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Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
The Christian gospel, says Brueggemann, is too easily preached and heard. Too often technical reason and excessive religious certitude reduce the gospel to coercive, debilitating pietisms that mask the text's meaning and freeze the hearers heart. With skill and imagination, Brueggemann demonstrates how the preacher can engage in daring speech-differently voiced and therefore differently heard. This speech, as suggested by the Bible itself, is "poetic" speech, enabling the preacher to forge communion in the midst of alienation, bring healing out of guilt, and empower the hearer for "missional imagination." As an alternative to theological/homiletical discourse that is moralistic, pietistic or scholastic, Brueggemann proposes preaching that is artistic, poetic, and dramatic. The basis for the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, Finally Comes the Poet is a unique and transforming guide for powerful preaching.
184 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
56 people are currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Walter Brueggemann
316 books572 followersWalter Brueggemann was an American Christian scholar and theologian who is widely considered an influential Old Testament scholar. His work often focused on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and the sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argued that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
March 25, 2015
I'm glad I picked this up again and reread it. Brueggemann talks about how, in contemporary America, the gospel is heard but as a truth greatly reduced. We hear it but not hear because we assume we understand fully. We've flattened it. We've made it prose and the gospel has to be r-enlivened for us by a poet--the preacher.
Brueggemann doesn't just point at the ways that the Bible speaks to our culture today, He also looks incisively at the many false roads in our culture. OUr numbness and ache, our vacillation between the poles of alienation and rage, our restlessness and greed, and our resistance. In each case, he examines a range of passages from the Bible (from Torah, Prophets and Writings) and shows us how God breaks through our modern cultural malaise and alerts us that an alternative way is possible.
This book came from the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School. Many 'preaching books' get bogged down in exegetical details or homiletic craft. If you ever read or heard Brueggemann you know that he is a perceptive reader of texts and cares about craft. But I value this book more for inspiration than implementation.
Brueggemann doesn't just point at the ways that the Bible speaks to our culture today, He also looks incisively at the many false roads in our culture. OUr numbness and ache, our vacillation between the poles of alienation and rage, our restlessness and greed, and our resistance. In each case, he examines a range of passages from the Bible (from Torah, Prophets and Writings) and shows us how God breaks through our modern cultural malaise and alerts us that an alternative way is possible.
This book came from the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures on preaching at Yale Divinity School. Many 'preaching books' get bogged down in exegetical details or homiletic craft. If you ever read or heard Brueggemann you know that he is a perceptive reader of texts and cares about craft. But I value this book more for inspiration than implementation.
September 6, 2013
Walter Brueggemann found this book title in "Passage to India," from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. This world has become "prose-flattened," so an alternative mode of addressing and encountering became the subject of the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School. Poetry isn't necessarily rhyme, metaphor, or simile, but poetry is the same type of alternative to conventional verbal expression that resurrection is to the reign of death. Israel spoke of the prophet, Greece of the poet, but both poet and prophet spoke and gave (in the Spirit they still speak and still give) the world jarring, angular, prodding, probing, redemptive words. This is Brueggemann, so you won't be surprised to know he reminds is "Word has its habitat in Sacrament. But it is to say more. It is to say that all our talking and listening is out of baptism and into baptism." (page 85)
I suppose in some ways Finally Comes the Poet is mostly a book for preachers and for those who regularly attend to preaching, but it's also a book for every one of us wherever we are. For the preacher in her or his daily sojourns to the mall or the grocery store. For every one of us who gathered around Word and Sacrament last Sunday, who now gather around colleagues at the office, grandkids at the kitchen table, second graders in the classroom, "bound in covenant to the life of God" (page 85), inspired to speak and evoke a lively and life-giving alternative to the reign of death. So let's not be prose-flattened? Let's all be and become the poet for each other!
I suppose in some ways Finally Comes the Poet is mostly a book for preachers and for those who regularly attend to preaching, but it's also a book for every one of us wherever we are. For the preacher in her or his daily sojourns to the mall or the grocery store. For every one of us who gathered around Word and Sacrament last Sunday, who now gather around colleagues at the office, grandkids at the kitchen table, second graders in the classroom, "bound in covenant to the life of God" (page 85), inspired to speak and evoke a lively and life-giving alternative to the reign of death. So let's not be prose-flattened? Let's all be and become the poet for each other!
April 21, 2021
brilliant. i've never had the old testament come so alive to me until starting to read walter brueggemann. so freaking good. i would recommend reading this one with a buddy, because the themes of this book are so rich and can be meditated and explored to no end, and it makes the experience all the more exciting. :)
January 7, 2013
Disclaimer: this is a book about preaching.
I begin with this disclaimer because it would have been nice to have had it myself; this was somewhat sneakily loaned to me by a friend and I thought it was on writing poetry. Surprise!
For all that, though, you don't have to have anything to do with preaching to appreciate this. Brueggemann is too smart by three for me, and yet he's written a book that is very readable--even a kind of call to different standards, as I have lots of preacher-type friends, that I might continually push them them away from "settling" in their sermons (which endears me greatly to them, I'm sure). The biggest problem of any sense I had was that Brueggemann's concepts are so weighty that it's hard to read this book with any speed; like taffy, you have to take small bits and chew on them for a while.
The format is a little repetitive in that each chapter ends with a signpost back to the title/thesis, but not to the point of annoyance. And the smooth writing style more than makes up for it. A brilliant book I'm glad to have been tricked into reading.
I begin with this disclaimer because it would have been nice to have had it myself; this was somewhat sneakily loaned to me by a friend and I thought it was on writing poetry. Surprise!
For all that, though, you don't have to have anything to do with preaching to appreciate this. Brueggemann is too smart by three for me, and yet he's written a book that is very readable--even a kind of call to different standards, as I have lots of preacher-type friends, that I might continually push them them away from "settling" in their sermons (which endears me greatly to them, I'm sure). The biggest problem of any sense I had was that Brueggemann's concepts are so weighty that it's hard to read this book with any speed; like taffy, you have to take small bits and chew on them for a while.
The format is a little repetitive in that each chapter ends with a signpost back to the title/thesis, but not to the point of annoyance. And the smooth writing style more than makes up for it. A brilliant book I'm glad to have been tricked into reading.
July 24, 2023
“We have only the word, but the word will do.”
A good book worth spending some time with.
A good book worth spending some time with.
November 6, 2018
This book came into my possession maybe 15 years ago when I worked at a homeless shelter. One of the chaplains said it was the most inspiring thing he'd ever read, and when I expressed interest, he gave it to me. I have a personal commitment to read every book that I am gifted. Which means, even though I no longer adhere to the faith tradition of the writer, the gifter, or the me of 15 years ago, I decided I needed to finally get around to reading it. I've also been mildly curious about the content since my mother has been telling me since I was 4 years old that I had the gift of prophecy. She said it a little snidely, so I was surprised to see a Christian book in which it was spoken of with honor.
I decided to approach FCTP with a completely open mind. I wanted to learn how this poetic/prophetic voice speaks to the human condition, to the deepest heart of humanity, where it convicts, inspires to action, and heals.
I could not glean as much meaning as many others will from the exegetical passages, but overall this book is stunning. I mean...so beautiful. I started stumbling across phrases that were so well-crafted and inspiring. And despite the age of this book, I was happy to find a male author who used gender inclusive language!!
Some favorite quotes stand out: "So we cling to the biblical text, now domesticated by our tenacious ideology. The text lingers in our midst, but it has been misshapen and diminished, and robbed of its dangerous power."
"This moment of speech is a poetic rendering in a community that has come all too often to expect nothing but prose. It is a prose world for all those who must meet payrolls and grade papers and pump gas and fly planes. When the text, too, has been reduced to prose, life becomes so prosaic that there is a dread dullness that besets the human spirit. We become mindless conformists or angry protesters, and there is no health in us. We become so beaten by prose that only poetic articulation has a chance to let us live. Into this moment, the preacher must speak. She does not get to speak a new text. She must speak an old text, the one everybody knows...Then there is a powerful sense that a world has been rendered in which I may live, a world that is truly home but from which I have been alienated."
And that's the spirit of Finally Comes The Poet . It evokes that mysterious part of the human spirit that needs beauty for meaning. It calls upon the listeners to move in the direction of justice, to examine their stagnant lives. It calls upon the speaker to use artistic narrative to draw out that which is best in those human collections we call communities. It's call to Jubilee as a counter to greed and coveting is revolutionary. It affirms feelings of rage and alienation. It reminds that Sabbath is an act of resistance against those who would sum up our worth by our labor and what we make from that labor, who insist that profit is the only measurable good.
But above all I think the paragraph I will take with me as I go into a hostile environment and try to effect political change, was on page 53: "Indignant hope is sounded because the speaker believes there is still the one to whom speech may be effectively addressed. There still is a serious conversation partner. In the very act of this speech, the world is already reshaped. It is reshaped with a chance of community and communion. It is reshaped with a possibility for dignity and self-respect. There is a speaking and a passionate conviction that there is listening."
I think what is essential about the act of prophecy is that it is the poet who affirms the personhood of the listener.
I decided to approach FCTP with a completely open mind. I wanted to learn how this poetic/prophetic voice speaks to the human condition, to the deepest heart of humanity, where it convicts, inspires to action, and heals.
I could not glean as much meaning as many others will from the exegetical passages, but overall this book is stunning. I mean...so beautiful. I started stumbling across phrases that were so well-crafted and inspiring. And despite the age of this book, I was happy to find a male author who used gender inclusive language!!
Some favorite quotes stand out: "So we cling to the biblical text, now domesticated by our tenacious ideology. The text lingers in our midst, but it has been misshapen and diminished, and robbed of its dangerous power."
"This moment of speech is a poetic rendering in a community that has come all too often to expect nothing but prose. It is a prose world for all those who must meet payrolls and grade papers and pump gas and fly planes. When the text, too, has been reduced to prose, life becomes so prosaic that there is a dread dullness that besets the human spirit. We become mindless conformists or angry protesters, and there is no health in us. We become so beaten by prose that only poetic articulation has a chance to let us live. Into this moment, the preacher must speak. She does not get to speak a new text. She must speak an old text, the one everybody knows...Then there is a powerful sense that a world has been rendered in which I may live, a world that is truly home but from which I have been alienated."
And that's the spirit of Finally Comes The Poet . It evokes that mysterious part of the human spirit that needs beauty for meaning. It calls upon the listeners to move in the direction of justice, to examine their stagnant lives. It calls upon the speaker to use artistic narrative to draw out that which is best in those human collections we call communities. It's call to Jubilee as a counter to greed and coveting is revolutionary. It affirms feelings of rage and alienation. It reminds that Sabbath is an act of resistance against those who would sum up our worth by our labor and what we make from that labor, who insist that profit is the only measurable good.
But above all I think the paragraph I will take with me as I go into a hostile environment and try to effect political change, was on page 53: "Indignant hope is sounded because the speaker believes there is still the one to whom speech may be effectively addressed. There still is a serious conversation partner. In the very act of this speech, the world is already reshaped. It is reshaped with a chance of community and communion. It is reshaped with a possibility for dignity and self-respect. There is a speaking and a passionate conviction that there is listening."
I think what is essential about the act of prophecy is that it is the poet who affirms the personhood of the listener.
April 28, 2024
Hoe te preken voor laat-moderne gemeenteleden die het allemaal wel een keer gehoord hebben? Hoe geef je als voorganger woorden aan de gevolgen – gevoelloosheid, pijn, vervreemding, woede, rusteloosheid en hebzucht – van een krachteloos geworden Evangelie? B. ziet al in de jaren ’80 van de vorige eeuw een groeiende verkondigingscrisis. In zijn in 1989 gehouden Lyman Beecher Lectures, die gebundeld zijn in dit boek, begint hij met diagnosticeren. De kernwaarden van het Evangelie – waaronder schuld, oordeel, genoegdoening, vergeving, roeping, godvruchtig mens-zijn – komen onvoldoende uit de verf. Veel preken zijn ‘flets’ en horizontaal geworden. De transformerende kracht is weggesijpeld.
B. pleit voor poëtische taal. Dat is een Bijbelse taal: moedig, helend en levengevend. Subversief ook, zonder negatief te doen en zonder aan te vallen. Met ‘poëtisch’ bedoelt hij niet rijm en metrum, maar eerder een wijze van spreken – evocatief, schurend en met tempo – waardoor de ‘gesloten’ wereld waarin gemeenteleden leven verrassend openbreekt. En we moeten weg van moraliserende, probleemoplossende, voorspelbaar-dogmatische prediking. De voorganger moet weer terug naar de Schrift. Meer hebben we niet nodig en meer staat er ook niet tot onze beschikking. “Our lives wait in the balance, hoping, yearning for the promissory, transforming word of the gospel. In the end, all we have is the word of the gospel.” (p. 142)
Wetenschappers, ondernemers, uitvinders hebben een gesloten, beheersbare en bruikbare waarheid gebracht. Nu is het tijd voor de dichter om met het Woord een alternatieve wereld te bouwen.
Na de diagnose geeft B. het goede voorbeeld en neemt de lezer mee op een creatieve tocht door de Schrift waar hij alles uit de kast haalt om te laten zien hoe je dat doet: poëtisch verkondigen. Hij legt via duidelijke voorbeelden de problemen bloot van niet-meer-werkende vormen van preken, wijst op andere aanvliegroutes en moedigt bovenal aan creatief te zijn, trouw te blijven aan de tekst en ‘poëtische taal’ te gebruiken die door het kille wereldbeeld heensnijdt. Hij wijst er ook op dat prediking spreken voor de gemeente én spreken voor God is.
De volgende themavelden werkt hij al Bijbellezende uit:
i) “Verdoofd zijn, pijn en schuld” en hoe verrassend genezing om de hoek komt kijken. Dit op basis van Jeremia, Leviticus, Mattheüs en Hebreeën (hfst. 1)
ii) “Vervreemding en woede”, op basis van Mozes’ gebeden, de Psalmen en teksten uit Jeremia, Hosea, Job, Jesaja en Openbaring (hfst. 2)
iii) “Rusteloosheid, hebzucht” en gehoorzaamheid aan de doop, op basis van het Sabbatsgebod (hfst. 3)
iv) “Vrijheid, overgave” en persoonlijke expressie, op basis van teksten uit Daniël (hfst. 4).
Met de structuur én de voorbeelden geeft hij concrete handvatten voor een vrijmoedige, poëtische verkondiging uit OT en NT.
B. pleit voor poëtische taal. Dat is een Bijbelse taal: moedig, helend en levengevend. Subversief ook, zonder negatief te doen en zonder aan te vallen. Met ‘poëtisch’ bedoelt hij niet rijm en metrum, maar eerder een wijze van spreken – evocatief, schurend en met tempo – waardoor de ‘gesloten’ wereld waarin gemeenteleden leven verrassend openbreekt. En we moeten weg van moraliserende, probleemoplossende, voorspelbaar-dogmatische prediking. De voorganger moet weer terug naar de Schrift. Meer hebben we niet nodig en meer staat er ook niet tot onze beschikking. “Our lives wait in the balance, hoping, yearning for the promissory, transforming word of the gospel. In the end, all we have is the word of the gospel.” (p. 142)
Wetenschappers, ondernemers, uitvinders hebben een gesloten, beheersbare en bruikbare waarheid gebracht. Nu is het tijd voor de dichter om met het Woord een alternatieve wereld te bouwen.
Na de diagnose geeft B. het goede voorbeeld en neemt de lezer mee op een creatieve tocht door de Schrift waar hij alles uit de kast haalt om te laten zien hoe je dat doet: poëtisch verkondigen. Hij legt via duidelijke voorbeelden de problemen bloot van niet-meer-werkende vormen van preken, wijst op andere aanvliegroutes en moedigt bovenal aan creatief te zijn, trouw te blijven aan de tekst en ‘poëtische taal’ te gebruiken die door het kille wereldbeeld heensnijdt. Hij wijst er ook op dat prediking spreken voor de gemeente én spreken voor God is.
De volgende themavelden werkt hij al Bijbellezende uit:
i) “Verdoofd zijn, pijn en schuld” en hoe verrassend genezing om de hoek komt kijken. Dit op basis van Jeremia, Leviticus, Mattheüs en Hebreeën (hfst. 1)
ii) “Vervreemding en woede”, op basis van Mozes’ gebeden, de Psalmen en teksten uit Jeremia, Hosea, Job, Jesaja en Openbaring (hfst. 2)
iii) “Rusteloosheid, hebzucht” en gehoorzaamheid aan de doop, op basis van het Sabbatsgebod (hfst. 3)
iv) “Vrijheid, overgave” en persoonlijke expressie, op basis van teksten uit Daniël (hfst. 4).
Met de structuur én de voorbeelden geeft hij concrete handvatten voor een vrijmoedige, poëtische verkondiging uit OT en NT.
September 26, 2017
Good stirring stuff. The four lectures (re-formed as chapters) deal with the modern angsts of numbness/ache, alienation/rage, restlessness/greed and conformity/autonomy. Each analysis of angst is then followed by a Biblical excursus and a discussion of how these passages address the root of the problem
Brueggemann is a wonderful and prolific writer. Once you've read three or four of his books you do start feeling as though you have read it all before.
Brueggemann is a wonderful and prolific writer. Once you've read three or four of his books you do start feeling as though you have read it all before.
May 8, 2020
A powerful and vivid description of the art of preaching. With interesting comments on the task of listening, engaging in conversation, and building communion. His unpacking of a few biblical stories is quite good, but then he is the greatest living commentator on the Old Testament.
This book was a gift from a retired minister whose newborn granddaughter's funeral I did this winter.
This book was a gift from a retired minister whose newborn granddaughter's funeral I did this winter.
January 14, 2024
I found this book to be very inspiring as a second year seminary student. It was my first Walter Brueggeman book and I intend to read many more books from this prolific author and Hebrew Bible scholar
November 23, 2018
Finally is the most appropriate word for as Brueggemann ties all of the threads together you sense the breadth of heart and soul he's been describing preaching as being.
July 27, 2021
Not a quick read (at least for me) but a great word on faithfulness to the text through artistic and poetic speech.
July 27, 2023
A wonderful work, steeping the preaching in the Biblical imagination in order to bring God’s people into God’s desired world even for our own time.
March 10, 2024
I needed this book.
November 17, 2025
A book about the poetry of preaching that is itself poetic.
September 27, 2022
Audience: pastors/preachers/clergy/ministers
Purpose:
a) Describe the state of mind, body, and spirit with which laypersons arrive to hear scripture and the sermon or homily; this in general is not a ready state of “hearing,” thanks to our perpetual assimilation into the dominant culture’s perspectives and values.
b) Emphasize the importance of narrating the Biblical story in such a way as to reorient laypersons’ listening/hearing receptivity and describe an approach for accomplishing this.
c) Review the essential, redemptive dynamic of the relationship between God and humans.
The phrase “finally comes the poet,” by the way, refers to the type of language that can serve to jar, awaken, reorient, or help us reimagine our understanding of God’s position and God’s action, i.e. how we can serve as participants in God’s just kingdom, a kingdom already pronounced but not yet fully realized. Bruegemann’s chapters are analyses of this reorientation process, which he explains via pairs of challenges: we must recognize, acknowledge and release our instinct for and attachment to “Alienation and Rage,” “Numbness and Ache,” and “Restlessness and Greed.”
I imagine each individual struggles more with some of these particular ways of suffering than others. For example, I can identify with all six of these categories, but some are more obvious upon self-reflection. The fourth and final pairing Bruegemann offers illustrates our movement from “Resistance” to “Relinquishment.”
Reading as a layperson, I believe I achieved the same understanding of Bruegemann’s ideas as most in ministry would. The difference is, I’m not now challenged to apply his insights and communicate God’s story in an awakening or enlightening way to a large group of people. Except maybe I am, in non-sermon ways. Either way, Bruegemann’s insights can heighten my own awareness so that I have a chance to enter my religious community as a prepared and ready hearer, checking my rage, numbness, greed, etc. and keeping my ears open for the language of the poet that reimagines the puzzle of our existence in a redemptive, hopeful way.
Purpose:
a) Describe the state of mind, body, and spirit with which laypersons arrive to hear scripture and the sermon or homily; this in general is not a ready state of “hearing,” thanks to our perpetual assimilation into the dominant culture’s perspectives and values.
b) Emphasize the importance of narrating the Biblical story in such a way as to reorient laypersons’ listening/hearing receptivity and describe an approach for accomplishing this.
c) Review the essential, redemptive dynamic of the relationship between God and humans.
The phrase “finally comes the poet,” by the way, refers to the type of language that can serve to jar, awaken, reorient, or help us reimagine our understanding of God’s position and God’s action, i.e. how we can serve as participants in God’s just kingdom, a kingdom already pronounced but not yet fully realized. Bruegemann’s chapters are analyses of this reorientation process, which he explains via pairs of challenges: we must recognize, acknowledge and release our instinct for and attachment to “Alienation and Rage,” “Numbness and Ache,” and “Restlessness and Greed.”
I imagine each individual struggles more with some of these particular ways of suffering than others. For example, I can identify with all six of these categories, but some are more obvious upon self-reflection. The fourth and final pairing Bruegemann offers illustrates our movement from “Resistance” to “Relinquishment.”
Reading as a layperson, I believe I achieved the same understanding of Bruegemann’s ideas as most in ministry would. The difference is, I’m not now challenged to apply his insights and communicate God’s story in an awakening or enlightening way to a large group of people. Except maybe I am, in non-sermon ways. Either way, Bruegemann’s insights can heighten my own awareness so that I have a chance to enter my religious community as a prepared and ready hearer, checking my rage, numbness, greed, etc. and keeping my ears open for the language of the poet that reimagines the puzzle of our existence in a redemptive, hopeful way.
April 20, 2023
Various people have recommended that I read this for years, being a preacher with a poetic mindset who loves Brueggemann. And many of his later distinguishing tropes are there, offering a fresh insight into Old Testament books, or rather opening up Old Testament books to offer us fresh insight into the Gospel. But sadly it is even harder work than his latter books. Not only is his "poetic" approach one that obscures as much as it enlightens here (though one might argue that this is the virtue of a poetic/parabolic approach, making us work for our insights and thus embedding them deeper) but the whole book seems more like a set of essays roughly stitched together by the poet-preacher motif rather than a coherent thesis. So it wasn't particularly satisfying, although I will doubtless return to it to dig for more gems.
June 24, 2015
I really appreciate Brueggemann. I wish the main text of this book were nearly as mind-blowing as his introduction. It would be twice as good if it had half as many words. His points were overstated-- both in their drama and in their redundancy. This might be a great style for 20-minute sermons, but it made for a very long 140 pages. In fact, I dragged myself through the second half only by reading it aloud. Maybe Brueggemann wouldn't mind these 'accusations' at all, but it didn't quite work for me.
Seriously, though, read the introduction. It was so good I wanted to throw the book across the room out of sheer excitement.
Seriously, though, read the introduction. It was so good I wanted to throw the book across the room out of sheer excitement.
September 7, 2015
Required Reading For Preachers
I decided to return to this book again after several years of being a pastor. It holds up in a big way. This should be mandatory reading for all religion students, especially is homily tics are in their future. What the Greeks called poets, the Hebrews called prophets. We desperately need imaginative preachers who will preach the gospel with the poetic artfulness it deserves. Pastors must learn to preach the beautiful, challenging, lyrical gospel and stop simple hitting hot button issues. The imagination of the prophets will give life to our preaching and this book is like a crash course in prophetic speech.
I decided to return to this book again after several years of being a pastor. It holds up in a big way. This should be mandatory reading for all religion students, especially is homily tics are in their future. What the Greeks called poets, the Hebrews called prophets. We desperately need imaginative preachers who will preach the gospel with the poetic artfulness it deserves. Pastors must learn to preach the beautiful, challenging, lyrical gospel and stop simple hitting hot button issues. The imagination of the prophets will give life to our preaching and this book is like a crash course in prophetic speech.
October 22, 2024
This was an incredibly challenging, incredibly refreshing, incredibly convicting read. He asserts that “the gospel is to readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no
unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. What began as news in the gospel is easily assumed, slotted, and
conveniently dismissed. We depart having heard, but without noticing the urge to transformation that is not readily
compatible with our comfortable believing that asks little and receives less.” Calling for a return to a gospel that asks something from its hearers, Brueggemann’s work pushes us toward more.
unsettling news and no unwelcome threat. What began as news in the gospel is easily assumed, slotted, and
conveniently dismissed. We depart having heard, but without noticing the urge to transformation that is not readily
compatible with our comfortable believing that asks little and receives less.” Calling for a return to a gospel that asks something from its hearers, Brueggemann’s work pushes us toward more.
October 20, 2008
A book that is aimed at trying to reinvigorate pastors to preach sermons that speak to the human condition. This is the best sum up of this book I can come up with.
January 23, 2009
Very, very bad.
April 14, 2010
Sadly, not as good as Hopeful Imagination, but a good discussion of the preacher's role in cultivating a dynamic language of faith among congregants and religious folk.
March 24, 2021
This small work says what I feel, what I wish I had said, what I hope I am saying.
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March 31, 2009Finally Comes The Poet by Walter Brueggemann (1989)
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews