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The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness
These twenty-two sermons from a master interpreter demonstrate how ancient texts can speak to the whole gamut of human experience even now. Included in Walter Brueggemann's preview are keen observations about the timeless issues of human life, both personal and the pain we face, often inflicted on each other; the use and abuse of power; the weakness and fragility of life; the redemptive power of faith; and much more.
- GenresTheologyChristianity
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1996
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70 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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March 28, 2013
Pure Proclamation and Holy Demands!
In this book Walter Brueggemann brings many ideas that could become teaching and preaching resources, many ideas for anyone to ponder, possibly even more so during the season of Lent.
On pages 59-60, the author describes preparations for the two hundred who typically attended a long-time annual Church Strawberry Festival Social in days of yore along with the two dozen present-day attendees. Like in those days of [the exilic] Isaiah 43:18-20, the Church Strawberry Folks were so completely enamored of the past they neglected and "have completely misunderstood the present tense." What are my own excessive preparations and concomitant misunderstandings these days?
On page 113 WB talks about "the long wait of Saturday" and observes that most of life is Sabbatarian, but how can Saturday be so persistently lonely and void of community? And are we not supposed to wait together for Resurrection Sunday's Easter dawn?! Throughout The Threat of Life WB reminds us we are baptized, and that baptismal pronoun always is we, us, our, ours and never ever an isolated, atomized autonomous "I, me, my, mine."
Evoking days of cultural anthro classes and later-on conversations in divinity school, when WB insists "You get a whole world with each food, because each food is a social reality in a social context" / "They are big, far-ranging public choices concerning foreign policy and budget and land reform and dreams..." (page 120) I respond with, "indeed, in so many ways." You are what you eat, meaning we actually become in some sense those rapacious grabbers of land, polluters of rivers and exploiters of the innocent. But maybe even more tangible and touchable, during the current economic recession and long before then, although all during my adult life I've eaten low on the food chain though not vegetarian (a little meat, chicken or fish once or twice a week), how clearly economic circumstances and anxieties about future income constrain and restrain the edibles we purchase and prepare and literally prevent us from much eating out in real sit-down restaurants with actual flatware and live wait-staff. You could say circumstances even re-train our palettes and our habits!
I love how in chapter 12, preaching on Psalm 23 for Lent 4, "Trusting in the Water - Food - Oil Supply", WB observes "The journey, with the power and purpose of God, changes the circumstances in which we live. Wilderness becomes home, isolation becomes companionship, scarcity becomes generosity. That is how the life of faith is. It is, to be sure, very different from the life where Yahweh is not at its core." (pages 94-95)
Jerusalem had "...long since forgotten the counter-tradition of Moses..." And Yahweh's word from Mount Sinai included a heavy "If"... if you keep my commandments, if you keep covenant, if you have no other gods beside me... As Martin Luther observed, all sin violates the first commandment so that we actually need only a single commandment, the first. We can consider ways various disciplines and practice may help achieve the possibility of new life as we abstain from all our idolatries, indulgences and distractions in favor of trusting and encountering the God who tames chaos, ordered creation, enacts resurrection, demands our allegiance and promises life "
In this book Walter Brueggemann brings many ideas that could become teaching and preaching resources, many ideas for anyone to ponder, possibly even more so during the season of Lent.
On pages 59-60, the author describes preparations for the two hundred who typically attended a long-time annual Church Strawberry Festival Social in days of yore along with the two dozen present-day attendees. Like in those days of [the exilic] Isaiah 43:18-20, the Church Strawberry Folks were so completely enamored of the past they neglected and "have completely misunderstood the present tense." What are my own excessive preparations and concomitant misunderstandings these days?
On page 113 WB talks about "the long wait of Saturday" and observes that most of life is Sabbatarian, but how can Saturday be so persistently lonely and void of community? And are we not supposed to wait together for Resurrection Sunday's Easter dawn?! Throughout The Threat of Life WB reminds us we are baptized, and that baptismal pronoun always is we, us, our, ours and never ever an isolated, atomized autonomous "I, me, my, mine."
Evoking days of cultural anthro classes and later-on conversations in divinity school, when WB insists "You get a whole world with each food, because each food is a social reality in a social context" / "They are big, far-ranging public choices concerning foreign policy and budget and land reform and dreams..." (page 120) I respond with, "indeed, in so many ways." You are what you eat, meaning we actually become in some sense those rapacious grabbers of land, polluters of rivers and exploiters of the innocent. But maybe even more tangible and touchable, during the current economic recession and long before then, although all during my adult life I've eaten low on the food chain though not vegetarian (a little meat, chicken or fish once or twice a week), how clearly economic circumstances and anxieties about future income constrain and restrain the edibles we purchase and prepare and literally prevent us from much eating out in real sit-down restaurants with actual flatware and live wait-staff. You could say circumstances even re-train our palettes and our habits!
I love how in chapter 12, preaching on Psalm 23 for Lent 4, "Trusting in the Water - Food - Oil Supply", WB observes "The journey, with the power and purpose of God, changes the circumstances in which we live. Wilderness becomes home, isolation becomes companionship, scarcity becomes generosity. That is how the life of faith is. It is, to be sure, very different from the life where Yahweh is not at its core." (pages 94-95)
Jerusalem had "...long since forgotten the counter-tradition of Moses..." And Yahweh's word from Mount Sinai included a heavy "If"... if you keep my commandments, if you keep covenant, if you have no other gods beside me... As Martin Luther observed, all sin violates the first commandment so that we actually need only a single commandment, the first. We can consider ways various disciplines and practice may help achieve the possibility of new life as we abstain from all our idolatries, indulgences and distractions in favor of trusting and encountering the God who tames chaos, ordered creation, enacts resurrection, demands our allegiance and promises life "
Displaying 1 of 1 review