Quotes from Walter Brueggemann

we have believed that faith does not mean to acknowledge and embrace negativity.

The dominant ideology of our culture is committed to continuity and success and to the avoidance of pain, hurt, and loss. The dominant culture is also resistant to genuine newness and real surprise. It is curious but true, that surprise is as unwelcome as is loss. And our culture is organized to prevent the experience of both.

The royal dynasty of King David, as portrayed in the biblical text, was a tax-collecting, labor-exploiting, surplus-wealth-exhibiting regime.

A totalizing regime cannot tolerate dissent or subversion. Thus, as is necessary, totalizing regimes must silence dissent, must prohibit subversion, must control artists, must banish poets, and when necessary must kill prophets.

Such brutality is required because dissenters, subversives, artists, poets, and prophets invite thought that the regime is not absolute, that its claims to legitimacy are not ultimate, that its policies are not beyond criticism nor its practices beyond destabilization.

Nobody is profane or unclean. Nobody can be discounted. Nobody is second-class. Nobody is subject to dismissal. Nobody should be cheap labor. Nobody should suffer systems of violence. Old living is contradicted by the truth of the Spirit. The superstition of superiority is broken. The old distinction of chosenness is placed in question.

It is the work of the poet to imagine YHWH out beyond old stereotypes and to show us that the God of Israel, at the very moment of risk, is a God of healing, transformative, covenantal fidelity.

It is clear that human agents have been at work through the entire traditioning process. They witness to the will, purpose, and presence of YHWH, who remains inscrutably hidden in and through the text and yet who discloses YHWH's own holy self through that same text.

This likely means the Torah of Deuteronomy, but it is not spelled out. Most spectacularly, there is only one condition spelled out … keep Sabbath!

do not think for one moment that there is any ready transfer from this narrative to our real-life crisis with the virus. The Bible does not often easily "apply." The Bible does, however, invite an open imagination that hopes for the best outcomes of serious scientific research. At the same time, it affirms that deeply inscrutable holy reality is in, with, under, and

doing economic justice for the vulnerable in generous, intentional ways, is communion with God.

The cry that breaks the silence is the sound of bodies becoming fully aware of what the predatory system has cost and being fully aware as well that it can be otherwise.