Inscribing the Text by Walter Brueggemann

This collection of sermons and prayer/poems is of astounding quality.  This comes as no surprise given Brueggemann is one of the greatest living theologians.

But what is perhaps most powerful is that this is a pastoral collection, sermons given at particular moments in particular places, and yet informed by the full extent of Brueggemann’s scholarship. What a delight it must be to find yourself in the pews as Brueggemann rises to speak of God. 

How many Sundays have been defined by the crushing mediocrity of a sermon? And yet somewhere out there such pearls as these were being offered. 

Many of the prayers are response to Psalms, many are, to use a term of Jim Cotter’s, “unfoldings” of a Psalm – not translation or paraphrase but a reimagining in our contemporary setting of what prompted the first Psalmist to write or craft the words. 

Much of the collection was written shortly after “9/11” - in a moment when Americans of all perspectives were taken off guard. Brueggemann would fit within what is loosely called “Liberal” America and if is interesting to see him trying to process the events of 9/11.  At moments the shock and grief of the event are at the fore, but at others he is taking on a bold prophetic voice – as the American Establishment lurched toward reactive and ultra-conservative responses, often buttressed by “Christian” rhetoric – he is calling out to a different understanding of the message of Christ.

This collection is a joy to read, but that does not mean it is an entirely comfortable read.  The intensity of Brueggemann’s faith and thought is a challenge – even on the page he demands our attention, and then directs that attention away to Christ.  Anyone would is genuinely attentive to Christ can not stay long unchanged.