Liminality Farm

Prophet. What are you seeing in your head right now? Old dude, white hair, crazy beard? Like these fellas.

Of course, the defining characteristic of a prophet isn’t the strangely uniform fashion choices. It is the ability to prophesy. For many, this has been taken to mean that a prophet’s primary function is predicting the future, and their credibility (and by extension, the credibility of their accounts in the Bible) depends on their predictions being successful. Let’s check in on the dictionary definition (source: Merriam Webster “Prophesy”)

Brueggemann’s primary hypothesis is this (note all quotes in this review are from The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann, unless otherwise specified):

The hypothesis I will explore here is this: The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated.

The book works its way through several arguments drawn from Scripture in six chapters, which I’ll review in several posts. This is not a short book, so it’s not a short post even for one chapter. I can wait here while you go get a snack…..

All set? Awesome, let’s dive in.

The Alternative Community of Moses

The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act…. The internal cause of such enculturation is our loss of identity through the abandonment of the faith tradition…. The church will not have power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation.

Well, don’t hold back, Walter — tell us how you really feel!

This selection of opening quotes from the first chapter sets up the “problem statement”. The author sees a fundamental opposition between consumerism and the real work of the church (which is not new in the modern North American church, FYI, having just read the laundry list of sins committed by Israelites in Ezekiel’s day). I want to point out a couple of key things to note before we get too much farther:

• If you read “faith tradition” and immediately thought of some kind of Christian Checklist (no drinking or extramarital sex or cursing = Heaven ahoy!) that’s not what Brueggemann is pointing towards. By “faith tradition” he is referring to a communal memory about what it meant to have radical hope, a memory so clear and present that any gap between it and current culture can be detected and named right away. Stay with me for a bit if you’re still confused, I hope to be able to unpack this more in the post on Chapter 2: Royal Consciousness.
• This is 100% a book about the intersection between politics and faith. If you don’t believe the two are connected, I am going to suggest (in honest neighborly love, no snark) that you reread the Gospels at least. Even just one. Even John (maybe especially John). Politics is more than just what box you tick at the voting booth. It’s about how the dominant consciousness of society is expressed in its actions (like treatment of the marginalized, to give an example Jesus cared deeply about) and as people of faith that needs to really matter to us. Brueggemann isn’t talking about Democrat vs. Republican (to use an American example) he is talking about being citizens of the kingdom vs. being citizens of the Kingdom.

Brueggemann doesn’t see prophesy as being primarily about social action (although, it is an inevitable outcome). The hypothesis of the book (cited above) is about prophetic ministry’s primary task being to point towards an alternative consciousness. Alternative to what? Well, the “dominant culture”, according to the hypothesis, but I hate using that phrase out of context. Almost every Christian I know (yeah, me too, a lot of the time) uses the phrase “dominant culture” or more often “the world” to mean whatever it is about their environment they don’t like or feel persecuted by. I am not going to give specific examples here (although I’m dying to) because frankly, I’m subject to precisely the same cognitive biases AND I also have a tendency to read things as if they were somehow meant as applying only to me, an individual. And this is not a hypothesis for individuals, really, it’s for collectives. Brueggemann does a lot of explaining of what he means by the dominant culture in the next chapter, so if you can’t wait, feel free to check out the post on Chapter 2.

For those still with me here in Chapter 1, Brueggemann distills his opening arguments into the following statement:

The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition.

The dominant culture we are meant to be alternative to is:

• Fundamentally uncritical of itself, and intolerant of criticism from other sources.
• Also fundamentally tired. The idea of something new is inevitably paired with the necessity of something changing, and change can be exhausting.

At this point, to provide an example, we turn to Moses as Brueggemann’s Prophecy Ground Zero. For those very familiar with the story, either from Exodus or Charlton Heston or Disney or maybe those singing vegetables, try to see it with fresh eyes. The story of the Exodus describes a shocking and radical break with the Egyptian social reality and its dominant culture (as personified by Pharoah). Any antecedents to the story, or even if the Exodus actually happened AS described in the Bible, are almost irrelevant in the face of WHAT is being described.

Prophecy is born precisely in that moment when the emergence of social political reality is so radical and inexplicable that it has nothing less than a theological cause.

Whew. Just imagine. This wasn’t some slow and “reasonable” perturbation from the static imperial culture of Egypt, bound to eventually return to its former condition under the sheer inertia of the thing. The participants in the Exodus didn’t just come up with a new religion, they were forming a new community that matched the vision of God’s freedom.

Conversely, if a God is disclosed who is free to come and go, free from and even against the regime, free to hear and even answer slave cries, free from all proper godness as defined by the empire, then it will bear decisively upon sociology because the freedom of God will surface in the brickyards and manifest itself as justice and compassion…. The point that prophetic imagination must ponder is that there is no freedom of God without the politics of justice and compassion, and there is no politics of justice and compassion without a religion of the freedom of God.

Prophetic Criticism

So what does Brueggemann mean by criticism, exactly?

Criticism is not carping and denouncing. It is asserting that false claims to authority and power cannot keep their promises, which they could not in the face of the free God.

This new covenant community will be defined by the religion of the free God, and therefore also by the politics of justice and compassion as described above. Brueggemann calls out the plague cycle as the clear dismantling of the imperial religion through the only mechanism possible — a demonstration of its fraudulence. But there is another aspect in this story — remember Exodus starts with the groaning of God’s people (Exod 2:23-25).

I will urge later that the real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right.

I know I tried to steer us away from thinking of Brueggemann’s statements in strictly individual terms, but here’s one place where I think we should go back down that particular path. How many times has your “world” insisted that you not grieve? Or if you are permitted grief, it is only of a socially acceptable variety and only for as long as others can endure it? Whether it is grief over a loved one lost, a relationship ended, a change in life circumstance (even good ones!), or any of the other ways, big and small, in which we groan and cry to God, how often are we told “Positive vibes only!!!1!!” or some other nonsense. And how often are the “positive vibes” people trying to sell you something? Possibly you are aware now that this is something of a soapbox for me, but it is for Brueggemann too so I don’t feel too bad about including it here. And it’s my blog so I’ll rant if I want to.

Now ascribe these same events to a whole community. What has our aversion to grief produced for us as a whole? A constellation of products promising to make us happy now, without having to go through the tough parts? A “society” of individuals on islands, who respond to the cries of those on our outskirts with “Well, I have it hard, too?” Are any of us really experiencing the freedom of God? Is it uncomfortable for you to read this? It’s uncomfortable for me to write it, that’s for sure. But here we are.

Prophetic Energizing

Energizing is closely linked to hope. We are energized not by that which we already possess but by that which is promised and about to be given.

It’s going to be awfully tempting at this point to view the criticism half of prophetic ministry as the “bad news”, and the energizing half as the “good news.” But that feeling is being produced (at least in myself) by once again viewing this through the lens of the individual, which was a useful detour above — but now we need to get back on Brueggemann’s original path. Criticism and its resulting effects are never comfortable for either the criticizer or the criticized. But the kind of prophetic criticism described in the book already points towards the free God — you don’t have to wait until we get to the “good bits”. Brueggemann lists and describes three points of prophetic energizing in the Exodus narrative:

First, energy comes from the embrace of the inscrutable darkness. That darkness, which is frightening in its authority, appears here in the hardness of heart…. something is “on the move” in the darkness that even the lord of the darkness does not discern.

“Hey, is he talking about that weirdo bit where Yahweh hardens Pharoah’s heart?” Yes, yes he is. God, in his freedom, is working all the angles necessary to make this work, and the Israelites are just as much “in the dark” about how the whole thing is going to play out as Egypt is. The difference being, of course, that Israel (at least for now) has submitted to God. They trust Him to be more powerful than darkness. There is an energy there, that while they do not understand this free God and his promises they move towards Him anyway.

Second, there is a wondrous statement of a new reality that surely must energize: “But against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the LORD makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel.” (Exod 11:7)

This statement is not meant to be exclusionary. Brueggemann argues that prophetic ministry is not meant to be “eternal”. By definition, it is for the now, for the concrete reality of the community the prophet serves. So this statement of distinction is for that community at that specific time.

It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone. They are old gods who don’t care anymore and have tried everything once and have a committee studying all the other issues.

So the relevant contrast is not between who’s in and who’s out of God’s faaaancy social club, but between the empire and the dissidents. It is between the wearied refrain of “this is just how things have always been and will always be” and true newness.

The last energizing reality is a doxology in which the singers focus on this free one and in the act of the song appropriate the freedom of God as their own freedom.

I admit I had to go Google doxology. Brueggemann is specifically referencing the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:1-18) and the Song of Miriam (Exod 15:21) at this point in the text, but probably the doxology I was most familiar with was the ending of the Lord’s Prayer (at least, for Protestants): For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen. Whether you think this is an extra line (Hi, Catholics!) or not, it’s a darn good doxology. There is no space in this single line for any power other than the power of a free God, and I believe this is what Brueggemann is getting at.

So, who cares about a little song, right? Or a line that you’ve probably repeated thousands of times without really examining it (I’m not casting shade — we said the Lord’s Prayer in school until I was in Grade 9 so believe me when I say I personally was not thinking about the theological implications in Grades 1-8). Brueggemann argues that we should care deeply, and one line in particular really resonated with me:

The evocation of an alternative reality consists at least in part in the battle for language and the legitimization of a new rhetoric.

Language matters. How we speak to each other, to ourselves and to God matters. At the time at which I am writing this, there is a fair bit of absurd resistance to marginalized communities in particular asking for a change in language. Other human beings requesting respectful speech (by their definition, which should be the one that matters) are more often accused of being “too easily offended” and overly “politically correct.” (Go have a look at that Wiki link if you have time, I for sure learned some things). I confess I don’t understand why people struggle so with this — when my schoolteacher asked to be addressed as Mr. Smith instead of Joe (names changed to protect the innocent!) none of us blinked an eye. Is it really so different when someone asks to be addressed by their preferred pronouns? For me and my house, no, it’s one and the same.

I wonder, after reading this book, if people are reacting to this language because of the fear of change. If instinctively we as society understand that language matters, and a “new rhetoric” is a step in establishing an alternative reality to the dominant one, then that fear could be very real. Probably someone has thought this through already (possibly even Brueggemann, who has written a shocking number of books), but maybe I’ll explore it later in another post.

Brueggemann sums up the path so far as follows:

Taken altogether, the Mosaic tradition affirms three things: The alternative life is lived in this very particular historical and historicizing community. This community criticizes and energizes by its special memories that embrace discontinuity and genuine breaks from imperial reality. This community, gathered around the memories, knows it is defined by and is at the disposal of a God who as yet is unco-opted and uncontained by the empire.

And that was only Chapter 1! In the post on Chapter 2 we’ll review Brueggemann’s deeper insight into the dominant culture or what he terms “The Royal Consciousness.”

Thank you all for reading,

A