Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann and Brent Strawn lead readers through the prophetic book of Isaiah, moving between looming predictions of punishment against Israel for breaking covenant with God and exultation in the ultimate hope of Israel’s restoration. Unwavering Faithfulness provides an accessible guide to Isaiah, helping contemporary readers grasp both the uncompromising demands of God’s holiness and God’s unshakable faithfulness to covenant relationship and desire to bring about a good future for God’s people. Isaiah is a dramatic book of prophecy and oracles that sweeps through the histories of Israel’s kings and dealings with surrounding nations, levying judgment but also offering the hope of restoration, blessing, and shalom. This great prophet’s words are a lot to take in. Israel is taken to task for exploiting the poor and seeking security in political treaties and the human economy rather than in the fidelity of God. Ignoring the call of covenant to enact economic justice and righteousness for neighbors, Israel experiences the holy rule of God as working through geopolitical events that lead to the destruction of Jerusalem. But Isaiah doesn’t rest here, and Unwavering Faithfulness forecasts ahead to the promise of Israel’s return to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile and to the imagination of the early church, inspired by the poetry of Isaiah to place its hope in Jesus the Messiah. The ultimacy of God’s governance and faithfulness in the swirl of global political chaos anchors this Bible study, helping readers grasp Isaiah’s vision of the covenantal fidelity of the Lord who wills newness and redemption amid failed histories. This book will help readers seek to identify the movement of God in the midst of the natural consequences of forsaking the holy way on a global scale (climate disaster and the self-destruction of fearful, power-mongering governments) and to continue to look for the in breaking of God’s shalom. Questions for reflection and discussion are included at the end of each chapter, making this book ideal for individual or group study.

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In Grace Abounds: God's Abundance against the Fear of Scarcity, Walter Brueggemann explores our human struggle of having a smallness of mind that breeds competition and envy against God’s prompting to move beyond our small selves to trust in God’s ultimate provision and to extend ourselves to others openhandedly. The Walter Brueggemann Library brings together the wide-ranging and enlivening thought of popular biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann over his storied career. Each volume collects previously published work on a biblical theme that has deeply informed Brueggemann’s scholarship, in an accessible digest for readers who want to freshly engage his prophetically minded but approachable writing on the topic. The Bible often associates God’s grace with abundance. While it is sometimes equated with forgiveness, more often grace is described much more broadly in the texts of ancient Israel: as the divine self-giving that stands against various forms of scarcity. We are bombarded daily with the idea that there is not enough of anything—housing, jobs, resources. By contrast, the Bible shows again and again how God meets our needs abundantly but in such a way that unveils our profound ongoing need for God and for one another. The first part of Grace Abounds lays out fundamentals of biblical grace by focusing on some of our most basic needs—to eat, to use land, to find shelter—and four different types of responses from people in Scripture struggling to survive experiences of exile and forced migration. In the second part of the book, Brueggemann advocates for specific biblical practices that are appropriate to the reality and experience of God’s grace and grace-full relationships with fellow creatures: keeping Sabbath, making doxology, bestowing blessing, offering forgiveness, and realizing reconciliation. Questions for reflection are included at the end of each chapter, making this book ideal for individual or group study.

Liturgy at its best has the power to transform the community of the faithful. The liturgies in this book focus on lament, especially the lament experienced by communities of people facing environmental degradation and loss. It is often observed that lament has dropped out of much Christian worship in favor of praise and thanksgiving, yet the honest emotion voiced in such prayer remains an essential component of authentic, transformative engagement with God. Each liturgy is a complete service of worship based on a specific theme and may also be used as an anthology of prayers and litanies. God's Good Earth in Crisis is offered in the conviction that worship is the most powerful means the Holy Spirit uses to equip us to live faithful lives serving God and caring for God's holy people and sacred earth.

Liturgy at its best has the power to transform the community of the faithful. The liturgies in this book focus on lament, especially the lament experienced by communities of people facing environmental degradation and loss. It is often observed that lament has dropped out of much Christian worship in favor of praise and thanksgiving, yet the honest emotion voiced in such prayer remains an essential component of authentic, transformative engagement with God. Each liturgy is a complete service of worship based on a specific theme and may also be used as an anthology of prayers and litanies. God's Good Earth in Crisis is offered in the conviction that worship is the most powerful means the Holy Spirit uses to equip us to live faithful lives serving God and caring for God's holy people and sacred earth.

Table of Contents 1 Alternative to the Bread of Affliction 2 Preaching the Psalms 3 On Tenacious Parenting 4 The Litigation of Scarcity 5 Twin Themes for Ecumenical Singing: The Psalms 6 In the "Thou" Business: The Travail of Biblical Language . . . Again 7 Reaping the Whirlwind 8 The Poem: Subversion and Summons 9 The Impossible Possibility of Forgiveness 10 On Appearing before the Authorities 11 Getting Your Sibilants Right: The Evangelical Shibboleth 12 Do the Numbers 13 Awaiting the Verdict 14 At the Death of Peter Knauert: Peter amid Remembering and Hoping 15 Advantage McEnroe 16 What Does It Mean to Be Human? 17 When the Music Starts Again 18 The First Great Commandment 19 A Little Evangelical Geography 20 Toward Perfect Health 21 Peace: The Fruit of the Spirit 22 Three Key Moves toward White Extremism 23 A Retrospect

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion. These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers show us how God accompanies us through all the moments and stages of our life, bringing us the joys of life even amid a broken and hurting world and especially offering a joyous calling in Christ to serve that world.

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion. These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers show us how God accompanies us through all the moments and stages of our life, while simultaneously calling us to do the same for all those whom God has placed alongside us in the journey.

Biblical utterance, in contrast to the sounds of power and certitude, offers imaginative probes into the mystery of God's creation and into the hidden complexities of human hurt and human hope. Thus the dialect of the Bible is offered in relational terms, so that the key ingredients to lived reality characteristically concern justice and righteousness, steadfast love, faithfulness, and compassion. Insofar as the church relies upon and attests to this dialect, we may expect that in church we will speak in a different rhetoric, and consequently we will speak about different subject matter. To be sure, the church is sometimes seduced away from this relational dialect to speak in cadences that are elementally alien to the Bible and to the claims of the gospel. Such seduction of the church takes place, for example, when our nation is at war and the church is tempted to reflect and reiterate the force of that social reality. Or such seduction occurs when the church is captured by any ism, notably in our time, racism or nationalism. Or alternatively, ideological conservatism that craves the language of certitude or ideological liberalism that is easily bewitched by the rhetoric of psychology or the market. When the church is domesticated to such alien claims, it loses its distinctiveness, and consequently loses its nerve and its courage for serious mission. Thus attentiveness to our peculiar dialect is an important investment. --from the Preface

Biblical utterance, in contrast to the sounds of power and certitude, offers imaginative probes into the mystery of God's creation and into the hidden complexities of human hurt and human hope. Thus the dialect of the Bible is offered in relational terms, so that the key ingredients to lived reality characteristically concern justice and righteousness, steadfast love, faithfulness, and compassion. Insofar as the church relies upon and attests to this dialect, we may expect that in church we will speak in a different rhetoric, and consequently we will speak about different subject matter. To be sure, the church is sometimes seduced away from this relational dialect to speak in cadences that are elementally alien to the Bible and to the claims of the gospel. Such seduction of the church takes place, for example, when our nation is at war and the church is tempted to reflect and reiterate the force of that social reality. Or such seduction occurs when the church is captured by any ism, notably in our time, racism or nationalism. Or alternatively, ideological conservatism that craves the language of certitude or ideological liberalism that is easily bewitched by the rhetoric of psychology or the market. When the church is domesticated to such alien claims, it loses its distinctiveness, and consequently loses its nerve and its courage for serious mission. Thus attentiveness to our peculiar dialect is an important investment. --from the Preface

As the church emerges from the impact of COVID, how will it reimagine its mission? With all the disruption COVID caused comes an opportunity for congregations. How will the local church organize itself, engage with the neighborhood and world, and offer pastoral care to a planet dealing with the significant issues heightened during COVID? Returning to old patterns of behavior is a wasted chance. A theological opportunity for the church lies in rediscovering the classical aim of leisure. The early church during the first two centuries offers us an understanding of leisure quite unique from the dominant expressions of leisure, such as Greek schole, Roman otium, and the Jewish Sabbath. By exploring early Christian practices, we can find insights about leisure for mission today. These practices include setting aside a single day of the week to worship, sharing in a common meal open to all, and, following the meal, incorporating into nonwork time care and engagement in the health and vitality of the community in the name of Jesus Christ. The followers of Jesus were consistent, if extraordinary, in meeting weekly, on the Lord's Day, to worship, eat together, and go out into the neighborhood to live out their faith.

The Walter Brueggemann Library brings together the wide-ranging and enlivening thought of popular biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann over his storied career. Each volume collects previously published work on a biblical theme that has deeply informed Brueggemann's scholarship, in an accessible digest for readers who want to freshly engage his prophetically minded but approachable writing on the topic. In Hope Restored, Brueggemann points us toward energizing hope for an alternative life of social equity and thriving. In Brueggemann's work, hope is not understood as easy optimism but as an honest facing of the unjust structures that human beings have created and a call to lean into the deep symbols of Scripture that imagine the alternative way of God, restoring solidarity and relationship that have been eroded by the violence of empire. According to the witness of Scripture, the divine presence is never settled into the arrangements and structures of the status quo. It provokes God's people to imagine beyond what they see and beyond their own selfish interests. Hope is always strongest among those who grieve and are willing to insistently critique the complacent, death-dealing social order that coddles the privileged and keeps its foot on the neck of those seen as "other" and to imagine new, whole-making realities on the horizon. Hope Restored takes readers through the unfolding possibilities for a liberated human imagination in Scripture. Brueggemann envisions the Torah--including the divine promises made to Israel's ancestral matriarchs and patriarchs, the travails of the exodus and its memory, and the giving of the law--as a collective effort to form a multigenerational community marked by gratitude and solidarity with the marginalized. The historical and prophetic books articulate the hope of shalom in the midst of brutal political violence driven by self-interested nations in which the people of God are often implicated. A deep consideration of Daniel offers a vision of resistance against and an ultimate righting of the abuses of sociopolitical machinations--through both human and divine means. The Psalms lead us into the space of lament, protest, and demand for God to make manifest new visions of life and justice that carry over into Jesus' story of the aggrieved widow who gives a judge no peace until he grants her justice. Exploring models of hope that are expressed through critique, persistence, vision, and holy inspiration in the Hebrew Bible and that find continued resonance in the traditions of Jesus, Brueggemann locates in the Scriptures a tenacious shalom that breaks through the rocky ground of struggle and suffering. This gritty, wide-awake hope is willing to be dissatisfied and to cry out against the oppressor, while reaching forward to imagine new alternatives with creativity and freedom, to bring into reality a social order that benefits and cares for all. Questions for reflection are included at the end of each chapter, making this book ideal for individual or group study.

This collection of prayers by noted Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann can be used in both public worship and private devotion. These prayers run the gamut from particular days in the church year to special moments in the lives of worshiping communities to events playing out on the world stage. In all cases, the prayers spur us toward acts of justice and peacemaking and call on God to heal and restore God's hurting and broken people.

There are geniuses in every field of work and all walks of life. Throughout my life, I have seen the geniuses of justice at work in this nation and in faith communities. This book tells the stories of fifty-three "geniuses of justice." They are Conservative and Reform Jews, Mainline, Pentecostal, Evangelical and Catholic Christians, "spiritual but not religious," women, men; Black, brown, white, gay and straight, young and old. Each is a powerful witness for justice. Each has the "IT" factor of justice burning in their bones. How did they become who they are? What drives them to "do the right thing" on behalf of others that is translatable to anyone, anywhere? These geniuses of justice are "just folks" who are justice folk. They can empower and teach each of us to change the world right where we are. This book passes on their genius for justice to you to strengthen and empower you for "bending the moral arc of the universe" to justice. This book is for everyone to learn something that will empower them to change the world - in the place where they live and have power to make a difference.