Tag Archives: Walter Brueggeman

Sabbath’s Blessed Rest: A sermon for Proper 4B, June 2, 2024

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`It may not be officially summer by the calendar but it sure feels that way—Memorial Day was last Monday. School will be out this week. Many of us are looking forward to the slower pace of summer with vacations, weekends away, time to relax with friends and family. In the liturgical calendar, we have also opened a new season. Officially the Episcopal Church calls this the Season after Pentecost. The liturgical color changes to green, and from now through the end of November, our gospel readings will focus on Jesus’ ministry and teachings as we read through the gospel of Mark, with another detour into the Gospel of John in August.

Somewhat deceptively, in the Roman Catholic calendar, this season is called “Ordinary Time”—which does not mean “ordinary” in our usual understanding, but refers to the ordinal numbers by the Sundays are named. We call them “propers”—from a Latin word; each Sunday has a set of readings that are specified for the day. But in another sense, ordinary time is an appropriate name for this season because it takes on a different vibe from the great seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter, which focus on the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. Our attention in this season after Pentecost is drawn to our response to those mighty acts of salvation, to our growth in faith and discipleship as followers of Jesus.

These comments about the liturgical calendar and seasons offer an interesting backdrop to today’s gospel reading and the lesson from Deuteronomy with which it’s paired. This year, we’ll be reading from Track 2 of the lectionary, which provides readings from the Hebrew Bible that relate in some way to the day’s gospel reading. Track 1, which we followed the last time we were in this year B of the cycle, offers a semi-continuous reading of the Hebrew Bible, in year B, the focus is on the rise of the monarchy.

We are presented with two gospel stories, coupled together that focus on Sabbath observance. And in the Deuteronomy reading, we have a version of the commandment to keep the sabbath day holy.

As Americans, we have been acculturated to value individualism, and personal freedom above almost everything else, so the idea that we might not be able to do whatever we want, whether it be a load of laundry or going grocery shopping, on a particular day of the week, elicits visceral, negative responses. Although the weekend still has meaning for us as two days when most of us are off of work, the reality is that there are many—in the service industry for example, or those who work two jobs to make ends meet—who do not have the luxury of 2 days off in a row or a Sunday for relaxation, and perhaps, going to church.

And with the ubiquity of devices in our lives, most of us have to be very proactive not to be reading or responding to emails from the office, or texts from bosses or coworkers about projects or tasks that need to be completed.

Thus, when we hear the Pharisees complain about Jesus’ disciples picking and eating grain on the Sabbath, or their criticism of Jesus’ for healing a man with a withered hand, our reactions are in part shaped by all of those deeply ingrained cultural attitudes, as well as by two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism which contrasts pharisaic morality and legalism with the freedom offered by Jesus. 

What we see here is not a conflict between rival religions but a conflict within Judaism; even a conflict within a particular movement in Judaism. Jesus and the Pharisees are not disagreeing about the Torah, they are disagreeing about its interpretation. Both would acknowledge the importance of the commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The question they are debating is what does it mean to keep the Sabbath day holy. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.” It’s quite similar to statements from rabbinic literature a century later (perhaps preserving earlier traditions): “The Sabbath is handed over to you, not you to it” and “Profane one Sabbath for a person’s sake, so that he may keep many Sabbaths.”

While the Sabbath is a day of rest in Judaism, it is also much more than that. As the great 20th century Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his little book The Sabbath:

On the Sabbath it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time. Even when the soul is seared, even when no prayer can come out of our tightened throats, the clean, silent rest of the Sabbath leads us to a realm of endless peace, or to the beginning of an awareness of what eternity means. … Eternity utters a day.

But what did Jesus mean when he said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath?” We might be inclined to think that the Sabbath then is dependent on human interpretation, or human desire for keeping it, but it’s likely Jesus meant something rather different.

To get at this question, it’s worth going back to the commandment. There are two versions of it in Hebrew scripture, and we heard the less familiar one, from the book of Deuteronomy, not from Exodus 20:8-11 where the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and to rest on that day is connected with God’s actions in creation—creating the universe and humankind on the first six days and on the seventh day creating the sabbath: creating, resting, blessing the seventh day and hallowing it.

It’s not only that God created, blessed, and sanctified the Sabbath; God also blessed and sanctified rest itself. Indeed, we can see that in addition to being a God who creates, God is also a God who rests and in so doing, offers us the gift of blessed and sanctified rest.

 Imagine that. 

In our frantic world, when we have made ourselves slaves to our devices, to our email and texts, when so many of us are never disconnected from our jobs, God offers us the gift of blessed and sanctified rest. We can disconnect, slow down, and stop—and, most importantly, we don’t need to feel guilty about it, because God has given us the opportunity, the gift, of sanctified and blessed rest.

The reason for keeping the Sabbath day holy and for resting is rather different in our text: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

To put it bluntly, here observance of the Sabbath is also connected with God’s nature and God’s actions. But in this case what is emphasized is God’s act of liberation of God’s people—the deliverance of the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. So Sabbath is partially an act of remembrance of what God has done, and who God’s people are, but it is also liberation or freedom, in the sense that on this day, God’s people do not have labor and toil as they did while they were slaves in Egypt; or to use a contemporary metaphor, slaves to the almighty dollar. 

But Sabbath is not a day of rest, remembrance, and liberation for myself alone; it is also a day of rest for everyone—male and female, slave and free, and even one’s animals. The day of rest extends to all of creation! In that sense, the commandment to rest on the Sabbath connects up with the commandment to love one’s neighbors. It is an act of love of others to allow them to rest, as well. 

In his wonderful little book, Sabbath as Resistance, Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggeman takes it a step further. Noting that we are caught up in a consuming and commodity culture, where our value is based on what we have and buy and where we are bombarded by advertising, made anxious when we don’t accumulate enough stuff, or enough for retirement, Sabbath is also an act of resistance against that anxious and acquisitive culture. He writes: 

I have come to think that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence 

I encourage all of you to look for ways of bringing Sabbath into your lives and the life of your families, whether it be for a day, a half-day, or even an hour; to enjoy the blessed and sanctified rest of a restful God, and to experience the freedom in a God who liberates us. 

Marked by Ashes: Poetry for Lent by Walter Brueggeman

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Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day …
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.
We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Sabbath as Rest, Liberation, and Resistance: A Sermon for Proper 4, Year B

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When I was a child, Sunday was a day of rest or play. I don’t remember my parents ever doing any activity that could have been construed as work, and they didn’t allow us children to do anything of the sort, either. Meals were prepared and the kitchen was cleaned up but no other household chores were done—no laundry or cleaning. And certainly, there was no outdoor activity permitted that could be seen as manual labor, no gardening or lawn mowing, for example. Continue reading →

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Have Mercy on Us

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Some prayers in the midst of horrific tragedy.

Grieving Our Lost Children by Walter Brueggeman

We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents … Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Collect for Holy Innocents, December 28 BCP

From Rev. Emily Heath (West Dover, VT)

Trinity Institute: Day II

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Today begin with Mary Gordon’s talk and a lively discussion, both on the panel at Trinity and among us in Madison. Gordon sad that there are three elements that pervade the stories of Jesus. First, that he has an intimate relationship with his Father; second that the gospels show Jesus was actively involved in people’s lives; and third that he suffered grotesquely and died, but that resurrection demonstrates that his suffering had meaning. On this third point, she quoted Simone Weil to the effect that the genius of Christianity is not that it offers a “supernatural cure for suffering, but that it offers a supernatural use for suffering.” Later, she said also that one cannot uncouple the readings or interpretations of the gospels from the actions those readings produce.

Gerald West led the group on-site and world-wide through the method of “contextual bible study” that he and his colleagues developed in South Africa and in conversation with people in Brazil and the Philippines.

I didn’t have particularly high hopes for the conference. I expected Brueggeman to entertain and provoke. He did so. I expected Gordon’s eloquence. Not knowing anything about the other two scholars and with a passing familiarity with liberation and post-colonial interpretations, I thought the conference would probably disappoint. But it didn’t. It was exciting.

There were two things that struck me. One was the level of discourse on the panel. It was clear that there were deep differences among the panelists. Perhaps the deepest were between the two Catholics. Sister Teresa Okure, who repeatedly appealed to the magisterium in positive ways, citing Vatican II documents as well as documents produced at the African Synod. Gordon spoke often and eloquently about the pain she and others suffer at the hands of the institutional church. But the conversation, in spite of those differences, was though-provoking and civil. The second thing was the stress by several of the speakers on the importance of the community coming together to read scripture.

Episcopalians aren’t very good at reading scripture together. In my experience, bible studies are poorly attended and often degenerate into individualistic reading into the text of one’s own issues and concerns, rather than allowing the text to speak to one’s situation. But time and again, the speakers urged us to find ways of reading and interpreting in community and in conversation between the trained and the less well trained or educated. But I wonder. Reading has become such a solitary activity and relatively uncommon at that. Is it possible to come together as a community to read and interpret together?

Trinity Institute: Reading Scripture through other eyes

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I just got home from the first day of the Trinity Institute’s conference “Reading Scripture through other eyes.” Thanks to Brad Pohlman and Franklin Wilson of Luther Memorial who provided the downlink and invited my participation again this year.

The conference speakers today were Walter Brueggeman, emeritus professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA and Sister Teresa Okure of the West African Catholic Institute. I enjoy the conference because it is one of the few opportunities I  have to engage theological scholarship in community, even if a large part of that community is virtual. Brueggeman and Okure both asked hard questions in their talks. Brueggeman gave an overview of the development of biblical interpretation in the last five hundred years, making use of Paul Ricoeur’s concepts of “pre-critical,” “critical,” and “post-critical” interpretations, the latter involving what Ricoeur called a “second naivete.”

He also stressed the important developments in biblical interpretation in the past thirty years, mentioning the rise of rhetorical criticism, ideology critique (including liberation theology, feminism, and post-colonialism), and the growing appreciation of Jewish approaches. He challenged us to ask questions of the text that let the text come close to people’s experience, and said in the panel discussion that truth claims have to be tested in the presence of pain. He pointed out Freud’s discovery that the self is “thick, layered, and conflicted,” making the connection between Freud’s use of image and story to help people understand themselves, with the traditional methods of Jewish interpreters who explained a story by telling another story. He extended Freud’s insight to the text and to God. The text of scripture is “thick, layered, and conflicted” and reveals a God who is “thick, layered, and conflicted.” Human beings, he observed, are created in the image of that God.

Okure sought to distinguish between the cultural contexts in which scripture was written and in which it is interpreted and the transcendent truth of the gospel. She spoke passionately both about her particular cultural context in Nigeria, and about her institutional context in the Roman Catholic Church.

Much of the discussion following the presentations, both in the panel conversation, and in our group at Luther Memorial, focused on questions of truth, including the truth of Jesus Christ. There’s an account of today’s proceedings here. More on the Trinity Institute here.

Although we were a relatively small group today, our conversation was lively and deep. To hear scholars struggling with important issues like the cultural contexts of reading scripture, and trying to articulate the relationship between the truths in scripture and the limitations of the human cultures in which scripture was written is exhilarating. There was also a provocative discussion about the role of the preacher/pastor and the community as a hermeneutical community, a community that interprets scripture.

We also heard Steed Davidson’s wonderful sermon on “Reading out loud.” He was working with Acts 8, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. He pointed the importance of Philip as guide, not as teacher, and asked who was more transformed by the experience, who was baptized, since the Greek isn’t clear.

One of the things I want to do at Grace in the coming months and years is some serious bible study and this conference gave me more impetus to do that.