A CHRISTMAS EVE BLOG FROM THE BACK PORCH

THE BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING!

       I woke this morning composing this blog! Our Blue Candle prayer over the Old Testament has shown that God – Creator, Lover, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is excited about covenant with us. That covenant is the story of Israel – prototypical People of God, and of all of us: Irish, Ecuadorean, Mexican, Italian, German….we are also the people of God  by virtue of Israel’s YES to that covenant

      This covenant was initially signed in the flesh of Abraham by circumcision, and in the fullness of time, in the sweet, cuddly flesh of a six-pound baby boy, entrusted to Joseph and Mary. He grew up to show us in tall, strong flesh what God looks like, how God acts in the world. I often hear: No one has ever seen God – and I respond: Ain’t so!  I have! In the face and story of Jesus – the baby who changed everything.  

      My friend Sue and her husband Joe are new grandparents: Natalie Claire was born in October and she has changed everything for everyone in that family (and all their friends)!  Every family with a new baby knows that. Love is born again, the fruitful love of a loving marriage: the covenant of a man and woman now seen in the flesh!

       The metaphor persists: God gives a baby boy as sign of God’s covenant with us: so we can see, and touch and hear who our covenant partner is. No burning bush, no Pharaoh - defeating plagues, no flame by night or cloud by day: the New Covenant is as natural as the birth of a baby boy who is more beautiful than the rainbow! This baby is welcomed by the loving adoration of Mary and Joseph, by the poorest of the poor: shepherds and by the richest of the rich: scholar kings from the East. 

       In 2014 I welcome him anew, in my daily work of praise and thanks and awareness of the infinite manifestations and meaning of the metaphor. Thanks and praise, indeed.

    

READING WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

READING WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

     Reading Walter Brueggemann is for me, like a cold shower: a wake-up call, a kind but firm kick-in-the-pants. Two years ago, I set out to read his 55 ( now 57 ) published books. Modestly, I did not try to read all his peer-reviewed articles!  Hundreds!

     Little did I know that my faith was to be shocked, scrubbed, strengthened by his faith expressed through erudite, exciting, enigmatic and sometimes elusive passages.  What themes have emerged so far?

1.  I have read sixteen of his books – the more accessible, easier-to-read ones were my first selections. I heard Walter sing, over and over again, in many ways – his theme song:

Prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH— the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ  - this YHWH whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit— were a real character and an effective agent in the world.

Brueggemann, Walter (2012-01-01). The Practice of Prophetic Imagination (p. 2). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.)

God -  a real character?  an  effective agent in our world?

Now that would be an imaginative step in the right direction. With that faith, we can relax into joy.

2. Another theme: Well-being - is the end of the Torah (the teachings), and of all that the Hebrew Scripture’s narratives teach. Our well-being is contingent on our recognition of God’s creative and redeeming work, our faithful thanks and praise to God and our avoidance of idols.  Hello!  Idols abound: on the Internet, at the mall, on t.v. and the Big Screen,on Wall Street and at out neighborhood bank! Brueggemann speaks of the totalizing Empire as demanding complete allegiance.

Again, it is the first time in my life that I associated my and society’s well-being with the commandments and rituals.  This story is about us!

3.  A favorite word of Walter’s in these books is commoditization – making a commodity out of other human beings. This is the ultimate idolatry. Our covenant with God is not for wealth, power or “wisdom”, but for our simple well-being.  The theme: each person is invaluable; each person is redeemed.

4.  Newness: God’s covenant is for ongoing newness:  fulfilled in the words and work of Jesus:

     Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:  the blind receive their sight,, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor have good news brought to them… Luke 7:22

God is an effective agent in our world – a real character, effecting newness.

5.  The power of dialogue

     Recognizing that we are all children of this Creator God, we turn to one another in dia-logue ( the Word between us )

What matters is that I speak enough to share myself,

That I listen enough to receive the other person in her fullness,

that we commune enough that both of us can be changed.  WB

As a teacher I have come to see that my responsibility is to evoke honest, passionate, serious dialogue in the pedagogical process.
 WB

More to come! Thirty nine ( or so ) more books to read!