When Walter Brueggemann passed away last year, the Church lost one of its wisest, most courageous and deeply faithful biblical scholars. A life-long student of the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament), he spent decades teaching us the profound messages which the ancient Hebrew prophets continue to have for the contemporary Church. His many writings helped us understand that the role of the prophet is not about seeing into the future with some kind of holy crystal ball, but about seeing our present reality with crystal clarity. The prophet not only sees what is going on but takes public responsibility to speak God’s word into that present moment. Brueggemann’s seminal work, The Prophetic Imagination, defines the Church’s primary role as helping to discover, proclaim and embody a radical, dynamic counterculture to the oppressive culture we find around us- no matter what century we live in.
The Urgent Prophetic Tasks of the Church Informed and Inspired by the Hebrew prophets, Brueggemann outlines the prophetic role of the Church through three specific, active steps:
- Tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion: The role of the Church is to honestly confront what the dominant powers want to cover up. Just as Jesus did, we cannot be afraid to confront and expose the dominant culture’s myths of consumerism, militarism, racism and uncritical nationalism. The Church’s job is to dismantle these oppressive narratives and speak the truth about who we actually are and what is actually going on.
- Grieve in a society that practices denial: The Church is to provide a safe, sacred space for public lament, for naming the suffering, for compassionately standing with those being harmed or in grief. The Church must be a place where we do not turn away and hide our eyes. It creates an alternative community that acknowledges pain rather than sweeping it under the rug.
- Express hope in a society that lives in despair: The Church is called to envision and demonstrate what the world might look like if God’s promises of abundance, justice and inclusive love are actually true. We are to be a people of hope, who embody the way of God’s kingdom here and now and who point the way towards the possibility of a transformed future. We are called to nurture a new imagination through scripture, liturgy, community service, public witness and committed prayer.
Though Bruggemann frames these tasks as the role of the Church, they are also the shared responsibility of each of us as part of the Body of Christ. Our personal prophetic role is part of the work of the whole Church: to be committed to speaking truth, to grieve with those who suffer, to keep nurturing dreams of holy possibilities fueled by God’s vision. May we daily strive, in the simple, concrete choices of our lives, to embody God’s prophetic imagination.
Pastor Annette