[Dialogue] Walter Bruggemann lecture

[Priscilla H. Wilson]

I am sending my notes on the Walter Bruggemann lectures on 3 different 
emails...3 lectures. These are rough notes as I listened. Hopefully 
they make sense. If you are interested, read them. If you are not...hit 
delete.
Priscilla Wilson

Walter Bruggemann lectures at Village Church, Prairie Village, KS – 
4/4/05

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old 
Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is the 
author of more than thirty books and commentaries.
I can get the DVD of the series for $35 or a VHS for $30. If you want 
me to do that for you, send a check to me at 3215 Tomahawk Road, 
Mission Hills, KS 66208…or just buy some of his books. Priscilla Wilson


Images of Disaster

All the prophets say the same thing. If you don’t keep the Torah in 
terms of justice to widows, orphans, etc, your country will be 
destroyed. The privilege people who ran the Temple believed God loved 
them and nothing would happen. These are all connections of poetic 
imagination. 587 BCE – Babylonian armies destroy Jerusalem. This is the 
organizing event of the O.T. The work of Babylon was at Yahweh‘s 
command. Remember the prophets are all writing poetry. (Bruggemann must 
have said 20 or more times that this is poetry.)
US society is experiencing a huge loss – white, male, heterosexual 
certitude is lost. Now life is different. Loss always produces poets, 
artists, musicians who give us a way to claim what is happening to us. 
If you ponder this loss, can anticipate other loses. OT is full of 
songs, metaphors, etc so we don’t go into denial. When the poems become 
scripture (took about two generations) they become normative of the 
losses in life. God is at work in the loss…taking things away form us. 
Re 9/11 – keep asking where work of God.
Critical task of the church…ponder the loses. Jeremiah 1 & 2…Marriage 
covenant between God and Israel. Marital metaphor, unfaithfulness. God 
wants relationship with the people even if they have been unfaithful. 
Poetry wants people to pause and think about the alienations in 
society.
Jeremiah 4, 5, & 6 – about war…statement to be afraid, civil 
defense…all poetry to help community understand life is in jeopardy. 
The Church shouldn’t just reassure people in a fickle society. Jeremiah 
asks how dumb can you be if you believe in the military industrial 
complex.
Why are people not healed? They are terminally ill. Jerusalem 
establishment has set in motion its own destruction…infidelity, 
dumbness, death, war, illness. Poetry attempts to penetrate the 
numbness. The course we’re on is suicidal Poet tries to get people to 
think about what life is like when world isn’t on our terms.
Because this poetry is scripture it is not just about 587BCE – is about 
crucifixion – about 9/11 – holocaust – genocide – Rawanda. We imagine 
we can do anything we want. It is about a cancer in society…world being 
taken from us.
We are addressed in this poetry to go deep in our life to understand it 
is not working. The slogans are invitations to pretend and we will miss 
our life. You sound like an enemy of the city if you speak the truth. 
Message is: you can’t have life on your own terms. Read this stuff 
through the Good News of Jesus.
Human pain and suffering are a clue to what we have to do. Break up the 
market ideology of individualism. Prophets focused on public reality of 
community. Liberals are impatient with text. Biblical articulation is 
very concrete – with imagination. Getting it right – the trajectory of 
your life…is it toward generosity or toward anxiety? Detail of the text 
is in relation to the trajectory of our life. It is about getting the 
flow of our life right.

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Priscilla Wilson
TeamTech Press
Mission Hills, KS 66208
913-432-2107
pwilson at teamtechinc.com