Walter Brueggemann, In Memoriam — When the World We Have Trusted In Is Vanishing

What It Covers

Walter Brueggemann explores how Old Testament prophets used poetic language to disrupt comfortable assumptions, addressing contemporary crises through biblical texts about loss, hope, and societal transformation in consumer capitalist culture.

Key Questions Answered

• •Prophetic poetry as disruption: Biblical prophets functioned as uncredentialed poets who imagined their world differently according to covenantal tradition. Their poetic language resists reduction to formulas or ideologies, maintaining transformative power by refusing to become another ism that liberal or conservative camps can claim exclusively.
• •Lamentations as spiritual practice: One-third of Psalms address grief and loss, yet institutional churches screen out lamentation from liturgy. This leaves congregations ill-equipped for societal losses, perpetuating denial instead of processing the destruction of trusted systems, similar to how Jerusalem's fall functioned as ancient Israel's equivalent catastrophe.
• •Steadfast love as covenantal reliability: The Hebrew word hesed translates as steadfast love, meaning covenantal reliability rather than romantic sentiment. The image resembles a dog gripping prey by the throat, representing God's tenacious commitment and the mutual faithfulness expected in covenant relationships, like enduring marriage rather than fleeting emotion.
• •Sexual controversies as displaced anxiety: Debates about sexuality in churches rarely concern the actual issues but represent amorphous anxiety about societal free fall. People dump fears about disappearing familiar worlds onto these topics because protesting other marginalized groups became unfashionable, making sexuality a permissible outlet for chaos-related distress.
• •Plural metaphors prevent idolatry: Biblical texts offer multiple contradictory images for God within single passages, like Isaiah presenting God as demolition squad, safe place, dinner host, sea monster, and nursemaid. This multiplicity prevents reducing God to fixed formulations, requiring readers to dwell with images rather than memorize verses as static doctrine.