"Prophetic Imagination"

Advent Imagination

By Adrian Peetoom

Walter Brueggemann. “The Prophetic Imaginiation.” (Second edition:  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.)

As I listened to the various readings from the prophets this Advent (2011), a longtime niggle grabbed hold of me. “Are Old Testament prophets of any use to us today?” Of course some passages are familiar, those passages that, for as long as the Church has existed, have been understood to point to the coming of the Messiah who will bring joy and peace. But why should we bother with other parts of these old texts? Especially from that downer book Jeremiah, and even less from his Lamentations. Mostly waves of doom and despair, with only some passages of deliverance and joy!  Even Jonah is an unhappy prophet at the end.

But those cannot be the only musings about these 17 books of the Bible, just about 25% of the 66 book total. Our Anglican tradition includes them as a source of authority for our life of faith and morals. These mostly downer books have to have some place in our faith make-up. They must serve some function in our walk through life. That’s what our tradition teaches. Perhaps we’d better reflect a bit more.

For help I turned to “The Prophetic Imagination,” written by famous Old Testament scholar and preacher Walter Brueggemann.  He worried about the same thing I have worried about off and on, namely the relevance to our lives of these old prophets.  He recalls how in decades past scholars and preachers would study the contexts in which each individual prophet spoke, the historical circumstances out of which their words arose.  I remember long childhood sermons which for the first half consisted of history lectures aimed at making us understand why what they had said then was important for us now, specifically. The preachers didn’t always succeed!

But without repudiating that kind of exegesis altogether, Brueggemann takes a somewhat different tack in this book.  Without denying the specifics of each individual prophet (character, location, time period), he sees a link that ties them all together. The link consists of these elements:

1.       These prophets were all part of a community, however small. We should not think of prophets as solitary figures flinging their words into hostile crowds. At Elijah’s lowest moment Yahweh tells him that there are “seven thousand in Israel [whose knees] have not bent before Baal” (1 Kings 19:18). A remnant perhaps, but there will always be one, also in the 21^st century in the West. That’s an important point for us, as we experience the seeming public irrelevance of the Christian faith and message. 

2.       The believers (those [tribal?] communities then, the church today) are faced with “royalty” (others call it “empire”), which is the whole of how public life is organized. Samuel was told that the people of Israel wanted a king like all the surrounding nations had. This prophet told them that they would come to regret that desire (I Samuel 8). David’s son Solomon fulfilled Samuel’s predictions. For what did this king achieve? The trappings of contemporary kingship. A harem. Not tribes but districts. Bureaucracy.  A standing army. Conscripted labour. Reality captured in aphorisms (wisdom in the form of pithy sayings).  And as the books of Kings and Chronicles tell us, against that royal consciousness truth and freedom ran stuck, with both Israel and Judah annihilated some centuries hence. 

It doesn’t take much imagination to see ourselves as living within our own contemporary royal consciousness.  Brueggemann makes no bones about it. And he asks: how can such a system be challenged? His answer: only with “prophetic imagination,” for which we have the models in those old books. Not with countervailing trappings of the same kind, or refinements. Those weird prophetic words aren’t meant to provide alternate programs.  They are first the words of grief (all the downer passages which expose “empires”), and then of hope ( mostly poetry that steps outside any available box that caused such grief).  “Prophets” (and who of us isn’t called to be one?) behold their situation. First they weep. Then they recall God’s promises. And finally they proclaim the “Day of the Lord.” Not a program. Poetry.  

In one of his other books Brueggemann draws attention to an example found in 2 Kings chapters 18 and 19. Jerusalem is under siege by the Assyrians. One day one of the besiegers (a cupbearer who knows Hebrew) shouts in that language a message that essentially says: just as the gods of other nations did not save them, your Yahweh will not save you. So quit resisting.  King Hezekiah has instructed his people not to respond (for the respond is to acknowledge that the speaker has a case.) Instead, the king consults prophet Isaiah. And then, after receiving an Assyrian letter containing a similar invitation to surrender, he “went up to the Temple of Yahweh and spread [the letter] out before Yahweh.” He prayed, and Yahweh heard his prayer, in a long poetic response (2 Kings 19:21-28). In the chapter that deals with this part of 2 Kings Brueggemann suggests that Christians are bilingual. They know the language of the empire (they must, for they live in it), but they also know the language of their faith (“Hebrew”) for it is the language by which they live.     

I write this in the first week of December, 2011. Our House of Commons has been focused on the plight of Attawapiskat and other Aboriginal villages in Northern Ontario (and northern Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta). Clusters of First Nation people living in condemnable housing, and lacking provision for adequate education, health care and employment, in spite of tax-paid millions over a long period.  It’s not the first time we hear about these conditions. As Aboriginal leaders keep pointing out, after each flurry of concern and governmental promises the headlines and sound bites soon disappear.  Yes, the rest of Canada keeps sending “Indian Act” money, but money clearly is not the answer. So what is?

Not long ago I came home from working at the HTAC library after the usual Thursday Eucharist and formation session (on the foolishness of “Rapture”). Johanna told me that at home  she had listened to a CBC program in which poor Canadians shared their anxious and fearful lives in this wealthy, very wealthy, country of ours.  Why do we have so many poor for so long? Their fault?

For decades now 20% of all Canadian children live below the poverty line. Three Prime Ministers ago Jean Chretien made a promise that his government would tackle, if not eradicate, this serious problem. Children living below the poverty line tend to lack properly nutritious food for the body (too much fat and empty calories), and properly nutritious food for the mind (not enough books, art, organized sports, and too much TV). As economists might observe, “so much loss of future human capital!” Most certainly not children’s fault.

Why can’t we fix these problems? Simple, says Walter Brueggemann, if I read him right. Given the structures of our society (political, social, cultural), these problems seem un-fixable, at least if we lack “prophetic imagination,” the ability to think and feel outside the box.  Unless we exercise prophetic imagination, we are in the grip of “royalty” or “empire,” and we consider our current societal conditions normal, perhaps flawed at the edges, but normal overall. Even church people have become dulled to current situation. Here is Brueggemann. “In the Christian tradition, having been co-opted by the king, we are tempted to…[offer] cross-less good news and a future well-being without a present anguish. The task of prophetic imagination is to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.” (pp 44, 45).

Brueggemann doesn’t suggest we form an alternate political party, or shape a national campaign to fix this problem or that. No, have your prophetic imagination stimulated by those old writings, and then tackle small, local problems. Find those neighbourhood situations that cannot be fixed within the tools of the existing political structures. Find those corners where hope, peace and joy do not exist, and where the soil for “growing” those good things seems barren. At the end of his book he lists some of the specific ones he knows.    

Advent. When Jesus is born, shepherds rejoice – the despised and marginal of their days.  Magi come…but from the faraway East not from the Promised Land. Herod hears about it…and kills baby boys. Religious leaders hear about it, but none come to worship. The Empire couldn’t be bothered. That is, until the prophetic imagination exercised by Jesus became a public nuisance. Then the empire (Rome and the Temple) crucified him.

It’s a good thing that we read prophets during Advent. It gives us opportunity to weep before we rejoice.  But then, let’s not overlook these poets during the other eleven months of the year.  And for reading those old voices properly, read Brueggemann’s book.