Out of Babylon

by Walter Brueggemann

Empires like Babylon lack both patience and tolerance toward those whose ultimate loyalty belongs to someone or something other than the empire itself. In response to such resistant loyalties, the empire will move beyond total control into totalitarian "final solutions."11

Such a reading becomes a very difficult matter, however, when the facts on the ground exhibit the United States as empire, as the place for faithful reading and faithful living according to an alternative loyalty that is in deep tension with the totalizing claims of empire.16

propose this parallel between ancient Babylon and the contemporary United States in order to ask a question: is this sense of privilege and entitlement, bolstered by an uncritical joining of Bible and flag and underwritten by military and economic dominance, a proper legacy to leave coming generations in the United States?

As the Jews in the Babylonian Empire had to struggle with the seductions and insistences of empire, so Christians in the midst of U.S. empire must struggle for peculiar identity. The tradition of Deuteronomy worried that prosperity would produce amnesia, so that the "local tradition" of emancipation would be forgotten in the face of newly granted entitlements:

Thus "local tradition" looks at the world differently than the empire; it tells an alternative and opposing story to that of empire centered on the covenant with YHWH. This local tradition is joined to the memory of empire by its opposition to the empire: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2). YHWH is the decisive agent for departure (Exodus) from the empire.

United States, we need to understand that it can be seen as filling both roles. Many in the history of the United States have understood it to carry the "local tradition" of a special covenant relationship to God. At the same time, is there a better modern-day candidate to occupy the role of empire? This double reading is necessary because there is no obvious equivalent between ancient reading and contemporary setting. If, however, we take the biblical rendering as in some way relevant to our context, then we may attempt a double experiment in the contemporary relevance of the ancient tradition.

There is no doubt that such a theological underpinning is deep in U.S. self-understanding, as now exhibited in political discourse. The claim is not simply belated political pandering (though it is certainly that). The claim goes back all the way to the Puritan notion of "a city set on a hill," a theological vocation variously expressed as "Manifest Destiny," or currently as "leader of the free world." This brand of exceptionalism comes as close as is possible to understanding the United States as God's chosen people, a carrier of God's purpose amid a world of "godless nations."

view God acts directly and immediately, as Jerry Falwell and others claimed with their portrayal of 9/11 as God's punishment for America's sins (though that list of "sins" was predictably and always committed by people other than religious conservatives). Or we can use the "cool" terminology that theological liberals prefer, claiming that "crimes against humanity" of various kinds and degrees breed their own "blowback" of punishment without direct divine agency. Thus we can imagine that exploitative policy will lead to social unrest, and that indifference to environment will lead to drought, storms, or other upheavals.13 In either "hot" or "cool" rhetoric, the argument is an insistence that there is moral coherence to the creation guaranteed by the Creator, and even the special status as "chosen" does not exempt from consequences.

But if that overlay from the prophets be accepted as usable grid and the United States as empire is understood with a divinely given vocation, then we must entertain as well the second step of prophetic imagination that we saw in Isaiah 10:7-14: the United States as empire oversteps its mandate, regards itself as free to act apart from God's purpose, and especially free to show no mercy toward those it opposes. If the United States is an empire in this way, then its failure to restrain itself from using atomic weapons, from using torture, and from killing civilians makes sense.

If it is to be faithful, the church in this nation must reckon with the ambiguous situation in which the United States is both chosen people and empire. Both readings together offer important ways that Scripture speaks to our contemporary context.

The poets speak only poetry, not program, not policy, not even advocacy, only poetry. But

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, "Peace, peace," when there is no peace. (Jeremiah 6:14) The loss of the city of Jerusalem, its temple and its king, was a loss that shattered the faith and identity of Jerusalem. The loss violated the deepest confidence and the most treasured assurances of the Jerusalem establishment. The new reality of public loss required deep and extended public grief that mourned and wept and chronicled the evaporation of viable life. The Book of Lamentations lines out the liturgical practice of grief.

The "local tradition" of the Bible, for both Jews and Christians, knows all about loss. And empire, by its standard procedures and practices, requires local traditions to think about and process loss, because empire is always and everywhere depleting the life and energy of every local tradition.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of the loss of Jerusalem for Jews. Consequently, on the ninth of the Jewish month of Av, faithful Jews continue to grieve the day when the Babylonian Empire came and razed the temple, deported the king, and destroyed the city. Jews are not yet finished with that loss. And

But in fact it is the Friday death—the cross, the imperial execution—that Christians confess to be the ultimate disclosure of the power and love of God.

Now practitioners of this local tradition in the United States practice faith yet again in the midst of empire. The U.S. empire, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, is beyond challenge.10 As a consequence, it has become bold about imposing its will everywhere that it can; it is a will imposed militarily, a will imposed economically through the required "reforms" of the World Bank and the IMF, a will imposed by an arbitrary refusal to participate in treaties or accept application of the rule of law to agents of the empire. But then, in the midst of a waxing empire that was the beneficiary of "the end of history," came 9/11.11 In one way of assessment, 9/11 was a fairly modest event with a relatively small number of deaths. However, the symbolic significance of the event has grossly outweighed its "factual" reality. That disjunction results partly from the fact that 9/11 occurred in the center of media attention in New York and Washington, partly because it was aimed at the core power icon and the core money icon of our society, and

The shock and anxious fear evoked by 9/11 are deep and acute, because it unmasked an abiding delusion of American life: that we are somehow exempt from the vulnerability that defines life for the rest of the world. The ideological assumption of U.S. exceptionalism—not unlike the Davidic-temple claims of the Old Testament— assumed and assured a privileged, entitled future. It was a future guaranteed by military monopoly and economic preeminence, but such monopoly and preeminence are in the service of an implicit theological claim of "goodness" and "chosenness."12

Beyond the loss of lives (that itself is not to be unappreciated), there was, in 9/11, a loss of innocence about which Niebuhr wrote so relentlessly: the loss of certitude, the loss of entitlement, and the fresh recognition of vulnerability.

As a consequence, I believe as a direct consequence of the durable faith of the congregation, we are now beneficiaries of a whole new wave of scholarship on laments in general and about the Book of Lamentations in particular. Of course the connections between the felt need of a particular communal culture and the directions of scholarship are never made explicit, and are mostly not acknowledged by scholars themselves. I believe nonetheless that critical study is led by the hungers of its constituency. It is as though a large body of scholars has implicitly understood that ours is now a culture of faith that must find resources for elemental human reality that refuses the cover-up of empire. This resolve to mobilize such resources is evident in both more critical and more pastoral enterprises.

Perhaps it is the case that a hope-filled future for our society depends upon the courage and freedom of the local tradition to speak beyond accepted categories for the sake of grace-filled newness. There is a "plan," perhaps, beyond our conventional possibilities. That "plan," however, requires "seeking with all your heart." Such a practice in a weary culture will at best be odd. But its oddness does not make it impossible.

The season of disappointment gave the displaced a long time to remember and to ponder that poetry of anticipated loss. The sense of displacement gave time to collect and order such poetry into coherent patterns that were on the way to canon. But mostly they listened—again and again—to the cadences of divine disappointment and alienation that sounded a steady beat of loss. The poetry was old; but its effect was to create a contemporary context for lament. The lamentation was the human response of Israel to the divine poetry of alienation. The poetry was true, it turned out, and so the grief was loud and deep.

To appreciate fully that local tradition of prophetic poetry and liturgical response, we should contrast it with the empire's own liturgy. The empire's liturgy was all doxology, all praise, all celebration, all self-affirmation, and all victorious confidence. The empire had no room for sadness, loss, or grief.Unwelcome poetry never found voice in the empire, for the poets of unwelcome were all silenced. The empire permitted no cry, expected no response, engaged in no dialogue, offered no ultimate holiness . . . and so practiced an unrecognized despair and an uninterrupted denial.

That, of course, is always the question for this (and any other) local tradition: whether to relinquish or retain, whether to accommodate or resist, whether to give one's self over to hegemony's buoyant self-delusions or to live in contradiction to that buoyancy. It was an acute question for those displaced Jews, even as now the same question faces the church in the midst of empire. The question never receives a final or a simple answer. The issue is always under negotiation and review; the local tradition is always repositioning itself and, at the same time, always being imposed upon by the force of the empire. So it must have been among Jews in Babylon, hearing always again the refrain of the unwelcome poetry of divine disappointment, always again responding in grief, always again refusing to give up on that ancient rootage.

how do we grapple with this reality and what leadership does it require to resist not accomodate

prophet speaks these words in direct contradiction to the facts on the ground. It is the work of poets to contradict the facts on the ground and to invite the listeners to embrace an alternative future. The poetry is grounded in a deep theological memory. But finally it depends on (inspired?) imagination to summon the community to an alternative reality. In all of these texts, poetic, imaginative discourse is required to circumvent the hopelessness of Babylonian reality. No one could see how to get from here to there. But the poet is into vision, not explanation. Those visions, moreover, are heard among the displaced as God's own committed utterance that alters the templates of historical circumstance.

The poetry of welcome insists that the deep crisis of displacement is not the end of YHWH's dealings with Israel. The poetry shows us YHWH's resolve about the future, which in turn holds deep consequences for the present. As long as the displaced people are drugged by the ideological claims of Babylon, there will be no energy for departure and restoration. Thus this poetry

of possibility serves to generate energy and courage to imagine and enact a future that the empire has sought to void. The poetry speaks in YHWH's voice in order to demonstrate that YHWH is the definitive player in Israel's future. Without the agency of YHWH (given in poetic imagination), there is no possibility of outflanking the ideological grip of the empire. The tradition of Jeremiah goes deepest into the heart of YHWH, there to disclose YHWH's resolve and anguish and wounded fidelity that become the ground for the future of Israel.

YHWH is back in play, according to Ezekiel, because YHWH's recovery of reputation requires the rescue of Israel (Ezekiel 36:22, 32). YHWH is back in play, according to Jeremiah, because the father God anguished over suffering Israel (Jeremiah 30:20). YHWH is back in play, according to Isaiah, because YHWH could no longer be passive and silent (Isaiah 42:14). Holiness, fidelity, and eager resilience: with these accents the poets urged Israel to look beyond today's possibility toward what YHWH's resolve will accomplish tomorrow. Babylon is a pivotal place for such transformative, empowering poetry. It must be heard.

If we take these three great poetic traditions, we are able to see, in broad outline, that they variously advocate a future for YHWH's people that will be priestly, scribal, or royal.

This latter point about pluralism all the way down and a refusal to allow a dominant voice a victory is an important one as we ponder the "local tradition" of the church in the U.S. empire. In recent religious discourse in the United States, the quarrelsome voice of sectarian exclusiveness has been sounded on all sides, left and right. But what could be more foolish (or unfaithful?) than to be busy excommunicating others in faith when the community is under deep imperial duress. The contemporary church amid empire may be instructed by the evidence of the Old Testament canon.