The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word

by Walter Brueggemann

CHAPTER 1 The Narrative Embedment of Prophetic Preaching

IT IS MY HOPE, in what follows, to make a credible connection between the material of “prophetic utterance” in the Old Testament itself and the actual practice of “prophetic preaching” that is mandated in the actual work of pastors who are located in worshipping congregations.

The task is difficult because such a preacher must at the same time “speak truth” while maintaining a budget, a membership, and a program in a context that is often not prepared for such truthfulness.

My own judgment is that for most preachers in most congregational settings, a focus on the biblical prophetic text—with traces that connect to contemporaneity—is a more realistic way to proceed.

I

my guiding thesis:

prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH—the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit—were a real character and an effective agent in the world.

the temptation is to an irrelevant transcendence or a cozy immanence. None of these conventional ways serves well the hard, dangerous work of “imagining YHWH.”

prophetic proclamation is the staging and performance of a contest between two narrative accounts of the world and an effort to show that the YHWH account of reality is more adequate and finally more reliable than the dominant narrative account that is cast among us as though it were true and beyond critique.

I suggest that prophetic preaching can take place only where the preacher is deeply embedded in the YHWH narrative.

When the listening community is also embedded there or at least has a residual attachment to that narrative, a chance for engagement is offered.

In most ecclesial practice, the sign of congregational embedment or residual attachment to that YHWH narrative is baptism that gives dramati...

II

The backdrop of prophetic preaching is the dispute between narratives.

The dominant narrative—one I have characterized as “therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism”—is committed to the notion of self-invention in the pursuit of self-sufficiency.

competitive productivity, motivated by pervasive anxiety about having enough, or being enough, or being in control.

culminates in violence if and when that self is impinged upon in inconvenient ways.

In the contemporary United States, it is a matrix that in parallel fashion is rooted in a conviction concerning US exceptionalism that gives warrant to the usurpatious pursuit of commodities in the name of freedom, at the expense of the neighbor.

Prophetic preaching is rooted in the alternative narrative of the God of Israel.

These several tellings of “the old, old story” of course yield different accents. They are, however, agreed that YHWH (in Christian confession, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ) is the deciding character and key agent in the historical-cosmic process.

the prophetic preacher is grounded in that alternative narrative that insists upon discerning life with reference to the God who dominates and occupies that narrative.

The preacher must keep deciding in pastoral ways about the means and pace for advocating this narrative in such a contested environment wherein many listeners have no zeal about such contestation and do not want the dominant narrative placed in question.

The preacher must be continually aware of the many and deep ways in which the dominant narrative is defining for her own life, so that no one of us is immune to the contradiction that is to be faced.

The preacher must remember that when the congregation (or some part of it) is deeply and convincedly embedded in the dominant narrative, prophetic preaching that advocates the counter-narrative sounds like unbearable nonsense.

III

I consider the pentateuchal narrative as the base and assumption for prophetic preaching in the Old Testament.

1. At the center of the pentateuchal narrative is the core presentation of Moses. He is the dominant figure in the narrative,

The “Mosaic center” features three narrative themes:

(a) The Exodus deliverance is a divine emancipation of slaves wrought through a daring human agent.

(b) The tradition of wilderness sojourn is “travel music” from bondage to new land.

(c) At Sinai, Israel gladly received Torah commandments as an alternative to the coercive commands of Pharaoh

The outcome is that Israel is shaped as a community of listening obedience whose life is from YHWH, the God of emancipation, whose life is to be lived back to YHWH in grateful response.

This sequence of a) cry to joy, b) faithful transformative sustenance, and c) listening obedience becomes the defining accent for the life of Israel that is lived in dialogic engagement with YHWH.

2. The “canonical” narrative of exodus-wilderness, sojourn-Sinai covenant takes on a continuing life in the traditioning processes of Israel, a process that has been awkwardly but powerfully articulated in the “Documentary Hypothesis” of nineteenth-century scholarship.

Israel’s continued life in the abundant land of promise is made closely conditioned on the basis of Torah-keeping. Through the interpretive process, the gifts of YHWH (blessings of creation, miracles of history) and YHWH’s claims on Israel’s life through Torah commandments are made defining and non-negotiable for the public life of Israel and, by derivation, for the public life of the world.

This succinct formulation of quid pro quo is decisive for what follows in prophetic preaching, even as it is exceedingly difficult in the modern world. It is plausible, of course, to take that characteristic covenantal formulation in a flat “supernatural” sense that makes it easy to dismiss in the modern world. It is also possible, however, to see the quid-pro-quo formulation of Deuteronomy as a shrewd discernment of the governance of the world that cannot be mocked, a givenness that is, in Israel’s parlance, guaranteed by the creator God. Thus the Sinai formulation is linked to the givenness of the created order.

It is impossible to understand the movement of the Old Testament from the Torah to the prophets unless this defining conviction about YHWH’s governance is fully recognized.

3. The Mosaic narrative in the Pentateuch has as its introduction two narrative accounts of unexpected gifts from YHWH that are completely inexplicable:

(a) The creation narrative of Genesis 1, also likely an exilic act of defiant hope, witnesses to the way in which God, by an issue of command, “calls the world into being.”

(b) The wonder of creation is matched in the ancestral narratives of Genesis 12–50 with the capacity of God to call forth, in each successive generation, a faithful people that has itself reached a dead end.

The ancestral narratives attest to the power of YHWH to create new historical possibilities where there is no ground for expectation.

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IV

This complex, thick, multilayered narrative provides the theological accents and the interpretive nerve that permit Israel to contest the dominant narrative of the world that is told and retold all around Israel by those who want to talk Israel out of its distinctive narrative and its dangerous, undomesticated imagination.

Before we move on to prophetic preaching, we may consider, in three perspectives, the insistent, generative force of this counter narrative:

1. The Pentateuchal narrative posits and permits a series of convictions that could be attested in a variety of ways:

2. On all counts, this narrative, with its move from wonder to wait, contradicts the narrative of self-invention, competitive productivity, and self-sufficiency.

At every accent point in the narrative, the tradition of Israel asserts that the dominant narrative of the world is not adequate and so cannot be true.

It cannot be adequate because it omits the defining resolve and capacity of YHWH, the lead character in the life of the world.

3. In the New Testament and the Christian tradition, the ancient story of Israel is retol...

There is no story without the character of YHWH. At the same time, we must recognize that the telling of this story is an enormous act of imagination. It is on the lips of the storytellers that YHWH takes on life. It is always easy enough for adherents of the dominant story to dismiss this alternative narrative because YHWH, the defining agent in that narrative, does not even register in the categories of the dominant narrative.