The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word

by Walter Brueggemann

Thus YHWH is indeed beset by anger and a propensity to punish. That is a serious contention of the prophets who insist that the historical process has a moral shape given by YHWH the creator that cannot be outflanked. That much we knew. But prophetic preaching that focuses just there, as is conventional in “prophetic preaching,” misses the deeper intention of these poets. In the very midst of such indignant self-regard, YHWH of these poets falls into grief and lingers there. Thus the terse New Testament report that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) is fully congruent with the God he serves. Jesus wept in a death scene over Lazarus. But Jesus has more weeping to do, also over Jerusalem that kills the prophets and that would come to a very sorry end (Luke 19:41–44; see 13:31–35). The God of Israel has been weeping over Jerusalem forever. That same God weeps over the savage judgment that comes in the historical process. But that same weeping, it is attested, becomes ground for new possibility.