A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent

by Walter Brueggemann

For I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.

Lent is a time to consider again our easy, conventional compromises and see again about discipline, obedience, and glad identity.

But women and men of faith are always on the road again, departing safe places, running risks, and hoping for well-being on the journey.

I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious antineighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.

we are flooded with the gifts of neighborliness—the economy of the rich devouring the poor is now inappropriate; we are now flooded with peaceable possibility—the old lust for war and violence is now out of sync; we are flooded with fruitfulness—the technological destruction that seeks to sustain our unsustainable standard of living is now passé.

we are left dazzled by a God who has made a new resolve about creation; we are left aware enough to notice the regularity of gift-giving creation; we are left grateful that God gives and gives and gives, in keeping with God’s own pledge of fidelity.

Save us, Lord, from a religion that ignores the cries of the exploited and oppressed. Lead us into a deeper faith that challenges injustice and makes the sacrifices that must be made to build a society that is ever more truly human. Amen.

God’s friendliness and kindness will run after me and chase me down, grab me, and hold me.

How is life possible among us in our massive, resistant defeats? How is life possible? Two things come clear in this story about Lent. First, the power for life in the face of our deathliness is urgent. We are surrounded by fallen sons and hopeless widows. We yearn to have that power to transform life. Second, that power for life is probably not available when we eat too well in the presence of the king. Elijah’s power comes along with his eating habits.

In the midst of exile, we look for you, O God. Teach us your new song that we may present a counter to the ways of death and celebrate your faithfulness and the new life that you are ever bringing into being. Amen.

The Easter claim is not simply about resuscitation but about a new reality in the world that is unrestrained by the force of fear or violence or privilege. Paul must become lyrical about this claim, because the reality outruns all of our explanations. And we may situate our lives in this most elemental claim of the living Lord who opens new reality to us.

The defining mark of the Easter world is divine, cosmic generosity that outruns our need and our want and our hope and our desire, to endow us with every good gift, most wondrously the gift of new possibility.

There is no class structure. There is no exceptional tenure or entitlement, no riding in the back of the bus, no exclusion of Gentiles—women, or conservatives, or progressives, or gays, or whomever we fear and want to exclude.

Deep Power of Life, draw us into your boundary-crossing generosity. May we be on the way toward others, toward new life, in sync with the one who is Lord of Easter. Amen.

If you want verification that God’s promises are kept, you will not find that verification among the new atheists who have reduced everything to a tight little package of reasonableness that easily explains everything away. Nor will we find verification among the fundamentalists who have God in such a box that there can be no room for inexplicable gifts. You will find verification among the daily performances of the trusting ones who live out their trust in ways that the world terms foolish:

God, you are the one who gives us a future, who shatters our categories with extravagant generosity. Make us ready to receive this Lenten season. Amen.

If you take that list of poor, hungry, weeping, hated, it means that the church is to be odd in the world, noticed in the community for walking to a different drummer. What Jesus intends is that the church should share in the suffering of Jesus, the Good Friday suffering of Jesus, because Jesus’ way in the world is not popular or safe.

Woe—trouble—to those who have settled in on the present tense as though this were the end and culmination of everything, who are satisfied, comfortable, at ease, accommodating, without the alertness and the critique of the suffering of Jesus.

The story we tell about scarcity is a fantasy. It is not a true story. It is a story invented by those who have too much to justify getting more. It is a story accepted by those who have nothing in order to explain why they have nothing. That story is not true, because the world belongs to God and God is the creator of the abundant life.

We are constricted by stories of scarcity. Break through these false tales with the surprising truth of abundance. May we bask in your shalom and then perform your story of generosity over and over again. Amen.

The burden of a poet is not explanation, because explanations never satisfy or convince. Rather the burden of a poet is to disclose, to reveal, so show what has not been seen or said until that instant. What is shown here to us is that there is a season of loss not to be avoided, a hope beyond, and a deep time of brooding between.

God of transformation, be with us in our loss, our brooding, and our hope. May we linger in faithfulness, not denying our pain nor cutting short our brooding. May we resist facile hopes; may we wait for you. Amen.

interest, or to accommodate our conventional reality. We do not need poetry or artistry or imagination, if we only want to wallow in our status quo. The poet stakes a claim against such present reality. This act of imagination subverts our status quo and invites us to an alternative.

In the midst of troubled times, be with us, God of well-being. May faithful remembering lead to compassionate reimagining. Amen.

We are not called to aid and abet the pharaohs that loom in our lives. We are called, rather, to depart, to trust the new life, and to find space and energy for a life of full shalom, to live apart from the system of pharaoh.

Teach us, O God, to wait in eager anticipation of your salvation. In this waiting, may we discover the promised blessings of new strength, new courage, new freedom, and new life. Amen.

The truth is that frightened people will never turn the world, because they use too much energy on protection of self.

The unafraid are open to the neighbor, while the frightened are defending themselves from the neighbor.

The unafraid are generous in the community, while the frightened, in their anxiety, must keep and store and accumulate, to make themselves safe.

The unafraid commit acts of compassion and mercy, while the frightened do no...

The unafraid are committed to justice for the weak and the poor, while the frightened...

In a world of fear and anxiety, you empower us to live lives of wholeness, lives that make the world whole and turn it right side up. Embolden us as those who know that they are called by your name. Amen.

Deliver us from the shackles of “Yes, but” and free us to sing songs of miracles. Open our hearts and minds to your creative word, which calls into being things that don’t yet exist and brings life that is extraordinary and new. Amen.

In Jesus Christ, your holiness has touched down in human life, remaking and reordering our values and expectations. Keep us restless and hope-filled and alive in the world, for the world. Amen.

Bring us to our senses, O God. Turn our hearts away from the path of death and toward life, toward you, our true home, that we may ever live with joy in your presence as your people in this world. Amen.

Imagine that God has called a people to live by the commandments as an alternative to the distortion. Imagine that Jesus called his disciples to organize their lives differently according to his teaching. Imagine that Jesus has called the church to be a people in mission, the mission of subverting the dominant distortion of social reality. What an enormous call, to work as alternative to a social system gone crazy. It is an incredibly upstream vocation to live a different kind of life in order that the world may come to know that the pathologies in which we get caught are not the truth of our life.

You call us—ordinary people with ordinary lives—to be a church dedicated to your purposes, which are at odds with the values of the world. Strengthen us to leave behind all the distortions of life we indulge and to embrace the gift of wholeness and joy you have offered us in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Forgiving God, we fall to our knees at the thought of a truly new beginning, a fresh start. Our hearts are broken, and we offer them to you in the assurance of your undeserved grace—the power that creates in us new hearts able to love. Amen.

In the Christian tradition, the seal of the deal is Easter. On that dread Sunday morning the earliest church discovered that the Jesus who had been executed by the state was alive and on the loose; death had no power over God’s will for life. The deathly systems of the empire had no grip on him even through his execution. But in truth, the God of the gospel has been doing this forever.

It is this God of the gospel who took primordial chaos in hand, who said, “Let there be light” and formed a dry, ordered, fruitful land. And since that first moment, this God has been taking our dismal modes of chaos and forming them into launching pads for new life. That is life out of death!

You are the God who makes a way when there is no way. Free us from our anxious intransigence and our impoverished imaginations. Open us to your newness, the gospel gift given over and over and over again. Amen.

Empower us, Lord, to resist the poor substitutes for true life on offer in our culture. May we not compromise with that which would weaken our faith. As we persevere on the journey, feed us with the bread of heaven that we may grow strong in you. Amen.

God of the cross, your power is hidden in a weakness that quietly overcomes the world. Open our eyes to see this power at work. May we walk in it as we live out your alternative vision for the world. Amen.

God of yes, you continually show yourself faithful. In the face of scarcity, in the barrenness of our wilderness places, you know our needs, and you meet them. All along our path, open our minds and hearts to trust you fully. Amen.

We are eager for Easter joy and new life, and yet we are haunted by the space between where we are and where you are. Grant us a new mind, a new readiness, a new heart, that we might stand with you in self-emptying obedience. Amen.

Here is the news. Out beyond the world of exclusion and rejection and hostility, there is on offer a world of welcome that sees the other not as threat or competitor but as cohort on the pilgrimage of humanity. That alternative world of welcome is signed by bread and by wine; but it is known by lives that reach out and touch in order to heal and transform.

God of all hope, we know all too well a world of betrayal, despair, exclusion, and conflict. May we live into your alternative world of truth, hope, welcome, and harmony as we trust and follow you. Amen.

1.The new truth of Jesus, honored by God, is that self-giving love is the wave of the future, and we are called to follow. 2.The Lord of the cosmos has signed on to this alternative

Draw us, Lord, toward you, toward your way of self-giving love. Draw us away from all that is not love—from the forces of greed, fear, anxiety, and brutality. In this Lenten experience of so being drawn toward you and away from the powers of the world, may we come to find that new life that is the meaning of Easter. Amen.

In Jesus and his way of life, you have given us an example to replicate—an example that is in sharp contrast to the ways of the world. In the grace and power of your Spirit, may we be that community that refuses anxiety because of its sure confidence in you and so is empowered to reach out in compassion and love. Amen.