Names for the Messiah Quotes

“And of course, the empire, in its refusal of the things that make for peace, generates a society of hostility, aggression, greed, conflict, and violence. The wonder of Jesus’ peacemaking is what he does in specific cases as freighted signs that break the power of the anti-peace empire. His grief over the city is an awareness that some of his own local Jewish contemporaries had been seduced and bewitched by the force of empire. It is no wonder that when he stood before the Roman governor, Pilate had no categories through which to understand him, because, as he is remembered as saying, “My kingdom is not from this world” (John 18:36), that is, not derived from fearful aggression. As the confrontation ends with a discussion about the truth, the imperial governor is left bewildered because he cannot understand a way of truth that contradicts the power of the empire.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“It is, of course, impossible to imagine Jesus undertaking such violent acts as a way toward peace. Thus if we can at all apply the phrase “Prince of Peace” to Jesus, it will be in contradiction to the old expectations of the Isaiah oracle, a contradiction of the hopes of Rome and a contradiction of the expectations of such a prince of peace in the American empire as well. The peace that he will initiate and sponsor, a peace that passes all human understanding and that defies all ordinary expectations, will be a peace that is wrought in vulnerability that does not seek to impose its own way. Peace via vulnerability confounds the empire!”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“More than that, they are all practices that contradict the conventional assumptions of empire. In the empire: – There is no forgiveness. – There is no generous sharing. – There is no violation of class stratification. – There is no attentiveness to the vulnerable and the unproductive. – There is no humility in the face of exaltation. – There is no readiness for being last in a world of aggressive firstness. – There is no denial of self for the sake of the neighbor.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“Peace requires the capacity to forgive. Peace requires a readiness to share generously. Peace requires the violation of strict class stratification in society. Peace requires attentiveness to the vulnerable and the unproductive. Peace requires humility in the face of exaltation, being last among those who insist on being first and denying self in the interest of the neighbor. These are all practices that mark his presence in his society.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” Isa. 52:7”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“… the father God is attentive to the vulnerable and unproductive, a theological claim that is reflected in the Torah provision for widows, orphans, and immigrants. Ancient Israel is to care for and protect precisely those God is attentive to.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“With this phrase he is insisting that his power is not grounded in the usual authority of empire; it is not an authority that comes out of the end of a gun or a cannon in coercive or violent ways. His kingdom, his claim to authority, is indeed “divine” in that it is rooted in and derived from “the will of the father,” whose intention for the world is quite unlike the intent of Rome.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“The old limits of the possible have been exposed as fraudulent inventions designed to keep the powerless in their places. Jesus violates such invented limitations and opens the world to the impossible. He ends that defiant declaration with the admonition: “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (v. 23).”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“practice in elemental and unmistakable ways. He is wonderful in his teaching because he opens up new possibilities that were thought to be impossible.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“Thus the teaching of Jesus attests to the possibility of God that the world has long since taken to be impossible. That is what is wonderful about his teaching.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“Jesus astonishes his contemporaries by his capacity to see and act beyond conventional assumptions.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“It remains, then, for the church at Christmas to delineate how it is that Jesus is the anticipated “wonderful counselor” and what that title means for good news in the world.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“The general claim of the oracle is that a new regime of peace and well-being will displace the older (Roman) order of violence and extortion.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“The power of King Jesus is intrinsically revolutionary and subversive against every repressive regime.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“The term “counselor” refers to the exercise of governance, the capacity to administer, to plan, and to execute policy.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“First, in the witness to Jesus by the early Christians in the New Testament, they relied heavily on Old Testament “anticipations” of the coming Messiah. But second, Jesus did not fit those “anticipations” very well, such that a good deal of interpretive imagination was required in order to negotiate the connection between the anticipation and the actual bodily, historical reality of Jesus.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study

“and the birth of Jesus, two things become clear. First, in the witness to Jesus by the early Christians in the New Testament, they relied heavily on Old Testament “anticipations” of the coming Messiah. But second, Jesus did not fit those “anticipations” very well, such that a good deal of interpretive imagination was required in order to negotiate the connection between the anticipation and the actual bodily, historical reality of Jesus.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah: An Advent Study