Quotes from Walter Brueggemann

The withdrawal of the king from the narrative exposes the king as an irrelevance. The one with all the power can do nothing to save. Because it is only "my God who saves.

In the prophetic tradition the continual insistence is that trusting relationships and not tradable commodities are the proper category for communion with God.

They imagined that with a rightly honored commodity they could "purchase" security in a world that seemed devoid of the creator. "Godmaking" amid anxiety is a standard human procedure! But

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.

It is my hope that the Christian community in the United States will cease to appeal to the Bible as a direct support for the state of Israel and will have the courage to deal with the political realities without being cowed by accusations of anti-Semitism.

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.

This exceptionalism is deeply present in American public rhetoric and every political leader must subscribe to it. Moreover, appeal to this exceptionalism as God's chosen people can cover a multitude of sins, for example, economic injustice and political oligarchy, all in the name of chosenness.

I intend to focus on the question of truth. That means I do not inquire about facticity-what happened-but what is claimed, what is asserted here about reality.

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.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be resolved until the human rights of the other are recognized and guaranteed.

One compelling alternative to land theology is the recognition that Judaism consists most elementally in interpretation of and obedience to the Torah in its requirements of justice and holiness.

The power of King Jesus is intrinsically revolutionary and subversive against every repressive regime.

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.

The alternative to the free market consumer culture is a set of covenants that supports neighborly disciplines, rather than market disciplines, as a producer of culture. These non-market disciplines have to do with the common good and abundance as opposed to self-interest and scarcity. This neighborly culture is held together by its depth of relatedness, its capacity to hold mystery, its willingness to stretch time and endure silence.

Grief is an element of aliveness and the answer to the denial the market demands of us. It is an index of our humanity. It is proof of the presence of our relatedness to each other. It is a communal practice that recognizes that choosing the wilderness of vulnerability, mystery, and anxiety was a good and life-affirming choice.

The dominant value system of our commodity society is to marginalize that human dimension, a marginalization that is epitomized in the loss of the arts from school budgets and the making of money as the definition of a "career" and therefore the measure of education.

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.

Jesus astonishes his contemporaries by his capacity to see and act beyond conventional assumptions.

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.

In one way or another, it is evident that the Jerusalem liturgy celebrated the kingship of Yahweh.

practice in elemental and unmistakable ways. He is wonderful in his teaching because he opens up new possibilities that were thought to be impossible.

Kitsch is decorous object with fake attraction that is in fact without value. In light of the poem of Job, I suggest that when our ministry does not challenge and offend and open news paths, we are likely to be engaged in religious kitsch.

the threat of life, so palpable among us, is a threat that can and will be countered by the Creator who continues the work of governance, order, and sustenance. Creation faith is the summons and invitation to trust the Subject of these verbs, even in the face of day-to-day, palpable incursions of chaos. The testimony of Israel pushes toward a verdict that the One embedded in these doxological statements can be trusted in the midst of any chaos, even that of exile and finally that of death.

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).