NO ONE has done more than the late Walter Brueggemann to illuminate the Hebrew Scriptures for today’s audience. This volume is the fourth in the Walter Brueggemann Library series put together from previously published works by its editor, Davis Hankins, and is on on the theme of God’s grace. Central is the opposition between scarcity and abundance.
The first five chapters lay out some fundamentals of biblical grace, while the last five advocate specific biblical practices that are appropriate to the experience of God’s grace — “unnerving and unpredictable” in the consequences that it may engender.
In the first two chapters, Brueggemann tackles food scarcity and food abundance. Dwelling on the former leads to anxiety, accumulation, and monopoly, while concentrating on the latter results in trust, sharing, and covenantal neighbourliness.
Next, he considers the urgent question of ownership, control, and governance of the land and its natural resources. Land is to be seen as creation, not, as in contemporary society, as possession.
Then citing “in you the orphan has mercy” (Hosea 14.3), Brueggemann turns to the problem of homelessness: the text is “a fairly precise equivalent to ‘homes for the homeless’”, because the homeless are the orphans in our society. Social justice is always at the centre of God’s concerns.
Arguing that we live in a time of “displacement and bewilderment”, Brueggemann sets out four examples of new thinking. First, we must face the reality of our situation, our loss of old certainties. Second, we must assert that God cannot forget us. Third, we must have the courage to hymn that “God is working a wondrous newness”. Finally, although such a world is not yet visible, we are called to affirm that such newness “from outside” can enter our fixed world.
Turning to five distinctive Jewish practices, Brueggemann sees the sabbath not only as a provision for refreshment of the self, but also in economic terms as a challenge to the dehumanising system of power which views economics in terms of ceaseless production.
Then, as in the Psalms, we are, in song, to abandon ourselves without reservation to the God of generosity and trustworthiness.
Third, we are to rethink mission in terms of a “ministry of blessing” — the part assigned to Abraham (Genesis 12.3), who becomes the “life-force” of Yahweh in the world. In Jesus, “the power to bless exudes from his body and makes all things new” (Luke 8.44-45). It is this creative power that the Church inherits.
Considering forgiveness, Brueggemann dismisses the notion of deeds-consequences so prominent in pre-exilic covenant theology and apparently leaving God no way out in the punishment of the exile in Babylon. What makes forgiveness possible is God’s steadfast love, which dominates exilic and post-exilic theology. It is in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer that we pledge to mirror God’s generosity.
Finally, Brueggemann considers the significance of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and the practice of sacramental confession, “where the fullness of God’s grace is made available”.
The most valuable element in any of Brueggemann’s works is his imaginative use of scripture. His is no narrow approach, but a remarkable freedom that honours the text by recognising its power, particularly in relation to the political and economic sphere of our contemporary world. To the general reader, this volume gives unexpected insights, and, for the priest, it furnishes endless subjects for sermons.
Canon Anthony Phillips is a former headmaster of The King’s School, Canterbury.
Grace Abounds: God’s abundance against the fear of scarcity
Walter Brueggemann
WJK £15
(978-0-664-26591-5)
Church Times Bookshop £13.50