Sublime

Peace, Walter Brueggemann

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann captures the relevance of grief in a time of doom: grief, he says, is the counter to denial.3

At this juncture in our common life, the chance of the preacher is crucial—as it has not been in a long time—precisely because the dominant texts are failing. . . . It is a task of the church—with synagogue and mosque—to offer this countertext of generosity, fidelity, and neighborliness. It is the chance of the preacher to permit people to give up

Certain basic questions emerge: Jesus’ message is evaluated, not for its timeless significance, but for the meaning it must have had for the audience of his own day, who had their minds full of poverty and politics, and would have had little time for theological abstractions or timeless verities.

His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. He recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win the victory of the spirit against them. “To revile because one has been re

Amos—“when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”