23 February 2005

Continuing to hear from Walter Brueggemann

It is equally important to perceive that those who have entry to power and prosperity are also victims of hopelessness, or, as we are wont to say in our time, have a sense of powerlessness. The royal consciouness means to overcome history and therefore by design the future loses its vitality and authority. The present ordering, and by derivation the present regime, claims to be the full and final ordering. That claim means there can be no future that either calls the present into questions or promises a way out of it. Thus the fulsome claim of the present arrangement is premisedon hopelessness. The present is unending projection, uncompromising in its claim of loyalty, and unaccommodating in having its own way.

Gosh, is Brueggemann writing about today?!? I find it more and more disturbing to see how a whole segment of the religious community blesses and seems to ordain the actions of our own government. We dare not say royalty...but we can think the rich, the powers, or those who see themselves as the leaders of a master society. The voice of the prophets who call the powers of the day to the way of peace and mercy and justice are continually covered over by the sweet smelling verbiage of a religious movement that is so hopeless (cannot see that God can and will continue to make life even when life doesn't go our way) that is can only back what is present and what has been for they do not see the possibility of God's saving power. It appears that the only vision of a future that is being held up among the powers that be is one that is based on a pitiful end time scenario that claims to be biblical but is arrogantly self-serving. Out of a sense of growing powerlessness, powers tend to try to exercise their own power over others. We need a new voice that resounds with the eternal voice of our God.

Connection: Listen. Simply listen to what is being said all around us. Listen to how the voices of powers that are trying to lead us (this is from any political party) are not able to speak the new language of God's promise for life. Listen.

O God of all Hopefulness, you are still the One who pulls us into tomorrow. Keep our eyes fixed on your loving kindness, your mercy, your graciousness, and your power to bring new life even as the powers of death play with life. Amen.