Wednesday 30 May 2007

Walter Brueggemann on burdens and rest and life that is able to break into something new.



So what causes people like us to bear heavy burdens? It is because, is it not, we are coerced, driven kinds of folk, responding to the endless echoes of some Pharaoh in our present life or from our past life. Pharaoh, of course, has insatiable demands, and as long as we live in the regime of some Pharaoh, we will never make enough bricks. I notice one other element in Pharaoh's narrative. When he died, the slave cried out in hurt. but until he died, they did not cry out. They were silenced. They kept it all in. They did not dare to speak their pain. That is how Pharaoh works and how Pharaoh works in your life and mine. As a result we dare not say what we know best, or we say it so carefully and so guardedly that we siphon off our passion. And when it gets said in that way, it has no power. The church - or surely dominant society - is pharaonic in its silencing. Such silencing gives us a visa to the realm of death. We die a little every day in silence because we know better, and yet we dare not speak.



We stuff it. We do not say what everyone is thinking. We do not expose the elephant in the room. We become silent. I know that life. I can live there and I have lived there. People (like me) who refuse to be empowered by the Spirit of God that is willing and able to tell Pharaoh to make his own bricks, find that silence is a way to stay alive and well. Unfortunately, we live a lie and things are well and alive. We are trapped and we are under the direction of a power we do not trust but it is a power we have allowed ourselves to follow just the same. One of the ways I try to speak up is to remember when I did not speak up. I also keep in mind specific and real individuals that remain silent over and over again in the face of powers that can and do pull their strings and control their lives. They are not the people they once were. They are now simple shells that have lost their substance...and I can remember their substance. It is odd how we can be willing to go along with some things in order to preserve our own lives but in reality, we are simply applying for what Brueggemann calls that "visa to the realm of death."



Connection: It is good to keep a critical eye on life around us. It is good to take note of when silence prevails. It is good to then make the move to not be silenced.



Lord of Liberation and Deliverance, we are saved by your announcement that we are free. And yet, we long to be free. As your Spirit continues to deliver us into the realm of your new life, grant us courage to grab hold of it and turn from silence into a life of bold proclamation. Amen.