Monday 25 June 2007

This week we will look at a few pieces from the chapter "The Fearful Thirst for Dialogue" from Walter Brueggemann's book "Mandate to Difference."

Brueggemann begins the chapter with a quote by George Steiner:

It is the Hebraic intuition that God is capable of all speech acts except that of monologue, which has generated our acts of reply, of questioning, and counter-creation. After the Book of Job and Euripides' Bacchae, ther had to be, if man was to bear his being, the means of dialogue with God, which are spelled out in our poetics, music, art.

From that note, he then goes on to write:

My thesis is that the church is a venue for dialogue in the midst of a monologic culture that finds such dialogue to be an unbearable threat that must be mightily resisted. Dialogue, I shall suggest, is not merely a strategy, but it is a practice that is congruent with our deepest nature, made as we are in the image of a dialogic God.

We, in our society and in our churches, are sore tempted to monologue. Such a temptation imagines absolute certainty and sovereignty, and uncritically imagines that any one of us can speak with the voice and authority of the monologic God. There can be no doubt that such a shrill voice of certitude, in any arena of life, is an act of idolatry that is characteristically tinged with ideology.



And yet, the voices we hear so often from within the church is this non-dialogical voice. It is simply the statement of what one side thinks - and often just one person who is held up in a position of ultimate authority beneath God. Therefore, that kind of voice, thunders what is to be the truth and the reality of life and nothing else is to be considered. This voice can come from the right or the left within our present religious context. When we forget how creative is the word spoken among us and to us and through us, we lose the vitality of the Word we claim is so central to our lives. I recently read a letter from a woman who threw in a few words that were meant to defer any attempts at a diaolgue to a simple statement about God - and it seems a God who distrusts questions and differences and conflict. What is so unfortunate is that such a one sided-conversation often leaves out any ability to discern what is truthful and what would be creative in the life of a community. I also recently noticed that every time we are not able to enter into dialogue in the church, the life of the body whithers. We need that tension that comes from a room of people who are willing to risk discussion and the chance that opinions will be moved and life may actually begin to shift and move and be a creative piece of art.

Connection: We all like to be monological to some point. We just cannot afford to stay there. Try to find ways to question and risk raising your voice and listening to something other than "my side" of a conversation.


O Word of Life, you announce the beginning of all things. By your word we are thrust into a world of words that shape and create and cause change that bring about new life even when we thought everything was just the way it should be. Help us to listen to other, engage in dialogue, and be open to how our paths may not lead us to a place we would like to go - but rather to the life within your blessed Reign. Amen.