Thursday 12 July 2007

Today we tie up the focus of the devotions from the past five days. Walter Brueggemann opens up our eyes to what is being created in our culture as we know it today.



The primary commitments of our culture to security, ideology, technology, certitude, and commodity constitute a system of hopelessness. But is was ever thus, from Pharaoh to Nebuchadnezzar to Caesar and on until now. Dominant culture - even with its myth of progress - is characteristically a culture of despair. It becomes so, because it regards itself as ultimate and can countenance no suggestion of its own penultimacy. It becomes so, because it banishes the power of the holy and in an imitation of the holy cannot recognize it owns profanation. It becomes so, because it lives by control and can entertain no openness for gift. And so despair yields a culture of death...and violence...and brutality that is mostly unnoticed by the shoppers, attended only by an occasional poet who is either misunderstood or dismissed as a celebrity.



I may repeat this tomorrow and tag on the next few lines from the book. For today, this is enough. We have often come back to the notion of control and the need for people (you - me - the dominant culture) to seek to have some kind of control over our own lives and the lives of others. But as we should all see from the reading of Scripture, that journey of control has resulted in the gift of God's Reign being bypassed or overlooked or even rejected. When our culture attempts to sell itself as the ultimate right or the ultimate power, we become fools. At this point in our self-absorbing lives, we lose sight of the many gifts that are available to us. We begin to push people away...push ideas away...push creativity away...push adventure away...and, in all that pushing, we push ourselves into a box of contentment that is really an illusion of security. Brueggeman's comment about the poet being misunderstood or dismissed as a celebrity is brilliant. There are so many times when we can hear people talk about "common sense" and "prudent action." At those points it can become so easy to leave the images of poets in the closet and reject their visions and dreams. It is at those times that we really must open up and seriously consider their words and images so we do not settle for life that is under control and we like it.



Connection: Listen to a poet...pay attention to a dreamer. Today.



Lord of Great Imagination and Hope, it is by your love that we are pulled beyond our own ways and begin to take on the journey of life that is the way of our Lord, Jesus. Inspire us to leap into your ever present life that becomes the way of transformation and all hopefulness. Amen.