| I find that Brueggemann opens up the way I look at what we have been handed by the faithful of other times and places. Here is the first taste.
It is not difficult to summarize these 'facts on the ground.' What requires careful attention, however, is the additional 'fact on the ground' that the story told about these events amounted to a vigorous, sustained interpretation by a determined interpretive community. That community produced an ideological explanation that came to be constitutive for the ongoing community of Judaism. Among those Jews carried off to Babylon, a small, intentional, intense group seized the interpretive initiative and established the governing categories for how the destruction and deportation were to be understood.
For some, this could put people off. Here is this community - coming up with the stories. These are the stories that so many people take as 'television 21st century history in the making' - factual, with videotape included. And yet, wrapping up a few bits and pieces of what can be held up as falling in line with what we know of the historical setting of the ancient middle east, there comes this grand, faithful storytelling. These stories are then held up as the foundational stones of so many people who count on the God of the Scriptures to be a powerful presence even now. I think that is wonderfully wild. This storytelling can thus be defining in the sense that it give a place and a purpose and a grounding to life that is not making of the powers of the world. Rather, it shows that faithful storytelling within a community, can shape and make a people come to life.
Connection: One thing I like to ask little children when they show me a picture or something they found or something they made is simply: tell me about it. It is then that the stories emerge. Their faces come to light and they begin to give voice to their creative side. It shows some of their personality and their grounding. And - it is simply great fun. Faithful storytelling can also be great fun - meaningful fun.
O God, who makes the day and delivers us into the next, you take us wherever we may be and you remind us to be - to be the beloved even if no one loves us. You give us faithful imaginations that save the day and turn us then into your power of love. We give you thanks. Amen. |
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