The liturgy of the local tradition or the liturgy of the empire. What will it be? Brueggemann looks at the predicament in Israel and Babylon.
One can imagine, then, two parallel liturgies. On the one hand, the imperial liturgy was about unthinking affirmation. On the other hand, Jewish local tradition's practice hosted unwelcome poems and unsilenced cries of need as a response to real or anticipated loss. The issue for displaced Jews is whether they could sustain the theological tradition about which they sat down and wept. In the local tradition the ultimate reality of God and the immediate reality of loss grappled with each other. "But," the Jews asked themselves, "should we abandon the local tradition in order to settle down to life in the empire?" That, of course, is always the question for this (and any other) local tradition: whether to relinquish or retain, whether to accommodate or resist, whether to give one's self over to hegemony's buoyant self-delusions or to live in contradiction to that buoyancy.
Unfortunately, it is very easy to be at home with the self-delusions of the empire - no matter what empire it may be or what it is that claims to rule us. To live in contradiction to the prevailing powers and influences and structures is not an easy road to walk. For if it is done consistently, a contrary walker starts to stick out. Therefore, it becomes more and more tempting to accommodate ourselves to those prevailing winds. It makes practical sense to step back from questioning the status quo. When we do that, we fit in. I know I like to fit in - I think many of us do. That is when we must pick up these old, old stories and poems and songs of resistance and begin to learn the language of lament and the language of hope and the language of radical engagement of the powers around us so that we get it into our hearts that there is another way to move through the contexts in which we walk.
Connection: It is good to find voices that help us resist and re-evaluate and critique and weep and press on in hope. The voices are there. We must turn an ear and begin to receive the gifts around us.
When the poetry of your Reign falls upon us, O God, inspire us to stop and listen and look at the way your Reign can unfold before us and pull us into a life we are not always willing to enter. Amen.
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