Counterscript: living with the elusive God

19. The work of ministry is indispensable. The point of ministry is not that the church may prosper but that that the world may live (and not die) and rejoice (and not cower). Only the church in its better days--and the synagogue and the mosque on their better days--is able to mediate irascible holiness, evoke consequent ambivalence, manage that ambivalence toward newness, and then wait.

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Walter Brueggemann recently wrote An Introduction to the Old Testament (Westminster John Knox). This article is adapted from his CHRISTIAN CENTURY lecture given in Chicago in September.

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