A text that redescribes

Theology Today, Jan 2002 by Brueggemann, Walter

(4) A quality of danger and risk, danger when people sense the tension with another text, danger to the one who speaks, expressed not uncommonly as anger. Beyond that, this danger of openness stops short of resolution; it is the danger of acknowledging and living with ambiguous claims.

(5) A readiness to be less relevant to the presenting problems of the day, for in truth this text gives little directly to such questions but cuts underneath to where the hidden issues of density hover, to the places where we redecide about trusting, doubting, giving, and resisting.

(6) The loss of the "moneys of certitude"-the ones who gladly pay to be reassured that the troubles are all in fact contained-because such moneys do not respond easily to textual proclamation that is polyvalent, open, and subversive. A wager can be made that those relieved to have their lives opened by such a recovered text will, in immense generosity, outgive the loss of the moneys of certitude, but one never knows. That is, the recovery of the text likely brings with it a deprivileging and the need to find a new set of friends, as did Jesus with his circle of "publicans and sinners."

THE PLOT OF THE TEXT

I want now to consider the large plot of this text to be recovered among us, a text that questions the dominant text of our culture, a plot that tells radically against the plot of modern consumerism. I understand and acknowledge the risks in such a large plot, because the text is enormously variegated in its detail and nuance. To suggest such a large plot is for me to think too much like a theologian, or perhaps to echo too much the so-called "Biblical Theology Movement." Nonetheless, in this company such a suggestion seems inescapable.

I take recourse to Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig to speak of creation-covenant-consummation as an ordered account of faith, of the large way in which faith sees the life of the world. Of course, that plot line is too simple, too clear, and too coherent for the vagaries of daily life, the vagaries of the text, or the detailed nuance of careful reading. But, provisionally, the task of the preacher is to lead the church in situating its daily life-with all the ambiguities present and not to be denied-in this sweep. The plot of creation-covenant-consummation that the preacher works day by day, week by week, and text by text situates lived human crises in relation to large evangelical claims-the linkage between the immediate and the deep. It also links the detail of our life to the presiding God, intimately connected to but not domesticated by the truth of our daily existence.

Creation is the claim of the text that the life of the world is bounded by the self-giving generosity of God. As deep and as far back as we can go, we will find that generosity. We cannot push beyond, will, or imagine our life outside the arena of Holy Generosity.

Creation-covenant-consummation yields a sweeping metanarrative to which the preacher bears witness. But Israel will not lie. It knows about this other triad of idolatry-absence-enemies; it knows about this other triad even as do we and as do the ones who attend to our preaching. Thus it is the case that preaching is not only a championing of this metanarrative that makes sense and gives coherence to daily vagaries, but preaching is also wrestling with the problematic in candor. The outcome, moreover, is not always clean, unscarred, and without ambiguity. The recovery of the text is in the interest of both the large coherence of metanarrative and the candid engagement of the problem left by that metanarrative and by our life in the world. In what follows, I consider three aspects of the large claim as it functions as countertext, as text counter to the dominant text.