Ice Axes for Frozen Seas

A Biblical Theology of Provocation

Walter Brueggemann, Davis Hankins

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781481302180
• eBook ISBN: 9781481303217
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Endlessly cunning, elusive, and playful--the Bible consistently unsettles even as it assures. Walter Brueggemann reveals exactly how Scripture exposes the inadequacy of the assumptions and habits that shape our lives. He finds inside Israel's ancient poetry, prophecy, narrative, and legal covenants new words that create new peoples. In so doing this book provokes a theology of transformation--one that compels new social, economic, and political practices. Brueggemann's reading reveals that we are not fated to live a life of greed, anxiety, and violence, but instead can embrace a shared life of well-being grounded in an investment in the common good. Brueggemann shows the endless ways by which the Bible provokes new life for transformed peoples.

PART I

POETIC CADENCES
THAT CREATE HOPE

1

CONFLICTED HUMAN AGENCY

My invitation from Walter May to address you was a suggestion that I focus on an “Old Testament narrative of hope and faithfulness” in the service of a larger “narrative of hopeful, inclusive ministry.”

I

I think I understand the double accent on hopeful because we live in a society (and church) that is overwhelmed by the “data of despair” all around us, with no one knowing where to turn next. The facts on the ground, moreover, are situated in a narrative of despair that I have termed “military consumerism,” a preoccupation with satiation and self-indulgence about commodities that is reinforced by a military muscle that aims to protect our entitled advantage in the world. It is clear that that narrative, which dominates the imagination among us, is not hope-filled, because it cannot make us either safe or happy. It is clear that the world generated by the narrative of “military consumerism” holds no human future for us. And it is unmistakable among preachers of every ilk that that dominant narrative cannot be easily critiqued because it functions in our society as an unquestioned religious totem. We are pressed elsewhere for hope; that, however, is not so clear, given the powerful combination of the facts on the ground and the narrative of despair that converge in concrete ways among us.

I am, moreover, impressed that Walter May’s mandate to me twice used the word “narrative,” “narrative of hope and faithfulness in the Old Testament” in the service of a “narrative of hopeful, inclusive ministry.” It is clear against both Enlightenment reason and fundamentalist reductionism that there is no tight settled edict that could yield sustainable hope. Rather hope arises precisely through the narrative process in which we tell and retell our lives.¹ Thus narrative has privilege as a mode for the substance of faith because we tell a story in which newness emerges specifically and concretely in a way that cannot be explained or controlled. Thus the question among us is, “What story shall we tell?” given that the dominant story we tell allows for no news to emerge, precisely because we are bent on explanatory control. A controlled story, one in which we know the end before we start telling, is no venue for hope.

When a Christian preacher or teacher asks about narratives of hope, we are drawn to the big narratives:

“My father was a wandering Aramean” as the defining story of ancient Israel, a story that culminates with gratitude for the new land.

The Pauline summary of faith grounded in Scripture:

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor 15:3-8)

The eucharistic mystery of faith:
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.

And eventually we come to the creeds that pivot on that awesome phrase, “and was made man.”

But of course the big narratives, in order to be pastorally compelling, emerge in small pastoral venues that well up in the concrete lives of the faithful. I submit that in all of these small venues, widely variant as they are, the defining connection is between bodily reality (of life, suffering, and death) and holy mystery that we cannot articulate with any precision but that matters decisively to us. It is the wonder of our faith–and of the stories we tell–that bodily reality and holy mystery make contact, not unlike that instant of contact between God and Adam sketched by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. To tell a surprising, compelling interaction of bodily reality and holy mystery, we situate our immediate narrative and shape it according to the remembered narrative of that same interface that we cannot explain but to which we bear witness. Thus I assume that in telling and in hearing such a tale that yields newness, we inescapably move back and forth between what we remember from previous tellings and what we know in the present tense of our own bodily contact with that holy mystery. So I take my assignment to tell a tale of hope that is a remembered story in which newness emerged at the mix of body and holy. As we tell and hear such a remembered story, we let the memory become present tense among us and find the pulse of new possibility that is in part God-given and in part humanly felt and discerned.

II

I have decided to focus on Psalm 30:6-12, which I suggest is a narrative of hope that can sustain and support a hopeful, inclusive ministry.² I will return to vv. 1-5 later on but will begin my reflection with v. 6. This psalm belongs to the genre of Song of Thanksgiving that Claus Westermann has identified as a “narrative psalm.”³ In this genre the psalmist returns to tell a story of a completed act of divine transformation that issues in gratitude. For all of its concreteness, this psalm is paradigmatic and exhibits all the moves that faith makes in the process of hope. Like all such psalms, it is immediately concrete but is transferable to other contexts, so that it may be used repeatedly by different people in different circumstances of despair and hope.

1. The story has as its premise vv. 6-7a in which the psalmist describes a situation of well-being. I take this as a premise and not as the first act in the narrative because nothing happens. The speaker reflects a happy occasion of stasis:

As for me, I said in my prosperity,

“I shall never be moved.”

By your favor, O LORD,

You had established me as a strong mountain …

Verse 6, taken by itself, sounds like a statement of smug self-sufficiency. It begins with a double “I, I,” the independent pronoun plus the pronominal suffix. This is indeed self-announcement. The term for “prosperity” is derived from shalom, and the word rendered “not moved” means “not destabilized,” not to “totter” or “stagger”; it is the same term used three times in the familiar Psalm 46 (vv. 2, 5, 6):

Though the mountains shake …

It shall not be moved …

The kingdoms totter.

The word is variously rendered as “shake, moved, totter,” as the psalmist ponders the force of chaos against the city. The statement in our psalm (30:6) reflects confident stability. Calvin takes v. 6 alone in that way:

This carnal confidence frequently creeps upon the saints when they indulge themselves in their prosperity, and so to speak, wallow upon their dunghill.⁴

But as is so often the case in his commentary, Calvin has it wrong. Verse 6 does not stand alone. It belongs with v. 7a, which acknowledges, “By your favor, O LORD.” The speaker recognizes that this moment of serene stability is a gift from God; there is nothing in it of self-congratulation. This is the creation as the creator intended it, “Very good.” YHWH is the source of well-being! That is the premise of what follows.

2. Just as quickly, however, without any explanation, serene stability is disrupted. God is promptly acknowledged as the source and cause of that destabilization. There is no hint of guilt or judgment or punishment. The speaker belongs fully and willingly to a world defined by YHWH. And now that world yields dismay:

You hid your face;

I was dismayed. (30:7b)

As God has guaranteed well-being “by your favor,” so God by hiding brings the world to disruption. It does not occur to the psalmist to take the loss as punishment or that it may be his fault. The trouble happens because God hides. The world moves from stability to acute loss because God hides.⁵

3. But the speaker knows what to do. Now we get immediate, direct address to YHWH. In the affirmation of v. 7, the psalmist addressed YHWH, but now the matter has become intense. It is “To You.”

To you, O LORD, I cried,

and to the LORD I made supplication: (v. 8)

The word order is properly inverted in the NRSV so that the indirect pronoun comes first. The verb in v. 8 is a reflexive form of ḥanan: “I present myself for mercy.” The speaker does not grovel nor does he repent. He simply positions himself before God in his need.

4. But what follows in v. 9 is not yet a cry for help, as we have been led to expect. Now the psalmist quotes himself, what he said in his dismay. The words are rather a dispute in the form of three demanding rhetorical questions:

What profit is there in my death

if I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise you?

Will it tell of your faithfulness?

The questions come very close to being an act of defiance. The questions assume that God wants and needs and loves to be praised. The purpose of the “supplication” (if that is what it is) is to show that God has something at stake in protecting the suppliant. It is not just for “my sake” that God should act but for God’s own sake, for God’s honor and reputation. The tone is one of chutzpah in which the suppliant assumes a certain position of covenantal leverage and entitlement. That same defiant urgency is voiced in Psalm 88 and is characteristic of Israel’s prayer:

Do you work wonders for the dead?

Do the shades rise up to praise you?

Is your steadfast love declared in the grave?

or your faithfulness in Abaddon?

Are your wonders known in the darkness?

or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness? (88:10-12)

The answer in every case is “no.” No, there are no miracles for the dead. No, the dead do not praise you. No, your steadfast love is not talked about in the grave. No, your faithfulness is not championed in the pit. No, your miracles are not known in the darkness. No, your saving help is not recalled in death. No, on all counts. The conclusion is that if I die, YHWH will lose a witness; the choir will lose a tenor and God will be diminished.

In our psalm the speaker will drop out of the choir and cause the loss of one voice in the praise brigade, to the diminishment of YHWH. Calvin comes close but cannot finally bring himself to see the leverage that is voiced here:...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART I Poetic Cadences that Create Hope
• PART II Narrative Complexities that Challenge
• PART III Legal Covenants that Coalesce
• PART IV Imaginative Provocations that Compel
• Retrospect
• Notes
• Index of Scripture References
• Index of Names