The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780664239121
• eBook ISBN: 9781611641233
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

In addition to being one of the world's leading interpreters of the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann is a skilled and beloved preacher. This collection of sermons demonstrates Brueggemann's fidelity to biblical texts, which come alive with meaning in our contemporary world. Throughout, Brueggemann also reflects on his preaching.

The book features a biblical index as well as a foreword by Samuel Wells of Duke University who writes: "Enjoy this volume from a master exegete, a master theologian, and a master preacher. They really are neat sermons. And they're for you."

1

Gosh, Some Angels

December 24, 1972

LUKE 2:8–20

My ten-year-old son Jim had to write a play for Christmas for his Sunday School class. He made it a dialogue between two animals at Bethlehem. It goes like this:

Donkey:	It sure is cold, is it not?
Lamb:	It sure is.
Donkey:	Do you know what year it is?
Lamb:	I think it is the year 1.
Donkey:	Did you hear that Caesar Augustus sent out an order that everyone in the country should be taxed?
Lamb:	That means that the people will be coming back, does it not?
Donkey:	Right.
Lamb:	Here comes somebody now.
Donkey:	Hey, there’s something in the sky.
Lamb:	Is that not a star?
Donkey:	Yes, there is something right by it. There are two of them.
Lamb:	Who is that over the hills?
Donkey:	It looks like some people coming to get their taxes in the books.
Lamb:	But the inns are all full. Maybe they will come here, huh?
Donkey:	Here they come.
Lamb:	Be nice to them, huh?
Donkey:	She looks like she is going to have a baby!
Lamb:	Hey, look over the hills. It looks like some kings.
Donkey:	She’s having a baby—look, some angels.
Lamb:	Gosh, some angels.
Donkey:	The shepherds see the angels.

He goes on. But that is enough so you know where I got the title for this sermon. I don’t know how you say in Aramaic, “Gosh, some angels,” but I assume that the first shepherds said at least that. I want to talk about the angels because they are crucial for the first Christmas. I think we don’t take them very seriously. We have reduced them, after the manner of medieval art, to cute little babies, or nice little children with wings and sparkling stuff on their backs. I suppose that is to make them seem innocent or heavenly. I suspect that we don’t understand fully what Christmas is because we missed out on the angels.

The angels in the Bible are a part of a much larger notion. It was commonly believed by the people who wrote and valued these stories that heaven, the world of the gods, was filled with many gods. They all had their various functions, like the god of snow and the god of war and so on, like Mt. Olympus, and each year they met at new year time in a grand assembly. In the Bible it is called the Divine Council, sort of like a United Nations in heaven. Each year they did several things.

1. They decided who would be king of the gods, who would preside over the council and have the final say. There are many psalms in the Old Testament which tell about Yahweh, the god of Israel, being chosen king of the gods for a new year:

Sing to the LORD a new song

the LORD reigns!

(Ps. 96:1, 10 RSV)

(which means he is king for another year).

2. The gods also determined how it was going to be for the new year, rather like writing out the Farmers’ Almanac a year ahead of time. This is called fixing the tablets of destiny whereby they determined if it would be a prosperous year or whatever. And if that sounds remote to you, I heard over KMOX yesterday that one of the economic analysts said ’73 would be a good year, that it was in the bag, and obviously such an announcement is not only prediction but determining how it would be. This is the tradition behind Jesus quoting the Old Testament when he says,

To proclaim release to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind . . .

to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

(Luke 4:18–19 RSV)

It is the announcement of a good plan for the new year which the gods decide.

3. Finally, this council of the gods makes a decision about who would be the human king for the new year. It was widely believed that the gods decided who would be king, and of course that is not remote from us either because every presidential candidate likes to have a Billy Graham at hand to give religious legitimacy to it all. Which suggests that in that ancient world the kings could use this holy symbolic system for propaganda and claim divine appointment, but that is the way they did it.

Which brings us to the angels. After the gods had made their decisions about the human world, they chose from among their numbers some of the gods to bring the message to the world of men. And that is all the word angel means, messenger, one who brings the message from the meeting of the gods to tell the world of humankind how it is going to be. And those angels (messengers) are not baby-faced cherubs with wings. There is nothing soft or sweet or childlike about them. They are rather stern and uncompromising, even insistent, because they bring a message that is clear and firm and non-negotiable. They come to tell what the gods have decided. They do not have wings. The message comes in all kinds of ways, in a dream, in a vision, in a nightmare, in a fire, in an earthquake, even an inner voice once in a while, sometimes a voice from the heavens. But it is all the same. It is all message and the one who brings it is a messenger, an angel.

And that is what happened in the fields of Bethlehem that night. The shepherds are every person with their grim business as usual, tending their flock, assuming that tomorrow would be like yesterday, that life would be about what it had been, with its little joys and its little disappointments but mostly just making it a day at a time with a little wool and a little mutton but not much more.

This has not been an easy sermon to prepare. Obviously today one can scarcely talk without mentioning the renewed bombing and I have not known what to say. You have been through it all before and you are as angry, as discouraged, as immobilized, even as guilty as I am, so I don’t want to lay that on you. But our eyes, like those in Viet Nam must be fixed on the skies which are filled with bombers. And I think it fair to say that our eyes are like those of the shepherds, also fixed on the skies, filled with dread and resignation.

The skies are always filled with bombers, but Christmas is the incredible affirmation that the skies at the important moment are not filled with bombers, which is our symbol for weary business as usual. Just then the skies are filled with angels, voices of another announcement about something God has decided. That is what Christmas is about, the perception that the skies are not filled with bombs, but with angels.

The story in Luke is at pains to describe the happening to the unsuspecting ones.

First there is the statement of glory, a bright light usually, an awesome experience, a time of terror, for the glory is the coming of God in all his power. And then there is the reaction to it: they were afraid. These are not nice friendly little angels. They are the ones that come crashing in where they are least expected and not welcome. Christmas is not a time of pleasantries, but it is a show of power, power to transform, but that means power to cause upheaval. It is the coming of the holy, the awesome surprising, disturbing presence of God himself.

I don’t know about you, but I do not expect transforming holiness to come in my life. I would not know what to do if holiness came, for I have got it all boxed off to come at special times in special ways. The message to the shepherds is that they take another look. Here they thought their reality consisted in darkness and sheep and it does not. It consists in light and a message from God. For the gods have met and they have made a new decision.

And Christmas is the celebration of the new decision of God. You know their decision well: “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (v. 11, RSV). Remember, we said one of the things the gods decide is who will be king in the human world. That is the central decision taken by the gods. They have decided that all the fake kings would be dethroned. Not Caesar in Rome, not Herod in Jerusalem, not Pilate as governor, not all the presidents and premiers and executives and generals, not any of them will be king, because the world has been turned a new way. It has been turned so that a king shall come from Bethlehem, not from the great city, but from a little city filled with filth and poverty. But think what it means. It means to anybody who knows, that the promises of God have been kept. He is faithful. He has not reneged. For a thousand years earlier he has said, I will keep this royal family and this royal promise and this royal vision. I will send the true David and he will turn the world back to its sanity. Where there has been fear, he will bring joy. Where there has been oppression he will bring justice. Where there has been suffering and sorrow, he will bring wholeness.

All the kings of the world hustled to keep their thrones. Even as American power does at this very hour in Asia. They are panic-stricken powers, scared of everything and everyone, but they don’t know how to work at it except to kill and destroy, and our whole human history is like that. Except the gods have made a fresh decision, and this new one does not come as threat but as child. He does not come as victory, but as helpless child. He does not come in pride, but in a way almost unnoticed by the world. But he is king. He is not robed in splendor but in baby clothes. He is not in the royal nursery but in a barn. None of it makes any sense. At least it does not make sense to people who think they have all of life reduced to a pattern and a formula. The Christmas event in Bethlehem makes no sense unless you allow that it is a fresh decision from God himself about the new shape of the world.

All of that came with the new announcement of the king. And then that messenger was joined by the chorus who gave the theme of the divine decision: glory and peace.

Glory to God—

Peace on earth!

They cannot be separated. Some want peace on earth without taking seriously the holiness of God. Some want to worship God and pay no attention to peace. But they are a common theme, which bind the world of God and the human world together, which let both heaven and nature sing. Glory and peace!

Glory, the gods rejoice. They are very pleased with themselves
because they chose the right one for king of heaven.
Peace, not just a shifty cease fire, but a zone of wholeness
in which we can live our lives.

Christmas is the incredible celebration that the new decision of God is being actualized even in our kind of world.

Well, that’s very primitive. And you may ...

Table of contents

• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Reflections on Walter Brueggemann’s Preaching
• Preface
• 1. Gosh, Some Angels: December 24, 1972
• 2. A Zinger That Changes Everything: July 16, 1983
• 3. A Demanding Long-Term Miracle: February 28, 1988
• 4. What You Eat Is What You Get: June 5, 1988
• 5. Starting Over—From Heaven Out: December 25, 1988
• 6. By Faith: May 21, 1989
• 7. The Strong God with Two Weak Verbs: February 2, 1990
• 8. The Ultimate Gate-Crasher: June 3, 1990
• 9. A God Who Gives Wildly … and Then Insists: October 14, 1990
• 10. A Loser’s Powerful Footnotes: October 23, 1990
• 11. On Not Winning the Heisman Trophy: January 15, 1991
• 12. Neighbor Religion That Lets a City Work: February 26, 1991
• 13. The Surge of Dangerous, Restless Power: April 14, 1991
• 14. Taking a Second, Painful Look: February 23, 1992
• 15. Re-Formed for Ministry: March 1, 1992
• 16. Deep Waters: April 17, 1992
• 17. God’s Relentless “If”: April 23, 1992
• 18. Power to Remember, Freedom to Forget: May 10, 1992
• 19. On the Wrong Side of the Ditch … for a Long Time: September 27, 1992
• 20. When Nagging Is Hoping: October 18, 1992
• 21. Afterward … After George … After Bill … Newness: November 8, 1992
• 22. Checkpoint John: December 8, 1992
• 23. Trusting in the Water-Food-Oil Supply: March 23, 1993
• 24. Outrageous God, Season of Decrease: December 12, 1993
• 25. More Coats Than Imelda Had Shoes: December 11, 1994
• 26. Birthed Public and Peculiar: January 7, 1997
• 27. Sabbaticals for Rats?: April 29, 1997
• 28. An Intrusive Absence: December 7, 1997
• 29. On Signal: Breaking the Vicious Cycles: November 15, 1998
• 30. Uttered beyond Fear: December 4, 1998
• 31. The Yet on the Other Side of the Millimeter: December 13, 1998
• 32. Strategies for Humanness: February 21, 1999
• 33. Do You Want to Join the Miracle?: March 14, 1999
• 34. A Fourth-Generation Sellout: July 14, 2000
• 35. The Stunning Outcome of a One-Person Search Committee: April 25, 2001
• 36. Newness from God That Unlearns Family: May 13, 2001
• 37. One Exorcism, One Earthquake, One Baptism … and Joy: May 27, 2001
• 38. Joined in Suffering … Reliant on God’s Power: October 7, 2001
• 39. Missing by Nine Miles: January 6, 2002
• 40. The Big Yes: March 3, 2002
• 41. Saints Remembered and Saints to Come: April 7, 2002
• 42. Consider Your Call: June 15, 2002
• 43. Shrill Faith for the Nighttime: September 22, 2002
• 44. Bragging about the Right Stuff: October 19, 2002
• 45. Embrace of the New Truth of Abundance: November 3, 2002
• 46. The Church with a Middle Name: “West … ‘Water and Vegetables’ … Minster”: March 9, 2003
• 47. Three Habits That Make God Un … Happy: March 10, 2003
• 48. “Until” … Endlessly Enacted, Now Urgent: April 21, 2003
• 49. A Resurrection Option: May 4, 2003
• 50. Variations from the Barrio: June 14, 2003
• 51. Medical Care Free and Expensive: November 9, 2004
• 52. “Morphed” Back to a New Life: November 14, 2004
• 53. A Nighttime Gnaw and a New Possibility: February 20, 2005
• 54. The Good News of Cosmic Regime Change: May 8, 2005
• 55. The Sabbath Voice of the Evangel: Against Death, Denial, and Despair: May 29, 2005
• 56. Bread: The Good Stuff on the Table: October 2, 2005
• 57. On Not Doing God Any Favors: February 26, 2006
• 58. Called against the Distortion: March 19, 2006
• 59. The Hard Miracle of Transformation: June 12, 2008
• 60. Trusting Two Rocks: August 24, 2008
• 61. The Song of an Ex-Leper: February 15, 2009
• 62. A Bilingual Life
• 63. A New Way of Being in the World
• 64. Power for Life Flown in by Bird
• 65. The Gift of a New Chance
• 66. The Saving, Disruptive Moment
• 67. The Threat of Life: Permitting Its Intrusion
• Scripture Index