In Exodus 11:7 there is a wonderous statement of a new reality that surely must energize: "But against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel." In our scholarly ways we may miss the power here. It is too terrible to be contained in a "doctrine of election." It occurs not in a doctrine but in a narrative and an unproven memory that we must let stand in all its audacity. It is not reflective theology but news just for this moment and just for this community. The God who will decide is not the comfortable god of the empire, so fat and well fed as to be neutral and inattentive. Rather, it is the God who is alert to the realities, who does not flinch from taking sides, who sits in the divine council on the edge of his seat and is attentive to his special interests. It is the way of the unifying gods of the empire not to take sides and, by being tolerant, to cast eternal votes for the way things are.
...in his passion and energy Moses takes sides with losers and powerless marginal people; he has not yet grown cynical with the "double speak" of imperial talk and so dares to speak before that data are in and dares to affront more subtle thinking. The affirmation whispered in the barracks is that Moses is "up front" about his commitments, and Pharaoh is not going to like it.
Seen at a distance, this bald statement is high theology. It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone...For Moses and Israel, energizing comes not out of sociological strategy or hunches about social dynamic, but out of the freedom of God. and so the urging I make to those who would be prophets is that we not neglect to do our work about who God is and that we know our discernment of God is at the breaking points in human community.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 15-16
No comments:
Post a Comment