I've recently been reading a wonderful book by Walter Brueggemann called 'Deep Memory, Exuberant Hope: Contested Truth in a Post-Christian World'. I've never read any Brueggemann before, never had the opportunity I guess, but when a friend on the Advanced Workshop course spluttered over his coffee on hearing that I'd never read him, I thought I'd give it a go. So, I went for a Brueggemann overdose with some birthday money and got four books in one go, of which this is the first one that I've read (more from the others in due course, I'm sure).

The book is sublime, and I heartily recommend it to anyone! It's a collection of essays by Brueggemann on the theme of the meaning of Scripture in today's post-Christian society. Each essay stands alone, but there is a thread that moves through them all, that being the heart of creativity and imagination rooted in the story of Yahweh.

I want to mention two essay in particular, called 'Reading as Wounded and as Haunted,' and 'Texts That Linger, Not Yet Overcome.'

In Reading as Wounded and as Haunted Brueggemann argues that Biblical Studies always begins with the canon: reading is always in response to what is there. Consequently , when reading we must hold in tension two opposing perceptions: that the canon is 'a serious attempt to provide a baseline of normalcy that was accomplished by serious believers'; and that the canon 'is an ideological act that establishes exclusive interests as claims of faith.'¹ The art of interpretation, he suggests, is in holding the creative tension of suspecting the potential for damage of ideologies embedded in the text, the special interests of a brutalising kind, whilst still trusting that there is a heart of true meaning beating within the text, a kernel, a pearl of great price, glimpses of 'another kind of deity, a God of plenitude, of generosity, one who need not protect his turf because it is infinite.'²

True reading, then, arises out of pain. If we are to criticically engage with the canon that includes texts that contain bodily damage and 'bad ideas' in the name of God we cannot but say 'A text that causes such hurt cannot be right, cannot be trusted, cannot be revelation!'³ We are wounded. But as members of the interpreting community in which we are rooted, we have not done with the text: we continue to be haunted by it and its stories. We are wounded by it, but we keep turning to it for ways in which it may also be a healing text.

True, this is not always so. Sometimes suspicion is enough to end the matter. But there is a 'large prerational propensity to affirmation and rage, a prerational propensity that in the end may be a gift of the Spirit - that is, the willingness and ability to stay with a text that so manifestly wounds is not explained rationally but in the inscrutiblity that the faithful name as spirit.'⁴ We read then, 'facing honestly the wounding caused by the text … in readiness to continue to be haunted by the wounding text in the affectively grounded expectation that there is more here than wounding but also healing.'⁵

By way of example, Brueggemann looks in particular at the Biblical theme of lament. Exile provokes lament, protest and suspicion over easy claims made for Yahweh: Israel will not accomodate its pain to make things easy for Yahweh. The Friday crucifixion is a suspicion of the claims of Jesus' gospel, a lamentation for eternal hopes cruelly and painfully shattered. And Easter does not cover the wounds of Friday but instead they live unsettled with continuing healing power. Holocaust is the primal act of protest at all claims for truth in Western culture, the claims of modernity and all of religion that is congruent with it.

Lament is an act of protest. It is suspicion of 'claims easily made for God that are contradicted by the evident pain that says otherwise.'⁶ It is an act of faith that does not need to protect God, that does not fear the texts of pain.

In Texts That Linger, Not Yet Overcome Brueggemann looks particularly at the question of God's abandoning absence. He does this by focussing on four texts:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

Psalm 22:1 (nrsv)

Why have you forgotten us completely?
    Why have you forsaken us these many days?

Lamentations 5:20

But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me,
    my Lord has forgotten me.’

Isaiah 49:14

For a brief moment I abandoned you,
    but with great compassion I will gather you.
In overflowing wrath for a moment
    I hid my face from you,
but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,
    says the Lord, your Redeemer.

Isaiah 54:7-8

While the first three are on the lips of Israel and can be argued away, the fourth is on the lips of Yahweh, a confession from the mouth of God. And here the more familiar compassion and everlasting love only come after the abandonment.

Brueggemann argues that these texts cannot be ignored, overlooked or argued away. This is how Yahweh is represented in the text. He must be stared in the face. Instead he reads them as part of the narrative whole of the text, as a drama focussed around the central character of Yahweh. And, as in any drama, the characters and most importantly the central character, Yahweh, must grow and develop. Thus, 'these texts are in Yahweh's past, but they are at the same time assuredly in Yahweh's past.'⁷ This wounding, troubling past of Yahweh still tells in the present. It is not necessary to claim that this troublesome past is normative or presently active, only that it has been there in the past and haunts the present, is pertinent to the present, continues to be present in the present.

The 'God of "steadfast love and mercy" is at the same time the God who has abandoned, and all current steadfastness bears the wounding mark of that ancient, undenied reality.'⁸ The only way beyond such woundedness is through such woundeness. But when identified and accepted, 'that ancient woundedness is robbed of its present authority.'⁹

Lament.

Deep Memory. Exhuberant Hope.