Dispatching Us to Otherwise: What I Am Learning from Walter Brueggemann About Faithfulness in a Pandemic

I recently heard a church leadership expert describe pastoring during the last nine months of the pandemic this way: imagine you signed up to run in a race and just as you approached what you thought was the finish line you saw all the competitors jumping into a lake and swimming to the other side. In that shocking moment, you realized you had inadvertently signed up not for a standard 10K, but for a biathlon instead. You decide to take a risk and jump in the water and start swimming. Having barely made it to the other side, you now see everyone jumping on bicycles. In that moment you realize you signed up not for a biathlon, but a triathlon, and although you succeeded in not drowning during leg two, you don’t own a bike…

I think the point of the story is that, in any area of leadership, no one signed up for the challenges of the last several months. Most of what we have had to take on we were ill prepared for. We have faked our way through the first aspects of change, but as we look to the future, we not only feel ill prepared for what lays ahead, but we very well may also be desperately unequipped.

Early on, two of my favorite theological voices helped me begin to navigate these turbulent times. Leave it to Walter Brueggemann and N.T. Wright to not only have well-formed thoughts about Christian life during a pandemic, but to also be able to get them down on paper and out in book form quickly enough to be helpful in the moment. Both books have been encouraging for me in a number of ways. Today, I thought I’d reflect on three things I learned from Brueggemann’s book on the pandemic, and then add the three things I learned from N.T. Wright tomorrow.

Three Things I Learned from Walter Brueggemann, in Virus as a Summons to Faith Biblical: Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Anxiety (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020).

(1) There is no Quid Pro Quo with God

As is typical of Brueggemann’s writing, even his book on facing a pandemic is really an analysis of Hebrew Scripture and its understanding of the nature of God. One area where Brueggemann has helped me to read the Old Testament well is to pay attention to the freedom of God narrated in its pages. The Jewish people understand their relationship to God to be very genuine and rooted in mutual freedom. There is never any sense – for Brueggemann – that humans are simply acting out a script pre-written by God. In fact, quite often the decisions humans make - both for good and for evil - seem to be surprising or even shocking to the divine. In the text, God must always respond to the free will and decisions of his human creatures. However, it is also the case that God is free. God’s actions or reactions cannot be determined by human words or deeds. There is no formula of petition, prayer, and/or behavior that can get God to give good gifts or to refrain from judgment. Even when people – like the Ninevites in the Jonah story – repent, they do so with a question, “Who knows what God will do?” Their repentance does not ensure that God must turn from his judgment and respond with mercy. God is not a cosmic vending machine of either blessings or curses. Yahweh cannot be controlled. Yahweh is mysterious and free.

There is, however, one constant with God. God is love. The people can trust in God’s compassion.

For Brueggemann, this means that there is no easy formula for equating the COVID pandemic with judgment for sin. (And we preacher-types should be very cautious before naming or proclaiming it as such). The outbreak of this deadly virus may have some relationship to divine justice, but it may not. Likewise, there is no formula for repentance, prayer, or justice that will cause the pandemic to go away. All of those questions are shrouded in a mystery that we should be careful to believe we know or can say too much about. We can, nevertheless, trust in God’s compassion.

(2) A Pandemic (Like All Crises) Opens the Possibility to Imagine New Relationships – Especially to Neighbors

In the early days of the pandemic, it was interesting to see how much the changes that were taking place revealed our deep connectedness. We realized quickly how dependent we are on farmers, teachers, nurses, grocers, delivery drivers, and toilet-paper makers. As the pandemic has gone on, it has also put a spotlight on our lingering social inequities. The exposing of those inequities has forced new – and difficult – conversations about justice reform, resources for the needy, inequity in health care, and the disproportionate needs of students and their families.

Brueggemann believes that this historical moment, like the moments of exile in Israel and Judah’s history, can awaken the prophetic imagination for God’s newness. As he writes, “Prophetic imagination is the anticipation of new social possibility that is available from the intention of the God of the prophets. What is now required of us is not simply fantasy but moral imagination to express historical possibility that is congruent with God’s hope for neighborliness. That moral imagination is rooted in promise; at the same time, it is grounded in the realities of dollars, laws, natural resources, and social conditions. The prophetic task is to submit our awareness of dollars, laws, natural resources, and social conditions to the hopes of the creator God” (p. 58).

My favorite part of the book is the way Brueggemann ends each chapter with one of his beautiful and thoughtful prayers. (His written prayers are works of theological art). In the last lines of a prayer entitled At the Ends of a New Normal, Brueggemann prays:

We want to return to the old normal that yield (for some) safety and happiness,

            But you dispatch us to otherwise.

Your new normal for us requires some adjustment by us.

            And adjust we will. We will live and trust and share differently.

“All things new” is a huge stretch for us.

But we know it is your good gift to us; with wistfulness, we receive it

            We embrace it, and

            We give thanks to you. Amen (p. 60).

(3) The Groans of Birth-Pangs are the Path to New Creation

For many reasons, I have become quite obsessed with the idea of the new creation in Scripture. I am in the midst of writing a paper for a theology conference on the significance of the biblical vision of the new creation. (It is particularly important to Paul’s understanding of the gospel). As Brueggemann reminds readers, Paul’s articulation of the new creation in Romans 8 does not think of its emergence as an easy, convenient gift, or as the natural end or assumed progress after the current time. Rather, the coming of the new creation is mysterious and it comes only through a painful process of disconnection from the old creation; a process similar to the groans and pains associated with childbirth.

Brueggemann writes, “From God’s side, I suppose, new creation will come as God chooses. But the coming of new creation is with an ethical passion that requires us to consider the groan of newness from a human side. The truth of newness from the human side is that God’s gift comes at huge cost, the cost of acknowledging that old creation has failed and is dysfunctional, the awareness that new creation requires disciplined, intentional reception" (p. 65).

Again, Brueggemann would never say the pandemic happened so that God could bring about something new. That would be to assume too much knowledge about God and God’s ways. It would also trivialize the genuine suffering that people are going through and likely do damage to the compassionate love at the center of God’s character. However, perhaps we can receive these months as a moment to lean on God’s compassion, imagine new ways of living in love toward our neighbors, and lean into the painful – but necessary – changes that must take place for the new creation to be birthed in our midst.

Good stuff. Tomorrow a word from Tom Wright.

Comments

[Robin L Smith]

Once again Scott you have given me the gift of "your being way ahead of the game" in reading and sharing theological insight and biblical truth/understanding. Can't wait to read the latest writings of Brueggemann & Wright. Thanks

[Ann Lavine]

Thank you Scott.

[John Hall]

Thanks for this synopsis Scott. As always your content is thought provoking. It is interesting to me that there are those who would even consider man made events like this bioweapon which has been released on the world by evil men to be a judgement from God any more than they would consider an other evil sinful man-made event like Hitler's holocaust a judgement from God. That aside what comes to mind for me is in the story of Joseph when he was reunited with his brothers in Genesis 50:20. His answer to them was this.
Genesis 50:20 NIV
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

We see all through history that what man intended for evil, and inspite of suffering created by the evil intent of men, through those events, God creates a long term good greater than could have been otherwise imagined from those circumstances.