Book Review: The Practice of Prophetic Preaching: Preaching An Emancipating Word by Walter Brueggemann
The Practice of Prophetic Preaching: Preaching An Emancipating Word
by Walter Brueggemann (Fortress Press, 2012)
Walter Brueggemann, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, argues for a new definition of the nature of the prophet and the task of prophetic preaching in his recent book, The Practice of Prophetic Preaching. Building on an earlier work, Prophetic Imagination, Brueggemann gives a fuller and more systematic treatment on the nature of the prophetic. He argues that the prophet is not a special call that only some receive but is a fundamental call that all who preach receive. He makes this claim by giving a different definition of the role of the prophet than is customary. The prophet is often perceived as that lone voice crying in the wilderness, that special person who is given the burden of “speaking truth to power.” Brueggemann develops a case quite carefully that the Biblical prophet is not so much one who is against something as he/she is for something that is alternative to the status quo.
In this volume he argues that all who preach are called to the prophetic task. He makes this claim because he defines the prophet not as a “future teller” or a “trouble maker” but as a voice who seeks to define and counter the royal narrative of his/her age. That is, the prophet is one who seeks to make sense of the mess of the moment while giving the hearer tools to evaluate the present and to engage in resistance to the dominant narrative of the day. In this analysis, none of us who preach get let off the hook. Anyone who seeks to speak on behalf of God has the task of telling the truth about the dominant social/political narrative in light of the Biblical narratives about love, justice, and mercy.
Hence, the prophet is the one who exposes the lie of the dominant social/political narrative and gives the hearer new tools both to understand the now and to develop an alternative analysis of what is important and life saving. Brueggemann interrogates the Biblical texts in a systematic way in Chapters 1–3 of this book. This is an excellent study for any preacher who wants new insights about the power of preaching.
After having defined the nature of prophetic preaching, he lays out a strategy of prophetic preaching in chapters 5 and 6. He identifies two tasks of contemporary prophetic ministry. First, the prophetic word empowers people (congregations) to relinquish a world that is passing from us. Second, the prophetic word enables people (congregations) to receive a new world that is emerging before our eyes as a gift from God. These two tasks, Brueggemann claims, enable people (congregations) “to be a matrix for emancipatory, subversive utterance that is not amenable to totalizing ideology.”(p.147)
This work is lodged in biblical exegesis with a genuine belief in the prophetic function of not only the preacher but contemporary congregations. This is a rich, readable treatment of the function and the nature of contemporary prophetic practice with a passionate appeal to those of us who preach to take up an often-abandoned mantle.
