105 Quotes by Walter Brueggemann

To be “defiled” by empire is to be robbed of a distinct identity that permits freedom against dominant culture. “Fasting” as alert abstention may be the order of the day that will make the asking of prayers more serious and compelling.

Lent is rather seeing how to take steps into God’s future so that we are no longer defined by what is past and no longer distracted by what we have treasured or feared about the present. Lent is for embracing the baby given to old people; resurrection to new life in Easter; and the offer of a new world made by God from nothing.

God will recruit as necessary from the human cast in order to reorder human history.

Give us courage for your easy burden, so to live untaxed lives.

The world for which you have been so carefully prepared is being taken away from you, by the grace of God.

It is no obvious or “natural” matter to resituate our lives with reference to the holy power and purpose of God. But that is what we do in prayer.

When serious people of good faith disagree, they’ve got to go back into the narratives and come at it again. One of the problems in the church is that people are not willing to do that. People have arrived at a place where they think they have got the answer.

As the church in reform draws closer to its core confession, it inescapably embraces its most radical vision that violates and contradicts conventional practice in its social context. What makes such reform difficult, moreover, is the fact that while we ponder the radical core claims of faith, we ourselves are variously enmeshed in conventional practices that are inimical to the gospel.

Those who sign on and depart the system of anxious scarcity become the historymakers in the neighborhood.