"The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, at 3 (2nd ed. Minneapolis Fortress 2001) (italics in original).
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| Snake River Grand Tetons National Park Wyoming June 2012 Credit: Jack Schuessler |
Our understanding of prophecy comes out of the tradition of Moses and the Exodus where we see a "radical break with the social reality of Pharaoh's Egypt." Page 5. How does this prophetic ministry get done? Prophetic work is the nurturing of the alternative consciousness. The alternative consciousness "serves to criticize, in dismantling the dominant consciousness" by engaging "in a rejection and delegitimatizing of the present ordering of things." Page 3. Second, the alternative consciousness "serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith may move." Page 3.
Moses "dismantles the politics of oppression and exploitation by countering it with a politics of justice and compassion." Page 6-7. Prophetic faith breaks imperial religion by declaring the the gods "no-gods," and breaks imperial politics by showing the people that "the oppressiveness of the brickyard" was ineffective and not necessary to the human community. Page 7. Moses provided a "vision of God's freedom," a new social reality. The old imperial order of Egypt serves and benefits the people in charge. The new order benefits the whole community. The program of Moses is more than an event in which a band of slaves escaped from the empire; it "is nothing less than an assault on the consciousness of the empire, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of the empire both in its social practices and in its mythic pretensions." Page 9.
A modern day example of this work of Moses is the leadership of Martin Luther King in integrating a lunch counter or a local bus line. Page 9. But for Brueggemann "politics" means much more than elections and leaders with slogans of change, and for him prophetic ministry is not a matter of strong leaders who do social action. No, the prophetic ministry is the work of Yahweh: "Yahweh makes possible an alternative theology and an alternative sociology." Page 9.
In the next post I will discuss Brueggemann's explanation of Jesus' prophetic ministry, and his alternative theology and sociology.
* All quotes in this post are from The Prophetic Imagination, and all quotes in italics are in the original.
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