Today's reading from A Way Other Than Our Own focuses on Isaiah's poem/song in Isaiah 42:15,16.
Brueggemann draws parallels between exiled Israel in the Babylonian empire and today's followers of Jesus in the American empire: "...scattered where we do not have much impact, sensing that the world is resistant to change, aware that the policies and practices around us are aimed at death. We are close to despair in our weakness and futility."
Brueggemann goes on to say of exiled Israel: "When this community of faith could do very little...it sang new songs, counter songs that refused to let the promise of the gospel sink into the landscape of the empire. The new song is a protest...and a bold assertion that the God of the gospel has...a will to reorder the world, to bring wholeness and health to the blind, the poor, the needy...and to the entire creation now so under killing assault."
The phrase, "...refused to let the promise of the gospel sink into the landscape of the empire", reminded me once again of how American Christianity has failed to be a clear contrast to the values of the empire by joining forces with the political powers (whether on the right or on the left).
Vincent Harding says, "It will take a miraculous overhaul of the church to become once again the bearer of good news." New songs, poems, art is all part of moving us out of the old and into the new.
Dear Abba, as you continue your gracious yet painful work of allowing the overhaul and dismantling of our structures and systems that have caused the gospel of Christ to become reduced to one more edifice on the landscape to serve the empire, give us new fresh songs and poems that envision a reordered world with wholeness and health for the blind, the poor, the needy and for all of creation. Amen.
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