wfn.org | Brueggemann says "Neighborliness" is important

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

June 15, 1997 
 
GA97012             BRUEGGEMANN SAYS "NEIGHBORLINESS" 
                     IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IDEOLOGY 
 
SYRACUSE--With chants of "dayenu!" (Hebrew for "it is enough!") ringing 
through the room, Walter Brueggemann urged Presbyterians seeking common 
ground to relinquish their power, their moral certitude and their 
theological orthodoxy in order to better demonstrate Jesus' command to 
"love your neighbor as you love God and yourself." 
 
    In twin addresses Friday at the Moderator's Pre-Assembly Conference on 
Presbyterian Common Ground, attended by more than 1,000 people, Brueggemann 
argued that the great commandments to love God and love neighbor are 
inseparable and insisted, "Sisters and brothers, there is enough.  There is 
enough power, enough orthodoxy, enough morality, enough more than enough." 
 
    He said secular economic theories presume that there is a scarcity of 
resources and therefore prevailing philosophy is that those resources must 
be rigidly controlled, parceled out and denied to some for the sake of 
others.  This outlook, he said, is contrary to scripture. 
 
    "Biblical ethics," Brueggemann countered, "is preoccupied with the 
major insistence  that power in the community must be deployed differently 
in order to have a neighborhood."  Forgiveness of debts, years of jubilee 
and release, many of Jesus' parables all point to God's demand that power 
be yielded "for the sake of the neighbor." 
 
    Though the biblical illustrations are primarily economic, Brueggemann 
insisted that this yielding of power and "capital" should be extrapolated 
to include all spheres of life.  The "radicality of the gospel," he said, 
"can be seen if we imagine that neighborliness is more important than good 
economics or good politics or good morality or good orthodoxy." 
 
    This is precisely the meaning of the servant-leadership of Jesus and 
the omnipresent metaphors in scripture that speak of "emptying" in order to 
be full, of the last being first -- "that the Friday of emptiness is the 
first step and precondition for the Sunday of fullness," he continued. 
 
    The problem with putting God's demands against our own temptations to 
maintain control and power, Brueggemann said, "is that our interests feel 
so much like the interests of God."  But as the Psalmist points out -- in 
Psalm 73 and Psalm 139, which he used as examples -- "the deep power of 
Yahweh, Yahweh's name, Yahweh's authority, Yahweh's recognition, Yahweh's 
claim, cannot be harnessed or employed or utilized or mobilized for lesser 
human projects, even good human projects..." 
 
    Absolute certitude in matters of faith and morality "is dangerous 
business," he continued.  "It not only makes for self-assurance.  It not 
only makes for loudness.  It makes for brutality....Anybody who equates his 
or her own program with the reality of God can be brutally shrill towards 
opponents and wondrously innocent about self." 
 
    The truth is, Brueggemann said, "that the church is and will be a 
pluralistic church.  Such a church, in my judgement, must give lots of room 
to brothers and sisters who love God with heart and mind and soul, but who 
appear to be our enemies." 
 
    He rejected the charge "that what I have said to you may sound like 
moral relativism.  That however is not my theme.  My theme is obedience. 
The God whom we are to love without reservation is indeed holy and does not 
come prepackaged as certitude.  The one we are to love, cherish and obey is 
inscrutable and cannot be reduced to pet projects, even Calvinist pet 
projects." 
 
Jerry Van Marter 

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