rudiments of exegesis

"Every teacher of exegesis has guidelines of methods for students, some complicated and exacting... First, I ask students to do a rhetorical analysis of the text, to notice what words are where, how they function together to create a 'world'... Second, students are asked to do a word study, to focus on the freight carried by particular words that emerge as important in rhetorical analysis. The outcome is to situate the text in a network of other texts, so that while the text is the point of singular attention, it is not isolated. Third, when rhetorical analysis has noticed the artistic imagination in the text and its generative work, and when word study has uncovered the text's intertextual relations, I ask students to ponder the question, What vested interest is operative in this text? The answer may be a truth claim offered in good faith, or it might be a theological conviction stated with passion, or it might be a bad-faith assertion serving political, economic interest. The purpose of the question is to help students consider the ways in which ideological forces are at work in our best theological claims and in our most faithful interpretation. " (Walter Brueggemann, The Word Militant: that the world may be redescribed-77)

I had been talking with a friend a few weeks ago and we were thinking hard about the way we teach a text or invite others into the text. Acronyms were being thrown out, we were giving one another the five minute breakdowns on what we had tried to do in a teaching once before, and then I read this. Brueggemann doesn't say much new here but in the formula, especially the last question, students ask a question that moves the preacher into a world other than hers, first. What I was taught in homiletics was an exegetical approach couched with a concern to say on one text, lest the group get distracted. Some can do this really well, my hom. professor would be an example. But I fear one text with three points doesn't attempt a kind of exegesis that brings us into the world of the text. We might be asking what the text says about our lives while a poem in Jeremiah might be saying something so specific and nuanced to a corporate Israel that context and questions may be just the thing that allows us, so far removed, to hear a prophetic word. The step Walter doesn't mention is your contextual bridge to the present. The order of things must serve the text however. In a jumbled and no less artistic way than it was written will the communicator be challenged to utter the words again once the scene is set. History flows in rhythmic movement revealing patterns that parallel each other. How convenient for the teacher who is willing to study in a way that is emerged in the story, this world of God, so that our worlds would be redescribed.

worlds with words

"The sense of this utterance, in which we are participants, we preachers, is that an alternative world is possible. The old world is not a given; it is a fraud. Another world is possible-in our imagination. We listen and imagine differently. In our liberation, we entertain different realities not yet given hardware, so far only in very-soft-ware, carried only by narrative and song and poem and oracle, said bfore being embodied, but said and we listen. As we listen, we push out to the possibility and are held by it like a visioning child with a dream"
(Walter Brueggemann,The Word Miltant: preaching a sub-version-165)

He goes on to say that another world is possible in our practice and policy. Brueggemann seems to ground the idea that a word would be worth speaking in a remembrance of the divine word that was spoken at the beginning. The refrain "And God said" remind us that another world is not only possible by it has hit the ground a long time ago. The preaching of the kingdom of God is grounded in an announcement, "it is at hand" and therefore possible. The announcement seems as important as its enactment but I do not know if I am willing to say that. The other day I was sitting in on a Hebrew Writings class with John Goldinday and he brought up St. Francis of Assisi and mentioned a quote attributed to him: "Preach the gospel, if nesscary use word." John said and I quote, "Well that is rubbish." He certainly brought up this well known and powerful quote in order to make a powerful statement as he moved to a concrete example. The thing that God was doing with he and his wife needed explaining otherwise people would leave thinking he was just a good guy for taking care of her. He shared in powerful witness to us students and so I believe words are not just important they are nessecary more they are required of us through a commission at the end of Matthew but also in the commission to be image bearers. They seem to hum with a kind of holiness when offered well and have the power to create worlds not yet realized.

guilted

if guilt is the medium what is the message
we're takin showers to go stand in the rain
getting high runnin form the pain...

count me guilted
better quilted and covered by
love love love

so give me a buck or case you luck
with the lucky ones
who give with there lives

Let the preachers preach on
about somethin they found
that will never sound like their words

count me giulted
better quilted and covered by
love love love

blue parakeets

Scot Mcknight has been one of those voices for me that inspires, encourages and challenges the categories that I often default to through simply living without awareness and openness to the idea that discipleship doesn't happen without asking questions and pursuing those questions to their end only to find new beginning points to connect with the world, ourselves, others and Jesus. That ran on, no apologies. His writing, specifically his new book 'The Blue Parakeet' has me excited about teaching and learning and walking in the story of God. I also enjoy when he quotes a beloved old testament professor to whom I owe much for his guidance in formulating and activating this story in my life.

The fact that we tend to avoid the passages of the scriptures that by their nature challenge our world into a reshaping that is often painful could be a clue to the kind of story God has written in history as represented in the authorship of the Bible. This story reshapes the tired old structures that frame reality, at least my perception of it, and invites us to a big, unfolding, more-truth-than-ever, paradoxically loaded narrative with a climax focused on Jesus and a rewriting that the wise Author is honing through the recreation of our lives together in Jesus.