c. 1997 Religion news Service

UNDATED _ Walter Brueggemann has spent a lifetime studying the Hebrew Bible.

At age 63, he looks up from these texts and sees alarming parallels between contemporary America and ancient Israel during the destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.”In the (Hebrew Bible), the tradition of greed finally destroyed Israel and led it to exile,”says Brueggemann.”In the West, the tradition of greed has just about destroyed the tradition of conscience and left us in a terrible mess. … The symbol of Nike is more powerful than the cross or the star or the crescent.” Brueggemann, perhaps the foremost Christian scholar of the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament by Christians), believes modern America could learn a few lessons from the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who challenged ancient Israel to look beyond the surface of society.”… Jeremiah is probably the part of the Hebrew Bible we ought to be reading right now,”he says.”What Jeremiah observes is that there is deep denial in the heart of Israel. They say, `shalom, shalom,’ when there is no peace. And there is a deep denial in the United States that says the economy is buoyant. …”The United States is the quintessential practitioner of the quintessential greed. We are the last colonial power with standing armies to defend markets, so that we think of the oil over there as our oil. …”The church is a big sponsor of saying `peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. The politicians echo that.” The charismatic Bible scholar, son of a Nebraska minister, was featured on the recent PBS series”Genesis,”hosted by Bill Moyers. He is professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., and an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He writes equally for other scholars and interested laity. A number of his books on the prophets and Psalms are widely used in adult Bible study classes.

These days, Brueggemann is especially captivated by the Book of Isaiah and sees parallels between Israel’s ruin and the present-day United States.”The Bible is not hard to understand: The violation of the Torah leads to the destruction of civil community. We have to ask ourselves, `What if this is true?’ In 587 B.C., all the public institutions failed. Israel lost its innocence. Israel lost its sense of specialness. Israel lost its certitude and entered into a profound season of grief and rage.” To tap into America’s rage, Brueggemann suggests listening to the lyrics of the murdered rapper Tupac Shakur, certain country music and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

The anger in these voices strikes Brueggemann’s ear a lot like the Book of Lamentations. He hopes people of faith will start paying attention to America’s sense of loss and rage, and fuss less about guilt.”I believe the sense of loss and displacement among us is massive and pervasive,”Brueggemann says.”And what we know is there is not enough Nike, there is not enough Coca-Cola, there is not enough beer, there are not enough new cars, to cover the loss.” He argues that houses of worship could be the arena to repair and heal.”Suffering in isolation produces violence,”Brueggemann says,”but suffering out loud in community produces hope. … The church and synagogue are one of the few places that can turn anger into energy.” Honoring the Sabbath is another important way for Jews and Christians to face reality by reflecting on their priorities, Brueggemann says.”The creation of the Sabbath is an antidote to the enormous anxiety we have about the fragility of the world,”he says.”Our anxiety stems from the fact we are in a rat race we can’t win. … On the Sabbath, you must say, `This is what my life is about: not making money or publishing books or whatever my seduction is.'” But Jews and Christians of conscience are having a hard time in modern America for a variety of reasons, Brueggemann says. He listed Bible illiteracy, the privatization of faith (faith as a private matter between an individual and a personal God), the church’s own entanglement in greed, and widespread denial and despair.”We’ve so privatized faith that we have nothing left but suburbia and family values,”Brueggemann says.”Well, that’s a very small part of our faith. Jesus didn’t get crucified for family values. He got crucified because he was an enemy of the status quo.”

MJP END LONG