Using God's Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility

By Walter Brueggemann

New and different readings of biblical texts are one consequence of a growing awareness of the environmental crisis and how it relates to social relations, especially in urban settings. Walter Brueggemann explores readings from Isaiah and how they relate to the environment and urban crisis. He approaches the readings as an artistic-theological history of the city of Jerusalem--a case study of urban environmental crisis that resulted from a lost sense of covenantal neighborliness. Reflecting on Jerusalem, its failure, demise, and prospect, Brueggemann uncovers some alarming parallels in today's urban cities, and offers a demanding but hopeful challenge to faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 1993
• ISBN: 9781611644784

Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of dozens of books, including Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out, and Truth and Hope: Essays for a Perilous Age.

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Preface

These six studies were prepared for and presented at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), June 2–10, 1992, in Milwaukee. The theme suggested for the sequence of studies by Moderator Herbert D. Valentine concerns stewardship in the broadest, most comprehensive sense. As a non-Presbyterian, I was pleased to be involved in a modest way at the Assembly and was well hosted by Kerry Clements of the Assembly staff.

My study is based on a large interpretive linkage between our social-environmental crisis and the book of Isaiah, a linkage I have asserted and assumed, not argued. While keeping critical matters submerged and out of view, I have tried to pay careful attention to the ferment currently present in Isaiah studies, including the work of Bernhard Anderson, Brevard Childs, Ronald Clements, Edgar Conrad, Christopher Seitz, and Marvin Sweeney.

I have decided to present the studies in printed form very much as I offered them at the Assembly. This means I have retained both an informal style of oral presentation and the local contextual reference of the Presbyterian Assembly. It seemed too much work to do otherwise; in any case, scripture study of this sort is inherently oral and local.

It is my hope that, beyond the meeting itself, these studies will contribute to the difficult and urgent conversation in the church concerning the human crisis all around us and the church’s large and faithful response in terms of stewardship.

Three special thank-yous, finally, must be voiced. I am grateful to Christine Wenderoth, colleague and reference librarian, who helped me with important details on these studies as she so often helps me out, and to Walter Sutton at Westminster/John Knox Press for his willingness in taking on the work of the manuscript. As has become characteristic, my greatest thanks go to Tempie Alexander, who typed the manuscript under considerable time pressure. She again has done so with unfailing grace and precision, which leaves me yet again in her debt.

WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

Columbia Theological Seminary

Second Sunday after Pentcost, 1992

Introduction

The large problems of ecology, consumerism, and resource depletion are essentially urban problems, even when urban power, urban anxiety, urban technology, and urban greed reach into nonurban places. We have on our hands an urban problem, with all the ingredients that come with it: surplus value, division of labor, stratification of power, and expansive media, all legitimated by established religion, which supports the whole. None of that is rural; it is all urban, and this is where we live.

When I thought of the urban propensity concerning management of God’s resources, I turned to the book of Isaiah, for it is the great urban document of the Bible. It focuses upon Jerusalem as the quintessential urban concentration of power, wealth, and truth. As you know, the book of Isaiah moves through what scholars call First, Second, and Third Isaiah, which really means first Jerusalem under assault, second Jerusalem in displacement, and third Jerusalem in restoration; but always Jerusalem, always Jerusalem at risk, always Jerusalem under surveillance, always Jerusalem on its way rejoicing, next year in Jerusalem, and this year, now, in Jerusalem or some other city that replicates its problems and promises.

I trust, then, you will permit me the small but crucial interpretive move from this quintessential holy city to every other city—Milwaukee, Louisville, Atlanta, Cleveland, Geneva, Rome, Tehran, Johannesburg, Rio, Belgrade—every great city that is endlessly under threat, under surveillance, and with potential joy. Moreover, risk, surveillance, and joy in every city, as in beloved Jerusalem, depend on the management of God’s resources. So I invite you to work this text with me. I will be talking of Jerusalem; and you, if you do your work, will be hearing of your home city, home of our hopes and our fears, our duties, our dreads, and our delights.

1

God’s Great Instead

Isaiah 2:6–9; 3:1–5; 3:18–4:1

The book of Isaiah does not begin happily, and neither shall I. Neither will I, because I am going to follow the terrain of the book of Isaiah, which begins in rawness. But my real reason for not beginning happily is that the city is not a happy place. The unwise misuse of resources has caused the city to live under deep threat. Isaiah’s first utterance about the city is (a) to establish for the listener the reality of threat, to break the romantic illusion of well-being, and (b) to try to identify the factors in that threat. I hope, therefore, that you will forgive me for beginning as sourly as does this poet. It will get somewhat better, a lot better, as we go along. But it is important that we take unblinking stock of where it is that we live—in the city—and what it is that so ominously hovers all around us.

— I —

In the long poem of Isaiah 2:6–4:1, the poet does an unflinching critical analysis of the jeopardy of the city. I will comment on four elements in this extended poem. As you will see, it is the third of these four elements that seemed to make this poem proper to our theme of managing God’s resources. The rubric I shall use is this: A city excessively full will, under God’s demanding surveillance, become a city starkly empty. (You will understand that the text is simply an old poem, nothing more, so I do not press it to doctrine or to policy or to action. But do host the poem, and in your hosting God may permit you to reread the city and rearrange the resources.)

— II —

Isaiah 2:6–9

For you have forsaken the ways of your people, O house of Jacob. Indeed they are full of diviners from the east and of soothsayers like the Philistines, and they clasp hands with foreigners. ⁷Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is filled with horses, and there is no end to their chariots. ⁸Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made. ⁹And so people are humbled, and everyone is brought low—do not forgive them!

The poem begins with a thesis and an address. The address is house of Jacob, that is, all the population. This poem is not addressed to a religious elite; it is indeed public theology, voiced for all to consider, without benefit of religious privilege. There is, to be sure, a problem in translating the text to our context, because of the church/society problem we have that did not exist in ancient Jerusalem. But then, even in that ancient city, there must have been key players who were not militantly theological in their self-understanding. No doubt there were doubters and people who only paid lip