Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

A Resurrection Option

A Resurrection Option Micah 4:1-5/ Third Sunday in Easter Imagine writing a poem like this one from Micah that lays out the whole future of the world on the lips of the poet: In the days to come ...! The poem pushes us who listen into the future. • The poem is an act of imagination that invites us to think beyond the present, knowing that things will not stay as they are; • The poem is an act ofhope that portrays the future quite unlike the present, and treats the future as though it is as certain as the present; • The poem is an act of assurance, that God will not stop until the world has been healed and brought to its senses; • The poem is an act ofsummons, whereby the future is not only a gift from God but is a task for the faithful to undertake. This poem was so crucial to the Old Testament community, because they were mired in an unbearable present tense, living under the grinding reality of one empire after another. In our time, moreover, our culture is so taken up in immediate crises of the economy and the military that diere is no one left to think about God's future ... unless it is the church. I There are days to come because God is Lord and therefore we must take care not to absolutize the present tense, not to freeze the moment of our fear or our triumph or our loss or our gain. The present tense is not guaranteed into the future, for God's future will endlessly put our present tense at risk. 211 The image of the poem is one of all the nations who will come to Jerusalem, that great city of peace. Imagine saying that about Jerusalem when the city is currently a pivot point for hatred and conflict and violence. In the days to come, Jerusalem will be Torah teacher of us all; all nations will be willing to be instructed on how to organize the future differendy according to the purposes of God. II The key element in this instruction from Jerusalem for a viable future is that there will be serious disarmament: they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Mic 4:3) The image is of people willingly dismanding their weapons, not only dismanding but transforming them into useful tools of agricultural productivity. The abandonment of weapons is not forced, but is done willingly. And if done willingly, the poem surely suggests that in time to come there will be enough trust, effective communication, and solidarity that old enemies can be a new community together. Thus the key mark of God's future is disarmament, the transformation of the economy from a war footing to an economy of food production . Such disarmament means, every time, the capacity to yield one's fear and aggressiveness and ambition and anxiety to a larger assurance, a guarantee that we need not position ourselves for hostility because our hostility is contained in the larger intention of God for peacejustice, and well-being. Well, of course, it is a futile exercise to utter such a poem in our military economy with all of the sloganeering and mantras of aggressive patriotism that now seem limitless among us. But then, that is always the way of a poem that tells a truth that is rooted in God's purpose and that lives close to the ground. Poets—like Micah—do not argue or engage in conventional reasoning. Rather, they glimpse and show and suggest and explode. So here stands an old, short poem in the face of war making; it announces that we get to re-choose. We are permitted a glimpse of a peaceable, peacemaking world. Or draw it closer. Think what would happen in the church if there were disarmament among liberals and conservatives concerning the£12 gay/lesbian issue or a dozen other such issues. Such a disarmament in the church would require confidence that our particular passions are contained in the large guarantees of God that all will be well and all will be well. Or draw it yet closer home, and consider the ways in which our most intimate relationships in family are marked by conflict or quiet resentment or barely conceded hostility...