Author: Sara Palmer

This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

Page 54

One New Book for the Preacher—Make That Two

Brent A. Strawn

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Kathleen M. O’ Connor, Genesis 1 -25A (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2018), xxiv + 384 pages. Kathleen M. O’Connor, Genesis 25B-50 (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2020), xxvi + 280 pages.

After COVID-19 and recently renewed attention to other equally pressing so­ cietal pandemics like systemic racism and economic disparity, trauma seems to be the word of the day, or rather of the year 2020. Moving backwards in time, however, trauma could just as well be the word of the past decade—or even much longer ago than that, maybe the word of the 21st century thus far, not to mention a whole lot of the 20th (and still further back). The science fiction books and TV shows that I grew up on as a kid associated the 21st century with the most advanced developments in technology and human society; they did not associate that far off futuristic period with trauma . What gives, then, other than the apparent inability of human sciences (and societies) to produce all that they seemed to promise in the late 20th century? On the one hand, trauma as a mark of recent days may be seen as the result of developments in knowledge that have allowed us to better recognize, diagnose, and treat trauma. This is a real upside; perhaps human sciences have delivered in some important ways. The downside, of course, is the “on the other hand”: the simple fact is that the 21st century (and so much that came before it) has contained more than its fair share of trauma. Trauma as a mark of recent days is thus not simply a matter of trauma-recognition or trauma-treatment’, it is equally, and worse, due to our time being one of trauma-causation and trauma-experience. Witness COVID-19, systemic racism, economic disparity (and the list goes on). What is the church to do? What is the preacher to say? Kathleen O’Connor, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament, Emerita, at Columbia Theological Seminary, has written one new book for the preacher “for such a time as this.” Her one book is actually a two-volume work, with the hist part, Genesis 1-25A (1:1-25:18), appearing in 2018, and the second, Genesis 25B-50 (25:19-50:26), released in Fall 2020.1 There is much to say in praise of O’Connor’s commentary, which, taken together, make it the book on Genesis for preachers in these latter days. First, O’Connor’s Genesis appears in the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, a truly extraordinary series in format and design—the closest, or so it seems to me, that one could get to a web environment in standard print form. There are no hyperlinks, of course, but virtually every page is packed full of additional (hyper) information: there is the commentary proper, of course, along with the part designated “connec­ tions” (which offer potential applications of the exegesis), but there are also numerous sidebars devoted to original language, culture/context, interpretation, and additional resources. This does not yet mention the copious illustrations that accompany the commentary. It is not without good reason that each volume in this series includes

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a section entitled “How to Use This Commentary” (Genesis 1-25A, xxi-xxiv)—the explanations and suggestions offered here are needed! An index to the sidebars and the illustrations is also a useful element. Finally, each volume in this series includes a CD-ROM containing a PDF of the book facilitating electronic searches, which is helpful given the sheer amount of information each book includes. My rough calcula­ tion of just O’Connor’s hist volume yielded over 400 sidebars of one sort or another and approximately 140 illustrations. Simply put, O’Connor’s Genesis is a treasure trove of data; in fact, sometimes the pages are a lot to take in. Second, there is O’Connor’s pen, which is both elegant and economical. The reader will be impressed again and again (as was I) with how she conveys deep learn­ ing with beauty and concision, not to mention profound insight. While there is a lot to take in on each page, no time is wasted here. I was repeatedly instructed not only by what O’ Connor included in the tiniest of sidebars but also by how she included it. (As but one example, her sidebar “Land in Perpetuity” [Ibid., p. 14; cf. p. 210], only two paragraphs in length, is weighty in coverage and insight.) Third, and most importantly, there is O’ Connor’s specific take on Genesis. Preach­ ers already know, or should, that O’Connor is one of our premier interpreters, with special expertise in some of the most difficult texts in the Old Testament. Indeed, her earlier books Lamentations and. the Tears of the World (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004) and Jeremiah: Pain and. Promise (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) laid the groundwork for this magnum opus on Genesis. She states at the very beginning of her preface:

For several years I set aside efforts on this Genesis commentary to complete a book about Jeremiah. This delay proved beneficial because my Jeremiah work gave me a surprising new lens with which to interpret Genesis; I had discovered trauma and disaster studies. To my astonishment, aspects of the national catastrophe so evident in that prophetic book—the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonian Empire—left unmistakable traces across the book of Genesis and provided it with new urgency. The beautiful, per­ plexing, and astonishing accounts of the beginning that make up Genesis serve the “pastoral” purpose to help the people begin again in the face of the impossible. (Ibid., p. xv)

O’Connor’s introduction proceeds to outline her “trauma and disaster studies ap­ proach” to Genesis (see Ibid., p. 7). It is an exciting (if such an adjective is acceptable for such serious topics) and compelling approach. According to O’ Connor, Genesis tells its stories “to assure its audience that the God who created, ordered, and gave life in the ancient past can recreate them now… in the aftermath of the national ’ s destruction under the Babylonian Empire” (Ibid., p. 2). Such a statement reveals, of course, that O’Connor’s fresh and lively interpretation depends on Genesis becoming “a work of literature sometime during the early Persian Period (539-330 BCE)” (Ibid., p. 3). It is that period, and none other, that is “the historical context that produced Genesis” (Ibid., p. 5). With this dating securely in place, O’Connor reads Genesis after the fact—the fact in question being the trauma of exile. In this reading, the stories of Genesis are viewed as “mirroring tableaus of historical suffering and beginning again,” but, O’Connor asserts, “The literature not only reflects aspects of Judah’s catastrophe but also helps the community cope with, understand, and move beyond it” (Ibid., p. 5).

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Genesis, therefore, not unlike Lamentations, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah, can be seen as a kind of “theological hist responder,” serving “survivors by providing language for and interpretations of destructive events that defy both language and interpretation” (Ibid., p. 6). Indeed, according to her, the Judean people survive in no small measure “because of the ‘pastoral care’ these books provide” (Ibid., p. 6). In the specific case of Genesis, O’Connor writes that “[b]ecause God does the impos­ sible in Genesis, bringing life where obstacles are insurmountable, the book invites hope in the midst of international catastrophe and global terrorism; ugly, frightening politics; and the vast movements of people. The book affirms that God creates life where there is no life” (Ibid., p. 21). Paying attention to the traces of pain found in the book showcases, in the end, the book’s capacity for hope. Throughout the commentary, O’Connor’s interpretive angle via trauma and di­ saster studies is everywhere present but nowhere heavy-handed. Both characteristics seem right to me. The former reveals how adeptly O’ Connor has identified trauma related motifs and themes (e.g., “disaster narratives”; themes of impossibility like barrenness, famine, landlessness; and promises of new life including offspring, land, blessing, and a great name [Ibid., pp. 8-15]) throughout Genesis and its various units. Even when a passage is not obviously about trauma per se, O’ Connor’s categories are almost always present in one way or another (see, e.g., Ibid., p. 209 on 13:7; eadem, Genesis 25B-50, p. 246 on Gen 47:29-30). That said, the fact that the trauma angle is nowhere heavy-handed in O’Connor’s work is also wise in my judgment, since this is not a monograph definitively establishing the Persian period dating of Genesis, coupled with O’Connor’s own understanding of how trauma and disaster studies inform such a socio-historical location for the book. Instead, this is and remains a commentary on the text of Genesis. This latter point goes a long way to allay potential concerns. One could, that is, worry that O’Connor’s reading is too dependent on a specific historical reconstruc­ tion so as to achieve its results. If so, one might subsequently worry that, in the end, despite its helpful and cutting-edge qualities, O’Connor’s Genesis is as weighed down by historical-critical baggage as any other treatment of the book. I must admit at this point that I am not yet convinced that everything (or even most everything) in the Old Testament, or even Genesis alone, is generated by the traumas of defeat and exile, even if those are important nodes (and they most certainly are). This caveat duly entered, it is important to note that, despite her expert attention to the specific traumas of the 6th century BCE, I believe O’Connor’s interpretation ultimately transcends the Persian Period reconstruction she depends on. This is because her treatment is so remarkably resonant with our present historical moment with its rumors (and not just rumors!) of wars and disease—especially disease: diseases of body and spirit and society in 2020 and only God knows how far beyond that. In light of this rather stunning interpretive confluence, O’Connor’s interpretation of Genesis as a “pastoral text” that provides hope to people traumatized in any number of ways floats above or beyond its historical moorings, making its way eventually to us here and now where the traumas are not about invasion but intubation, not about exile but exhaling without a mask, not about Babylonian empire but white supremacy. O’ Connor herself notes that her interpretation is somehow analogical or indirect: “I am not claiming that disaster episodes in Genesis were composed to ‘represent’ Judah’s traumatic history in any factual sense; rather they function within a literary arena as distant echoes of

Page 57

similar destructions… .Disaster stories guide the ancient audience and modern readers to approach their suffering indirectly, gently” (Genesis 1-25A, pp. 10-11). Pastoral indeed! And so, even if one deems O’Connor’s Genesis to be occasionally overly taken with a Persian date for the book, we nevertheless see the gift of Scripture (and of gifted interpreters of Scripture like O’Connor herself) to somehow transcend its (and their) historical locations, boundedness, and limits, so as to become a word in due season, on target, for the community that needs precisely that from the Lord. Every preacher worth her salt knows that that has always been the gift of Scripture and the task of the homilist. In this matter, as in so many others, O’Connor’s book is both model and means, example and right tool for the job.

Note 1 I am grateful to Smyth & Helwys for making an advance copy available to me prior to publication. Since it was an uncorrected draft, the pagination information offered here may be incorrect, vis-a-vis the published volume.

This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

Page 48

One New Book for the Preacher

Martin B. Copenhaver

Woodstock, Vermont

Walter Brueggemann, Preachingfrom the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019).

A story is told about a grumpy couple having dinner at a restaurant. One com­ plains, “This food is terrible. It’s barely edible.” The other responds, “Yes, and such small portions.” When I am feeling grumpy myself, that story captures what I think of preaching from the Old Testament from most Christian pulpits—it is not done very often and, when it is, it is not done very well. In my experience, a slim minority of sermons from Christian preachers is based on Old Testament texts. If the top twenty Old Testament warhorses (texts such as Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 or Amos 5:21-24) were sent out to pasture, the frequency of preaching from the Old Testament would shrink even further and dramatically. At the same time, sermons from the Old Testament I hear often lack theological sophistication or nuance. Such sermons fail to take up Old Testament texts on their own terms. Some reflect what might be called the “two God theory”—the old canard that the God of the Old Testament is a God of judgment, while the God of the New Testament is a God of grace. In this and other ways, Christian preaching can lapse into a form of supersessionism. Then, to paraphrase Walter Brueggemann’s paraphrase of Walt Whitman, “Finally comes Walter Brueggemann.” His new book, Preaching from the Old Testament, draws on a lifetime of scholarship and commitment to preaching in a way that of­ fers Christian preachers an opportunity to deepen their engagement with the Old Testament. No one is better qualified for this task. As Rolf Jacobson asserts in the hist sen­ tence of his foreword, “There has been no greater Old Testament theologian in the last half century than Walter Brueggemann.” That is neither flattery nor hyperbole. The Prophetic Imagination, one of Brueggemann’s seminal works, was published fortytwo years ago and practically every year since has seen the publication of another Brueggemann volume, each one marked by his stunning acuity. For all of his importance as an Old Testament scholar, Brueggemann is further qualified to take on this particular task because he has always lived and worked be­ tween the guild and the church. What Brueggemann has written in his dedication to Ellen Davis could be applied to him just as aptly: His critical work has been “fully in the service of the community of faith.” Still further, Brueggemann is both a student of preaching and a masterful preacher himself, who acknowledges “the cruciality of preaching for the life, faithfulness, and well-being of the church.” Even without such affirmations, we would know from reading the three volumes of The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann that he sees the work of the preacher as both essential and urgent. His brilliant Beecher Lectures on preaching and the published volume that followed, Finally Comes the

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Poet, would provide further evidence, in the unlikely event it were needed. Brueggemann’s new book draws on both his Old Testament scholarship and his understanding of preaching to explore the intersection of the two. He begins with the recognition that “the Old Testament is perennially, at the same time, a rich resource and a complex challenge for the Christian preacher,” but goes on to affirm that it is “worth the effort.” The rest of the book backs up his claim by tracing ways in which the Old Testament texts make “connections to our contemporary faith challenges that are myriad, rich, and suggestive.” Brueggemann makes quick work of refuting the notion that a Christian sermon must make direct Christological connections when it is based on an Old Testament text. His dismissal of that notion is based on two counts. For one, the sermon does not stand alone. It is embedded in a liturgy that will, in its own way, point to the work of Christ and offer affirmations of the Trinity. At the same time, there is indeed one God, so it is “sufficient to let the good news take the form of witness to the God of the text,” wherever that text is situated. The Old Testament is not a single work, of course. It is comprised of diverse works representing different genres. Reflecting this diversity, Brueggemann considers the preaching task as it relates to five genres, devoting a chapter to each: Genesis, The Tale of Moses, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Wisdom Traditions. Each genre tells a different part of the story of God’s complex love affair with humanity in a distinctive way. Obviously, if the Bible is a library, one needs to approach it as one would any other library by being clear what kind of book one has taken off the shelf. To pick an obvious example, we will read a book of history in a different way than we will read a volume of poetry. Being clear about which genre a particular text represents is the hist task of interpretation. By organizing his book around the distinctive ap­ proaches to preaching appropriate to each genre, Brueggemann helps the preacher add texture to the interpretive task. There are common themes among the genres, however, in the texts themselves and in Brueggemann’s interpretation of them. Each genre exhibits a distinctive way of tracing the plot of the divine and human drama. In Genesis, for instance, the plot reflected in the text is one of humanity being cursed, followed by the promise of blessing. In a similar manner, one of the tasks of the prophets is to offer both judg­ ment and promise, to expose an “illusion of chosenness,” so that the people might receive the poetic word that offers hope. How such themes are played out in each genre is not easily summarized, so I will not attempt it here. But Brueggemann’s interpretation makes clear that although there are many books and different genres that must be read on their own terms, ultimately it is a single story that is told—the story of God refusing to take the human “no” for an answer, of a God who insists on having the last word. The chapter on “Preaching from the Psalms” deserves special attention, both in its own right and because the subject of that chapter is also the theme for this edition of Journal for Preachers. Brueggemann begins with the helpful reminder that the Psalms are human speech: “They are fully from the human side of the great dialogue of faith, and they are properly an articulation of anthropology (the nature of the human) as distinct from theology (the nature of God). As long as preaching is understood, even in an inchoate way, as “top down” revelatory disclosure of God, the Psalms will not do.” Nevertheless, as Calvin asserted, one can start from either

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the human or the divine and come to the truth of the gospel. Or, as Brueggemann puts it, “The Psalter is all human speech. It turns out, however, that this human speech is made possible—and serious and urgent—because of the one to whom it is addressed.” The Psalms are of value to us precisely because they are so inescapably human, reflective of the human condition in ways in which we can recognize ourselves. The full range of human experiences and human emotions is in full display. As Bruegge­ mann summarizes, “The Psalms probe and voice authentic emotional extremity” before God. This is not the voyeuristic “tell all” of a therapeutic culture. Further, the attestation of emotional extremity found in the Psalms is not a whispered word or private property. Rather, these expressions are a shared experience and find their true home in community and before God. The value of the Psalms for the preacher is that they trace the range of human experiences—not just of the psalmist, but of the person in the pew—and place those experiences within the divine story. It is an exercise in reimagination—another of Brueggemann’s favorite themes. Brueggemann employs various ways to describe the plot of human and divine drama as presented in the Psalms, including the typology that he introduced in his 1984 book, The Message of the Psalms: orientation, disorientation, new orientation. Another of Brueggemann’s descriptions of the plot-line I found particularly helpful moves from the trouble, to the petition, to the rescue, to the response of gratitude. Some psalms (such as Psalms 30 and 116) reflect this plot quite exactly. Other psalms articulate only one stage of the plot, or a few of the stages, which is why the Psalms must be read canonically. It is only when we consider the entire Psalter that we get the full story. Near the conclusion of this chapter, Brueggemann affirms: “We shall finish, it is promised, with Charles Wesley, ‘ Lost in wonder, love, and praise. ’ But the process that will end in praise is risky. It is a move through pain, brutality, and absence.” He goes on to offer a few examples of how the Psalms can help members of a congregation situate their own stories within the divine story: “This is the life of a woman in my congregation who lost her daughter and has found new life in presiding over shelter for homeless persons. This is the life of a guy in my congregation who every week sends a sermon summary to his grandchildren; he still thinks it is all working! This is the life of an old guy in our congregation who is alienated from his older son and lives in hope.” Brueggemann goes on to give other examples, but they are more evocative than exhaustive. I found myself adding to the list in my own mind, based on my own experience and the experience of those I know. When prompted by the Psalms, there is no end to such examples that come to mind. Further, a preacher who brings the breadth and depth of human experience to speech will be able, through to Psalms, to situate the listener’s experience within the divine story in a way that reflects the pattern of the Psalms: orientation, disorientation, and, finally, new orientation. Reading this book made me eager once again to preach from the psalms. It convinced me that the Psalms can both articulate and address the human condition in a unique way that can be transformative. It may be human speech, but it can be used for divine ends.

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In his preface to the book, Brueggemann expresses gratitude “for this publica­ tion at the end of my work.” Of course, we hope that this is not the literal end of his work. I, for one, would love to hnd room on my bookshelf for new volumes because I always learn a great deal from any book from his pen. But it is also true that this little book has the feel of a valedictory. One hopes it is not a hnal blessing, but a blessing it is.

This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

Page 54

One New Book for the Preacher—Make That Two

Brent A. Strawn

Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Kathleen M. O’ Connor, Genesis 1 -25A (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2018), xxiv + 384 pages. Kathleen M. O’Connor, Genesis 25B-50 (Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary; Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2020), xxvi + 280 pages.

After COVID-19 and recently renewed attention to other equally pressing so­ cietal pandemics like systemic racism and economic disparity, trauma seems to be the word of the day, or rather of the year 2020. Moving backwards in time, however, trauma could just as well be the word of the past decade—or even much longer ago than that, maybe the word of the 21st century thus far, not to mention a whole lot of the 20th (and still further back). The science fiction books and TV shows that I grew up on as a kid associated the 21st century with the most advanced developments in technology and human society; they did not associate that far off futuristic period with trauma . What gives, then, other than the apparent inability of human sciences (and societies) to produce all that they seemed to promise in the late 20th century? On the one hand, trauma as a mark of recent days may be seen as the result of developments in knowledge that have allowed us to better recognize, diagnose, and treat trauma. This is a real upside; perhaps human sciences have delivered in some important ways. The downside, of course, is the “on the other hand”: the simple fact is that the 21st century (and so much that came before it) has contained more than its fair share of trauma. Trauma as a mark of recent days is thus not simply a matter of trauma-recognition or trauma-treatment’, it is equally, and worse, due to our time being one of trauma-causation and trauma-experience. Witness COVID-19, systemic racism, economic disparity (and the list goes on). What is the church to do? What is the preacher to say? Kathleen O’Connor, William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament, Emerita, at Columbia Theological Seminary, has written one new book for the preacher “for such a time as this.” Her one book is actually a two-volume work, with the hist part, Genesis 1-25A (1:1-25:18), appearing in 2018, and the second, Genesis 25B-50 (25:19-50:26), released in Fall 2020.1 There is much to say in praise of O’Connor’s commentary, which, taken together, make it the book on Genesis for preachers in these latter days. First, O’Connor’s Genesis appears in the Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, a truly extraordinary series in format and design—the closest, or so it seems to me, that one could get to a web environment in standard print form. There are no hyperlinks, of course, but virtually every page is packed full of additional (hyper) information: there is the commentary proper, of course, along with the part designated “connec­ tions” (which offer potential applications of the exegesis), but there are also numerous sidebars devoted to original language, culture/context, interpretation, and additional resources. This does not yet mention the copious illustrations that accompany the commentary. It is not without good reason that each volume in this series includes

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a section entitled “How to Use This Commentary” (Genesis 1-25A, xxi-xxiv)—the explanations and suggestions offered here are needed! An index to the sidebars and the illustrations is also a useful element. Finally, each volume in this series includes a CD-ROM containing a PDF of the book facilitating electronic searches, which is helpful given the sheer amount of information each book includes. My rough calcula­ tion of just O’Connor’s hist volume yielded over 400 sidebars of one sort or another and approximately 140 illustrations. Simply put, O’Connor’s Genesis is a treasure trove of data; in fact, sometimes the pages are a lot to take in. Second, there is O’Connor’s pen, which is both elegant and economical. The reader will be impressed again and again (as was I) with how she conveys deep learn­ ing with beauty and concision, not to mention profound insight. While there is a lot to take in on each page, no time is wasted here. I was repeatedly instructed not only by what O’ Connor included in the tiniest of sidebars but also by how she included it. (As but one example, her sidebar “Land in Perpetuity” [Ibid., p. 14; cf. p. 210], only two paragraphs in length, is weighty in coverage and insight.) Third, and most importantly, there is O’ Connor’s specific take on Genesis. Preach­ ers already know, or should, that O’Connor is one of our premier interpreters, with special expertise in some of the most difficult texts in the Old Testament. Indeed, her earlier books Lamentations and. the Tears of the World (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004) and Jeremiah: Pain and. Promise (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012) laid the groundwork for this magnum opus on Genesis. She states at the very beginning of her preface:

For several years I set aside efforts on this Genesis commentary to complete a book about Jeremiah. This delay proved beneficial because my Jeremiah work gave me a surprising new lens with which to interpret Genesis; I had discovered trauma and disaster studies. To my astonishment, aspects of the national catastrophe so evident in that prophetic book—the fall of Judah and Jerusalem to the Babylonian Empire—left unmistakable traces across the book of Genesis and provided it with new urgency. The beautiful, per­ plexing, and astonishing accounts of the beginning that make up Genesis serve the “pastoral” purpose to help the people begin again in the face of the impossible. (Ibid., p. xv)

O’Connor’s introduction proceeds to outline her “trauma and disaster studies ap­ proach” to Genesis (see Ibid., p. 7). It is an exciting (if such an adjective is acceptable for such serious topics) and compelling approach. According to O’ Connor, Genesis tells its stories “to assure its audience that the God who created, ordered, and gave life in the ancient past can recreate them now… in the aftermath of the national ’ s destruction under the Babylonian Empire” (Ibid., p. 2). Such a statement reveals, of course, that O’Connor’s fresh and lively interpretation depends on Genesis becoming “a work of literature sometime during the early Persian Period (539-330 BCE)” (Ibid., p. 3). It is that period, and none other, that is “the historical context that produced Genesis” (Ibid., p. 5). With this dating securely in place, O’Connor reads Genesis after the fact—the fact in question being the trauma of exile. In this reading, the stories of Genesis are viewed as “mirroring tableaus of historical suffering and beginning again,” but, O’Connor asserts, “The literature not only reflects aspects of Judah’s catastrophe but also helps the community cope with, understand, and move beyond it” (Ibid., p. 5).

Page 56

Genesis, therefore, not unlike Lamentations, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Second Isaiah, can be seen as a kind of “theological hist responder,” serving “survivors by providing language for and interpretations of destructive events that defy both language and interpretation” (Ibid., p. 6). Indeed, according to her, the Judean people survive in no small measure “because of the ‘pastoral care’ these books provide” (Ibid., p. 6). In the specific case of Genesis, O’Connor writes that “[b]ecause God does the impos­ sible in Genesis, bringing life where obstacles are insurmountable, the book invites hope in the midst of international catastrophe and global terrorism; ugly, frightening politics; and the vast movements of people. The book affirms that God creates life where there is no life” (Ibid., p. 21). Paying attention to the traces of pain found in the book showcases, in the end, the book’s capacity for hope. Throughout the commentary, O’Connor’s interpretive angle via trauma and di­ saster studies is everywhere present but nowhere heavy-handed. Both characteristics seem right to me. The former reveals how adeptly O’ Connor has identified trauma related motifs and themes (e.g., “disaster narratives”; themes of impossibility like barrenness, famine, landlessness; and promises of new life including offspring, land, blessing, and a great name [Ibid., pp. 8-15]) throughout Genesis and its various units. Even when a passage is not obviously about trauma per se, O’ Connor’s categories are almost always present in one way or another (see, e.g., Ibid., p. 209 on 13:7; eadem, Genesis 25B-50, p. 246 on Gen 47:29-30). That said, the fact that the trauma angle is nowhere heavy-handed in O’Connor’s work is also wise in my judgment, since this is not a monograph definitively establishing the Persian period dating of Genesis, coupled with O’Connor’s own understanding of how trauma and disaster studies inform such a socio-historical location for the book. Instead, this is and remains a commentary on the text of Genesis. This latter point goes a long way to allay potential concerns. One could, that is, worry that O’Connor’s reading is too dependent on a specific historical reconstruc­ tion so as to achieve its results. If so, one might subsequently worry that, in the end, despite its helpful and cutting-edge qualities, O’Connor’s Genesis is as weighed down by historical-critical baggage as any other treatment of the book. I must admit at this point that I am not yet convinced that everything (or even most everything) in the Old Testament, or even Genesis alone, is generated by the traumas of defeat and exile, even if those are important nodes (and they most certainly are). This caveat duly entered, it is important to note that, despite her expert attention to the specific traumas of the 6th century BCE, I believe O’Connor’s interpretation ultimately transcends the Persian Period reconstruction she depends on. This is because her treatment is so remarkably resonant with our present historical moment with its rumors (and not just rumors!) of wars and disease—especially disease: diseases of body and spirit and society in 2020 and only God knows how far beyond that. In light of this rather stunning interpretive confluence, O’Connor’s interpretation of Genesis as a “pastoral text” that provides hope to people traumatized in any number of ways floats above or beyond its historical moorings, making its way eventually to us here and now where the traumas are not about invasion but intubation, not about exile but exhaling without a mask, not about Babylonian empire but white supremacy. O’ Connor herself notes that her interpretation is somehow analogical or indirect: “I am not claiming that disaster episodes in Genesis were composed to ‘represent’ Judah’s traumatic history in any factual sense; rather they function within a literary arena as distant echoes of

Page 57

similar destructions… .Disaster stories guide the ancient audience and modern readers to approach their suffering indirectly, gently” (Genesis 1-25A, pp. 10-11). Pastoral indeed! And so, even if one deems O’Connor’s Genesis to be occasionally overly taken with a Persian date for the book, we nevertheless see the gift of Scripture (and of gifted interpreters of Scripture like O’Connor herself) to somehow transcend its (and their) historical locations, boundedness, and limits, so as to become a word in due season, on target, for the community that needs precisely that from the Lord. Every preacher worth her salt knows that that has always been the gift of Scripture and the task of the homilist. In this matter, as in so many others, O’Connor’s book is both model and means, example and right tool for the job.

Note 1 I am grateful to Smyth & Helwys for making an advance copy available to me prior to publication. Since it was an uncorrected draft, the pagination information offered here may be incorrect, vis-a-vis the published volume.

This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

Page 46

One New Book for the Preacher

D. Cameron Murchison

Biack Mountain, North Carolina

Bill McKibben Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself out? (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2019)

Last fall a friend who is a careful reader of The New York Review of Books called to my attention Alan Weisman’s book review article entitled “Burning Down the House.” It was a thoughtful analysis of both David Wallace-Wells’s volume, The Uninhabit­ able Earth: Life After Warming, and Bill McKibben’s book that is the subject of this review. Two particular lines in “Burning Down the House” caught my attention and sent me straight out the door to get a copy of Falter. The first was the summary account of the purpose of The Uninhabitable Earth, to-wit: “This book is meant to scare the hell out of us, because the alarm sounded by NASA’s Jim Hansen in his electrifying 1988 congressional testimony on how we’ve trashed the atmospheres still hasn’t sufficiently registered.” The second was a quote from McKibben’s book that Weisman takes to be its final, main point: “Let’s assume we’re capable of acting together to do remarkable things” (p. 202). I had previously downloaded The Uninhabitable Earth to my Kindle app and dabbled in it. So, it had already scared the hell out of me. As one might imagine, a word about acting together to do remarkable things was a welcome ray of hope. That’s what sent me straightway to a bricks and mortar bookstore so I could have it in my hands to ponder—and perhaps to hope. The overarching metaphor of Falter, as its subtitle makes plain, is that of the “hu­ man game” and whether or not it has played itself out, whether or not it will continue to be played. McKibben’s journalistic craft has taught him ways of effective com­ munication that are artfully deployed through this metaphor and others. Thirty-five years ago, Robert Heilbroner wrote a book that posed a similar question, absent the metaphor, in a volume more aridly entitled An Inquiry Into the Human Prospect. In the language of 1974, Heilbroner put the question this way: “Is there hope for man?” McKibben restates the matter adding to the metaphor of the “human game” that of “leverage.” “Over our short career as a species, human history has risen and fallen, gotten stuck and raced ahead, stagnated and flourished. Only now, though, have we achieved enough leverage that we can bring it to an end, both by carelessness and by design.” McKibben goes on from making this point to showing how the size of the board on which the human game is being played is shrinking—not shrinking in the absolute sense of the space earth occupies, but in the relative sense of the space of earth that is available for robust human habitation. The leverage that works against the prospect of the human game continuing has to do with hyper individualism and a repudiation of altruism, both of which McKibben believes have found their way into the warp and woof of the modern U.S. economy through the influence of the novelist Ayn Rand, celebrating a view of humanity and society in which solidarity and community are negative values and in which altruism is “perhaps the dirtiest word in Rand’s lexicon.” Indeed Rand spoke of altruism as

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“the poison of death in the blood of western civilization.” Such a view of humans as “only individuals, that4 there is no such thing as society,’ that we owe each other nothing” has gained pre-eminent leverage in contemporary American life through the outsized influence of politicians and of corporate leaders who frequently and explicitly have expressed their fealty to Rand’s vision. McKibben observes that men who gained power in the 1980s, ideologically dominated by Randian notions, were in control at precisely the moment when the most damage could be done to a shift in climate and when new forms of inequality could be made more or less permanent. But it is not only that the political and traditional corporate sectors have been dominated by a view of humanity that is inadequate. The same influences are domi­ nating the more recently emerged tech industries which, though they value their own forms of community, are “deeply attached to the idea that they should be left alone to do their thing: create value, build apps, change the world” without any interference of someone trying to stop (or regulate) them. This comes to focus for McKibben in emerging possibilities of genetic engineering that raises the prospect not simply of repairing defects in existing human beings, but more fundamentally of changing humans before they are born. Coupled with strong forms of Artificial Intelligence and the bizarre challenge to human mortality via cryogenics incubating in the brave new technology sector (a company named Alcor currently has 147 human beings on ice), McKibben suggests that “as climate change has shrunk the effective size of our planet, the creation of designer babies [and untrammeled AI and efforts to defeat death] shrink[s] the effective range of our souls.” But how, then, is this a book about hope. The key is found in the last section of Falter that admittedly offers only a chastened hope. McKibben specifically speaks of “an outside chance” to “keep global warming and technological mania within some limits and, in the process, keep the human game recognizable, even robust.” To be sure, he has not only reiterated the challenge to nature via climate change that he has focused for many of us over three decades; he has also discerned the challenge to human nature that the technological mania presents. But his hopefulness is supported by two “technologies” that he has experienced richly in recent years: solar panels and the non-violent movement. McKibben says that though he has long understood the benefits of solar panels, he didn’t really grasp the power they have to change lives until he recently journeyed to rural Africa on a reporting trip. There he discovered a rapid spread of renewable energy without the environmental dangers and huge expense of power plants and grids —for “in communities that had been unlit, uncooled, and uninformed by fossil fuel for two hundred years, solar panels were turning on the energy overnight.” And what has been good for Africa can be good for the rest of the world, he argues, citing a Stanford study that makes clear “that every major nation on earth could be supplying 80 percent of its power from renewables by 2030, at prices far cheaper than paying the damage for climate change.” The other element of McKibben’s practical hope is nonviolence, by which he does “not mean only, or even mainly, the dramatic acts of civil disobedience that end in jail or a beating,” but rather “the full sweep of organizing aimed at building mass movements whose goal is to change the Zeitgeist and hence, the course of history.” At this juncture McKibben’s theological commitments become more obvious as he

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notes that though religion’s relation to the nonviolence movement is complex, it has in fact been led in significant moments by religious figures and buoyed by spiritual insights about “turning the other cheek, of taking on unearned suffering, of engaging our sympathy for the weak instead of our truckling admiration for the strung.” The reference to how nonviolence can contribute to changing the Zeitgeist points to the most pertinent elements of Falter for the preacher. Recall that the Zeitgeist that has controlled much of politics and the corporate economy since the 1980s —and the technological industry more recently—is that of Ayn Rand’s hyper individualism that abhors altruism, interconnectedness, and any limits on one’s creative energy. And then remember core elements of the life of Christian discipleship that embrace the mind of Christ, by doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regarding others as better than yourselves; looking not to your own interests, but to the interests of others (cf. Philippians 2:3-5). Preaching can contribute to the practical hope that McKibben describes by reviv­ ing the tradition of apologetic preaching, preaching that unmasks the spiritual vacuity of convictions that have dominated our common life, leading us toward ecological destruction and technological hubris. Such apologetic preaching can proclaim Gospel convictions about God’s embrace of the human family as an oikos, a household, built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Christ Jesus being himself the chief cornerstone. Gradually, but surely, such Gospel preaching will kindle hope rooted in a truer and deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Thus will a spirit of the times be built that can recognize with McKibben that though there’s a time and place for growth, our time and place needs maturity, balance, and smaller scale that can protect, repair, and safeguard the good life God intends for all that God has made.

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One New Book for the Preacher

David Neil Mosser, Sr.

Salado United Methodist Church, Salado, Texas

Brooks Harrington, No Mercy, No Justice: The Dominant Narrative of America versus the Counter-Narrative of Jesus’ Parables (Cascade Books: WIFPand Stock, Eugene, Oregon, 2019)

I once had the treasured experience of hearing Dr. Carlyle Marney preach, and as I read Brooks Harrington’s hook No Mercy, No Justice: The Dominant Narrative of America versus the Counter-Narrative of Jesus ’Parables, something Dr. Marney said kept stirring in my head. Marney quoted the Gospels and said, “You always have the poor with you . . . and you make the poor” (Matthew 26:11; Mark 14:7; John 12:8). Harrington’s book reminds those who are thoughtful and open-minded of the truth of that statement. Regarding the US criminal justice system and poverty, Rev. Brooks Harrington has done much and perhaps has seen it all. Prosecutor and minister, Harrington’s highly qualified insight into these social issues rings disturbingly authentic. He has served in several capacities including functioning as a criminal prosecutor, a pastor of inner-city church in an impoverished neighborhood, and as the founder of a legal ministry protecting indigent victims of family violence and child neglect and abuse. In the spirit of Rauschenbusch and Gladden, No Mercy, No Justice exercises biblical norms and Jesus’ gospel principles to inform believers’ treatment of the poor and homeless—our American Achilles heel. Harrington’s key notion is that the dominant narrative of American culture has defined both justice and mercy in self-serving ways. One version suggests that jus­ tice and mercy are contradictions. Mostly, our culture devalues mercy and hinders its practice. Yet, within God’s counter narrative disclosed by means of Torah, the prophets, and the life and parables of Jesus, justice and mercy become aspects of God’s truth. There is no justice without mercy. There is no mercy without justice. Harrington writes, “The dominant narrative of a culture … is the culture’s story of life’s meanings, values, marks, and measures of success and failure, approved and disapproved manners of behavior, and paths to honor and happiness” (p. 18). From the start, Harrington illustrates how the target of acquisition is for the poor always whatever objective the dominant American culture determines it is. Of course, this objective is impossible to obtain by those who have not been privileged to achieve such lofty aspirations. The poor, who by living on the flimsy and fragile side of life, do not comprise the dominant narrative. Via a series of riveting personal stories, Harrington establishes how brutal “holding the bag” is for chiefly those women and children who have few options for protection. For example, some “Pay Day Loan Companies” will somehow have “computer troubles” when underprivileged borrowers, after employers pay them at week’s end, come in late on Friday afternoons to settle their debts, usually by cash. Unsurprisingly, the computers “are down,” and the attendant cannot take a payment at that time. The attendant then tells such persons that without the computer, no receipt can be issued.

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The attendant then tells these poor people there is no recourse, as he cannot track down the manager or the owner. All he can tell them is to return on Monday morning to pay up. The catch, of course, is that on Monday the indebted will owe substantially more interest than if they had paid on Friday afternoon. It is all perfectly legal—and perfectly unethical. After analytically defining justice and mercy in our culture, Harrington then turns to the counter-narrative of God. By means of emotive stories of several individuals he pastored in his impoverished church in an impoverished neighborhood, our author illustrates the toll that the dominant narrative exacts mainly on innocent people. The victims are simply Harrington’s rank and hie parishioners. They are folks who get it wrong by being born to the wrong people in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Yet, Harrington also holds out theological and biblical hope. His dialectic runs thusly: “The dominant narrative provides no meaning or satisfaction to anyone” (p. 26). De­ spite this glum assessment of the status quo, Harrington goes on to write, informed by a Pauline perspective: “God’s counter-narrative proclaimed by Paul was that true power was found in weakness and sacrifice, and not in conquest and fear, and that true peace would come from love and not force of arms” (p. 37). Friedrich Nietzsche would have simply howled at this quotation! Harrington devotes the second half of No Mercy, No Justice to “commentary­ worthy” exegesis on thirteen parables. After Mark’s parable of the sower, he writes about eight of Luke’s parables, one of Luke/Matthew, and finally three of the parables found in Matthew. He does this to turn from abstract concepts/definitions of justice and mercy to the particularity of Jesus’ parables. In a neat hermeneutical move, Har­ rington demonstrates that God does not hold mercy and justice in some oppositional tension. Rather, these divine bequests “are integral and complementary aspects of the same Truth and Way” (p. 128). Harrington’s penultimate chapter summarizes his discoveries about justice and mercy from his exegetical work on the parables. The concluding chapter is a midrash on Mark 4 and 5. Here Harrington tells this Marcan story about Jesus from the point of view of one of the disciples. Publishing houses publish good books each year. We read many of them. Yet this is one of those extremely rare books that can drastically change our perspective on several fronts. First, No Mercy, No Justice will change how we view the poor, and how public policy, especially of the last few years, punishes people who least likely merit it. Second, for preachers especially, Harrington’s exposition of scripture will provide a new sort of path to and thr ough many scripture texts. He handles the Bible with deep care, but also with a sort of playful challenge to people who think they already know everything they need to know about these biblical parables. Finally, the book is well written and a pleasure to read—which is important because the subject is less than pleasant. It is well worth the time and effort.

Journa l for Preachers