Today, we give thanks for the life of Walter Brueggemann—one of the most sacred and salty voices the church ever has known. His death today marks the end of a remarkable earthly journey, but his words, his courage and his prophetic witness will live on far beyond his years.
For me, The Prophetic Imagination was the beginning. It was the first of his works I encountered, handed to me by faithful professors at Baylor University in the early 1990s. To this day, it well may be the most transformational book I ever have read.
Growing up, the churches that raised me had given me a sincere, but deeply misguided, understanding of the prophets. I had been taught—over and over again—that prophets were future-tellers, predictors of what was to come. That was the box I kept them in until Brueggemann came along and broke it wide open.
He revealed something far more powerful: the prophets were not fortune-tellers but truth-tellers. They were men and women given the gift of double vision—the ability to see the world as it really is, in all its injustice and sorrow, and at the same time to see the world as it should be under the reign of God. They called God’s people to feel again, to hope again, and to act with courage and imagination for the sake of justice and mercy.
Fierce conviction, poetic tenderness
Walter Brueggemann had a sacred mind and a salty tongue. He wrote with the fierce conviction of one who had seen too much to settle for a tame gospel, and with a poet’s tenderness for the hurting world. His work never was distant or theoretical. It always was rooted in the gritty realities of life and the unrelenting hope of God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.
His teaching reshaped the way I read Scripture, the way I preach, the way I live. It redefined the ministry I have been called to and the justice work we have had the privilege to join. The people I’ve met, the community we’ve built, and the pursuit of God’s restoration in the world are all, in some measure, the fruit of seeds he planted.
For all of this, I forever am indebted—to Walter Brueggemann, to the professors who pointed me toward his work, and to the Spirit who continues to use his sacred, salty voice to call the church to imagine and enact the world as God intends it.
Thanks be to God for Walter Brueggemann. May his memory be a blessing. May his voice continue to stir us. And may he rest in the deep, abiding peace of the One he loved and served so well.
Chris Seay is the lead pastor of Ecclesia Houston. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.
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