Using God's Resources Wisely

Isaiah and Urban Possibility

Walter Brueggemann

• Editorial: Westminster John Knox Press
• Año: 1993
• ISBN:
  9781611644784
• Categoría: Teología y religión
• Categoría: Estudios bíblicos

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.

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 service to the categories of faith, but all are addressed. So take this as an address to all the players in urban management, faithers and nonfaithers.

The thesis is: You have forsaken your people. Notice, not just “the ways of your people,” not just torah; the city is now organized to abandon the people, the folk: their identity, their memory, their place in the historical process. The city is organized so that people no longer count, as though detached management can go its own autonomous way without regard for the well-being of the people who constitute the city. In such an enterprise the city becomes an empty form, filled with nonpersons long since forsaken.

The forsaking that has happened in the city is done by a fourfold “filling” of the city. The disregard of “your people” has caused, instead of valuing the populace, people-denying deposits of goods. Count them!

1. Fullness of diviners. People with technical competence manage superbly, but they are outsiders who do not understand or value the deepest commitments of this public community, outsiders who impose values, practices, and modes of security that are essentially alien to the fabric of this historical community. The techniques condemned by this poet are religious, but that religion bespeaks economic and political manipulation. There is perhaps in the text an element of nativism that might permit something like “Japan-bashing,” but I think not. I think the diviners, soothsayers, and foreigners are our home-grown managers, who no longer relish or believe in the communal passions that have given human substance to the city.

2. Filled with silver and gold. The poet condemns a money society that is driven by commodity accumulation and thinks increasingly in terms of surplus value. Indeed, there is “no end to their treasures,” never, never, never enough, always more at the expense of neighbors, so that there is nothing left in the core city but more and more banks, a sign and enactment of a city passioned for wealth and power and control, increasingly immune to the reality of humanness in the city.

3. Filled with horses, and no end of chariots. Horses and chariots in the ancient world of course had to do with armaments, the city filled with arms, instruments of self-securing, and there is no end to this either, because the arms must increase to match our increasing greed and our increasing anxiety. Many of the horses and chariots in the end, of course, are no longer to be used against external enemies but to patrol and guard the internal inequity, to keep the disadvantaged from appearing in their odd ways to take a share,

4. Filled with idols. We worship “the work of our hands,” made by our own fingers, emblems of technological inventiveness, signposts of power, monuments to self-sufficiency.

This fourfold “fill” is a convergence because, in any critical analysis, greedy economics, anxious armaments, preoccupation with technique, and distorted religion always go hand in hand with one another. The poet does a critical job on the city. The fourfold filling is a way to manage resources. The last line of verse 9 asserts the outcome of such management: “so people are humbled, and everyone is brought low.” In these savage verses, there is no mention of a God who threatens, just a careful look at a full city, which has in its future script “brought low, humbled, emptied, failed,” not made happy by full money, not made safe by full arms, not made strong by full government, not made forgiven by full idols: the city pitiful in its ill-chosen management.

— III —
Isaiah 3:1–5

For now the Sovereign, the LORD of hosts, is taking away from Jerusalem and from Judah support and staff—all support of bread, and all support of water—²warrior and soldier, judge and prophet, diviner and elder, ³captain of fifty and dignitary, counselor and skillful magician and expert enchanter. ⁴And I will make boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them. ⁵The people will be oppressed, everyone by another and everyone by a neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the base to the honorable.

In the second section of our text, abruptly, the prophet now introduces heavy-duty God-talk. God was not present in 2:6–9, but the holy one hovers around the edges of the city, waiting and watching. We are offered very large God-talk: Sovereign, Lord of hosts. The God-talk of this text is poised for one terrible verb, “taking away”: seizing, confiscating, removing. “The LORD of hosts is taking away….”

The city imagines itself secure in its enormous technical competence, but the city is never so well ordered that it can be immune to the long, brusque reach of the holy one who will govern the city. The holy one with the long arm reaches in and takes, takes what belongs to God, takes what God wants, takes what we must have to live, which we thought we owned, takes, and we are left diminished.

Yahweh takes away from the beloved city support and stuff, the most elemental things needed for survival and humanness. The God who gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater now takes from this full city the bread that is the staff of life, the most democratic of all foods, least expensive and most required. The God who will say of bread, “This is my body,” here says to the mismanaged city, “It’s mine, not yours.” The water is gone. There is not enough. Mouths are parched to senselessness, all gone.

Yahweh takes away all the leadership that is necessary to the working of the urban economy, takes away warriors and soldiers (so much for horses and chariots), takes away dignitaries and advisers, technicians and experts, removing them in lordly brusqueness, because the city used up its allotted time, wasted its mandate; and now comes oppression, the collapse of the social fabric, neighbor against neighbor, youths sassing elders, base folk jeering honorable ones (sounds like job!).

Of course the hard part is to think that God’s terrible verb “take away” can be enacted in a full city, hard part indeed. And I do not urge it, but only show you this text. I thought about “take away,” and I decided I doubt it could happen here, in my city. But think of being a citizen of St. Louis, for twenty-five years aware of East St. Louis, suburban St. Louis. In 1950 that city was cited as “all American,” and now it is a jungle with garbage not picked up, looking like a war ruin, with even City Hall under mortgage, a city in former days full and now “taken away.” Name your own city, and imagine the terrible verb of God.

— IV —
Isaiah 3:18–23

In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; ¹⁹the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; ²⁰the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; ²¹the signet rings and nose rings; ²²the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; ²³the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.

It was this passage that suggested to me that the book of Isaiah is about resource management. It is a difficult text. It will not preach, but it is a wondrous text for the study of advanced Hebrew vocabulary. There are four elements to this text, which was written by a poet who must have been something of a lexicographer.

1. The list. The text is an inventory of the closet of somebody in urban affluence dressing for a party. It sounds like the dressing room of Imelda Marcos, except that the closet is not in Manila. It is in downtown Jerusalem, where they should have known better—or name your own city. It is about one way to manage resources. The list of goods is about luxury, affluence, extravagance, economic narcissism, about the mistaken notion that one is entitled to all the produce of the urban economy that one can control, no limit, no disruption, no counter voices, just more, more, more.

Even if you have the text in front of you to read, I think it worth repeating this onslaught of unbridled self-indulgence: The list includes anklets, headbands, crescents, pendants, bracelets, scarfs, headdresses, armlets, sashes, perfume boxes, amulets, signet rings, rose rings, festal robes, mantles, cloaks, handbags, gauze, linen, turbans, veils. It is quite urban. It is quite female, presumably. But that is how urban men store and exhibit their success. No doubt this list is urban in the presence of the distended stomachs of children, and welfare mothers, and “I will work for a meal,” and all of those leftover nonpersons of a city too busy to care. Or if this is not our list, we may make some substitutes. It is in any case a list made possible by full silver and gold, full horses and chariots, full diviners and soothsayers, full idols, all ways of managing God’s resources.

2. The verb. The terrible verb of 3:1 is sounded again, “take away”: loss, removal. The whole urban extravagance is in long-term jeopardy, for such an accumulation is inevitably disproportional and, finally, not allowed.

3. The subject. “The Lord” is the one who gives bread to the eater and seed to the sower, but who never gives or sanctions or tolerates inordinate accumulation in the presence of inordinate misery. This speaker of threat, this Yahweh, is the dreadful subject of the ominous verb who says of urban shamelessness, “This shall not stand”: not in Milwaukee, or in Louisville, or in Atlanta, or in any of God’s chosen cities. It shall not stand because the very holiness of God is offended and grieved by the skewing of the neighborhood. No strategy for the loss is outlined by the poet. While this terrible subject and this awesome verb smack of supernaturalism, Isaiah knows that the holiness of God happens in the detail of the human process. God’s lordly taking away occurs not dramatically but as a loss, a little loss, and another loss, until glory and economic leverage and the confidence of the system evaporate.

4. The time. “In that day,” maybe soon, maybe late, perhaps slow or speedily, no timetable: the lingering notice is open-ended but as sure as it is unspecified. Beloved Jerusalem is on notice that its policies of full, autonomous resources and its cynical arrangement of extravagance are a very short-term arrangement, because God will not be mocked.

— V —
Isaiah 3:24–4:1

Instead of perfume there will be a stench; and instead of a sash, a rope; and instead of well-set hair, baldness; and instead of a rich robe, a binding of sackcloth; instead of beauty, shame. ²⁵Your men shall fall by ...

Índice

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 God’s Great “Instead” (Isaiah 2:6–9; 3:1–5; 3:18–4:1)
• 2 Winds of Newness (Isaiah 11:1–9)
• 3 Forgetting the Present … Forfeiting the Future (Isaiah 39:1–8)
• 4 A Struggle for the “Other” (Isaiah 56:1–8)
• 5 God’s Poor as the Future’s Prerequisite (Isaiah 58:1–14)
• 6 Afterward … In the Meantime (Isaiah 65:1 7–25)