I have repeatedly found myself where I didn't plan to be. It was not my intention, and I was not what I could have been. I have realized that God can use flawed tools, and we can grow
I spent decades leading congregation and studies, and your words brought back to me the tension of two churches. Recently a group of us have mulled over Walter Brueggemann’s book Tenacious Solidarity. We have been examining what he calls advocacy by the like of Moses and other prophets. The chapters named Political Agency against Idolatry and Commodity and others. Even among this group, willing to relook at their own faith stance, you can feel the tension in regard to advocacy or as you so well put, injecting yourself in that place called “in between.” Appreciate your words.
This means a great deal — especially coming from someone who has lived inside that tension for decades.
Brueggemann is exactly the right companion text here. His framing of prophetic advocacy as the refusal to let the dominant narrative go unchallenged — that's the thread I was trying to trace from the enslaved preacher forward. The second sermon was always an act of what Brueggemann would call "prophetic imagination": insisting on an alternative reality in the teeth of the one being enforced.
And you've named something I think is underappreciated: the tension doesn't go away even among people who are willing to reexamine.
Advocacy costs something even inside sympathetic communities — because injecting yourself "in between" disrupts the peace of the group, not just the peace of the empire. That's what made the prophets so unwelcome even among their own people.
Thank you for carrying this work in your community. The tension you're describing is the proof it's real.
I have repeatedly found myself where I didn't plan to be. It was not my intention, and I was not what I could have been. I have realized that God can use flawed tools, and we can grow
"Inject yourself where you are not supposed to be." Exactly.
Between the empire and your neighbor,
Between the violent intent and the act,
inject yourself.
I spent decades leading congregation and studies, and your words brought back to me the tension of two churches. Recently a group of us have mulled over Walter Brueggemann’s book Tenacious Solidarity. We have been examining what he calls advocacy by the like of Moses and other prophets. The chapters named Political Agency against Idolatry and Commodity and others. Even among this group, willing to relook at their own faith stance, you can feel the tension in regard to advocacy or as you so well put, injecting yourself in that place called “in between.” Appreciate your words.
This means a great deal — especially coming from someone who has lived inside that tension for decades.
Brueggemann is exactly the right companion text here. His framing of prophetic advocacy as the refusal to let the dominant narrative go unchallenged — that's the thread I was trying to trace from the enslaved preacher forward. The second sermon was always an act of what Brueggemann would call "prophetic imagination": insisting on an alternative reality in the teeth of the one being enforced.
And you've named something I think is underappreciated: the tension doesn't go away even among people who are willing to reexamine.
Advocacy costs something even inside sympathetic communities — because injecting yourself "in between" disrupts the peace of the group, not just the peace of the empire. That's what made the prophets so unwelcome even among their own people.
Thank you for carrying this work in your community. The tension you're describing is the proof it's real.
Timely, well done.
Thank you.
You are very welcome. I have been working on this one for a few weeks, and it felt ready.