Walter Brueggemann. Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. 1997. 155 pp.

I'm mad at Walter Brueggemann. I've been wanting to embark on a writing project and have been struggling to name the times in which we are living -- a time of cultural and societal decay and a time in which the church no longer holds sway over the dominant cultural values. Walter Brueggemann has struggled with these same issues and has defined the contemporary context with much more academic finesse than I would be able to bring to the project.

With powerful allusion to the image of a church in exile, Brueggemann offers a new paradigm for preaching in our contemporary Western cultural milieu. Though his thoughts are mostly directed at the so-called mainline denominations, pastors of a more evangelical bent will profit from wrestling with the issues Brueggemann articulates. Most pastors today are keenly aware that they are preaching to a church that does not have the upper hand in cultural issues.

The dominant paradigm which Brueggemann adopts is that of a church in exile, comparing the present situation to Israel in Babylon. There is a remnant which struggles to remain faithful but is struggling to learn how to sing the Lord's song in a foreign land. In both situations, Brueggemann sees a "loss of a structured, reliable 'world' where 'treasured symbols of meaning are mocked and dismissed'." The scriptural resources which arise out of this time in Israel's life provide material for preaching during this time but they also provide some understanding for the times in which we live.

Though painful, the exile evoked "the most brilliant literature and the most daring theological articulation in the Old Testament," asserts Brueggemann. The exile is a time to grieve the loss of what was and is a time of feeling like a "motherless child." The greatest threat however, is to cave in to the power of despair.

The task of preaching specifically, and ministry in general during these times, is "to 'represent the catastrophe' and to 'reconstruct, replace or redraw' the paradigms of meaning that will permit 'creative survival'."

There are four specific components of preaching that will help the church move through the process of adaptation needed for survival. The first is lamentation and complaint wherein the church is enabled to "represent the catastrophe".

The biblical laments and complaints such as are found in Lamentations and Psalms provide a model for this. To use more psychoanalytic terms, this is acknowledging what once was and coming to terms with the loss. Second is the step of assurance. In spite of disappointment and travail, the community is assured of God's presence and care. Third are "doxologies of defiance." More than being memories of past events, doxologies are 'anticipatory assertions of what God is about to do.' Fourth, the promise stage asserts that "God is not a prisoner of circumstance but... can call into existence that which does not exist."