Explores the book of Lamentations and its meaning for faith and ministry today. The five poems that comprise Lamentations tell of the community's pain in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction.

"Smith's sage advice will aid Christians in recognizing the simple joys of practicing their faith."--Publishers Weekly Western culture is in a tailspin, and Christian faith is entangled in it: we do kingdom things in empire ways. Western approaches to faith leave us feeling depressed, doubting, anxious, and burned out. We know something is wrong with the way we do faith and church in the West, but we're so steeped in it that we don't know where to begin to break old habits. Popular pastor and speaker Mandy Smith invites us to be unfettered from the deeply ingrained habits of Western culture so we can do kingdom things in kingdom ways again. She explores how we can be transformed by new postures and habits that help us see God already at work in and around us. The way forward isn't more ideas, programs, and problem-solving but in Jesus's surprising invitation to the kingdom through childlikeness. Ultimately, rediscovering childlike habits is a way for us to remember how to be human. Unfettered helps us reimagine how to follow God with our whole selves again and join with God's mission in the world. Foreword by Walter Brueggemann.

What's the point of the church anyway? The emerging generation is opting out of the church in large numbers. They're embarrassed at how the church is portrayed in the media and dismayed at what appears to be their options for participation. Is church really necessary anymore in our day? Is it even possible? Tim Soerens sees this unsettled state of affairs as an extraordinary opportunity: the church, he says, is on the edge of a new possibility at the very moment so much of it feels like it's falling apart. In his extensive travels in all kinds of neighborhoods, Soerens has seen the beginnings of this movement firsthand. In Everywhere You Look, he lays out practical, actionable steps for building collaborative communities in any neighborhood. Here is a vision of the church grounded in a grassroots movement of ordinary people living out what it means to be the church in their everyday lives. Read this book—and join the movement.

Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

This collection of essays is drawn from a series of previous collections to which the author has contributed that were designed to honour senior scholars in the discipline of Old Testament study. Each of these essays reflects a distinct intention depending on the nature of the original collection in which they appeared and the scholar who was being honoured. Taken together, however, this collection amounts to an articulation of Brueggemann's distinctive approach to theological interpretation of the Old Testament. Already in his major volume on Old Testament theology, Brueggemann proposed a dynamism of tension, dispute, and contradiction as the text of ancient Israel sought to give voice to the mystery of God as a sustaining and disruptive agent in the life of the world. Over a long period of time, this collection reflects the author's growing clarity about the task of Old Testament theology. It further reflects on the nature of the biblical text and the way in which the God who inhabits the text runs beyond all of our attempts to define and explain. These essays reflect not so much on methodological issues, but take up the substantive questions that regularly occupied these ancient text-makers.

Biblical faith is passionately and relentlessly material in its emphasis. This claim is rooted in the conviction that the creator God loves the creation and summons creation to be in sync with the will of the creator God. This collection of essays is focussed on the bodily life of the world as it ordered in all of its problematic political and economic forms. The phrase of the title 'all flesh' in the flood narrative of Genesis 9 refers to all living creatures who are in covenant with God - human beings, animals, birds, and fish - as recipients of God's grace, as dependent upon God's generosity, and as destined for praise and obedience to God. The insistence on the materiality of life as the subject of the Bible means that the difficult issues of economics and the demanding questions of politics are front and centre in the text. So the Pentateuch pivots around the Exodus narrative and the emancipation from an unbearable context of abusive labour practices. In a similar manner, the prophets endlessly address such questions of social policy and the wisdom teachers reflect on how to manage the material things of life and social relationships for the well-being of the community. This emphasis, pervasive in these essays, is a powerful alternative and a strong resistance against all of the contemporary efforts to transcend (escape!) the material into some form of the 'spiritual'. All around us are efforts to find an easier, more harmonious faith. This may be evoked simply because of a desire to shield economic, political advantage from the inescapable critique of biblical faith. Such a temptation is a serious misreading of the Bible and a critical misjudgment about the nature of human existence. Thus the Bible addressed the most urgent issues of our day, and refuses the 'religious temptation' that avoids lived reality where the power of God is a work.

The necessary context of prophetic preaching, Walter Brueggemann argues, is a contestation between narratives: the dominant narrative of our time, which promoting self-sufficiency at the national level (through militarism) and the personal (through consumerism), and the countervailing narrative of a world claimed by a God who is gracious, uncompromisingand real. In previous work Brueggemann has pointed us again and again to the indispensability of imagination. Here he writes for those who bear responsibility for regular proclamation in communities of faith, describing the discipline of a prophetic imagination that is unflinchingly realistic and unwaveringly candid.

Addressing what many consider the world's most controversial conflict, Naim Ateek offers a succinct primer on liberation theology in the context of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination. Beginning with the historical roots of this struggle, he shows how the memory of the Holocaust served to trump the claims and aspirations of the native inhabitants of Palestine, and how later Israeli occupation and settlements in the West Bank have contributed to their suffering and oppression. Supported by many Western Christians, Israeli claims to the land rely on a particular exclusivist reading of the Bible. In contrast, a Palestinian theology of liberation responds with a counterstrategy for biblical interpretation, emphasizing the prophetic themes of inclusivity and justice. Ateek concludes by providing principles for achieving security, peace, and justice for all peoples in Israel/Palestine.

Using a model of orientation - disorientation - new orientation, Brueggemann explores how the genres of the Psalms can'be viewed in terms of their function. This results in fresh readings of these ancient songs that illumine their spiritual depth. The voices of the Psalms come through in all their bold realism.

A classic text in biblical theology--still relevant for today and tomorrow. In this 40th anniversary edition of the classic text from one of the most influential biblical scholars of our time, Walter Brueggemann, offers a theological and ethical reading of the Hebrew Bible. He finds there a vision for the community of God whose words and practices of lament, protest and complain give rise to an alternative social order that opposes the "totalism" of the day. Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Linking Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus, he argues that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people, but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing. This edition builds off the revised and updated 2001 edition and includes a new afterword by Brueggemann and a new foreword by Davis Hankins.

'Wise words ... filled with a message of hope for humanity and the world' - Irish Catholic Walter Brueggemann is beloved and respected by scholars, preachers and laity alike for his penetrating insights on Scripture and prophetic diagnoses of our culture. Both are woven throughout this new collection of his writings, A Gospel of Hope, which encourages readers to abandon what is safe and routine and instead embrace the audacity required to live out one's faith. This must-have volume gathers Brueggemann's wisdom on topics ranging from anxiety and abundance to partisanship and the role of faith in public life.

Silence is a complex matter. It can refer to awe before unutterable holiness, but it can also refer to the coercion where some voices are silenced in the interest of control by the dominant voices. It is the latter silence that Walter Brueggemann explores, urging us to speak up in situations of injustice. Interrupting Silence illustrates that the Bible is filled with stories where marginalized people break repressive silence and speak against it. Examining how maintaining silence allows the powerful to keep control, Brueggemann motivates readers to consider situations in their lives where they need to either interrupt silence or be part of the problem, convincing us that God is active and wanting us to act for justice.

A unique how-to book about the Bible proposing that Christians should approach the Bible not as a collection of ancient documents, but as our partner in an ongoing dialogue about our life here and now.

A collection of startlingly fresh and meaningful prayers, from Walter Brueggemann, a leading Christian thinker and scholar.

Synopsis: In this new edition of Gerhard von Rad's classic work on the Moses traditions, the reader is provided with a more polished text, cross-references to von Rad's other works, an updated bibliography, Scripture index, and a new foreword by Walter Brueggemann. Endorsements: This volume "sparkles and snaps with strong interpretive impulses that reflect on von Rad's courage and his clear-headedness about the appeal to its radical promises and its equally radical claims . . . von Rad understood well the continuing contemporeneity of the traditions that cluster around Moses, both as promise and as demand. These are radical invitations to be in the world differently." . . . There is no "obvious one-to-one correlation between the ancient dangers of Israel and our contemporary dangers, and von Rad clearly understood that one cannot easily slide from one to the other. His own work shows the difficult way of interpretation in connecting from one context of danger to another that requires interpretive skill and grace." --Walter Brueggemann, from the Foreword Author Biography: Gerhard von Rad (1901-1971) was Professor of Old Testament at the University of Heidelberg and was the premier Old Testament theologian of the twentieth century. Among his many publications are Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (1962-1965), Wisdom in Israel (1972), and Genesis (rev. ed. 1972).

The Bible and its preaching are for every generation urgent and indispensable, but they are especially urgent today. Within the preaching of Elijah and Elisha lie the possibilities and inspiration for the church to recover its voice in a way that is unfettered and unencumbered by old habits. It is the chance, and the responsibility, of this new voice to replicate in the present life of the church alternatives underway in the biblical text itself, to show that life "could be otherwise, " and to make it so. Considering these narratives canonically, Walter Brueggemann shows how the memories of Elijah and Elisha took on a quality and authority of lasting testimony. They exhibit a world profoundly open to the gifts, energies, and visions given by God. Brueggemann shows how such prophetic narratives summon listening Israel to a radical either/or decision, endlessly insisting that there are choices to be made that hold options for the world as otherwise.

Beloved and respected by scholars, preachers, and laity alike, Walter Brueggemann offers penetrating insights on Scripture and prophetic diagnoses of our culture. Instead of maintaining what is safe and routine, A Gospel of Hope encourages readers to embrace the audacity required to live out one's faith. This must-have volume gathers Brueggemann's wisdom on topics ranging from anxiety and abundance to partisanship and the role of faith in public life.