I recently finished my second book from the theologian Walter Brueggemann. I was blown away when I read The Prophetic Imagination last year (see: blog review). This time I worked my way through his book Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks (see: Amazon link). It’s a bit of a strange title and an even more unique premise. Brueggemann compares the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon with the attacks on America on September 11th. What links these two together is a strong sense of exceptionalism that was dramatically shattered in each example. As a result, he argues that“The prophetic task, in our contemporary society as in ancient Jerusalem, is to counter the governing ideology, in both cases that of exceptionalism.”

Brueggemann contrasts the flow of ideology-denial-despair with the counterpoint of realism-grief-hope. The first three (ideology–>denial–>despair) is the method of empire and this is what leads to an overdeveloped sense of exceptionalism. But it works only until it doesn’t. That’s where the fall of Jerusalem and the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new opportunity to escape the normal thought process and enter into a time of realism–>grief–>hope. Our choice today is to continue the first cycle or learn to embrace the prophetic call of the second.“9/11 is a symbol and an epitome of the wide and deep loss now faced in our society that requires rethinking from the ground up.” One will cause us to live in a perpetual sense of despair while the other offers a robust sense of hope. Brueggemann sees these three prophetic tasks laid out in the Old Testament:

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