Finally Comes the Poet

Wisdom for preachers, writers, listeners, readers

Last Spring I read Walter Brueggemann’s book, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation. I’ve read a number of his books before and have several on my shelf. He’s brilliant, but this book, well… this book kind of blew me away.

It’s often the sign of a great book that you are still thinking about it months or years later. It ought to be required reading for preachers, but could be for anyone.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash

I included some reflections on the book in this previous post: Anatomy of a Sermon

In this post that you are reading, though, I mainly want to share some of Brueggemann’s brilliant words.

But first, a tiny bit of background on the phrase where he got his title. It is borrowed from Walt Whitman’s 1871 poem, “Passage to India” in a section where Whitman is speaking about human achievement, pursuit, technology, science. All things that in the late 1800s were (maybe still are in some circles) believed to be signs of progress.

Whitman posits that truth, however, remains something that the poet speaks or sings.

After the seas are all cross'd, (as they seem already cross'd,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish'd their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

Brueggemann picks up the sentiment in Whitman, arguing that what is needed is the language of poetry when it comes to speaking the deeper truths of the human experience. This is what preaching must attend to. Speaking of God, of life in all its fullness, can never be without metaphor, image, can never be “scientifically precise” can never be reduced to formulae.

So, now, here are my favourite quotes from Brueggemann’s book…

“Is there a word there that can rescue me from my exhausted coping?”—Pg. 8

This simple question is so powerful, especially today. It expresses the hope that we all carry. Will something speak to how I am feeling? Will something address my anxiety, my overwhelm, my trying to “keep up.” But, not only address it or speak to it, rescue me from it?

“As I am addressed by the gospel, I hear anew that possibility overwhelms necessity in my life.”—Pg. 10

I love that word choice! “Possibility overwhelms necessity.” Imagine if we heard something like this week in and week out!

“The preacher renders a world not known in advance. It requires no great cleverness to speak such a world, but it requires closeness to those texts that know secrets that mediate life. These texts voice life that is given nowhere else. The preaching moment is a moment for the gift of God's life in the midst of our tired alienation. For this the church and indeed the world waits. They wait, until, finally the poet comes, until finally the poet comes.”—Pg. 41

Think of how spot on this is for our current lives, lives replete with loneliness and exhaustion, all from a text published in 1989. We need to hear something that pulls us from our “tired alienation.” It is a creative, poetic act, yet preaching requires “no great cleverness.” Rather, it needs “closeness to those texts that know secrets that mediate life.”

“When that speech of God's fidelity, sovereignty, and presence is uttered again, the world is changed. The silence of God has been oppressive, but somehow we had not noticed. We imagined that we were the children of modernity: liberated, autonomous, on our own. We thought the speech of this other one had been banished and with good riddance. But the ideology of autonomy is not sufficient. It leads eventually to alienation, isolation, and rage. In our autonomous silence, we deny our true selves, created as we are, for conversation, communion, trust, and yielding. In the salvation oracle, the speech of life is sounded from the other side. The God who has been silent is evoked back into conversation.” —Pg. 65

Ummm, wow. Please go back and read that quote again. Slowly. It’s gold.

“In their yet-to-be-formed condition, seminarians largely preach sermons filled with "ought" and "must" and "should." I have found myself growing in resistance to such sermons that purport to speak God's command. I have found myself discovering that mostly I do not need more advice, but strength.”—Pg 84

This, of course, is for all of us, and perhaps especially regarding what we say to ourselves. “I really should do x.” Or “I really mustn’t do y.” We already have that going on in our heads, as if giving ourself advice and then coming down on ourselves if we don’t actually follow it. But, indeed, we need more strength, and we need a word from outside of ourselves to supply it.

And to close, three long-ish quotes all about the imagination. I love it! I’ve put a few of my favourite phrases in bold.

“If we wish to have transformed obedience (i.e., more faithful, responsive listening), then we must be summoned to an alternative imagination, in order that we may imagine the world and ourselves differently. The link of obedience to imagination suggests that the toughness of ethics depends on poetic, artistic speech as the only speech that can evoke transformed listening. Even concerning ethics, "finally comes the poet." It is poetic invitation that holds the only chance of changed behavior, a point understood and practiced by Jesus in his parables, which had such ethical bite, but such artistic delicacy.”—Pg. 85

“The sermon is not normally the place for concrete moral admonition, because such admonition will only enhance the partisan distortion, either in agreement or disagreement, rather than feed the imagination. Nor is the sermon the place for concrete instruction about public policy. Concreteness about policy questions, which is so crucial to the church, takes place more effectively in other contexts. The sermon is the place where the church is freed to imagine what it would be like to be intentional about mission and to embrace in our imagination acts of discipleship that we are not yet ready to accept in practice.”—Pg. 88

“The event of preaching is an event in transformed imagination. Poets, in the moment of preaching, are permitted to perceive and voice the world differently, to dare a new phrase, a new picture, a fresh juxtaposition of matters long known. Poets are authorized to invite a new conversation, with new voices sounded, new hearings possible. The new conversation may end in freedom to trust and courage to relinquish. The new conversation, on which our very lives depend, requires a poet and not a moralist. Because finally church people are like other people; we are not changed by new rules. The deep places in our lives —places of resistance and embrace-are not ultimately reached by instruction. Those places of resistance and embrace are reached only by stories, by images, metaphors, and phrases that line out the world differently, apart from our fear and hurt. The reflection that comes from the poet requires playfulness, imagination, and interpretation.”—Pg. 109-110

Do any of the quotes I’ve shared here resonate with you?