Land Place as Gift Promise Cha

In The Land, Walter Brueggemann consistently pushes one point: that "The Bible ... is primarily concerned with the issue of being displaced and yearning for a place" (2). Through the stories it tells about the relationship between Israel and the land, the Bible is concerned with laying out a vision of how and how not to be in the land. This book is loaded with pathos, reminding us of how the Bible witnesses to God's intense longing for his creation to live into the vibrant, harmonious relationships for which he destined it. Brueggemann well articulates the Bible's ideal of the Land as an avenue through which grace intervenes upon the fallen state of creation. Right relationship with the land begins with Yahweh's call to the land, for the means of acquisition is definitive for the character of the interaction with the land once occupation takes place. This shows up of course in the Abraham narrative, but is echoed throughout the text as the people of God are continually called to leave the land of their own establishment (which is slavery), embrace exile/wilderness, and receive that land which is Yahweh's gift. It is obedience and trust in this word from Yahweh that enables one to receive land as it was created to be given. Any other means of land acquisition is deemed illegitimate by Torah. Brueggemann goes on to describe right relationship with the land once occupation has occurred. In fact, I shouldn't use the word "occupation," for it implies a sort of living that Brueggemann's reading of the text adamantly opposes - one that views the land as a thing to be used and abused if necessary. Even "use" gets it wrong, for that would imply that the land belonged to Israel, which it certainly does not. The land is Yahweh's, and it is a gift in a peculiar sense, namely that there has been no transfer in ownership. Rather, the gift is the permission he gives to live there. The gift is the fruitfulness he brings from it. The gift is a safety that wasn't earned, a city that was built by another, protected by another. The gift is an existence in which need not be defended or fought for. Remaining in the land is not a matter of defense or alliance, but of obedience to Torah. And it is this life of obedience that is true liberty. More than simply not being subject to oppressors, "Exodus is about freedom ... in the good land under the good word of promise" (27). Yet it is in the Land that the Israelites face the greatest temptation: to believe that their lives can be blessed by the work of their own hands. Always in the wilderness,Israel was forced into dependency, trust, and hope in Yahweh as the sole provider for them. To counter this are the institutes of Torah, a memory giving definition to the community in a way that affirms their peculiar identity as a people whose very existence is a gift. It is a bulwark against a belief that better management1, denial of justice to the poor, etc., will lead to productivity. The only true

Though this may be the best of Walter Brueggemann's many books, it is not a work for the faint of heart. Brueggemann's prose sometimes seems to overtake his meaning. One wonders at times-Brueggemann himself might say-whether there is a surfeit of meaning in this text that eludes immediate penetration, or simply a surplus of words. At least that's how I often feel upon first reading. A virtue of Brueggemann's work is that it invites one back for a second reading and even more. This, I find, is often the moment when one's efforts to capture his line of thought pay off. Because there is a notable homiletic note in much of Brueggemann's prose, he proclaims more often than he explains. The most important observation I can make for a first-time reader of Brueggemann is that one needs to count on reading him more than once. Always, the gems that Brueggemann scatters across the terrain are well worth the labor. His assays in search of the reflection Israel has applied to her sacred texts demonstrate his commitment to the Bible as theological material. One rarely departs a chapter empty-handed, though one sometimes leaves exhausted. An extended preface to the second edition (pp. xi - xxiii) establishes an apologia for what the author considers his methodological naiveté in the first edition. Brueggemann provides a useful sketch of the state of Old Testament theology when he first wrote on the land. Perhaps his most important observation was that the discipline had only recently begun to turn from the `mighty acts of God' pattern of thought often associated with G. Ernest Wright, Harvard's late and eminent Old Testament scholar. A recognition that this intellectual movement-characterized by a search for Israel's distinctives-sometimes played upon false antitheses (myth/history, space/time) was making it possible for scholars to recover the biblical motif of creation and, so, for Brueggemann to speak about the biblical theme of land, even if in not so sophisticated a fashion as he believes is possible some years hence. Brueggemann finds in the land a central organizing motif for Old Testament theology, offering as it does the chance to move beyond existentialist interpretation-individual decisions are important but too, well, individual-and those interpretations abbreviated by the label `mighty acts of God' (`Land as Promise and as Problem', pp. 1-13). The latter notice a serious biblical concern, but fail to take into account the concrete longing for place and the power to hold on to it that runs through the biblical witness. We meet Israel in its wanderings in and out of land. This people certainly knows land as a promise, for it is so often without it. It also knows the problem of keeping it-by purity rather than by power, in Brueggemann's construction-during its monarchic time as a landed nation. In this first of a dozen chapters, Brueggemann makes an important distinction between space and place. Space is essentially empty and often refers to the

Almost always bibliographies for rural ministry include Brueggemann's "The Land." After reading the book, I don't understand why. Brueggemann's observations appear applicable to urban and suburban as well as rural ministries. (Granted, I read an earlier edition of the book. Perhaps, a later edition would clear my confusion.) Brueggemann's insight is in biblical theology, not a particular subset of Christian ministry. Brueggemann uses "the land" as a category of interpretation from Genesis to the ends of the New Testament. Granted, the scope of the book is ambitious, but Brueggemann does a commendable job. I was particularly intrigued in seeing connections between the land as gift, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, and Paul's teaching on grace. Brueggemann's method helps us overcome blind spots in traditional interpretation. Nonetheless, I would not suggest jettisoning more familiar ways of looking at Scripture in favor of "the land." As one who reads the Old Testament through the New, I would have appreciated more emphasis on Christology, Soteriology and their relation to the land. Still, there is plenty of food for thought.Some practical observations. The book is dense. Anyone with merely a cursory knowledge of the Old Testament will find the book a slow read. Moreover, I recommend reading the last chapters first. They lay out where Brueggemann's interpretation is going.