and then you - walter brueggemann

We arrange our lives as best we can,

to keep your holiness at bay,

with our pieties,

our doctrines,

our liturgies,

our moralities,

our secret ideologies,

Safe, virtuous, settled.

And then you –

you and your dreams,

you and your visions,

you and your purposes,

you and your commands,

you and our neighbours.

We find your holiness not at bay,

but probing, pervading,

insisting, demanding.

And we yield, sometimes gladly,

sometimes resentfully,

sometimes late…or soon.

We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.

We are your creatures met by your holiness,

by your holiness made our true selves.

And we yield. Amen.

This is the first of a collection of prayers by Walter Brueggemann from a book called Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. What is so remarkable about these prayers is that they were uttered by Brueggemann before his seminary class; the lecturer humbly committing himself and his students to God.

Edwin Searcy the editor of Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth makes the following comment:
'The care that Brueggemann gives to his prayers testifies to the crucial importance that he places on the living covenantal conversation. For him biblical texts offer the mother tongue of the divine-human conversation. In his prayers for class and for worship, Brueggemann speaks his mother tongue of praise and confession, lament and gratitude, despair and faithfulness. Listening to his practiced voice we rediscover ancient ways of speaking honestly before God.'

Bruggemann, reflecting on a life spent in teaching, identifies something crucial that those of us who are involved in theological education and training for ministry constantly need to remember:
'The church at prayer is the only adequate matrix for theological education.'

And Then You is a prayer that I read again today and it spoke to the frustration I feel about so many of the debates and arguments, controversies and petty squabbles that we get caught up in as the church. God calls us to yield before him in awe and reverence, humbled by his holiness and grace.