Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent
    A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent
    A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent
    Ebook113 pages2 hours

    A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent

    By Walter Brueggemann

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Lent recalls times of wilderness and wandering, from newly freed Hebrew slaves in exile to Jesus' temptation in the desert. God has always called people out of their safe, walled cities into uncomfortable places, revealing paths they would never have chosen. Despite our culture of self-indulgence, we too are called to walk an alternative pathâ€"one of humility, justice, and peace. Walter Brueggemann's thought-provoking reflections for the season of Lent invite us to consider the challenging, beautiful life that comes with walking the way of grace.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestminster John Knox Press
    Release dateDec 15, 2016
    ISBN9781611647877
    A Way other than Our Own: Devotions for Lent
    Author

    Walter Brueggemann

    Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of dozens of books, including Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out, and Truth and Hope: Essays for a Perilous Age.

    Read more from Walter Brueggemann

    Related to A Way other than Our Own

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Maundy Thursday, April 14

      Feb 16, 2022

      AS A VOCALIST, I HAVE many favorite hymns: “Be Thou My Vision,” “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” and “The Love of God.” All hold deep meaning for me. They lift my spirits when I sing them. Recently I was surprised to learn the definition of the word hym

      1 min read

    • Article

      Facts Of Life

      Mar 21, 2021

      Facts Of Life
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Rebel Evangelical

      Aug 23, 2019

      The Rebel Evangelical
      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Jun 24, 2019

      I am truly saddened to read that your computer systems were hacked. I wanted to say thank you for your magazine. The best part, the peace in my day (every day) is when I sit down at night to read my Bible and the articles that you publish. It is my s

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Best Time to Share the Gospel

      Nov 19, 2021

      “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 Wow, it’s almost Christmas aga

      2 min read

    • Article

      Women Of Grace

      Oct 21, 2019

      Many who read the above scripture are usually quick to grab the promises of prisons shaking, stubborn doors opening, and chains falling away. However, upon deeper study of this scripture, it is evident that the “Suddenly” in verse 26 was a direct res

      3 min read

    • Article

      Irresistible Grace

      Feb 10, 2023

      In his book Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes an insight about divine mercy that particularly resonates with my own experience. I suspect it may also resonate with yours. Stories of how people come to Christ are as unique as the individuals that

      3 min read

    • Article

      AGENTS OF Change

      Apr 13, 2020

      What on earth is a Reformational church? The Reformational church is God’s agent of constant change from glory to glory, conforming to the image of His Son. That’s why we are straightening and aligning the church to what Jesus intended in the first p

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Guest At The Table

      Aug 7, 2018

      The 3-year-old son of a rabbi who's visiting this obscure corner of the diaspora already stands tall and straight -- like the proper mensch he is becoming, complete with skullcap, earlocks and a blue-and-white fringed garment in accordance with the b

      2 min read

    • Article

      A New Day Of Pentecost Part VI

      May 19, 2023

      The scripture above records the final words of Jesus Christ to His disciples before He was taken up into a cloud. One of His last promises was that the Father would send the Holy Spirit, and the baptism of the Spirit would enable the disciples to acc

      2 min read

    • Article

      Happy New Year

      Sep 29, 2017

      I'm on probation these days. For it's that time of year when Jews put themselves on trial before the High Judge, so I write today's column from the dock, being my own accuser and, at the end of these Ten Days of Repentance, my own defense attorney. E

      4 min read

    • Article

      An Apex of Babble

      Mar 6, 2019

      An Apex of Babble
      13 min read

    • Article

      Radiance

      Dec 30, 2022

      Radiance
      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Aug 19, 2019

      Thank you for your wonderfully illustrated Biblical series of articles that you regularly publish. I find that I can’t concentrate like I used to, and love the short, precise, and factual articles. I have learnt so much from reading them. I was fasci

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters To The Editor

      Dec 30, 2019

      Letters To The Editor
      6 min read

    • Article

      What Time Is It?

      Aug 27, 2021

      South Africa has recently endured a traumatic few weeks, where the nation has been found in the balance… Many have faced the outbreak of a third wave of the coronavirus – confronted by trauma, stress, fear, and death. This dire situation brought me t

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Way other than Our Own

    5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      “ many of us stand alongside Nicodemus in our bewilderment and in our urging and in our gnawing. Like Nicodemus, honor the gnaw in your life. Go. Seek.” - Walter Brueggemann

    Book preview

    A Way other than Our Own - Walter Brueggemann

    Floyd

    Ash Wednesday

    An Old Identity Made New

    Seek the LORD while he may be found,

    call upon him while he is near;

    let the wicked forsake their way,

    and the unrighteous their thoughts;

    let them return to the LORD, that he may have

    mercy on them,

    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

    —Isaiah 55:6–7

    These verses are a familiar call to worship or a call to repentance, not a bad accent for Lent. The face of God shown here is of a Lord near at hand, ready to forgive, a God of grace . But this is a God to whom a turn must be made, a God of demand , a God of demand ready to be a God of grace . . . not just hard demand, not just easy grace, but grace and demand, the way all serious relationships work.

    The imperative is around four verbs, seek, call, forsake, return, good Lenten verbs. But this is not about generic repentance for generic sin. I believe, rather, the sin addressed concerns for Jews too eager to become Babylonians, too easy to compromise Jewish identity, Jewish faith, Jewish discipline—in order to get along in a Babylonian empire that had faith in other gods with other disciplines. The imperatives are summons to come back to an original identity, an elemental discipline, a primal faith.

    I suggest, moreover, that these are just about the right imperatives for Lent among us Christians. For I believe the crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.

    The good news for the church is that nobody, liberal or conservative, has high ground. The hard news is that the Lenten prerequisite for mercy and pardon is to ponder again the initial identity of baptism . . . child of the promise, . . . to live a life worthy of our calling, worthy of our calling in the face of false patriotism; overheated consumerism; easy, conventional violence; and limitless acquisitiveness. Since these forces and seductions are all around us, we have much to ponder in Lent about our baptismal identity.

    Lent is a time to consider again our easy, conventional compromises and see again about discipline, obedience, and glad identity. And the climax of these verses:

    that he may have mercy . . .

    for he will abundantly pardon.

    Isa. 55:7

    The word to the compromised deportees is that God’s face of pardon and mercy is turned exactly to the ones who reengage an identity of faith.

    God of grace and demand, you challenge us to reclaim our baptismal identity as those whose lives are built on your call and your promises—not on the easy, seductive forces around us. Stir our hearts that we may engage your transforming word anew and rediscover its power to save. Amen.

    First Thursday of Lent

    On the Road Again

    I lift up my eyes to the hills—

    from where will my help come?

    My help comes from the LORD,

    who made heaven and earth.

    —Psalm 121:1–2

    We are on the road again! As followers of Jesus, we are on the road again in Lent, walking the way of obedience to Jerusalem for the big showdown with the authorities of church and state. It turns out, every time, to be a hazardous journey, full of toils and snares, potholes and adversaries, ending in a rigged trial. But women and men of faith are always on the road again, departing safe places, running risks, and hoping for well-being on the journey.

    The defining journey of biblical faith begins in the departure of Abraham and Sarah back in the book of Genesis. They were dispatched by God to leave their safe place, to go to a new land yet to be given, to get a new name, to be blessed by God, and to be a blessing to the others around them. They went! And their family, generation after generation, has gone. And we, finally in their wake, must also travel beyond safe places to the gifted end that God intends, hopefully to be blessed and a blessing on the way.

    And if we ponder our destination, perhaps it is to be to the neighborhood of shalom, the neighborhood of shared resources, of inclusive politics, of random acts of hospitality and intentional acts of justice, of fearless neighborliness that is not propelled by greed or anxiety or excessive self-preoccupation.

    Psalm 121 is designed exactly for travelers who face a demanding, risky journey. It is a psalm that has been used over and over by travelers and now is available for us. This psalm is an assurance and an affirmation that the journey we now undertake is not by ourselves alone. We are surrounded on the way by the God of all trust, the God who kept Abraham and Sarah safely, the one who walked all the way to Jerusalem with Jesus, all the way to Friday and on through to Sunday.

    I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious antineighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.

    Self-giving God, call us to walk the road of newness—a new self, a new society, a new world, one neighbor at a time. May we have traveling mercies this Lenten season. Amen.

    First Friday of Lent

    A New Way of Being

    in the World

    And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

    —Matthew 6:27

    Lent is a time when we ask about the meaning of repentance. Lent could be a time not when we think about all the sin and suffering and self-denial that have been traditional with us, but when we ask in fresh ways what the people clustered around Jesus make of the world they are in. I put the question this way: Jesus affirmed that it is possible to be in the world in a new way, to be present to the people and problems around us with some newness and freshness.

    The usual way of being in the world is anxiety, of being pressed and harried and worried, and that in turn leads to a stance of defensiveness and fear and a determination to keep what we have. Anxiety that believes that we best get what we can and keep what we got snowballs on us, and we get caught up in it and don’t know it’s happening.

    Characteristically, Jesus asks a question which doesn’t require an answer because it’s so obvious. It is a question which just stops all our protests and explanations short. You know it well: Which of you, by being anxious, has ever added an inch to your lives?

    I find that a biting, embarrassing question, because of course, it is true. Being defensive and frightened and coveting has never really resulted in any gains. Partly we do it because we don’t know any better

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1