Episode 587: RIP Walter Brueggemann - Voices in my Head (the Rick Lee James Podcast) - Rebroadcast

Welcome back to Voices in My Head, everybody. This is Rick Lee James. I wanted to just give a quick preface to this podcast. As many of you may know, and probably do know quite well, Walter Brueggemann passed away. I had the privilege of getting to know Walter and call him a friend, and first as a, as a podcast guest, but then, um, just we would keep in touch and correspond, and he genuinely was such a a neat person and became not only a person that I would have conversations with about theology and things, but he loved music. And he was kind enough to endorse my song Advent Hymn, which he didn't have to do by any means. But I had such a nice little pull quote from him about how much he appreciated the hymn. And I think he appreciated the theology behind it. And it just meant so much. And it really saddened me. I know that over the last few years, his health had been failing and we weren't able to correspond or get together as much as we had been. And we actually were, uh, he had moved, I, I believe, up north a little further away. Uh, he was in Cincinnati, and then as his health failed, I believe he moved away. And that just, um, made it where we even less were able to correspond. Uh, but I'm, I'm glad I had the chance to get to know him a bit and to laugh with him, to share some meals with him. And so I thought today, in his honor, I would share just this podcast that I did with Walter Brueggemann back in the day. And I didn't realize until I listened to it that it actually was just before I was releasing the music video for Advent Hymn. So it's been, I don't know, 2017, something like that. I can't quite remember, but it's got to be somewhere in that time frame when we recorded this particular conversation. So I hope you enjoy it. Walter Brueggemann has been one of the probably most influential theologians of the 20th century and beyond, and I know he's going to just continue continue to have a great effect on biblical scholarship and theology. So enjoy. Thanks for listening to Voices in My Head.

Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, psychology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show.

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I am here with special guest Walter Brueggemann today, and we are going to have a great discussion about money and possessions in the Bible. Just so you know, we actually started this discussion once and something went haywire with my recording device, so we're gonna start it all over again. We weren't too far in, but I do want to let everybody know who's listening that one week from tomorrow, at least at the time of this recording, on October 21st, I will be releasing the world premiere video of my song Advent Hymn: Watching, Waiting, Longing. It's from my album Hymns, Prayers, and Invitations, and we were So blessed to be able to make this music video with Agape Media out of Dayton, Ohio. And just wanted to let you know that is coming. We are hoping that many churches will be able to use it in their Advent celebrations this year. But be watching at rickleejames.com or on my Facebook pages, Twitter, you know how to find me if you are online. So just be watching on October 21st is when we release that. Well, I am super thrilled to have my guest Walter Brueggemann here together today. I am going to give a very, very quick a bio about him, and then we're going to get into our conversations on his new book, Money and Possessions in the Bible. Walter Brueggemann is surely one of the most influential Bible interpreters of our time. He is author of over 100 books and numerous scholarly articles. He is also a sought-after speaker and just a great lunch companion, as I have found out 2 years running now as we have done this. His newest book is Money and Possessions, and we are going to have a great conversation about that. Today. So the Bible has a lot to say on the topic of money and possessions. I didn't ask you this before, so we'll try this to make it a little more fresh this time since we just started the conversation before. Where do you even begin when you're starting to write a commentary like this?

Well, I had a very hard time with this, with this topic when I agreed to write the book 8 years ago. I I kept it 2 years and I couldn't think what to do, so I turned it back, and then 2 years later they came back and asked me again. So I finally, what I did was to start with the 10th Commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," and I read "Thou shalt not covet" in relationship to the crisis in the Garden of Eden where the word "covet" is usually translated "desired," that the first couple desired the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and so I linked creation to the Sinai Commandment, and then I went from there. Because I think that if you think about money, that the 10th Commandment on coveting probably is the focal point, because coveting or greed is a violation of what the Creator intends for our life in the world. Wow.

All right, well, that sounds like a great place to begin with. So in this book, you have 6 theses that you present as we are looking at, at wealth, money, and possessions from a biblical standpoint. And so I'm just going to start with these 6, and we're going to see where our discussion takes us today. We already know where we're going for at least the first 2 before the recording stopped a moment ago, so So your first thesis is money and possessions are gifts from God, and I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on that and tell us how that is different from maybe the prosperity gospel that is so often preached.

I think that the thesis that they're all gifts from God is an attempt to resist the deep seduction we all face— in an individualistic capitalism that my money is mine, I made it, and I can do what I want to, which is an assumption of self-sufficiency. And obviously the Bible wants everywhere to insist that we are not self-sufficient, but that everything we have and everything we can be is a gift from God. So I think it's grounded in creation that money is a social way of valuing commodities, and obviously all the commodities of worth arise from the generativity of creation, otherwise we wouldn't have them. So I think that thesis wants to contradict the parable of the fool who tore down his barns and built bigger barns because he thought he didn't have enough yet. But he obviously thought if he had enough barns and if he had enough grain, he could be self-sufficient, and the parable wants to refute that. And I think the prosperity gospel is simply a religious palaver about self-sufficiency. So it's an easy self-deception, and what I like to do is to contrast abundance with prosperity because abundance is God's intention that all the neighbors should share the wealth, whereas the prosperity gospel teaches us that my wealth is mine and I don't have any obligations.

So it's sort of like building a neighborhood pool rather than my own personal backyard pool, you know, in some ways. That's right. And I love how you emphasize in in your writing that these things, if they are anything at all to us, they are gifts and not achievements because these are graces if God has given them to us. And so that's a wonderful emphasis. And that if we forget the giver of all good gifts, that the gifts themselves are sure to turn into distortions of what they were intended to be.

I think that's right. I think that in the manna story, for example, when they tried to store up manna, It rotted on them and smelled bad. Right. That's what happens.

A pretty good analogy for our wealth so often.

I think so.

Well, your second thesis is that money and possessions are received as rewards for obedience. Again, that could, could be taken the wrong way if we're not careful. So I want to give you a chance to elaborate a little bit more on that point too, that money and possessions are received as rewards for obedience.

Well, this is a strong trajectory in the Bible that's rooted in the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses says if you obey God you'll prosper, and if you don't, you won't. It's echoed in the book of Proverbs that if you work hard you'll come out well, otherwise you're a fool. And as you mentioned, in Psalm 1, the same thing. If you keep the Torah, you'll be like a tree planted by living water and all that. So it is a strong strand in the Bible, but it runs into trouble when you get to the Book of Job, because Job's life story is that he kept all the commandments and it didn't work for him. And so the big crisis for that kind of theology is that our experience simply teaches us that it's not true. It's true most of the time, but it's not true.

Yeah.

And so that leads us to recognize that about money, or about anything, but about money, there's no, there's no single teaching in the Bible.

Yeah.

That what you get is a reflection of the come from many different people's kinds of experience about that. And I think that successful people read the Bible and they gravitate to that proposition until it doesn't work anymore.

Yeah, so if we're not careful, we are the ones that are just the ones building bigger barns and saying, "God has blessed us," where in fact maybe the word blessing means something completely different in Scripture.

Exactly.

So—

Well, at the risk of breaking my recorder again, because I said this before when we were talking, I love that you made the pull of Job in the midst of when you're talking about this, because if we aren't careful, we can as Christians, and we have so often, just taken something that's written in the Bible and said, well, that's it, end of story. But as we were talking again a few minutes ago, I had said that isn't the understanding more from a Jewish perspective when you approach Scripture, that Scripture is something to be grappled with and questioned and kind of argued about and mulled over and really wrestled with. And so it's not like there's necessarily always this, okay, it says that, so that has to be true and there's no other answer, even if everything in the world proves it wrong, you know.

I think that's exactly right. The rabbis always understood that. The rabbis understood that every time you look at a text, you can turn it and see a different angle, or every time you read a text, you can immediately find another text that says something different about that. Yeah. So what the Jewish interpretive tradition does is to resist drawing final conclusions, and as you were pointing out, it's a great temptation among Christians to think that texts have absolute meanings, and when you get to that absolute meaning, then you can quit thinking. And the Jewish tradition understands you can't ever quit thinking about these texts.

And I think it's, you know, when you talk about the absolute meaning, which we struggle with, religious language, you have to use metaphors to talk about God and to talk about things, and we are so bad in our culture of not understanding that certain things are metaphors in Scripture. They, they don't necessarily encapsulate every single possible scenario in it, but they're, they're a good way of— a good starting point and a way to maybe speak about God. So even in a sense, when we talk about this money and possessions that I know our listeners are probably struggling with, I think we, we run into that sometimes. These are, these are good ways to discuss it, but we have to make room for the fact that life doesn't always work that way.

That's exactly right. And the corrective in using metaphors is to have a great pluralism of metaphors that keep correcting each other.

Yeah.

Because if you just settle on a very narrow range of metaphors, then they feel like descriptions rather than metaphors.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like the Bible's doing a lot of that. I feel like one book's fighting with the other a lot of times, you know. And as a corrective, as a way of really living this out together and helping us to decide what it means. I think we see it throughout church history. There wouldn't have been so many councils and so many— That's right.

So many church fights.

Yeah, exactly. We're still trying to figure it out. Well, let's move on to your third thesis, which is money and possessions belong to God and are held in trust by human persons in the community. And I wonder if you could elaborate on that.

Well, that's kind of an extension of the first one. The first thesis, I suppose our familiar image for that is the steward or the household manager. The steward does not own the stuff, but he has to report to the owner and therefore has an obligation to manage well. A couple Sundays ago in the lectionary we had the parable of the dishonest steward who cooked the books for the sake of his future, right? And, and I think that means that while the steward makes some proximate decisions about the management of money, that the big long-term policy decisions about money are not made by the steward but are made by the owner, that is God. And so whatever, whatever we think about money is in the context of what we think we know about God's will for money, which is not subject to our approval or disapproval. And then we have, we have to talk about what What is the will of the Creator God about money that maybe comes out somewhat differently than the way I myself would decide to do it if I had complete autonomy about it, which I don't.

And you talk about in the book some too that this role of a steward, excuse me, it's the same role assigned to the human couple in Genesis 1:28 concerning having dominion, and that the steward is not the owner but is accountable to the owner for proper management. Exactly. So we have this Adam and Eve couple that come on the scene. A few of our listeners have heard of them. And, you know, they're told really to be stewards of what I've given. And it's like the misuse of that is what leads them down the bad path.

That's exactly right. And as you know, that verse is really important when we think about the environmental crisis.

Sure.

That the earth needs to be cared for according to the will of the Creator.

And not exploited, but cared for. That's an important distinction.

That's right.

So I think what we're really saying here is vote for Trump, right? No, I'm just kidding. No, I'm just kidding. I had to throw that in. We're so close to the elections. I had to just, you know, as we talk about money and possessions, it's kind of hard not to. No, let's, let's move on to— before I get into too much trouble with listeners here, um, the fourth thesis of the book. And, and that was an excellent point, by the way, about the stewardship that's involved there. Uh, your fourth thesis though is that money and possessions are sources of social justice. And for whatever reason, social justice almost seems like a bad word to many Christians these days. I'm not quite sure why that is.

Yeah.

But I wonder if you could elaborate on that for us a little bit more.

Well, I think two things about biblical teaching on social justice. One is that the haves and the have-nots are bound in a common destiny, and the haves are not free to conduct their life as though they weren't in solidarity with the have-nots. And the other teaching, it seems to me, is that everybody who lives is a member of the community that is entitled to a viable existence. And that entitlement is intrinsic to their existence, so we don't get to vote on it.

Right.

In the Old Testament, I think the classic examples of the have-nots are the the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor. It keeps repeating those four, and then that comes to expression in the New Testament, particularly in Matthew 25, about I was in prison, and I was homeless, and I was without food. So what the parable does is to go down the list of the have-nots and say that they are the place where Christ dwells. So that notion of communal solidarity is defining, and the basic polemics of the prophets in the Old Testament are basically a critique of powerful elite people who thought that they were not in solidarity with the powerless and the vulnerable.

This is gonna seem very random with what you have just said, but have you ever read the novel The Exorcist before?

I saw the movie.

You saw the movie? It's very close. It actually is very close to the book, but it was written by a Catholic author named Peter Blatty, and the book is actually considered sort of a faith classic, and that actually technically is is one of the first big-budget faith-based films that we have, believe it or not. You know, it's kind of interesting to think of it in that way. But I recently read the book for another discussion I'm hoping to have on another podcast, and what you said is actually something that in, in the beginning of the book the author says. This quote is, "What we give to the poor is what we take with us when we die." Wow. Yeah, and I just thought that was so powerful And obviously you don't get that from the movie.

No, you certainly don't.

But there's certainly a struggle in that book, in that novelization of a person who's struggling with faith and in the midst of their struggle will not allow himself to not be working with the poor and the disenfranchised. And it's even why he ends up sort of in that demonic place trying to cast that out of the poor girl that's a part of the story. I always have, well, always since I've read it, I've found that quote to be just so interesting and so powerful with what you were just describing, that what we give to the poor is what we take with us when we die. Yeah, it's a really, really good quote. So when we talk about money and possessions as social justice, I think we can see that, especially from the aspect of the Torah, that money and possessions are actually for the well-being of neighbors, and especially the neighbors who do not have. And we are in such a critical moment as a nation that, let's just face it, we are the haves. I mean, we are not necessarily the good guy of the biblical story in this country. We always want to read it like, oh, we're always, we're the good ones, we're the ones that God blessed. But in fact, you know, I have friends that are working with the refugee crisis. One in particular, Brandon Sipes, who you've met before, he actually is working with Nazarene Compassionate Ministries and has found himself in different places around the world with refugees and is desperately calling Christians saying, "They need help. They are our neighbors. They are the neighbors that do not have." We need to not allow fear of maybe one of them in the in the midst as a terrorist to stop us from our obligation to help our neighbors and our needy. And it's even a biblical mandate that we can't turn from in some way.

My experience is that what people love to do is to have a theoretical argument about socialism and capitalism. And that is a dead end. The Christian question, the biblical question is, "What does my neighbor have to have to live?" Does my neighbor need healthcare? Does my neighbor need housing? Does my neighbor need food? And so on. And if we focus on the neighbor question, it would lead us not only to different practices, but it would lead us to different policies. And so the centrality of the neighbor to money questions is really urgent in the gospel.

Well, I think it was Shane Claiborne that I heard say one time, because he's a person that lives very simply in community, kind of lives day to day on the kindness of others so that he can give to others. And I think it was him that said, "We are not against having good things, but in order for us to have good things, we don't want others to go without." And so what we want is for everybody to have those good things together, and let's all have them together. And that's a— I think that's a pretty good view of where the Bible would have us to take. You know, we want everyone to enjoy, and so far be it from us if our having those good things keep others from having anything. That's exactly right. Yep. Well, this is a good conversation. We're just flying through these points. We're going to have to go back and have a second lunch here in a minute. Not so bad. But your fifth thesis is that money and possession Provisions are to be shared in a neighborly way, which is, I mean, all these are a little bit similar to the ones before them. But you talk about all members of the community are entitled to the wherewithal for a viable life of security, dignity, and flourishing. And maybe you could talk to us some about how Jesus echoes this.

Well, Jesus, yes, that's exactly to the point. Jesus kept raising the question about who is my neighbor. And, um, the, the, the Old Testament gets as far as to love your neighbor in Leviticus. What Jesus does in the Sermon on the Mount, he extends that to say love your enemy, so that Jesus is really making the argument that all the other people are our neighbors. And they are all entitled to share the good things that we have. And I think that in the New Testament, the, the most dramatic, uh, expansive view of neighborliness was the decision of the early church in the book of Acts to admit Gentiles. What that did was to expand neighborliness beyond any sense of tribalism. And the more anxious we are, since we now live in a very anxious time, the more anxious we are, the more we want to limit neighborliness to our tribe or to people like us. And the gospel is an incredible push that we see that people who are unlike us really are our neighbors and need to be treated that way.

It's interesting in the political climate too that you're talking about the neighbors and that we can't just, as followers of Jesus, have this focus on us. I heard a certain politician who I already mentioned once. I loathe to mention him Rick Lee James again in this moment, but on the way up here I was listening to the radio and they were playing one of his clips about America first, America only, and the rest of the world, if we have any left over, we'll take care of them. And there was the other side making the point, we want you to know around the world we're going to keep our promises. We aren't going to leave you high and dry. And it leaves you with this interesting dichotomy. In the political world of like, which one really sounds more like Jesus, you know, in that sense. And I'm not going to claim that either of them are like Jesus or that any of us are really as much as we should be. But it's at least a cautionary— should I call it parable— when I hear things like that, of which side as a believer are you going to fall down on just in your life? Because we can't have that attitude of, this is only my house, and these are only my things, and even though the next-door neighbor has a child that is starving to death, that's too bad. We have an abundance of food that they don't have, but it's mine.

That's right.

You know, and so I think it's just a cautionary tale for us to look closely at Jesus because as believers, as Christians, Jesus is our model. Not Samson, not King Saul, not so many other people that are throughout Scripture, or Tiglath-Pileser, not our model. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more about Tiglath in a minute, but we'll move on.

I just want to say, when you quote Trump about America only, America first, it sounds It's different scope, but it sounds strangely like George Wallace's segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. Trump's mantra is not quite that small, but it's the same mindset that keeps the stuff for us to the exclusion of them, and it's a very anti-gospel Or as Michael Gunger says in one of his songs, it's not us or them, it's us for them.

Yeah, very much so.

Well, good stuff.

Well, Michael Gunger, if you're listening, there you go. Walter Brueggemann and I are talking about you. So anyway, so your fifth point was money and possessions are to be shared in a neighborly way. And I think that that really does echo Jesus. And you said something a few a few moments ago too on the last point about the haves and the have-nots are heading the same direction. And we do see that in the story of the sheep and the goats with Jesus. I mean, everybody's heading to the same end together, right? And it seems like the only difference is what they did or did not do, you know, in the way that God responds to them in the end of that story. So lots to take in and think about when it comes to money and possessions. Well, we are already up to your 6th thesis. It's unbelievable we've gotten here already. We almost did it twice because of Rick Lee James. But your 6th thesis is that money and possessions are not just good to be used by the community, but that money and possessions are seductions that lead to idolatry as well. So it's interesting that they can sort of be a both/and.

That's right.

I think that's right. And maybe unpack that a little bit.

Well, I think the, the, uh, the quintessential story is the golden calf narrative in Exodus 32. Uh, it probably is the case that the word we translate calf is a bull, which means great virility. And if you put money and virility together, uh, it's very important that the golden bull is the icon that sits out in front of Wall Street. And I think that in our society, the NFL is the new liturgy of the Golden Bull. It's all about money and violence and virility. Wow. So I think that stuff comes together all in the service of self-sufficiency. I think, and incidentally, in Ephesians and Colossians, when the writer names the things that contradict the gospel, he has a catalog of them. In both letters it says greed, parentheses, which is idolatry. So early on they were identifying that kind of greed. Yeah, it's very anti- God.

And you point out too, and I think this is a pretty awesome way, that money and possessions, they aren't inanimate objects. They aren't just like things that sit there. It's almost like love is a verb in the Bible. It's almost like these money and possessions have this verb-type action function as well, as to where they're forces of desire that they can evoke lust or they can evoke love in a certain way. That compels devotion and servitude. Maybe talk to us just a minute about the fact that like silver and gold are not innocent, like inanimate objects.

The author who has understood this best is Jacques Ellul, French sociologist. He's written a book about money, and what he says is that money is capable of being an active demonic force that talks us out of our life. So it's not an inanimate object, but it really is— you said it rightly, I think— it has verbal capacity that talks us out of our life. And I think much of the Bible attests that. In the dismal narrative in Joshua 7, I think it is, of an Akan where he covets the silver and withholds it from the community and causes a great defeat. And he describes how he was so attracted to the silver that he simply couldn't resist it. And I think we know about that in our monetized society.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

Well, it's all, It's all very interesting in that whole parallel. And I don't know that I, until I read what you'd written, had ever thought of money and possessions in that way as something we live in. And I told you just a couple days ago, I was in Chicago at Olivet University. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure of meeting a theologian named Constance Cherry before, but she's written a series of books. One of them is The Worship Architect. And just in our conversation, she made reference to a book, and my brain's not very good, I can't remember things sometimes. I think I wrote it down, but she was telling us about a book she read that's about idols, and this book, the basic thesis of the book is that not only do idols lead us to destruction, but when we worship them, we start to look like them in some ways too. And I think this goes right along with what you're talking about, these are not like morally neutral things, money and possessions. These are things that actually— I know it's a weird stretch, but it is October, we're near Halloween, so that Exorcist analogy again. I wonder if at times we don't— we're not thinking about like demon possession and things, but we don't often think that maybe sometimes the things that we are being possessed by are things that are just as dangerous.

That's right.

That just look differently.

The specific text that relates to what Constantine said, I've just been working on Psalm 115, describes idols as powerless. They have hands but cannot feel, they have ears but cannot— goes through all that. And then the next verse says, and those who worship them will be will become like them, will become powerless and inept, and so on. So I, I think the, the argument is a really important one, that we do become like what we worship. Wow.

Yeah, that's pretty powerful. So on the other hand of that, on the positive, imagine if we really worshiped the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together as the body of Christ. Maybe we really do start begin to look like the other side of it too. That we actually believe— it's why I'm a believer, is I believe that God actually does transform lives and bring something new and wonderful from them. And so I don't start from a standpoint of that we are all just so far gone there's no hope. Hope for us. And as maybe Calvin would describe at times, you know, we're all just dung, but we get covered by snow and then we're better. I really do think that the redemption of God comes to us, and if we start out as dung, we get transformed into something better somehow, you know. And so that's why it's all the more important that we become people of worship and that we become people who worship properly. Now, a few minutes ago, and I really do think this this connects to money and possession. We were talking at lunch about the Eucharist and this great thanksgiving part of our service.

Right.

And we were talking about how that has been lost in so many of our congregations as the focal point of worship, where from the earliest times it actually was what made our worship Christian, the fact that we did the Eucharist. And so often during that moment at the conclusion of a service when we got to the climax, it was at that moment of thanksgiving where we received that offerings were also received to give to others. And I think in many ways our neglect of the Eucharist, our receiving from the Lord at his table, has also led to the neglect of the poor where we allow others to receive from us that are in need. I wonder if you have anything just to say on that about the matter?

Well, I think what you said is exactly right. That is, it is a cluster and a convergence of ideas of God's abundance, of our generosity, so that the food that is represented at the table is the food that feeds the neighborhood. And we've broken that connection, and the connection between them is gratitude. So we are grateful at the table. So the word Eucharist means thanks, and it is out of gratitude that we gladly share food, bread, with people who are in need.

Yeah.

So, uh, those, those connections are really important.

Yeah. And, and so almost when we're— if we expand the Lord's Prayer a little bit, when we say give us this day our daily bread, we are also saying provide for the poor among us.

That's right.

It's a beautiful way to put it. And since we're in this time of year, I don't want to get too far into like political conversation, but I think it does have some relevance in what we're talking about. One way of when we say the Lord's Prayer and we get to that part that says thy kingdom come, thy will be done, we are in a sense saying God's government come. God's politics be done on earth as it is in heaven. I wonder if we could just talk for a couple minutes about the idea, because I really do think this has been lost on us in the church in North America especially. I can't speak so much from around the world, but I think we have a hard time understanding that the kingdom of God is a different politic altogether from like the politics of America. That we, we, we put so much stock into, like, for instance, right now, who the next president's gonna be. And I feel like everyone is sort of dissatisfied with the choices that we have. And so often I hear despair from Christians about that, and it makes me wonder, do we really understand what the kingdom of God is in the midst of that? Because no matter who's gonna be elected, that doesn't change the way we live., and it doesn't change who ultimately our ruler is in the midst of all that. I wonder, what are maybe some thoughts you have?

I suggested in my book that Jesus' use of the phrase Kingdom of God really means a new neighborly economy. So in Mark, when he— his first utterance is, "The Kingdom of God is at hand, repent," I think it means, uh, quit participating in the economy of the Roman Empire, which is an economy of greed. And I think he called his disciples to disengage from that anti-neighborly economic practice for the sake of an alternative economic practice. So it's very important, I think, to recognize that Jesus did not get executed by the Roman Empire the Roman Empire because he was a nice man. He got executed by the Roman Empire because he was a threat to the way the political economy was working, and he introduced an alternative. So I think there isn't any ground for despair among us, but we have to recognize that right now, right where we are, We can be practitioners of an alternative neighborly economy that has all kinds of public political implications, and I think that's what we need to be working through now given where our society is.

Yeah, so what I'm really trying to say is, who you voting for? No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding.

No.

I think, as you and I were saying earlier, Hillary is greatly compromised about things, no doubt, but there is also no doubt that she is committed to neighborly practice to a much greater extent than what's-his-name.

Yeah, what's-his-name, anyways. Well, and I just, again, I just think that the Again, no matter who is elected, I said this morning on a post that I made, I said, I'll give you my prediction for November 9th. Jesus is Lord. Hillary never will be. Trump never will be. Jesus always will be. And I think we have to keep that in mind no matter who Caesar is. We only, as I've heard it said before, we only know who Pilate is because of Jesus. You know, there's a sense in which the great Caesars and the great rulers of the world have come and gone and we've forgotten them many times over. That's right.

Or in the Old Testament, we don't even know Pharaoh's name.

Yeah, very true. Now, before we end this conversation, now David Dault texted me actually while we were talking. He may have in fact been the one that messed up our recording. I'm not sure, but your former student David Dault, we'll blame it on him. Him one way or the other. He wanted me to ask you about Tiglath-Pileser, all right? Because he was one of your students, obviously. And by the way, I should mention David Dalt has a wonderful podcast, and they're getting a lot of play actually on NPR in certain places. It's called Things Not Seen, and it's a very good show. But he did— when I was talking to him, because he's literally writing the book on you right now, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit of the story of Tiglath-Pileser and maybe why there is some relevance to his story for us to keep in mind today.

Well, Tiglath-Pileser was the greatest of the Assyrian monarchs who was very expansive in the 8th century, which means during the time of Isaiah, and his empire constituted a great brutal threat to the, to the states of northern Israel and Judah. And he was confronted by the prophet Isaiah— not directly confronted, right— but what Isaiah did was to invite Hezekiah, the king in Jerusalem, to act out of faith in Yahweh. Yahweh rather than out of fear of Tiglath-Pileser. So Tiglath-Pileser summoned Israel to this great either/or to decide whether the Assyrian gods or Yahweh, the God of Moses, was really God. And I think that we are summoned to that same kind of either/or. I doubt whether David Dalt knew too much about Tiglath-Pileser, but David and I would share the notion that it does roll off your tongue very nicely.

Very good, very good. Well, David has been a new friend and a good friend, so I appreciate him. And you've had a lot of influence on a lot of great people over the years, David being one of them. Patrick Woolsey, and probably numerous people I can't even think of through the years.

I've had a lot of good students.

Well, and I think that they have, you know, I think what you shared with them and the way that you have been a part, through God's help, of shaping people who have learned under you has also helped to shape many other people along the way. And I think it's sort of been out of your intellectual generosity that you've allowed many of us to thrive in our ministries. And so I would, I would be remiss if I didn't take this time on this podcast to thank you for your faithfulness and, and what you have done over the years. There are a lot more lucrative things to do with your life than sit around and think about God, you know, and write about God. But I think you've been a faithful beautiful example of what that means to really wrestle with these texts. And so if I do anything else during this time, I always try to thank my guests, but I especially want to thank you from, from a deep place in my heart with gratitude, even as a songwriter, because you were one of the first people when I was reading your books to reveal to me the idea that, um, oh, there is some artistry to the idea of being prophet, that there really is something poetic about this, that even in, in these little simple songs that I try to write, sometimes we are actually doing prophetic work that is speaking the words of God to people. So all that is to say thank you, and thank you for being so kind and generous. When I first met you, now I have to say, you know, last year I was a little nervous because you never know with theologians sometimes. Sometimes they're a little crabby, you know, but it has been just such a joy. Good. And truly it's been a real honor to get to spend these times with you and keep in touch with you over email. So thank you for your service to the church.

Well, I'm really glad to be with you, and I'm grateful for your ministry and wish you well in it.

Well, thank you so much. Well, Walter Brueggemann, thank you. As I say every week to my guests, but especially this week. Thank you for being one of the voices in my head.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com, follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com/rickleejames. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, it would mean the world to me if you were to leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction. May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore.

Amen.