Walter Brueggemann

And finally, they traded themselves so they could eat food.

See, Walter Brueggemann, he's a famous Old Testament scholar, makes a very interesting point about Genesis 41.

He says, Pharaoh introduces the principle of scarcity into the world of economics.

For the first time in the Bible, somebody says, there's not enough.

He needed to put Egypt first.

It's like, okay, that's kind of wise what he's doing.

But back to Walter Brueggemann.

I love Walter Brueggemann.

I'm sure this has come from many other places.

I first heard it from Walter Brueggemann, that in the Preaching Act, there are three parties.

There's the text, the preacher, and the congregation.

The danger is, as I recall what Walter Brueggemann said, is that the preacher takes the text and gangs up against the congregation.

Or as he said once, kind of we use the text like a rolled up newspaper trying to discipline a dog, whap, whap, whap.

The image that has formed my preaching is, it is the preacher and the congregation standing together with the preacher beginning the conversation saying, behold the text, what are we to say about this? And how are we to understand this together? That to me changes the equation that the pastor doesn't need to get up in the pulpit and lead the charge.

And so it's something to be passed on.

passed on um and i think that's something that you know one of my favorite i don't know if you've read much of uh of walter walter brueggemann his old testament scholarship sabbath as resistance has become like a huge um you know uh a huge opportunity kind of to play into what we're talking about, but these two systems of oppressed and oppressor and how scripture has been used to weaponize against certain people groups, it's like there are so many motifs in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the Minor Prophets, the Book of Amos, the judgment against the oppressor.

It's like that Sabbath as resistance and Brueggemann's work there is like, man, there are... there's an institution in the Bible that actually pushes against the enslavement that the world is trying to make the believer fall into.

The capitalist enslavement.

And so I think that, to your point, these systems, these institutions that God has given his people to experience that freedom and that rest, those often go under-highlighted by by the groups that categorically make the bible to be something that is is oppressive right versus liberating

See, this expression shows Jonathan's faith in God, not an attempt to force God's hand, as if that would work anyway.

The late Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, says it like this.

Jonathan is careful not to presume upon the freedom of Yahweh.

Jonathan concludes his invitation by saying, nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.

That's clinical depersonalization.

Okay, now before we progress, I'm going to show you this quote from Walter Brueggemann, and it's very important in the context of the rest of what we're going to talk about.

But he says, "...the Sabbath is an act of resistance against the relentless demands of productivity." So now we can look at scripture through the lens of the nervous system physiology.

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew people spent 400 years under the Pharaoh.

The very first structural boundary that he builds into their covenant society is the Sabbath.

It's the fourth commandment.

Now, going back to our quote from Walter Brueggemann, he writes in Sabbath as Resistance, Sabbath isn't acute suggestion for weakened self-care.

It was a radical, violent, political, and psychological declaration of war against the Egyptian empire living inside their minds.