Truth Speaks to Power Week 2: Moses
Thanks for all your comments and discussion last week! This is a great conversation we’re hosting here.
This week, we’re covering chapter 1: “Truth Speaks to Power: Moses”.
Feel free to comment about and discuss anything you like from this chapter. Here are some possible discussion starters:
- Discuss Brueggemann’s contrast of public/private spirituality (p. 11).
- “…if you have seen one pharaoh, you have seen them all. They all act the same way in their greedy, uncaring, violent self-sufficiency” (p. 17).
- “…the one with the most is the one who is most anxious in irrational ways” (p. 21).
- Discuss Brueggemann’s mandate that the church tell these stories (p. 27).
- What contemporary answers would you give for Brueggemann’s four questions on p. 37?
5 Comments
patty wbk · August 19, 2013 at 8:15 pm
I wonder what the message would sound like if the pastor told the story casting the contemporary church as Pharoah or the colonized Pharisees.
Mary Langer Thompson · August 20, 2013 at 5:03 pm
Interesting, Patty. I don’t think I looked at the Exodus story in quite this way before. I think the Church teaches the message that “God will provide and take care of us,” but the way in which power corrupts is not emphasized, nor, which is evident in this chapter, “If you’ve seen one Pharaoh, you’ve seen them all.” It’s a whole different way of looking at the narrative. We know God used Joseph, but why did it take so long, and why did he kiss up to the Pharaoh? It was ultimately the collective voice of the slaves God listened to.I like the idea that “God hovers around the places.”
Elijah · August 21, 2013 at 5:53 pm
i have 2 questions at this point.
1) “The privatisation of faith” that confined our faith to private sphere in a wholesale retreatr from public issues (pp11) is a spell that church leaders (Pharoah) advocating strongly. Members are very mesmerized by such spell.
How can we wake up from this spell when this spell has worked for a long time?
2) Why would Dr Brueggemann start off the chapter with the trial that Jesus had gone through? i have yet to see the link of this portion to the life of Moses.
Mary Langer Thompson · August 23, 2013 at 4:17 pm
Elija, both Jesus and Moses spoke “truth to power,” power being the pharaoh, and Pilate a type of pharaoh. Like an artist, Brueggemann is doing a sort of time warp to show the abuses of power over and over, with the righteous ones challenging that power. Starting with Jesus links the Old and New Testaments. I like the juxtapositions.
Elijah · August 23, 2013 at 7:42 pm
Thanks Mary. Your explanation is clear and concise. Yes that juxtaposition is delightful and enlightening:)