Walter Brueggemann, who died this past week at the age of 92, was among the most influential biblical scholars of our time — and one of its most courageous Christian voices.
Through more than 120 books and a lifetime of teaching and preaching, he invited us to hear the ancient texts not as relics, but as ever-enlivened speech: disruptive, hopeful, unsettling, and fiercely relevant. His writings on the prophets, the psalms, the land, and the imagination have shaped how pastors preach, how communities practice, and how we understand the relentless contest between empire and the kingdom — both in us and around us.
But Walter was not simply a scholar; he was a prophetic presence. His voice carried the cadence of the prophets he loved — daring, poetic, insistent, and full of faith. He read both scripture and the world with eyes wide open, refusing the comforts of denial or despair. And even outside the pulpit or the page — in the most ordinary of everyday conversations — he carried that same prophetic attentiveness.
It was following one such conversation — as we sat reading together at his kitchen table, reflecting on the ancient idea of the either/or choice — that Walter once wrote of our friendship.
In his essay Two Farmers, Two Ways, he reflected on our conversation about the either/or choice that is ever before us: whether to live by anxious control or in generative trust. Whether to serve the commoditizing powers or to be responsively led by good news possibility.
Walter never pretended these either/or choices were easy — nor did he allow them to fade into abstraction:
“The reason that this declaration is so urgent is that the ‘Canaanite’ alternative appears to offer a life of ease, comfort, and security, when in fact it is a way of the destruction of self, neighbor, community, and eventually of creation.”
Nor did he let us forget its modern, public consequence:
“A socio-economy that gives tax preference to the wealthy… that is grudging in its support of the needy… that programmatically destroys its own environment is a society that has chosen death and is engaged in relentless self-destruction. The utterance of the either/or suggests that ours is a very late time to re-choose, but not a time that is too late yet.”
Walter taught me — and so many of us — that the choice between anxiousness and generative grace is not one we make just once. It is a choice set before us again and again: in boardrooms and in pulpits, in voting booths and social media posts, at the kitchen table, and yes, even in farmyards and backyards.
As I remember it, when Walter and I sat reading together at his kitchen table, it was no academic exercise. It was a personal reckoning. Walter was carefully leading me toward the recognition that decisions between the “two ways” are not simply operative socially, but within each of us — the battle between anxiousness and generous trust waged daily in our own hearts. In our relationships, our parenting, our vocations, and our life decisions. As he wrote: “Our better angels root for us, but in the end we must choose our better selves, on offer as a gift from the goodness of God.”
What that essay does not reveal — but I hear in every line — was the context of my visit to his home and this conversation. I was in the midst of a choosing moment myself… a life decision that stood plainly between anxious striving and generative grace. In both that conversation and the essay Walter sent me afterward, I knew I was being invited — not pushed — toward making a defining choice.
And that was not the first time. Over the past ten years, Walter’s voice has been a consistent guiding presence in our family life — shaping our conversations, decisions, and ways of seeing and being in the world.
On one lighter decision occasion, when our family was debating if we should start a small flock of sheep and/or goats, Walter sent a check with a note… “for the sheep.” It was a simple act that affirmed, embodied, and gently prodded us toward the trust, stewardship of the land, and neighborliness he so often called us to.
Today, as I grieve the loss of Walter’s voice and presence, I returned to his essay. And I hear fresh again the urgency he placed before me — and I feel again the weight of choice.
Walter’s listening and response never led toward ease or mere accommodation. It was about listening for the direction of fidelity, heeding the way that honors neighbor, creation, and human agency — all while daring to say so when public policies, cultural habits, or personal decisions betray those very values.
Now it is up to each of us to keep reading, conversing — and to keep choosing. For certainly, there are choices before us today that are starkly either/or:
- Will we choose fidelity to neighbor, land, and covenant — or surrender to the false gods of profit, power, fear, and want?
- Will we trade neighborly care for authoritarian rule and nationalist myth?
- Will we treat immigrants and refugees with hospitality, or with suspicion and cruelty, stoked by fear-driven politics?
- Will we steward the land and waters entrusted to us, or sacrifice them on the altar of extraction and corporate profit?
- Will we embrace the hard work of socioeconomic justice, or cling to the false security of widening wealth gaps and “trickle down” fictions?
- Will we choose trust and generosity, or anxious control dressed up as “freedom” while the vulnerable pay the price?
As Walter wrote: “…ours is a very late time to re-choose, but not a time that is too late yet.”
Thank you, Walter — for sitting and reading with me in the text of life, for helping me see the stakes, and for reminding us all: The text still speaks. The choice is ours to make. And the Spirit is calling us toward life.
Shane Ash 