Ichabod Toward Home, by Walter Brueggemann
Where is God? This provocative question rings in the ears of all those who energetically engage God and God's promises in the world. For some, the answer comes in a self-assured smugness that appears to lay claims on God's omnipresence as repudiating any claims of pain or struggle. For others, the answer arises in the forlorn cry of the oppressed and suffering for whom the absence and impotence of God seems all too palpable. Or for others, the answer is that God is present and can be managed and therefore controlled ("God is here and God is ours"). For pastors, who each Sunday both embody and encounter the smugness, the cries and the contentment, this provocative book from noted Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests that the pastor's homiletical task is one of "guerrilla theater" that challenges commonly held assumptions about God's presence.
The outline for this theater arises out of the strange and exotic tale of the journey of the "ark of the covenant" into and out of Philistine captivity in I Samuel 4-6. This three-day journey involves the catastrophic capture of the ark by the Philistine enemy, a day of silent combat where Israel's God YHWH defeats the Philistines's God Dagon in the stillness of the night, and a final triumphal return of the ark via an unmanned ox-cart to the Israelites. Laying out the contours of this story and exploring its resonance with other parts of the Bible, Brueggemann provides an in-depth reading of a text that echoes with other journeys within scripture, such as exile and return, cross and resurrection.
Tying the variety of these resonances together, Brueggemann paints a coherent picture that each day of the ark's journey provides a counter-reading to our usual theories regarding the presence of God. The day-one capture of the ark and its departed glory counters the smug assurance of God's presence that leads to denial of pain and suffering. The silent victory of YHWH over Dagon in the stillness of the night contests the despair of those who believe that God is absent or unable to act, while the triumphal return on a simple ox-cart subverts the complacency of those who believe that God is a manageable commodity.
