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The Prophetic Possibility of Reimagining
Here are four probes about the urgent vocation of reimagining:
I. Dominant Imagination of the Empire
Every empire wants to monopolize imagination in a totalizing way. It does this by
coercion that silences other imagination and by seduction that woos people to stay inside the
hegemony. Empires prosper not just because of superior wealth and power, but because of
cultural hegemony, so that it becomes impossible to imagine anything beyond the reach and the
legitimacy of the empire.
So it is with the US Empire that is now the successor in the modern world to the Spanish,
Dutch, and British Empires. The US Empire, with its mantras of exceptionalism, is a totalizing
enterprise, endlessly reinforced by quasi-religious songs and slogans. It specializes in
consumerism in which we are offered limitless commodities that promise to make us happy. That
consumerism, moreover, is sustained by a gargantuan military that makes possible control of
world markets, natural resources, and cheap labor, all to assure an enhanced standard of living to
which we are peculiarly entitled. That combination of exceptionalism (that has a cadence of
religion about it) plus military consumerism totally occupies our imagination. As a result
consumerism becomes our way of life and militarism is our passion, a convergence that promises
to make us safe as well as happy. The measure of how deeply our imagination is held hostage to
this idolatry is that we have come to think of it as a given. More than that, it is a given with
moral legitimacy, so that we continue to assume that our domination has a moral quality to it that
puts it beyond question. Every preacher knows that you can critique the Bible and you may
doubt the gospel, but it is hazardous indeed to critique US exceptionalism-cum-consumerism-
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militarism. In such an environment of captive imagination, it is well nigh impossible to
reimagine any future in an alternative way.
II. Counter-Imagination as Subversion
Alternative imagination outside that captive, domesticated imagination of the empire both
refuses and contradicts the claims of dominant ideology. It is surely true that nothing seriously
different will come among us until we imagine alternatively. I will identify four factors that I
believe are essential for counter-imagination that refuses the givenness of the empire and that can
entertain an alternative construal of the possible.
1. Counter-imagination must be rooted in a distinct generative tradition. It will not arise,
I believe, out of generic good intention. It requires appeal to some credible interpretive tradition
that has vitality over time. Foremost among the traditions that may authorize new social
imagination is the biblical tradition as it has been cherished and interpreted in specific faith
traditions. The narrative, song, and oracle that constitute the substance of biblical faith refuse
modernist rationality and dare attest a world of social possibility that the empire has long since
declared to be impossible, dismissing such claims as either crazy or treasonable.
That tradition pivots on transformative emancipation. It is rooted in the Exodus narrative
that is a paradigmatic tale that is always again reperformed in the face of empire. Thus Pharaoh
becomes an icon and cipher for every power arrangement that exploits, oppresses and makes
abundant life impossible. That narrative begins in honest groaning that refuses the silencing of
the empire (Exodus 23-25). Indeed, Pharaoh had to die before the cries of anguish could break
the silence. That narrative ends with Miriam and the other women singing and dancing with
tambourines that Pharaoh has been defeated and there is new historical possibility (Exodus
15:20-21). This narrative attests to an impossibility that permits new social relationships to
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emerge. It moves on to the abundance of manna that denies the scarcity of Pharaoh or of
wilderness, and culminates at Sinai with “ten rules” for an alternative society as a neighborhood.
That narrative has behind it the ancestral stories of Genesis in which, in each generation
of Sarah, Rebekkah, and Rachel, God does the impossible by creating an heir and a future where
none had been in purview.
In Christian tradition, that narrative has in front of it this Nazareth interruption that
alarmed the authorities of the status quo empire. When Jesus was asked about his identity and his
credentials, he responded:
Everywhere I go, newness happens: The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the
lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, the poor rejoice (Luke 7:22).
Who knew? Who knew that the reperformance of this emancipatory narrative is the ground of
historical newness?
2. That tradition, and surely every particular generative tradition, features some agency of
holiness that is, some attestation of the will and purpose of God. That is very difficult in the
reasoning of secular Enlightenment context. Reimagining is primarily a theological issue, that, to
ask, “What is the Holy Resolve out beyond us that may propel newness?” Agency of this kind is
an acute intellectual embarrassment in a society that takes Richard Dawkins so seriously, so that
we may best talk softly with se3eminhgly innocuous gentleness about the “stirring of the spirit”.
But however we say it,
-It is clear that Moses was dispatched to the court of Pharaoh by Holy Resolve (Exodus
3:10).
-It is clear that barren women birthed heirs by a Power other than their own (Exodus
1:15-22).
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-It is clear that Jesus and his transformative acts tapped into Originary power that is
beyond explanation (Mark 1:27).
Thus our reimagining may ask in big terms, “What is the deep, holy resolve to which we are
summoned that will command us beyond the contours of empire to the socially impossible? The
God who so command is not an idol, but one who, in the words of the Psalm, “does whatever he
pleases” (Psalm 115:3).
3. That force of holy Resolve issues in risk-taking human agency. Thus in Exodus 3, after
YHWH in rather bombastic fashion announces what YHWH will do, that holy one then says to
Moses, “You [not I!] you go to Pharaoh” (v. 10). Holy power calls out human agency, and
human agents think, imagine, and act beyond the permits of empire. They thereby break the spell
so that empire is no longer seen as a given, but as an opportunistic construction of social power
that can be deconstructed.
The work of reimagining is not just theoretical speculation; it very quickly entails
generative action that performs social possibility with energy, courage, imagination, and smarts.
Thus Matthew, for example, can have God (quoting Hosea) say, “Out of Egypt I have called my
son” (Matthew 2:15). That human agency called out and empowered might be quite public and
dramatic, like Martin Luther King at the kitchen table (“Do not fear, Martin”). Or it might be
local and mostly unnoticed. We do our imagination with our bodies, even though the empire
always wants to recruit our bodies into the rat-race of production and consumption.
4. The tellers of these narratives and the singers of these songs and the human agents who
reperform the narratives and songs are not simply emotive zealots. Reimagining as the
reperformance of emancipatory narrative requires shrewd social analysis. Reimagining must be
acutely informed about social reality and the facts on the ground. This is a facet of the ancient
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prophets of Israel that is often not fully appreciated. Their witness indicates that they paid
attention to the leverage of power and the control of money, and to the force of dominant
ideology that regularly said in liturgical cadence, “peace, peace” when there was no peace. So
the prophets knew about:
-selling the poor for a pair of shoes (Amos 8:6);
-economic self-indulgence that so narcoticizes that there is no notice that society is going
to hell in a hand-basket (Amos 6:4-6);
-catching poor people like a bird in a cage (Jeremiah 5:26-28);
-false religion that refused to pay workers a decent wage (Isaiah 58:3).
So now, reimagination must do its homework about the impossibility of a viable, sustainable
human future when economic wealth is poorly distributed and unregulated, when social control
and domination are couched in phony piety, and when social differentiation is dismissed as
“class warfare.”
Thus I suggest that the emancipation of captive imagination depends upon:
-a generative narrative tradition; reimagination is not and cannot be just free
lance speculation.
-a Holy Resolve in which imagination is in sync with the moral tilt of creation;
reimagination is not just a good idea of well-intending people;
-a vigorous human agency that embodies a transformative vision; reimagination is not a
thought but a practical action;
-a wise practical social analysis; reimagination is not romantic wishing.
III. Reimagining in the tradition of Israel
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I will exposit reimaging as a model as it is performed in the tradition of ancient Israel. It
is Isaiah, more than any other book of the Old Testament, which provides a map and model for
reimagining. Isaiah imagines the painful ending and humiliation of Jerusalem and then he
imagines a different restored Jerusalem. He does so under the rubric of the gospel,” for he is the
first to use the term “gospel” in a technical sense, a usage that permits us to conclude that
reimagination is an act of “good news.” Thus in 40:9:
Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings.
Lift up your voice with strength,
Jerusalem, gospel herald,
Lift it up and do not fear,
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God.”
Or more familiarly:
How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of the messenger,
Who announces shalom,
Who brings gospel news,
Who announces salvation,
Who says to Zion, “Your God reigns” (52:7).
The substance of these utterances is that they interrupt both the arrogance of the Babylonian
Empire and the despair of displaced Israel. The mantra of new imagination is:
Here is your God (40)!
Your God reigns (52:7)!
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The interruption is a rhetorical act. It is the articulation of Holy Resolve that eventuates in
homecoming, albeit homecoming to a new home. “Homecoming to a new home” is a compelling
way to think about reimagining, the prospect of leaving “here” and going “there,” and the
possibility of a very different the new home will be in contrast to the old home.
I suggest that the book of Isaiah is Israel’s best script for reimagining exactly
“homecoming to a new home”:
-At the beginning the book of Isaiah imagines:
Out of Zion shall go forth Torah,
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hook.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war anymore (2:1-4).
This is an act of amazing imagination that anticipates an end to all business as usual among the
nations.
-At the end the book of Isaiah imagines:
I am about to create new heavens and new earth,
…for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy.
Jerusalem as a joy will be very different from Jerusalem as ruin, or as a tribulation, or as a venue
for conflict and exploitation.
-And in mid-point the book of Isaiah imagines:
On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians will
come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship
with the Assyrians. On that day, Israel will be the third with the Egypt and
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Assyria, a blessing in the mist of the earth, whom the Lord of Hosts has blessed
saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and
Israel my inheritance. (19:23-25).
Two things are clear in this mapping of reimagination in the book of Isaiah:
-First, it is all poetry; it is not memo, blueprint, or program. It is an act of artistic
imagination.
-Second, each of these poems of imagination contradicts settled imagination that has been
taken as given in that ancient society:
a) At the outset we may be sure that the power people did not want to think about
disarmament as in the poem of 2:1-4...
b) At the end, we may be certain that urban managers did not want to entertain a
Jerusalem beyond their management horizon as in the poem of 65:17-25).
c) In between, the advocates of the nation-state did not want to think that there may be
other chosen peoples along with us as in the vision of 193-25.
In Isaiah we are offered an artistic sketch of alternative possibility that does not
accommodate any present social arrangements. This is imagination out beyond all present
possibility.
It is especially at the far end of the book of Isaiah (likely in the Persian period) that the
book of Isaiah begins to sketch out this counter-imagination of the new home to which there will
be homecoming.
a) The new home imagined by Isaiah is for folk who are under summons. Already in
chapter 1, as Isaiah imagines a future, we are given nine imperatives that are the conditions for a
viable future:
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-wash yourselves;
-make yourselves clean;
-remove evil from before my eyes;
-cease to do evil;
-learn to do good;
-seek justice;
-rescue the oppressed;
-defend the orphan;
-plead for the widow (16-17).
The sweep of this series of mandates begins in the purity of worship and moves to a passion for
the vulnerable in the economy. On both counts, pure worship and passion for the economically
vulnerable, the future will not be a replica of the past.
b) With that as a beginning for Isaiah, the matter gets specific in later Isaiah as the poet
imagined the reformulation of Jerusalem. In chapter 56, there is a debate about membership, who
is in and out. “Pure worship” sounds exclusionary. But here, in chapter 56, such worship will
include eunuchs and foreigners (vv. 3-6). Include those whom Moses in the Torah had excluded;
include those with compromised genitalia after Moses had excluded those with crushed testicles
and cut off penises, and perhaps other sexual irregularities as well (Deuteronomy 23:1-2).
Include foreigners beyond our tribal homogeneity, outsiders who threaten identity, the very ones
Moses had excommunicated to the tenth generation Deuteronomy 23:3-6). Include them with
only one specific condition, that they keep Sabbath, that they do work stoppage and refuse to
participate in the rat-race of endless production and consumption (Isaiah 56:4, 6). Include those
outsiders, let them be joyful in prayer and sacrifice, for
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My house will be a house of prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7).
c) They had a debate about proper worship; for they knew about the punctilious
regulations of the book of Leviticus. But in Isaiah 58 the poet reprimands the pious who presume
upon God in their delight in worship, but who oppress their workers with low minimum wage
and cheap labor (vv. 3-4). The poet reimagines worship beyond pious regulation. Fasting, an
exhibit of discipline, takes the form of neighborly emancipation:
Is not the proper fast…
To let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the homeless into your house,
to provide clothing for the naked,
that is, to expend resources for the vulnerable and exploited?
Such worship that is neighbor-love will connect to YHWH. It is all bodily well-being:
Then you shall call and the Lord will answer.
You shall cry for help and I will say, “Here I am” (v. 9).
“Then”…perhaps not until “then”!
d) They had a debate about debts and mortgages and foreclosures and high interest rates
(chapter 61:1-4). Some argued that the indigent should be in prison, in order to maintain
economic stability, no doubt an ancient version of “the new Jim Crow.” But then came the rush
of God’s spirit that broke such stability open. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me.”
The spirit violated conventional order:
-to bring good news to the oppressed (debt cancelation);
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-to bind up the broken hearted (who despair as they are left behind);
-to release prisoners who are their because they lacked good lawyers);
-to enact the year of the Jubilee.
In this act of imagination, Israel is invited to new actions that will yield
Garlands instead of ashes,
Gladness instead of mourning,
Praise instead of a faint spirit (v. 3).
And then:
Build up… raise up former devastation,
Repair ruined cities (v. 4).
Break old patterns of control for the sake of the public good.
e) By chapter 65 the poet seems to go berserk in reimagining a new heaven, a new earth,
and a new Jerusalem.
Coming soon is a city with no foreclosures on vulnerable property (vv. 21-22);
Coming soon is a city with no infant mortality (v. 20);
Coming soon are children who are not born in social calamity (v. 23);
Coming soon is the God who is as attentive as a vigilant mother:
`Before they call, I will answer (v. 25).
Coming soon is a reconciled environment:
The wolf and the lamb,
The lion and the ox.
They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain (v. 25).
f) Coming finally is a world well held, says the poet, by the mothering God:
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I will extend prosperity to her like a river,
And the wealth of nations like an overflowing stream,
and you shall nurse and be carried in her arm,
and dandled on her knees.
As a mother comforts her child,
So I will comfort you,
And you shall be comforted in Jerusalem (66:12-13).
This collage of poems in Isaiah spreads before us a New Jerusalem in a reordered world. It is all
poetry. It is reimagining. It is all gift. It is all God’s resolve, yet it is to be performed in the real
world. But consider: without this poetry of reimagining,
-there would have been only exclusion…contra chapter 56;
-there would have been only piety with oppression…contra chapter 58;
-there would have been endless imprisonment for debts…contra chapter 61;
-there would have been only old heaven, old earth, and old, tired, Jerusalem…contra
chapter 65.
-there would have been no comfort for the city, but only weariness, coercion, and
hostility…contra chapter 66.
Without reimagining, Jerusalem would have been fated to an old, sad forlornness. The poetry
disrupts what seemed forever, breaking open the possibility of the God who lives on the lips of
the poet!
IV. Our Contemporary Vocation of Reimagining
The vocation of reimaging is a task for risk-taking boldness that is sure to offend all old
certitudes, all treasured ideologies, and all reliable stabilities. We are in the wake of Isaiah and of
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Jesus (and of Martin and Desmond and Nelson and now Francis) who foreshadow a social world
of neighborliness that no longer required keeping some in long-term disability. Thus already in
Mark 3:1-6, as soon as Jesus healed and made a new world possible by his transformative
performed imagination, the urban elites conspired how to kill him; they resisted his active
reimagining of a healed world. The present task, like those ancient performances, is to enact
counter-imagination, counter to present power assumptions about privilege, entitlement,
exceptionalism, consumerism, and militarism, all of which are taken as givens among us. We
will each have our own agenda, but surely the agenda is to reimagine our planet and our society
as a neighborhood. So here are four quick forays into the new neighborhood:
1. We may reimagine a new network of internationalism that features disarmament after
the manner of plowshares and pruning hooks, a serious work of peace-making governance. Such
an act of imagination would necessarily eschew US exceptionalism that treats our massive
military power as a moral exceptional. We may take our cue from President Putin who recently
chided US exceptionalism and rightly asserted, after Isaiah 19, that there are many “chosen
peoples.” Of course a serious network of international peace-making is an impossibility, and
giving up US exceptionalism is an even greater impossibility; but reimagining dare not be
limited to the possible.
2. We may reimagine a culture that welcomes others. Such a culture would break beyond
our convenient tribalism to make glad room for those unlike us, culturally, ethnically, in terms of
sexual orientation, in ideological difference, in every way different. Such an imagining would
require moving beyond the safety of sameness, in order to recognize what Martha Nussbaum
calls “The Clash Within,” the clash each of us carries within between an openness of welcome to
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the others and a tribal fearfulness of the other. Such an act of othering asserts, after Isaiah’s
welcome to eunuchs and foreigners, that God gathers all to one common table.
Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered (Isaiah 56:8).
Such a welcome is in the wake of the astonishing decision of the early church to admit Gentiles
who, at first, seemed even to Peter to be “unclean.” But of course God rebuked Peter: “What I
have called clean you cannot treat as unclean” (Acts 11:9). Such an act of otherness is
impossible, given the fear, anxiety, and resentment that permeate our society; but reimagining
dare not be limited to the possible.
3. We may reimagine an economics of neighborliness. Such an act of reimagining would
break with market ideology that sets neighbor against neighbor as competitor and threat, an
ideology that believes that “more is better” and “faster is better” and bigger is better.” Market
ideology has given legitimacy to the act of the big ones devouring the little ones, and creditors
devouring debtors. Such a new economy follows the vision of Isaiah that serious religion insists
on freeing debt prisoners, on providing food [stamps!], clothing, and shelter to the oppressed.
That is, it is a dream of the common good that not only eschews rabid lethal individualism, but
that provides a social infrastructure based on debt relief that permits a viable life for all members
of the community. Of course such a break beyond market ideology for the sake of a neighborly
economy that must necessarily be local is impossible among us; but reimagining dare not be
limited to the possible.
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4. We may reimagine a new ecumenism that recognizes the legitimacy of other religious
confession alongside our own. We are learning, albeit slowly, that the presence of a Muslim
neighbor, for example, requires that our most treasured theological certitude must be formulated
differently, not abandoned, but reformulated. We all know that letting one “other” come to the
table--one woman, one African American, one Jew, one gay person…any “other” who interrupts
the sameness of dominant culture--requires that we talk differently. We Christians will continue
to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. We will learn, however, to say it differently, to allow for the
awareness that God saves and delivers in many modes, and that even our Christian claim has no
monopoly on the truth. We will cling to our confession, but we will imagine ways of articulation
that make room for others. We will learn from others unlike us and be changed by them.
Such a move is consistent with the verse that Micah adds to the poetry of Isaiah
concerning plowshares and pruning hooks. After he quotes that poetry, Micah adds a new verse,
For all the people walk,
Each in the name of its god,
But we will walk in the name of YHWH our God, forever and ever (4:5).
Yes we will! We Christians will forever take the precious name of Jesus with us. But we will
notice that our fellow travelers walk alongside in the name of other gods. Such a new ecumenism
that isn’t just sweet politeness is hard to imagine in our society, given our sectarian passion and
our vigilance about selling out and compromising our absolutes; reimagining dare not be limited
to the possible.
V. We have what is needed for this vocation
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Surely it is time for reimagining, because the old imagination that has governed us has
failed. It has not made us safe or happy. It is time--with energy, courage, and the guidance of the
Spirit--to break the captivity of old imagination. We are well equipped to do it:
a) We have a tradition that is endlessly generative when it is not reduced to
fundamentalism or to progressive criticism.
b) We have a conviction about Holy Resolve, knowing that “God’s ways are not our
ways.”
c) We have among us forceful, compelling human agents, not least Francis, who may lead
us beyond old captivities.
d) We have the tools and the smarts to engage in deep social analysis, so that we can
identify the ideologies that skew our common life in the world.
We have the prerequisites for the newness of Isaiah…new heaven, new earth, New
Jerusalem, new society. We may undertake poetry not unlike the script of Isaiah. Such work may
indeed yield:
a) a new network of peacemaking internationalism beyond our chosenness;
b) a new culture that welcomes others beyond our tribalism;
c) a new economy of neighborliness beyond our desire to consume endlessly;
d) a new ecumenism that engages fellow travelers with their legitimate confessional
claims beyond our settled absolutes.
As we walk “in the name of YHWH our God forever and ever,” we are aware in compelling
ways that this God, fleshed in Jesus of Nazareth, is always summoning and empowering to new
possibility that the empire say is impossible. As Gabriel declared to Mary, “Nothing will be
impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
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Walter Brueggemann
Columbia Theological Seminary
This paper presented at a conference on “Reimagining” at Georgetown College, January 9, 2014