Delivered out of Empire by Walter Brueggemann

Author:Walter Brueggemann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781646981878
Publisher: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation

Questions for Discussion

1. Moses’ consistent defiance of Pharaoh is an all-or-nothing tactic. He refuses to relinquish even one hoof, to imagine a “distinction or division that leaves any ‘remnant’ to Pharaoh” (p. 44). What does this refusal to compromise the well-being of any part of the community suggest about God’s vision of emancipation? What risks are involved in acting on this belief—articulated and lived out by Fannie Lou Hamer, Nelson Mandela, and many others—that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free”? What might it look like for you and your community to refuse to compromise someone else’s freedom?

2. Why do you think human communities so often try to reserve emancipation for in-groups of like-minded people? Have you ever feared being left behind on the basis of some trait that a group of people have deemed “lowly or ignoble,” leaving you examining your own hooves and wondering about your worthiness (p. 44)? How do the promises cited in Isaiah and Matthew 8:11 speak to God’s behavior in contrast to this kind of exclusion?

3. An enduring message of Scripture is that even as humans acknowledge their unworthiness before God, “God’s inclination toward such unworthy creation is not one of hate, rejection, judgment, or exclusion. It is rather a readiness to grant mercy” (p. 48). What challenges you or gives you hope in the idea of God’s “readiness to leave none behind”—both those who suffer oppression and those who have exerted power over others unjustly (p. 48)? What does it mean that God rejects hate and “wills all to depart pharaonic venues of deathliness” (p. 48)? What does leaving “deathliness” mean for the powerless and for those who cling to power, respectively?

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