226 - Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation

Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
By Walter Brueggemann
Minneapolis, Fortress, 1989. 165 pp. $8.95.

Readers of Fred Craddock's Overhearing the Gospel will recognize a similar concern, on how to get through to those who have already heard, in Brueggemann's latest book, based on his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School. He calls for preachers to become "poets," to discover the power in words that may enable congregations to apprehend the truths of Scripture that now often go unnoticed or rejected. The four chapters deal with forgiveness (texts from

Jeremiah and Lev. 6:1-7), communion (Psalms of Lament), obedience (Commandments concerning the Sabbath and coveteousness), and two models of transformed humanness (Daniel 1and 4). This is not a book that explains how to write sermons that will break through the numbness, the ache, and the alienation of those not now able to hear the word of God speaking to them in power, but it is an appeal to preachers to find ways to become such "poets," and Brueggemann's own ability with words provides one example of how that might be done.

Donald E. Gowan
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
Pittsburgh, Pa.