Standing in the River: Remembering Walter Brueggemann and the Power of Prophetic Imagination

A personal tribute to the biblical scholar who reminded us that Lament births Resistance and that Joy is a form of protest.

Walter Brueggemann passed away this week, marking the transition of a towering figure in Christian thought and justice-rooted theology. For many of us clergy, organizers, and spiritually grounded activists, Brueggemann’s work was more than theological scholarship. It was a lifeline. His seminal text, The Prophetic Imagination, first published in the late 1970s, painted a powerful portrait of the Hebrew scriptures as a living archive of people surviving empire, and dreaming beyond it.

With Walter Brueggemann, whose wisdom still guides us. (May 2015: Erlanger, KY)

Dr. Brueggemann invited us to see the prophet not just as a truth-teller but as a soul-stirrer, one who dares to offer a vision of the world as it could be. He named lament as holy resistance, grief as fuel for imagination, and prophetic imagination as the sacred soil from which new futures might grow. He gave language and courage to a generation of faith leaders and community organizers who were trying to live out a call that often defied tradition and easy answers.

A Prophet for Our Time

I was one of them. As a young minister and emerging organizer, I found myself captivated by Brueggemann’s insistence that sabbath could be a form of resistance, that neighborliness was a revolutionary ethic. Years later, in the wake of the Ferguson Uprising, I was invited to a gathering in Erlanger, Kentucky—a circle of clergy from Minnesota and Ohio grappling with what prophetic leadership meant in that critical moment. I had the profound honor of facilitating a conversation between Dr. Brueggemann and this circle of spiritual leaders. He insisted I call him Walter, despite my grandmother’s instructions to the contrary.

That conversation planted a seed in me. It was the moment I first imagined creating a space to explore the prophetic voices shaping our world. That seed would become the Prophetic Resistance Podcast, and Walter’s voice echoed in every episode.

Resistance as Grief, Joy & Love

And now, in this time of national and global despair, when empire reasserts itself with narratives of hierarchy, scarcity, and isolation, Brueggemann’s call feels more urgent than ever. Prophetic resistance today means more than public witness. It means mutual aid. It means building institutions. It means making art. It means holding space for both grief and joy. It means remembering the stories of our ancestors, those in scripture, and those in our own lineages, who survived and thrived despite the forces arrayed against them.

Brueggemann taught us that resistance is also a kind of surrender. A surrender to the love already unfolding in and around us. To the Beloved Community, that is not just a dream but a reality we can build now. To the Kin-dom that is, as Jesus said, at hand.

Standing in the River

In my writing and speaking of late, I often return to a spiritual motif of standing in the river. A river flowing with ancestral wisdom, spiritual memory, and divine possibility. Walter Brueggemann stood in that river. He gathered its wisdom, transmuted it through the lens of his time, and offered it to us as a gift. Now it is our turn.

We stand in the river. We gather what we’ve been given. We remix it. We pray over it. We live it. And we place it back in the river for those who will come after us. So that one day, generations from now, others will draw from these same waters and find the courage to imagine, and live, another world.