Assignment | Lesson One | Torah: Covenant & Liberation

Before I reflect, I think it helps to share my background. I’m a lay member of the church who’s genuinely trying to better understand the Bible. As an educator, I’ve spent most of my life in spaces of learning and teaching, but interestingly, I’ve steered away from formal, in-depth study of scripture. I grew up in a church that leaned heavily on literal interpretation, and honestly, that often left me feeling confused because many of the stories didn’t fully make sense to me when read that way. Over time, though, I’ve been exposed to different denominations and perspectives, and that’s opened my eyes to more meaningful ways of engaging with scripture. Now, I feel a strong desire to wrestle with it for myself and to discern what might be literal and what might be metaphorical, rather than relying on others to define that for me.

With that perspective, The Prophetic Imagination was a challenging read for me. I found myself pausing often to look up terms just to keep up. At first glance, the Torah can feel like a long list of rules, but when I began to consider it in its historical context, I started to see how it actually gave Israel a framework for imagining a completely different way of living. What stood out to me is that biblical freedom is about liberation and the ability to live in relationship with God and community, where justice and care for the vulnerable are central. This structure depends on faithfulness to God.

In the time of Moses, Egypt represented the empire. Today, rather than identifying a single “evil empire,” we might need to examine ourselves. Do we participate in systems similar to those of Egypt? How do we believe in justice for the marginalized and a world without divisions? What I took from the readings is that living faithfully today requires both honesty about those realities and a deep hope in something better. A God-centered vision where love ultimately overcomes injustice. For me, the real challenge for the church is figuring out how to keep imagining and working toward that kind of world without becoming shaped by the very systems we’re called to resist.

In applying the lecture and the reading from The Prophetic Imagination, I am struck by the thought that we are taught through Abraham and Moses that we achieve freedom through community and by living in God’s image. It’s not individualistic. God told Abraham that he would be blessed to become a blessing. It didn’t end with Abraham himself just being blessed. His blessing was an important connecting piece to the blessing of others. The readings of Exodus showed an early example of the responsibility we have not only to be in community with one another but to care for our community as well. I often feel that when we think of God’s promise, we think of it as it pertains to ourselves singularly, and we need to apply a communal lens to it to fully understand it.

I appreciated the challenge of applying the Torah to today’s world and the need for us to be creative and open to new ideas and ways. Thinking of the Torah as not so much a list of rules but a guide to fight against oppression has opened up a new way of viewing this first part of the Bible. These aren’t restrictions so much as they are tools. 

The question I have from this week is: How can the church better embody Torah-shaped freedom in the context of today’s world?

I think you said it well, Sandy, when you wrote, "For me, the real challenge for the church is figuring out how to keep imagining and working toward that kind of world without becoming shaped by the very systems we're called to resist." That's a real danger, I think, for the church today, at a time when Christian Nationalism is growing in influence in both some parts of the church and in the wider political leadership. I wish I had a good answer for how to do that, but you talk about honesty and hope... those seem like a good place to start!

I was struck by Brueggeman’s description of creation faith, an orderly view of the world that, if I understood him correctly, does not allow for the freedom of God within the cosmos or more to the point, within the human community.

In Genesis 1 and 2, we have the two creation stories, both of which speak to this idea that creation - the human and more-than-human world - is orderly. The story in Genesis 1 particularly speaks to this idea. However, what do we in modern times do when the orderliness of creation is upended by crises like climate change, when creation is chaotic and unpredictable because of the actions of humans? How are we to responsibly use the freedom God has given us in our relationships with the rest of God’s creation, especially when we’ve already used that freedom to perhaps irreparably harm what God has made? How are we to understand our communal life with God and the more-than-human parts of creation? 

Brueggemann posits that it is the work of the prophet, and the prophetic work of the church, to both critique the royal consciousness and to proclaim a faithful alternative. Critiquing the royal consciousness in terms of damage to the environment is seemingly simple enough. The dominant political and economic culture of the United States and most of the developed world is an extractive culture, one that “mines” creation for what is desired without giving long-term thought to the consequences of that mining. 

What is more challenging, I think, is to provide an alternative consciousness or faith. If how we’re living now isn’t adequate to our place in God’s world, then how ARE we to live? This can be especially challenging from a faith perspective in the Christian tradition because of the misuse of passages like Genesis 1:28, where God says to the first humans, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” Passages like this have been used to justify injustice, to rationalize the breaking of our covenant with the rest of creation. 

Our tradition, including the Torah, needs to be in dialogue with other faith traditions that see a more equitable relationship between humans and the more-than-human world of animals, plants, water, soil, etc. Conversations between Indigenous people on this continent and the stories in the Torah, the prophets, and the Christian scriptures can help to bring out aspects of our holy writings that we may have missed due to centuries of preconceived notions on the meaning of the texts. 

For example, when Indigenous people speak of the animals and the plants as their brothers and sisters, how does that connect with Genesis 1, that sees humans created during part of one day over six days of creation? Do we have something to learn from indigenous people that can put in perspective Genesis 2:7 that says that God formed the first human, “from the dust of the ground”? In that sense, Indigenous people may be one of the “prophets” needed by the Christian tradition, prophets that both critique our settled, royal consciousness and yet also provide a faithful alternative to how we live in relationship with God’s creation.

By way of introduction, I have been in ordained ministry for 25 years, and I have always had an ambivalent relationship with the Hebrew Scriptures. My awareness of that was why I knew I should participate in this course. As I began reading, I realized where a lot of that comes from: I have strong negative reactions to the concepts of the “Chosen People” and the “Promised Land.” I am a passionate supporter of Palestinian human rights, and the way scripture is abused to try to justify their oppression is sickening to me. So much of the “plain reading” of these texts supports prejudice, tribalism, and oppression. Nevertheless, I am hoping that this class can help me re-orient my relationship with the OT in ways I can live with and feel better prepared to interpret these passages.

If Torah is shaping a people’s identity around ideas of freedom and responsibility, then perhaps it can speak strongly against a “genetic,” tribal understanding of identity that defines “us” against “them.” I found myself wishing Brueggemann was more precise in distinguishing between the Egyptian people and the Pharaoh’s empire, when contrasting them with the prophetic community Moses was creating.

Brueggemann’s distinction between Moses’ prophetic consciousness versus the institutionalized religion of Solomon’s kingdom might also illumine how scripture has been distorted to “baptize” repression. Certainly proclaiming that God is “free” rather than captive to the interests of any nation state is a good place to start.

I found some of Brueggemann’s terminology odd, especially the word “energizing,” which I translated in my own mind to “inspiring” or “vision casting”. His distinctions between liberals and conservatives seemed a bit forced, perhaps dated, but I get the point. And while I appreciate his reminder that we do not need to look outside our tradition for standards and guidance, when he was writing about cultivating that anti-imperialist alternative consciousness, what I was hearing were the words of Arundhati Roy: “Another world is not only possible; she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

Finally, as a song writer, this a quote that will stick with me: “We might say rightly that singing a song does not change reality. However, we must not say that with too much conviction.”

Incredibly, though I talk and preach about Christianity in the context of empire quite a lot, it has always been within the understanding of the Roman empire from the New Testament or the European/American empire of more recent times. I have never heard about or read about the Egyptians in the Hebrew Bible as an empire in the same way - what was I missing?! The comparisons are there in terms of power and control versus justice and compassion, but I don’t know enough about the Egyptians’ religion to dig deeper (beyond what Brueggemann was referencing). For example, I’d love to know more about the gods of the Egyptians and the ways the society was structured. If the Hebrew people were enslaved, what about the other Egyptian citizens? How stratified was their culture? How much wealth and power was concentrated at the ‘top?’ Clearly the Hebrews were suffering under a political structure that was focused on keeping them powerless and exploiting their labor.

I have always thought about the Exodus story as one of liberation and the development of a covenant between the people and God. I like the suggestion that God is leading the people toward a new way of life based on justice and compassion, but ALSO giving them a ‘radical alternative consciousness’ about what is possible with God. The reading also offered a new-to-me perspective of Moses as revolutionary rather than only a servant of God or partner with God. So much of the scripture has Moses simply hearing the word of God and then following directions. Brueggemann seems to assign him much more strategic agency and political savvy than I’ve considered. Surely this reflects the bias toward the New Testament in my Christian education.

Brueggemann says that “[t]he task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” I like this vision for ministry and do have a desire to lead from this place - but I fear it’s very difficult to extract my own consciousness and perception from the dominant culture. Just as we say there is ‘no ethical consumption under capitalism’ because too many threads are intertwined for any individual to avoid complicity, I wonder if I’m able to direct people to see something radical enough to count as the ‘radical alternative consciousness’ that’s described. It’s a worthy goal - and something I will keep aiming for!

To shape a people for freedom, responsibility, and communal life with others and God, Torah first establishes that God is the creator of everything; that He is sovereign and does what He wants when He wants. Torah teaches Hebrews their unique identity as God’s covenant people. In Egypt, while they were still enslaved, God demonstrated His power to them by triumphing over all the Egyptian gods, which the Hebrews had by proximity, begun to worship in concert with the God of their ancestors. He established Moses as His prophet who brought a prophetic criticism of Egypt and their treatment of the Hebrews. God reminded them that He alone was their God and that He heard their cries for freedom. And through miracles only he could perform, God brought them out of Egypt. Through this liberation, this prophetic energizing, this covenant people now have a responsibility to live as such, remembering their history and teaching it to their descendants. Through their wilderness experience, they should have learned the responsibility of living with shared responsibility for each other, and with a responsibility to keep the statutes given by God to them and for them.

One of the most persuasive arguments for the power of faith that I got from this lesson is in the Hebrew midwives who disobeyed Pharoah’s orders to kill the Hebrew babies. Even though they had known nothing but oppression under Pharoah, they feared God more than they did Pharoah and so showed compassion towards the babies and mothers. They trusted God to stick to the covenant he had with their people to make of them a great nation.

I learned something that actually shocked me. I never read, with an intent to understand, the scriptures about King Solomon. All this time, I thought Solomon was a wise AND just king, but found out via Brueggeman, that he was a wise AND oppressive king who placed heavy burdens on the Israelites.  And although he increased the wealth and prosperity of the kingdom, he seemed to be doing it for his own glory rather than for the benefit of the people. Moses’ goal was to bring the Hebrews out of oppression and into community with one another and with God. Solomon used his kingship to bring prosperity to the kingdom while at the same time creating conditions of satiety which resulted in the people becoming separated from direct access to God.

As I review this lesson from the perspective of a lay leader in the Christian Church in 2026, I can see that leadership is never easy. Whether it’s Moses trying to lead a group of ungrateful and complaining Israelites out of oppression, or the wise Solomon who knows God, giving himself over to disobedience and idolatry, or me serving as Chairperson of our congregation, I think that we have to do our best to discern what God is calling us to do. One thing I know is that God’s Word is true and that whatever He calls you to do, if you have faith and trust Him, He will equip you to do it effectively. I believe that in this country today, we are facing a Pharoah-type leader who believes he is greater than our God and that he is not required to show justice and compassion to those under his leadership. I believe that as leaders in the Christian Church, it is our mandate from God that we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him, loving Him and all His creation. There is no one greater.

Reading through the scripture readings this week, I was thinking about just how much of the Bible’s story is told through the lens of oppressed peoples. Moses was guiding oppressed people out of Egypt, just as we should be working to lead people through the modern oppressive forces into a kind of counter-cultural state that provides more freedom. I was especially drawn to Brueggemann’s idea of prophetic ministry as something that is “criticizing and energizing”. 

I know as people sometimes we don’t like taking correction or being called into something outside our norm, but I’ve felt the great encouragement and excitement of being convicted about something that can open my mind to knew perspectives and new ways of doing things. Moses was listening to an urgent call from God. I believe we are still hearing urgent calls from God, to help speak “truth to power”, and to “break the social reality” (pg 5) that Brueggemann talks about. I learned also in this piece that it’s also not about being “political” for partisan sake, or to be provocative. It is truly to “be an assault on the consciousness of empire” (pg 9), and promote and demand systemic change towards freedom.

So for me the question becomes: in a world that is bitterly divided by partisan politics, how do we respond to claims that using our prophetic voice is “partisan” or even “inappropriate” for church spaces? Is the issue “how” the church speaks, not “whether” the church speaks?