I still remember the first time I cracked open Walter Brueggemann’s “Finally Comes the Poet.” I didn’t know what I was in for.
As a preacher, I’d spent years trying to get better at clarity, at structure, at relevance. But Brueggemann wasn’t interested in relevance the way I was. He was interested in rupture. In disorientation. In opening up language that could bear the weight of mystery.
“What is needed,” he wrote, “is not simply instruction, but an offer of new life, a new way to see, a new way to be.”
That line hit me like a psalm. When too many preachers preach to inform, maybe even to inspire, Brueggemann taught me to evoke. His death, on June 5, 2025, should prompt us to reembrace the imagination he set before us.
Brueggemann had a deep affection for the prophets, and it shows. His sermons, prayers, and essays thunder and weep. They lean into paradox and beauty.
“Finally Comes the Poet” is not just a call to more poetic preaching—it’s a call to more truthful preaching. “Much of our preaching has been flattened,” he says, “into prose that conforms and explains and manages.” But God is not manageable. Nor are God’s words or God’s word.
What Brueggemann gave me—and many others—is permission to preach like artists. Take a moment and let that sink in. He gave us the freedom to allow our imaginations to breathe. To believe that the world could be remade through words.
The preacher, in his view, is not a lecturer or a life coach, but a witness. A vessel. Someone who dares to speak of things unseen.
That means using language that “moves,” not just teaches. That kind of speech isn’t safe, but it is faithful.
Nowhere is that clearer than in “Prayers for a Privileged People.” If “Finally Comes the Poet” is a manifesto for imaginative preaching, “Prayers” is its prayer book. These are not tidy, pious prayers. They are raw and urgent. They are full of lament and longing, sometimes laced with accusation, often trembling with hope.
“We are your people,” one prayer begins, “yet we must confess that we have often been the people of Pharaoh, not Moses; the people of Caesar, not Christ.” That’s not prose. That’s prophecy. That’s poetry shaped by fire. It’s a poetic and truth-telling prophecy that we need for our day.
As a preacher, I’ve learned that the real work is not just saying things well—it’s saying things true. And truth isn’t always efficient. It doesn’t always come wrapped in bullet points and alliteration. Sometimes it slips in through metaphor. Sometimes it sneaks up through story. Sometimes it groans in prayer.
That’s what Brueggemann got and tried to teach us. He didn’t give us a preaching technique. He gave us a vision. A vision where the preacher is not just a herald but a poet of the kingdom. Someone who names what is—and what could be.
There’s a moment in “Finally Comes the Poet” where he writes, “The task of preaching is to open the listener to the new futures that God is always sending.” That’s what I want in the pulpit, what I want to preach. I don’t want to merely explain a text, but to open a future. A God-shaped future.
And sometimes the only way there is through the wild and wondrous words of a poet.
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Speaker, Enneagram theorist, author and coach. Sean is the Teaching Pastor at Ecclesia Houston.
