Ancient Anglican

Julian understands that ultimately it is Christ’s love for us that made him suffer. Although his suffering occurred but one time, she sees that his love “was without beginning and is and ever shall be without end.” The suffering exists for a moment, but the love of Christ endures.

God’s very real presence in our lives is unaffected by how we are feeling. She ends this Revelation with the insight that “bliss lasts forever, and pain passes and will come to nothing.”

Julian understands that the devil is still active in the world, but she sees that Christ’s victory means that whatever evil the devil does, God turns it into joy for us and sorrow for him.

Julian’s physical vision of the Crown of Thorns gives way to a spiritual vision of Jesus enwrapping us, enfolding us, embracing us, and wholly enclosing us within his love so that we can never be truly parted.

Julian gives us a living example of how the good dirt of the parable becomes receptive to the seeds. Julian never asked for her revelations or even for intellectual insight or eternal salvation. Rather, she only asked to know Jesus better.

It is within this time of war, plague, social rebellion, and religious division that Julian receives and transmits to us, her revelations of God’s tenderness and care and that “all will be well.”

Ultimately, the prophetic imagination does not simply herald the reversal of the socio-economic order, but the overcoming of Death, Hell, and the spiritual forces of darkness.

It is Jesus’s crucifixion that is his decisive criticism of the royal consciousness that must have order. Jesus was not killed by the rabble but by the religious and political authorities of the day.

Into this abyss of suffering, the prophet of hope and amazement begins to speak with the words “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.” Isa. 40:1. Jeremiah’s Rachel who refuses to be comforted (Jer. 31:15), has been answered.

The working example (which I assume Brueggemann had in mind in 1978) of this penetration of despair, is the civil rights movement, and specifically, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech:

Jeremiah also grieves because, like Isiah, he is speaking to a people who simply cannot and who simply refuse to hear. The Royal Consciousness has closed the ears to hear the words of the prophet.

At a more fundamental level, Brueggemann writes that prophetic critique must be grounded in pathos. He points out that the royal management consciousness that is rooted in practicality and reasonableness leads to apathy, or the denial of experience, emotions, empathy, and imagery.