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Worship Order October 11th 2020 German Church Atlanta

Prelude: We have faith Welcome Song 1: Fürchte dich nicht Psalm 1: 1-6 Song 2: Kommt und lasst uns ziehen Markus 10: 17-27 5. Mose 30: 11-19 Sermon: Genesis 30, 11 -19 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”

14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.

15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, 1

decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose Life so that you and your children may live.

Dear friends, Imagine: the people of Israel fled slavery in Egypt and then lived in and walked through the desert for about 40 years. Finally, the wandering people of God stand on the border with the land of Canaan. This is where the whole fifth book of Moses leads us. Here we see a people on the threshold, Israel on the Jordan. On the border between yesterday and tomorrow. Behind it is slavery in Egypt and the 40 years of desert migration and before it the promised land, the land "where milk and honey flow".

It is also a generational change: the young have the new, the land of the future ahead of them, yet they have not experienced the departure from slavery in Egypt and have not witnessed the oppression of their ancestors themselves. And the old generation knows that they will at best experience the beginnings of what is 2

now before us, the first signs of the other time, nothing more. And what can they give to the next generation who sets out to enter the new land?

Moses himself, as the Fifth Book of Moses tells us, is on the threshold. It is the last day of his life. He has led the people for 40 years, but he will not enter the promised land. He can only take a wide-eyed look. And here, on the border, he sums up the whole Torah, the good instruction to life, once again in a single great speech.

The time that the fifth book of Moses puts into words can be described as a turning time, a threshold time, a time of profound change. Old guarantees are broken, what was unquestionably certain in the past is gone, a new stable life frame is not yet recognizable. Will it ever happen again?

Many of us have the impression that we too are on such a threshold today. A new Era. An Epoch threshold. A time of profound change. Today we live on the border of wiping away a past world and wondering what is to come.

Our parents, our grandparents were able to say - and have said this quite often: "Our children should have it better than us: no war, no hunger.

Work and bread, a house, good schooling, a good living, prosperity."

Some people lived with the basic feeling in their youth: the world can become completely different again.

Brighter, fairer, more peaceful, freer. – Today, for our descendants, we hope that the world will remain a bit as it is, that it will not get worse, that our grandchildren will find a world worth 3

living in. Epoch threshold, turn-oftime. Life on the border. In between times, between yesterday and tomorrow.

You can also see it this way: In the past, much more was just determined.

There was no choice. You had to fit into the realities. Tomorrow is a world of countless choices, of many possible choices. Too many, perhaps; the individual is thus often colossally overwhelmed and longs at times for certainty again or that others decide for him.

Turning ages, an epochal threshold: In the past, young parents could still say: God has given us a healthy child. In the future, young expectant parents will be faced with a choice as to whether they want to take this or that test to make sure that this will be a healthy child.

And they will have to decide whether life is given to him, whether they think it is worth living.

In the past, the world was divided into blocks; today and tomorrow we live in a multipolar global political world. In the past, society could still be shaped and governed within national borders.

The great human problems of the future - as we all know at heart - will no longer be solved within national borders, but only globally, if at all!

Climate change does not stop at national borders. The digital revolution is taking place on a global scale in our lifetime. Most of us can still remember our first mobile phone – that was only 20 years ago. Ten years ago, the smartphone began its triumphal march around the globe. And today even the children in the streets of Nairobi or 4

Manila are equipped with a smartphone and have access to the promises of the Western beautiful new world.

Should we be surprised that they leave their homes and strive to enter a country "where milk and honey flow"?

- And either there will be a fairer distribution of resources in water, food, natural resources, educational opportunities, participation in the future. Or there will be even greater migratory flows and wars over natural resources. Epoch threshold. A new era.

A world moment of profound change.

Even in the Church, we have the impression everywhere that a profound change is taking place. The centuries in which the Catholic and Protestant churches virtually administered the religious monopoly in society are irretrievably over. In the future, we will be faced with an ever-increasing variety of ideological orientations, lifestyles and opinions.

Times of upheaval are difficult times.

Epoch thresholds are disorientation times. Old things have passed irretrievably. What's new is only in sight, and the rapid changes are worrying us.

Perhaps this is not true either, that this is a peculiarity of our time. Maybe every time is threshold time, time of upheaval. Perhaps every today is such a moment when we are asked, me and you, where we ask ourselves: Where do we come from? What are we going to do? What are we sticking to? What carries us? Who is coming to us?

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In any case, the time into which the 5th Book of Moses leads us was such a time. The people of God at the border, on the threshold into another time.

Into this situation speaks the word of the Bible, and the main word of Genesis is "today". Three times it even occurs in the small section we are looking at today: the law i give you today is not too heavy for you ...

Today I present you with the choice between happiness and happiness, between life and death. ... Today I have brought to your eyes blessings and curses, life and death. Choose life to stay alive, you and your descendants!

God's Word and Direction to Life: on the threshold. God speaks today!

The timeline obviously does not matter when God speaks - as Martin Luther says: God does not look at time by length, but straight through. If he speaks the Eternal One, it is today.

Thus, a divine today that never passes and cannot be overdone wanders through our human time, and it always applies to those who hear it.

So today let's hear his voice. On the border between yesterday and tomorrow, where we ask: where do we come from? What are we going to do?

What are we sticking to? What carries us? Who is coming to us? On the threshold, let us hear His voice. God Himself speaks to us.

Moses says in our section: Let no one say: We do not know what God wants, it is far too difficult for us, we cannot understand it. No, God's speeches are "not unattainable. It doesn't hover above the clouds, so you'd have to ask, 6

"Who goes to the sky and takes it down so that we can get to know it and then follow it?" It's also not at the end of the world, so you'd have to ask, "Who's going over the sea and bringing it in so we can get to know it and then follow it?"

God speaks today. And God's Word is very close to you. It is on your lips and in your heart. It is the obvious, not a detached dogma, not a theological expert knowledge, not religious high robe acrobatics, but the near-, even the nearest: Respect god, honor what is right, love your neighbor, protect the weak, offer space to the stranger, and thus prove yourselves to be human – nothing more. The obvious. Or simply the Golden Rule: What you don't want somebody to do to you, don't do to anyone else. Or in the positive formulation of the Sermon on the Mount: all you want people to do to you, you do to them! (Mt 7, 12) Deep within us, we know what we are, what the right is, what is expected of us. And our heart, that is also our conscience, is able to distinguish what leads to life or leads away from life.

Deep down we can distinguish between sincerity and trickery, between truth and deception, between what serves only one's own ego enlargement, or coexistence, communion, peace.

God's Word is very close to you. It is on your lips and in your heart. And that is why, says Moses to the people, the Scriptures tell us that is why you can choose. You have a choice: between happiness and misfortune, between life and death, between blessing and curse.

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Choose wisely! Choose life! Today we hear these words especially with the awareness of the next US election being around the corner!

And so we pray together today, as it is described in a new spiritual song: Wiser, smarter, lighter, richer if you make me, you will create me, you my God. What is good, what is just, what is alive and genuine?

Let me understand what really matters.

Give me your word for my heart, give me a heart for your word, that touches me and carries me on my way.

You are before I am, you will be when I have been.

Hold on to me for life, my God. Open my heart for your word.

Open your word for my heart, that makes me mature and teaches me to live.

Amen.

Intercessory Prayer Blessing Postlude: Jesus in my house

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