Sermon 7-19-2020 Deuteronomy 7: 6-12 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. 7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. 10 But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. 11 Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. 12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. Dear friends, today I first want to give you an insight into a pastor's thoughts before she writes her sermon: "Honestly? I did not choose the text. At first glance, this God is not very sympathetic to me. I don't like this educative God:
If ... Then... If you love me, I do everything for you. If you hate me, I'll kill you. Even with children, I find this kind of education that has shaped so many of us, (even if it is not as drastic as this speech of God) simply ruthless. Carrot and stick. I do not feel that such an education leads people to freedom, selflove and responsible action. But it leads to people who do not value themselves enough and yet only begin looking for their own good. To people who have been wondering throughout their lives: “Will I now be rewarded or punished?� I can only preach about this text, if I realize that they are human words. People have written the Bible. People who talk about their experiences of and with their God. It is not the unfiltered word of God as the Koran claims it to be.. I am convinced that all the words of the Bible are mixed with people's desires, aspirations, and beliefs. Mixed with the hopes, injuries and fears of men who believe in hearing God. No, I am not going to talk about the election of Israel. This subject is too big for me and too big for a little Sunday preaching. I will therefore reflect on what this speech of God says about the man who wrote this speech. How much inner distress must have happened that this longing to be uniquely chosen by God has become so great! How much experience of humiliation and kicking is in a person when it becomes so necessary to speak of a God who loves me, when I love him and who hates and kills those who hate him.
For me, the text takes on immense significance when I read it as a dialogue of the writer with his own longings and fears. (And now, please, join me for the actual sermon:) “There he is again. The God of the Old Testament. Big and horrible. Magnificent and frightening. Loving and cruelly strict. How often in the Christian Worship the texts of the Old Testament are read only in a softened form! How often are Psalms shortened and words deleted when there is talk not only of the loving but also of the hateful and cruel God. But isn't that a purified talk? Can we simply delete these passages of a cruel and avenging God? Just because I don't want to be afraid of this God myself, I can't just delete these lines. But I can make one thing clear. These words and speeches of God have been written down by men. All the words of the Bible have been written down by men. From people who speak of their very personal image of God. And this image of God does not have to correspond to mine! This is a great treasure in our Church and a great treasure in my very personal faith. I can read sentences critically. I may and may even be obliged to relate them to my very personal image of God. If I become aware of this, then I can read the texts of an allpowerful and also avenging God differently. I don't have to angrily distinguish myself from it, because there is no place in my mind for a vengeful God. Rather, I can ask myself: What prompted people to write about such a God? What happened to people when they
wrote that God would take revenge on people who do not believe in Him? II. I can read this text of the special election of the small people of Israel and the accompanying punishment of God of the peoples who do not believe in him as words that reveal to me a lot about the thinking and, above all, about the feelings of the author. What may have been going on in him? A great need, an almost existential need appeals to me here. The need of the author not to perish in the tangle of different cultures and religions. The fear of not being seen. The fear of not being loved. The fear of losing one's identity, if there is not a very big one coming from the outside, which he speaks about over and over again. Unless God himself comes and says, "You are meant. You are my beloved child." What happens to a person if he is not given this message from the outside? If he has not experienced it in his own life, or only in fragments? I think he will seek this language over and over again on the outside and not within himself. He will seek it from other people. From God. And it will never be enough. For it does not penetrate to the core. Any external specialness, and even the affection and love of God cannot replace the care and love of a man or woman for themselves. For those who have not learned to treat themselves lovingly will not believe the one who assures him that he loves him. III.
I believe that the author of this speech of God was deeply unsettled. I think he was full of fear and longing to finally be seen. And this longing was so great that the promise of God to love him and his people was not enough. I think the longing to be seen was so exuberant in him that from his point of view God simply had to hate the others. So that the love for the small people of Israel can shine all the more radiantly. I believe that the author needs the hatred and revenge of God to dodge his own pain. The pain of feeling unloved and small. How often and in what situations do I act similarly myself? When do I start to criticize others, and expose them? When do I get angry with others? If I'm honest, these are often situations where I don't feel like being enough myself. Or when I think others do something that I would never dare. Then my anger and displeasure with my own unlived life turns to my fellow human beings. Or I'll start to feeling it physically at some point. My body hurts, I get sick. IV. I think the only thing that really helps is this: to watch ourselves attentively in our own feelings. We need to listen to ourselves attentively in our thinking. We need to become a loving, uncondemning observer of our self. Because then we
have the opportunity to learn whether our anger at others is actually an anger at ourselves. Because this is how we learn to distinguish whether our fear of others is perhaps also the fear of ourselves. Because we are more likely to feel that our outcry to be seen and loved by a great and terrible God may come from a great lack of self-love. Love your neighbor as yourself - what a challenge! No more than yourself, no less than yourself - like yourself! All who can watch themselves with loving eyes, who manage to feel their own feelings without condemning themselves, are probably not far from being able to love themselves. And I am convinced that this is the chance and the only way to look similarly at our neighbor. And then there is one more thing: I no longer need a vengeful God, I no longer need a God who only loves me or a small people and hates the others. I then feel a completely different God in me and around me. One who has enough room for love for all. One where I don't have to be afraid that his love is limited to a few. One of whom I can truly believe what is written of him: God is love; and we who remain in love remain in God and God in us. Amen.