What Matters
by Oswald Bayer
from LF Fall 2019
It has been over 40 years since I was pastor here in Täbingen from 1972 to 1974. And now you have asked me to speak to you about what keeps faith alive, what nourishes it, so that it does not dissipate and die away, speechless, mute. How is it that faith that once was vibrant and fervent can become dull and silent? And how does it happen that those who once were joyful in faith, and full of love and gratitude, can become apathetic or cynical, despondent or indifferent, listless and lethargic? Their expectations of God have flagged, they are without hope, their love has grown cold, their faith is lost, dead. There can be many reasons for the death of faith, for the loss of the unconditional trust and confidence that faith is. When faith is lost, spiritual attack (Anfechtung)—that tremendous challenge to faith—has triumphed. In such times, the only thing that can stand up to this attack, that can resist it, is that which gives life to faith, keeps it alive, and keeps creating it anew as it overcomes the attack.
So, what keeps faith alive in the face of spiritual attack? But even more fundamentally: what creates faith? How does it come about? How can there be faith at all?
There is only one answer: Faith comes through the word; fides ex auditu (Romans 10:17). Faith comes from the word, through the word, in and with the word. Without that word there is nothing. No word, no world.
Everything that is, is through this word. Yes, God Himself is word, for Father, Son and Holy Spirit speak and listen to one another. We humans, too, like our fellow creatures, are word. For we are addressed and therefore are able to answer our Creator and our fellow creatures; and we also have to answer and give account as responsible persons.
If, then, we ask, “what keeps faith alive?”—indeed, “what creates faith in the first place?”—then we have to be attentive to the word. “Those who are attentive to the word find happiness,” it says in the Proverbs (16:20). So now we want to seek our happiness and ponder this saying.
Obviously, everything depends on being attentive to the word, giving the word our full attention. But to what word do we pay heed? There are many words, words and voices that speak to us, that want our attention and promise us happiness. What is the one word that breaks into this jumble, creates clarity, and brings true happiness?
In the central station of a metropolis, surrounded by countless people scurrying about in confusion, each heading in a different direction; in the midst of a Babylonian babble of voices, I suddenly hear my name: clear and distinct, different from all the other voices crisscrossing and overlapping each other in their ambiguity. Called by my name, I am singled out, and oriented to the one who addresses me. His word is powerful. It alone has the power to lift me out of the babble of voices around me, to set me apart from a diffuse environment and to make me a unique individual. Having been singled out and oriented to the one who is calling me, I can now answer. Whether I may answer or must answer will all depend on my situation.
This scenario clarifies the connection between the station or fairground of human yearnings, images of happiness and life goals, the many gods born of fear and greed, and the one word, “which we have to hear, which we have to trust and to obey in life and death.”[1] This one word is a very specific name, and since it is directly parallel to “those who are attentive to the word find happiness” it means: “Happy are those who trust in Yahweh, the LORD!” To be attentive to the word is nothing else than to trust in the LORD.
The word essentially is God’s name. Whoever is attentive to this name, hears it; they do not try to fathom it, they do not invent it—to say nothing of the fact that they cannot set or choose it as an goal. For God’s name happens, it comes to me, I experience it: amid the many gods and goddesses, the many lords and mothers with their thousand names, who all clamor to be heard and obeyed. They may give each other space, but above all they contest that space, in the midst of all the erratic fluctuations of their promises and temptations, their threats and coercions. But behold: an intervention, a breakthrough, like the bursting forth of the sun’s rays through the clouds; a silence—let everything in us be silent! There is the true God, the true happiness, with his name, with quiet strength, a powerful clarity that sets us in order, orients us, and creates clarity: powerful, to be sure, but at the same time gentle and vulnerable, like a promise of love: “I will be with you!” (Exodus 3:12). “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me from generation to generation” (Exodus 3:15). In the wilderness God lets Moses hear him speak from the burning bush, and Moses covered his face (Exodus 3:6). Again, in the wilderness, God lets Elijah hear him in the silence as a quiet whisper, and Elijah wrapped his face in his cloak (I Kings 19: 12f.). Gerhard Tersteegen also hears this name in awe with his song “God himself is present …”[2] Indeed; it is out of deep reverence that our Jewish sisters and brothers do not pronounce God’s proper name.
“I will be with you!”—that is God’s name, the great promise of reliable love. I will be with you on the paths, detours and wrong turns of your life story and search for happiness; I will be with you on the paths, detours and wrong turns of the entire course of world history. I want to give you enough, in my goodness and grace, and in my mercy I will save you from all distress and lead you to the good goal.
This promise of happiness is contained in the original promise with which I am addressed, the one word to which I should be attentive: “I am the LORD your God!” (Exodus 20:2). This original promise has come close to us in the form of a human being: in the life, suffering and death of Jesus Christ, so that through the Son in the Holy Spirit we not only hear God’s name—his grace and mercy—but also taste and see it. “Taste and see how friendly the LORD is. Blessed are those who trust in him” (Psalm 34:9). Jesus Christ, the LORD, is “Immanuel” (Matthew 1:23): God with us “in the mud and in the toil, so much so that his skin smokes,” as Luther says in his sermon on the name of Immanuel.[3] He walks with us through thick and thin. He speaks for us when our own heart speaks against us. He steps in for us when others are finished with us and let us down, when they say: You are a failure, you are useless! He defends us, when the “old satanic foe”[4] accuses us (Revelation 12:10). The old foe wants to make us feel worthless so that we grow weary of him and sink into depression. When others depart from us, he stays near; in fact, he is closer to me than I am to myself. When others condemn us and we can no longer endure it, when we are alone in our defiant and despondent heart, he justifies me. He gives me trust, confidence and hope. He delivers me from my foolishness and melancholy and gives me the courage to live. For “I have come that you may have life and have it in all its fullness” (John 10:10): life and pure contentment in its fullness.
“Jesus Christ, as he is attested in the Holy Scriptures, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” What does this proclamation of the Barmen Synod of 1934 mean for us as we consider the question of happiness?
Our primordial search for happiness is not excluded simply by that one word to which we must be attentive. As if our longing for beauty, sun, air, love, recognition, protection and help in times of distress, as if our yearning for peace, our hunger and thirst for justice—as if all that could simply be negated!
Jesus Christ, as the one Word of God, with the original promise “I am the Lord your God!” brings to the fore the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods beside me!” But he still allows the voice of jealousy to be heard, a jealousy that excludes every other except itself when this other is to be worshipped and adored and wants to gain power over us. He lets this voice be heard when all that is necessary to life and all that was created good by God becomes limitless and boundless, when it claims all our care and attention and we can think of nothing else than our own happiness: the happiness that comes from good health, a happy family, work satisfaction, success in life, a good reputation, and enjoyable hobbies. All things good and useful to life can become your idol if you hang your heart on them, if you rely on them completely, if you look to them to promise you a final fulfillment and in this sense true happiness. Then your love becomes the goddess Venus, the care for your children becomes Diana, worry about your livelihood becomes the god Pluto and Mammon, and the handling of the conflicts vital to your life becomes the god Mars, the god of war (as if war could be the father of all things!), and then your love of the word becomes the God Logos, and your yearning for beauty, light, and clear thinking becomes Apollo and Athena.
But those who attend to the one word, which alone we are to trust in life and death, and who are as wise as Solomon, and ask for a “hearing heart” above all else (I Kings 3:9)—for a heart that listens to that word, they acquire a sober and critical attitude to the mentioned necessities of life and their tendency to absolutize themselves and to want to become permanent, indeed eternal. If he who promised himself to us with his name is alone eternal, then I am temporal and finite--however eternal, insofar God’s unbreakable promise of love, “I will be with you!” was given to me. As temporal and finite beings, kept in this promised eternity, we must not presumptuously assume or stubbornly insist that we have a right to be happy, young and beautiful, intelligent and rich, respected and loved—as if we had a right to claim anything before God the Creator! As temporal and finite beings kept in God's eternity by attending to his word and trusting him, we can gratefully receive the happiness God grants us without ourselves wanting to eternalize it. We must not fail to recognize its fragility and brittleness, and we do not need to be ashamed of feeling sad about this. We can gratefully enjoy this fragile happiness, if it happens to fall to our lot, without that pagan anxiety that fears the envy of the gods. Finite pleasures have their rightful place, their space, their time and their beauty; the enjoyment of the finite is its justified use.
When the bad days come, when we experience misfortune, loss of those closest to us, loss of health, loss of employment, loss of friendship, loss of recognition by others or even of self-esteem, we fall from the joy of life into despondency and world-weariness under the onslaught and the force of these attacks (Anfechtungen). It is difficult then to attend to the word, to trust in the LORD, and to find in him the source of our happiness. The great promise of love, “I will be with you!” must then be believed against all appearances to the contrary. The happiness of this love is then hidden under its opposite.
In the Luther Bible, we find this verse, which is offensive in its exclusivity: “Only attack (Anfechtung) will teach you to take notice of the word” (Isaiah 28:19). Really!—only attack? That is a provocative statement that at least serves to provide us with a realistic and sober view of things! Happiness is not there for the taking: it must be fought for—by paying attention to the one word of God so that, if necessary, I can also claim it against the God hidden in misfortune and can hold up to him his promise “I will be with you be!” And I can use it as a weapon to defend myself in times of attack (Anfechtung), as Jacob did at the Jabbok (Genesis 32). So, when I am attacked, it is not the genuineness of faith that is being tested, but God’s word, which proves its reliability and power in the attack and against it. In this way, spiritual attack teaches us to take notice of the word, and to remember the power that is in it. It is able to overcome the doubting question of whether God keeps his promises, and to reassure me that “neither death nor life, neither present nor future, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in the whole of creation can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Romans 8:38f.). Should not this love then be our true happiness? We certainly cannot make it ourselves, but we can find it.
“Those who attend to the word find happiness.” Concentrated attention to the word gives us the opportunity, as Luther’s Small Catechism points out, to engage daily with the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, absolution, and the Lord’s Supper. If these parts of the Catechism are what really matters, then within these parts this is true especially of the Lord’s Supper. In it, God’s name, his comfort, his promise to be with us down here “in the mud and in the toil” are all condensed and concentrated.
That promise is distributed and given in the hand, in the mouth, and—God grant it!—in the heart, permeated and encompassed by the gifting words of institution (Gabewort): “This is my body, this is my blood, for you, given for you for the forgiveness of sin” and for the deliverance from all evil. “My body, my blood”: “May it strengthen and preserve you in true faith to life eternal!” With this tangible comfort and defiance, we may, ought, and can resist spiritual attack, which wants to rob us of our faith, that unconditional trust and confidence we need for life. God himself has given us the weapon in our hands, in our ears and in our heart, with which we are to defend ourselves when our life is under attack. That weapon is his own word, in which he is with us and creates our faith and preserves our life so that we can pray: “My heart holds up to you your word: ‘Seek my face!’ Therefore, your face, Lord, do I seek” (Psalm 27:8).[5]
Oswald Bayer is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany.
Notes
[1] Barmen Theological Declaration (1934), I.
[2] Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Augsburg Publishing House and Lutheran Church in America Publication Board, 1978) [hereafter cited as LBW], 249.
[3] Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 57 vols., eds. J. F. K. Knaake et al. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883ff), 4, 608-609.
[4] LBW, 228.
[5] A lecture delivered in Täbingen on September 18, 2015, and translated by Jeffrey Silcock
