Sermons on Isaiah 40 and Romans 8 by Rob Scheider

Sermon on Isaiah 40, 1-11 By Rolf Scheider [This sermon presented on June 22, 2014 in the Berlin cathedral is translated from the German on the Internet, www.academia.edu. Rolf Scheider is a pastor and theologian.] Linguist researchers tell us the Indo-Germanic root of the words “Trost” (comfort) and “Treue” (faithfulness) is the same. The English word trust reminds us of this. Whoever hasn’t completely lost trust trusts in the meaning of his/her life… Our intelligence and our reason rest on a basic feeling. The Berlin theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher called this feeling the “sense of simple dependence.” We know we depend on others. No one created himself. We go to an uncertain future with confident courage. No one knows what diagnosis threatens at our next doctor’s visit. We design the future hopefully. Psychologists speak of a “primal trust” as a prerequisite for a healthy psychosocial development. Persons who suffer under depressions know how hard life is when trust is lost. Encouragement from outside only deepens the isolation. Well-meaning attempts at comfort can only be interpreted as empty promises. A life without reliable relations is desolate. The social ideal of the self-confident venturous and independent contradicts the fact that people are relational beings. We flourish when people are around us whom we can trust or rely – and we atrophy in isolation. In Woody Allen’s famous film “Manhattan.” Young Tracy admonishes the paranoid-hypochondriac-desperate Isaac played by Allen himself in his inimitable way: “You have to have a little faith in people!” Soccer fans these days show their needs of dependence and membership in an unconcealed way. The greater the human band surrounding the fan, the greater the feeling of being lifted up. The community always has comforting effects whether one’s team loses or wins. Fear narrows us physically and depresses us; comfort expands and relieves. We can make this experience in community with others. There are also comforters who can generate this physical feeling… Comfort is a staple or necessity of life like water and bread. Whoever doesn’t have water dies of thirst. Whoever doesn’t have bread dies of hunger. Whoever has no comfort despairs. The need for comfort is huge – and the danger of only being put-off is high. Thus the question is pressing: How do we experience comfort? Can we find an answer in our sermon text? “Comfort, comfort my people!” But how? Comfort is now dispensed like a medicine… Only someone whom we trust can comfort. Trust is earned and can be lost… Theologians are quick to defend God against the complaints of suffering persons… The psalms are full of complaints and accusations of God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus on the cross spoke this verse from the 22nd Psalm…