The Loincloth
Via Iwand’s sermon on Jeremiah 13:1-11, “The Loincloth” (February 1936, Freizeit der theologische Fachschaft der Universitaet Koenigsburg in Allenstein, in Bekenntnispredigen, Heft 14, 1936. S. 4-13)
How the echo from the warning of Jeremiah sounded is reported to us. ”Come,” they said, “let us take council against Jeremiah; for the priests cannot err in the law, and the wise cannot fail in their counsel, and the prophets cannot teach injustice. Come, let us kill him with our tongue and nothing will come of all his speeches.” That is the effect, the effect of the Word of God. We human beings are commonly proud of being able to kill the one who speaks for God with
our tongue. As if something were won in this: as if the events that the Word speaks about were gotten rid of! We are proud when we are right in the end – but God is full of sorrow, when He is right in the end over against all His adversaries, against the priests, against the prophets, against the wise and unwise, all who perish in their own being right. They rejoiced that they had the power to stifle the prophet’s word and did not suspect that they themselves would soon be taken away as if they never were. Perhaps we are frightened a little at the thought of that event, perhaps we get ourselves used to seeking the truth with many, with the crowd, with those who shout down the Word of God but still cannot hinder what it announces. Because finally only one is always right in the end – God is right in the end, though we all persuade ourselves that we are right, though everyone cries: Silence, what God says will not happen, but what we say, what we plan will happen, we master fate – God? Does God have the hands to reach into the wheels of history? Does He have horses and a chariot to accomplish His will? How is God supposed to engage history? God in history – What Jeremiah had to display here for his people is God in history, but differently than philosophers of history and prophets of salvation dream of this God in history. This is not a God who brings up the rear, who gives His “Yes” and “Amen” to that which has already happened, instead His word comes first – and that which follows after is Himself. Thus He says: “I will bring upon this land all the words that I spoke about it.” That is the God of history, the God who acts because one no longer listens to his word, the God who takes His glory because one no longer gives it to Him, the God who does not follow after what we have done, but rather who acts as the active, powerful, irresistible God behind His word. For as He speaks, so it happens. That is the God of history, to whom His name matters more than everything that is on the earth, who does not allow whatever will not praise Him to live. Woe to those who despise His Word and run into the arms of the dumb, veiled, inaccessible God!
