[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! On this Sunday I would like to talk about something that everyone has, or at least may have, something that everyone knows in some form. Sadness. There are many, many sad people on this earth, in this world. There is a great deal of sadness of all kinds, and very often it happens that even behind the serene exterior, down in the depths of the soul, there is some secret, deep sadness, some sorrow. Or there is a person who has a great sadness that lasts a lifetime, and there is a person who has small, everyday sadnesses, but there is no one who does not know this one of the deepest human feelings. There are so many different reasons for sadness, as soon as I suddenly remember a sad person. Let me list just a few of these reasons, which many of us are familiar with and which we see and encounter ourselves very often. For example, the knowledge of a latent, secret illness, which perhaps no one knows about but himself, but which haunts his soul and makes his life sad. Because he sees the prospect as sad. Or perhaps it is the comparison of oneself with others and the involuntary feeling of one's own lack of talent that makes one sad. Or perhaps it is the other way round: one feels one's own talent, but at the same time is forced to experience that one does not get recognition for the talent one may have more than someone else who gets more recognition for it. Or perhaps the reason for the sadness may be an unhappy, unhappy marriage, a lack of happiness in family life, a failure to find it. There may be a reason for sadness in a child who is not born, or a child who is born. Because a child can not only bring joy to its parents, but also immense sadness. Or perhaps it is a sin that takes hold of a person's soul and he knows it is a sin, but he cannot control it, he cannot cast it off, he cannot get rid of it, and that makes him sad. Or a great tragedy that has struck his life.There is a lot of sadness in this world. This life on earth is full of all sorts of sadness. You could almost say that each person has his own individual sadness. So there are many different causes of sorrow, but qualitatively, the Word says, there are two kinds of sorrow: sorrow according to God and sorrow according to the world. And it's good to distinguish and see this clearly because it's how the same sorrow becomes either uplifting or devastating in our lives. And the deepest foundation of sorrow according to the world is the example of the rich young man in the Bible. I am sure you all know it. It happened that once a wealthy, sympathetic young man became enthusiastic about Jesus. But when he heard Jesus tell him the condition for following him - that he should sell all his possessions and distribute them among the poor - his enthusiasm suddenly waned, and so we read in the Word: 'And the young man, hearing these words, went away sorrowing'. How strange: a sad rich man! For such there is. And why was he sad? The reasoning in the Word is so particular: 'Because he had many possessions'. So we read on, word for word. So there is such a thing. He could not part with it, as you know. He couldn't put it in Jesus' hands, he was so attached to it. So, brothers and sisters, this shows that wealth - whether it's joy or sorrow, whether it's riches or poverty, something that I can't put into Jesus' hands - will eventually make my life miserable. And the rich young man has not been sad at all so far. In fact, it is very likely that he has been very cheerful and enjoying the benefits and opportunities of his wealth. But now, when it suddenly became apparent, almost in a flash, that this was what separated him from Jesus, now wealth was no longer a source of joy for him, but rather a source of sadness.
For this is the wonderful thing, Brothers and Sisters, that everything, really everything, that separates a man from Jesus, somehow makes a man sad. Because it is really true, whether we want it or not, whether we believe it or not, that Jesus is Life. Jesus is the fullness of joy. As it is written in a Word, "Thou hast fullness of joy". So anything, really anything, that is so precious to a person that they don't want to put it in the hands of Jesus, will sooner or later make their life miserable. It has just come out that this rich young man in the Bible had an idol for his wealth. Do you know what an idol is? Everything in a man's life that he holds on to so tightly that he refuses to give it up can become an idol. What fills his heart, occupies his soul, his thoughts, his emotions. That which fills your life to the brim. This is the idol! And the idol always makes you sad! And are you not sad because something in your life has become an idol? Perhaps it is an old memory that is so engraved in your life that everywhere you look you see it? Or maybe a big disappointment? In people, in a world that still haunts you so much that you can't get over it? Or maybe the pain of your life not turning out the way you once imagined? Or maybe it's a dear dead one that God has already taken, but you haven't given it back and still refuse to let go? Or maybe a sin that has overtaken you, or maybe a dream that never wanted to come true? Because it can all be an idol and an idol always makes you sad!
Do you not sense, Brothers and Sisters, that such sadness is actually the sadness of our own selfish heart. It exposes what is in the heart. For it is very true that there is no better way to know the inside of a man than by what he is grieving over. What is it that makes him sad? In the case of the rich young man, it is in his sadness that what has been in his heart is brought out, somehow disguised. Deep inside. His idol is now unmasked. Until now he himself had not known. He had hoped to follow Jesus and his own selfish heart. And then now he realizes that he can't. You can't do it that way. That's why we read about him, "He would go away thirsty!" This is actually the sadness of unsatisfied selfishness. Observe your sorrows: it is almost always such selfish sorrow that grips your soul. Which is nothing but self-pity. The lack of fulfillment of your own ideas.
The exact opposite of this is the so-called holy sadness. It's also mentioned in the Bible. When Jesus approached Jerusalem, "seeing the city, he wept over it". So we read in Luke's Gospel. Seeing the city, he wept over it. That's sadness too, but of a different kind. It's a typically Godly sorrow. Jesus not only wept in the cemetery, not only wept at the tomb of one of his best friends, Lazarus, as it is written of him. Jesus also wept at the grave of his enemy. Seeing the city, the city that He knew was going to kill Him, "weeping on it"! He was not weeping for Himself, He was not feeling sorry for Himself. He was weeping for this city. What made him so sad? The approach of the divine judgment threatening the city and its inexorability. The anticipation of the terrible punishment that threatened the whole nation. He wept because he saw men rushing senselessly to their doom. He ached for blindness, and he ached for the punishment that awaited them, and he ached for the destruction that would befall them, and he ached for the damnation.
Brothers and sisters, we should learn this kind of sorrow. This holy sorrow, this sorrow for others. To weep for the plight of others. Let us observe what it is that hurts us? When was the last time we cried? And why then? Was it for someone else? And when we wept for someone else's misery, was it not rather that we imagined ourselves in that other person's misery and in fact we were not weeping for him, for that other person, but we were weeping for ourselves? Could you cry, for example, for the neighbour who has been so terrible, who has hurt you so many times and made you angry? Could you weep for that wretch who still doesn't know Jesus and is running to his doom? Can you weep for that? Or is it not that we weep sooner for a cup that is broken than for a human soul that is broken? Oh, how terribly selfish is our sorrow! Even our sorrow at the misery of others, even our tears of compassion, all proclaim that we love only ourselves. And we feel sorry for ourselves and fear for ourselves from the possible similar perils as the other person is in.
It is only natural that there are tragedies in life, and there are events in which sadness is entirely justified, sadness is self-evident. There are cases of this in the Bible, but there are many in life in particular. For in the Bible, the ancient Jeremiah prophecy that was fulfilled in the Bethlehem massacre of the children reads, "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and wailing, Rachel mourned for her sons, and would not be comforted concerning her sons, because she had none." An awful lot of tragedy happens in this life. And it is the pastors - to whom people tend to bring not so much their joy as their sadness - who can tell us so many cases of the immense sadness that eats away at a person's heart. Well, dear Brethren, it is at such times that one must be especially careful of the soul, for sadness makes a man's soul like freshly ploughed earth, and now the great question is, what seed falls into it? Sadness is in fact a great spiritual hunger, and the great question is precisely how one wants to satisfy this hunger, because it is not all the same. Woe to him who flees from sadness into a world of illusions! Dear Brothers and Sisters, do not pass very light judgment on those who, for example, stagger in their footstools! For perhaps most of those too have fled there from some secret sadness. They have fled into the intoxication of alcohol to escape the reality of a life they thought was unbearable. Nothing could be easier than to have a few half-drinks and you're in another world. A beautiful but dangerous world. A world of illusions. And if one cannot escape to God, or does not want to escape to God from one's own sadness, tell me where to escape to. Nearest and easiest to the cup. Or someone else might bury themselves in work. Or perhaps into illicit pleasures, or perhaps into daydreaming, daydreaming. The cuckolded wife, for example, in the mindless adoring love of her children. Or the unhappy husband perhaps in the pursuit of unrealistic ambitions. No matter where! Escape from the unbearable reality! But illusions always deceive. And never comforting, for that is why they are illusions. And so sadness then becomes gloom, then isolation, then bitterness, then despair, then despair. And we all know where despair leads.
How right the Word is when it says, "Sorrow according to the world is death!" Right at the very point of Rachel's otherwise very justified sorrow is a terrible sentence. It reads, "He would not comfort me concerning his sons, because there are none!" So it is not that he could not comfort me, but that he would not. He was inconsolably sad. He would not accept comfort, and he would not hear comfort. Because he does not want to hear the consolation. He buries himself in his sadness. And that is the most dangerous escape from sadness. When one flees into his own sorrow and buries himself completely in it. And yet, there is consolation for such a Crab-eater! There would be. In fact, not only would there be, there is. There is comfort for all sorts of sorrows! What is it? Strange to say, but it is true that the deepest sorrow in the world, or perhaps I should say, more correctly, the holiest sorrow in the world. That abyss in the Garden of Gethsemane in which these words were uttered, "Above it my soul is sad." Such sadness has never been in the world! And in this sadness there is everything. Jesus is sad for the betrayal of Judas, for the apostasy of Peter, for the falling asleep of his disciples at the most critical moment, for his people being driven to the murder of God by their blind leaders, for the judgement of the church, condemning the Son of God in God's name, the secular judgement that the famous Roman justice system offers no protection to the only truly innocent man - and above all the abandonment because everyone is abandoning him, even God!
Such sorrow has never before consumed, never before tormented a human soul in this world. And yet how strange that this sorrow unto death is the only true healer of our sorrow. This sorrow is the only true source of all consolation. Because it means that even in our deepest sorrow, God is with us! And if anyone wants to flee from his sadness, let him flee to God, who knows better than anyone else what sadness is, and knows better than anyone else - knows it from his own experience, from the depths of the Garden of Gethsemane that I have just read from the Bible. And I know that sadness is the spiritual state where one is closest to God.
So think of the sadness of Jesus! Let Jesus Christ into your sorrow. He is closer to you, He is closest to you! Closer than the cup, closer than work, or than illicit pleasure, or than dreaming, or than anything else in this world. You will never regret it! "Sorrow according to God brings unrepentant repentance!" says the Word. I could not describe the psychological process of a human soul being comforted in the presence of Jesus. But there is, as I have just quoted and I return to it again, it is written in the Bible, "Thine is the fullness of joy." And I know, because I know from experience, that the one who truly turns to God - but truly, to the God who, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, has gone through all the sad journeys of our strange life on earth - the one who truly turns to this God, will experience that it is true, that indeed with Him is full joy. And then even through his sorrows there shines through some pure serenity from above. That said, I don't know how it is that in the presence of Jesus one is comforted, but I do know that Jesus somehow puts a limit to one's otherwise boundless and boundless sadness. Somehow, he sets a limit in such a way that Rachel no longer sees only the loss of her sons, that is, she no longer sees only the bad - that too, of course, but also something good. Something so good that it is wrapped up in the evil. Because in every evil there is something good. But then, this good can only really be recognised by holding the hand of Jesus, and only by clinging to Jesus! I have seen people give thanks for the tragic turn of events in their lives!
So, in the end, the fact is that the same sorrow can be a Godly sorrow and it can be a worldly sorrow. It just depends whether it brings you closer to God or takes you away from God. So, in fact, what is most decisive in our lives is not what happens - even if anything happens - but what is more decisive is what does what has happened shape me into? What does it do to me, or what does it do to me? And what do I use it for? And then it turns out that the same sadness that can be levered without Jesus can be lifted to great heights with Jesus. And the same sorrow that without Jesus binds and paralyzes, with Jesus heals and makes you a better person. If a person does not give his head to sorrow but to Jesus, he can even use his sorrow for good, for it is written that "all things work together for good to those who love God"! Everything! So then the sorrow too! How? Only Jesus can tell us. He does. But only directly, but only personally to everyone. All I know is that the God who could bring life out of the most hopeless death at Easter, the God who could create life out of the most hopeless death, the God who can bring good out of the greatest sorrow. And if you give your sorrow to God, then His Spirit begins to work in that sorrow, and then what Jesus said becomes true: "Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted."
He is not saying they will be happy when this or that happens, but when this or that passes away or is fulfilled. No! It says, "Blessed are they!" Now! They are happy in the sadness. For then their sorrow becomes comforted sorrow. And then, even if there is still pain, there is no more sadness in it.
We now sing the beautiful song of all sad people:
My soul, why art thou discouraged:
Why do you grieve so?
Trust in God, and do not be discouraged,
In whom I rejoice at last.
Who seemeth to me
He gives me a kind release,
He'll show me, evidently,
That he is my God.
(Psalm 42:6)
Amen.
Date: 13 November 1966.