12. Watch Your Step When You Go to the House of the Lord
Chapter Twelve
How still, how secure, everything is in the house of God. To the one who enters, it is as if he had come, with a single step, to a distant place, infinitely far away from all clatter and screeching and noisiness, from the terrors of existence, from the storms of life, from scenes of dreadful events or their debilitating expectation. And wherever you turn your eyes in there, everything will make you secure and restful. The high walls of the venerable building, they stand so firm; they protect so reliably this secure place of refuge, under whose mighty vault you are free from every stress. And the beauty of the surroundings, its magnificence, will make everything friendly for you, so inviting. The holy place wants to ingratiate itself with you, as it were, by likewise recollecting what indeed must be presupposed—good and tranquil times that have favored these undertakings of peace.
See, the man who cut these images into stone, he took a long time to do it. And in all this long time, his life must have been protected and made secure so that no one jolted him and nothing happened to him that in any way could make his hand or thought unsteady. As an artist, he needed the deepest quiet of peace—what he produced therefore also reminds us about this quiet. See, the one who has woven this velvet with which the pulpit is adorned, he must have had quiet to sit still at this work, at the work that thrives in times of peace and is not needed in times of war. And the woman who sewed the gold on it, she must have been allowed to sit undisturbed and diligent in her work, solely occupied with it and with the thought of doing each stitch with equal care.
How calming, how soothing—alas, and how much danger in this security! And therefore it really is true that, strictly speaking, only God in heaven can preach very effectually to human beings in life’s actuality. For he has the circumstances, has the destinies, has the situations in his control. And the circumstances—and when you are in them, when they surround you as the person in question: yes, their eloquence is penetrating and awakening. I suppose you, too, have experienced that. If you yourself were the sick person, who lay sleepless on the sick bed in the midnight hour; or if you alone were the one who sat by the sick person’s painful bed in the midnight hour and with alarming clarity counted every stroke of the clock and every sigh of the sick person, but without finding the relief of monotony or of the counting—if, then, you were to hear that devotional song, “Our Savior Was Born in the Midnight Hour,” do you believe that all speakers together would be capable of producing this effect? And why not? Because the sick bed and the nighttime hour preach more powerfully than all speakers; they understand this secret, talking to you in such a way that you come to feel that it is you, just you—not the one who is sitting beside you, not those out there—but just you who is being addressed, you who feels alone, alone in the whole world, alone in the midnight hour by the sick bed.
Or if a person is at death’s door, and one frankly and honestly has not concealed from him what in these times one will conceal from the dying person, what is the most important thing for him to know—that it is over: do you not believe that a simple, comforting word from the most limited person will produce an entirely different effect than all the most famous speakers on the person who—healthy and fresh, even spiritually sound in his own mind—sits securely in the magnificent temple and listens and perhaps evaluates the address? And why will that simple word produce an entirely different effect? Because death knows how to make itself understood, finding the one to whom it relates; it knows how to let you understand that is you, that you are the person concerned, that it is no one else, not your next-door neighbor or your opposite neighbor or another person in the city, but that it is you who is to die.
It is this way in the actuality of life, where, with the help of circumstances, God is the one who preaches for awakening. But it is in God’s house, in the magnificent house of God, where the pastor preaches—for comfort. Especially if he would strive to satisfy human demands or what people then call the demands of the times. For while people in these times become more and more fearful, more and more afraid to actually experience themselves the terror implicit in the violence of circumstances, they are becoming more and more finicky in coveting the vanity of eloquence on the other hand. People do not want to hear anything in earnest about that which is terrible; they want to play at it, almost like soldiers in peacetime (or rather non-soldiers, I suppose) play at war. Artistically, people want to demand everything with respect to the beauty of their environment, and they artistically demand everything of the speaker. Yet, in a worldly and ungodly way, they themselves want to sit in perfect security in God’s house, because, after all, they know well that no speaker has the power—the power that only Providence has—to grip a person, to cast him into the force of circumstances, to let the vicissitudes and ordeals and spiritual trials preach in earnest to him for awakening.
Oh, there is so much in the usual course of life that will lull a person to sleep, teach him to say “peace and no danger.” That is why we go into God’s house in order to be awakened from sleep and in order to break the spell. But when, in turn, there is sometimes so much in God’s house that will lull us to sleep! Even what is awakening in and for itself—thoughts, meditations, ideas—can lose meaning entirely by the force of habit and monotony, just as a spring can lose the tension by which, after all, it really only is what it is. Hence, in order to come closer to the subject of this discourse, it is indeed right and proper, is a plain duty to invite persons again and again to come into the Lord’s house, to call on them. But people can become so accustomed to hearing this invitation that it loses its meaning. Thus one ultimately stays away, and it ends with the invitation preaching the church empty. Or people can become so accustomed to hearing this invitation that it develops false notions in those who do come, makes us important in our own minds, so that we are not like those who stay away, makes us self-satisfied, secure, because it entangles us in an illusion—as if it were God who needed us since we are invited so urgently, as if it were not we, on the contrary, who in fear and trembling should think about what he can demand of us, as if it were not we who sincerely ought to thank God that he will have anything to do with us at all, that he will put up with us and permit that we may approach him ourselves, tolerate that we presume to believe that he cares about us, that he unashamedly wants to be known, to be called our God and our Father.
So, then, let us now talk in a different way about this matter, while we discuss this saying from Ecclesiastes:
Watch Your Step When You Go to the House of the Lord
Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord. For it is an exceedingly responsible matter to go up into the Lord’s house. Remember that he who is present there is he who is in heaven—and you are on the earth. But do not imagine that he is far away in his sublimity. Just this is indeed earnestness and responsibility—that he, the infinitely sublime one, is quite close to you, closer than the people you have about you on a daily basis, closer than your most intimate friend before whom you feel entirely able to show yourself as you are. Sublimity and distance seem to correspond to one another, so that the one who is sublime is also distant from you; equality and closeness seem to correspond to one another, so that the one who is near is also your equal. Yet, when sublimity is quite near to you and is still sublimity, then you are in a difficult position. In his sublimity, God himself—the infinitely sublime one—is really quite close to you in the Lord’s house. For it is not with God as with a human being, who, after all, basically becomes less sublime when he comes close to and has dealings with you, the lowly one. No, God can come quite near to the lowliest one and yet remain in his infinite sublimity.
Oh, the earnestness of eternity; oh, what a difficult position! For is it not true that, normally if a stranger alone is present where you are, then you are somewhat changed, and if the most powerful and most lofty person in the land is present, then you are much changed, because he is so lofty, and because you see him so rarely. But God in heaven is lofty in an entirely different way, and yet, when you go up into the house of the Lord, then God—in his infinite sublimity—is quite close to you, closer than you are to yourself, since he understands and discovers even your thoughts that you do not understand yourself. Oh, what an immense weight of responsibility—that the infinitely sublime one, the one for whom you perhaps would prefer to show yourself in your best form, that he is quite close to you in his sublimity, sees you, and yet sees you absolutely close at hand in his sublimity, as not even the one who is around you every day sees you. Even if you—in view of the fact that you are presenting yourself before the Most High—would try to appear different than you are, you cannot do it: he is too infinitely sublime for that. Yes, and now it comes again: he is too close to you for that. If a person can lose his composure and forget what he wanted to say when he is placed right before His Royal Majesty: oh, how terrible to be placed right before God. For His Royal Majesty is neither as lofty as God, nor can he come as close to you.
Be on guard, then, when you go to the house of the Lord. What do you want there? You want to call on the Lord your God, to exalt and to praise him. But now, in all honesty, is that actually your earnest intention? As you know, language has no more solemn expression with respect to demanding honesty than when one says to a person: “Is that your conviction, your opinion, before God?” And, after all, you are before God in the house of the Lord. Accordingly, is your invocation that calls upon God honestly meant before God? And what is honesty before God? It is that your life expresses what you say. We human beings must be content with less, with the one person solemnly assuring the other person that this or that is what he sincerely means. But God in heaven—the infinitely sublime one or (yes, here it comes again) God the knower of hearts, who is absolutely close to you—God will only understand one kind of honesty: the honesty that a person’s life expresses what he says. All other honesty, all other solemnity, all mere assurance that one means what he says: it is a deception, an untruth, before God. Such an invocation is a presumption against him.
Be on guard, then, that your invocation is not presumptuousness toward God, instead of being able to please God. Be on guard that you—deceived by your own self, because you do not understand yourself—do not presume to deceive God, as if you had in your heart the pious feelings that nevertheless do not have power over you to change your life, to let your life be the expression for these feelings. Oh, we human beings often complain over the fact that we lack the words and expressions for our feelings—that the language will not aid us, that we must hunt for words and perhaps in vain. Nothing like that will worry you before God, if only your life expresses that you have these feelings. Yes, then you are sincere before God and that loquacious honesty utterly superfluous.
Or perhaps you go up into the Lord’s house in order to pray to God for help and assistance. Be on guard for what you ask. Have you rightly, have you before God, realized yourself whom you are calling upon for help, what it means to call upon his help, what it commits you to? If it is perhaps worldly matters, childish worries, trifles, on account of which you want to call upon his help—and not in order that he might help you to forget them but in order to occupy yourself with them—then if it is on account of trivialities (which, after all, you perhaps will have forgotten tomorrow and, with them, also this by no means trifling thing, that you called upon the assistance of the Most High): then you indeed have mocked God. And he does not forget that you called upon his help.
If a physician becomes impatient (and certainly with justification) when childish parents send word to him for every trifle, so that the whole thing is over when he comes, and they have nearly forgotten why they sent for him: then should God, the omnipotent one, be willing to be treated in this way? Or do you dare hazard to think that it is God who is to serve you, that he, the most exalted one, should be ready to hear your prayers and to fulfill your wishes right away? Oh, if you involve yourself with him, then you are the one who thereby is unconditionally bound to obey and to serve. And if you do not understand this, then it is a presumption to have a relationship with him, a presumption to call upon his help.
Yes, he certainly is the omnipotent one and can do everything that he wills. It looks almost tempting, as if you only needed to wish. But be on guard. No thoughtless word is so avenged as a thoughtless prayer to God, and no prayer is so binding as the prayer that invokes God for help. For it now binds you unconditionally to let God help you as he wills. You can ask a human being for help, and you may have forgotten it when he comes with the help. You can ask a human being for help, and, if he does not want to help you as you desire, then you can say, “That was not what I asked for.” Yet, if you have prayed to God for help, then you are bound, bound to accept the help as he sees fit. Oh, how often a cry for help is heard, and this cry is that there is no help. In truth, there is always help enough. But the human heart is so cunning and keeps its word so little that when the help turns out to be what one had most feared, then one says, “But that is no help, is it?” And yet, if this help is from God, and if you have prayed to him for help, then you are bound to accept the help and, in faith and with gratitude, to call it help.
Or perhaps you go up to the house of the Lord in order with a vow to commit yourself to a purpose, to a resolution for the future. But be on guard for what you do. Have you rightly understood what it means to promise God something, that what you promise God is something a human being can and dares to promise, that it is not something that we human beings are able to be fooled into promising one another, that it is something God will permit you to promise him. Otherwise it is indeed a presumption. And have you rightly understood how a promise to God binds you? They say that “a promise is a snare”—and a promise to God, yes, if it is what it is supposed to be and becomes what it should become, then surely it is as far as possible from being a snare, then it is a saving leading-string. But if it is not! If you do not understand yourself in what you promise God, if you do not have the true conception of what you can and dare to promise God: then you lose God; you pamper your soul into handling God and God’s name light-mindedly and vainly. And if you do not keep what you promise to God, then you lose yourself. Oh, and really there is always one whom a person cannot escape: oneself. And then one more: God in heaven!
Be on guard, then, when you go to the house of the Lord. Take the words of the Preacher into consideration: “Be not rash with your mouth, and let not your heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and you upon earth: therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is known by multitude of words. When you vow a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he has no pleasure in fools: pay that which you have vowed. Better is it that you should not vow, than that you should vow and not pay.”
Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord. For perhaps you should get to know much more than you really wish to know after all, and perhaps you will receive an impression that you later will seek to get rid of in vain. So be on guard with fire; it burns.
It is heard again and again; it is regarded in the world as a done deal: human beings would like to know the truth, if only they had ability and time for it, and then if one could make it obvious to them in proper fashion. What a superfluous worry; what an ingeniously concocted excuse! In truth, every human being has sufficient ability to know the truth—surely God in heaven would not be so inhuman as to have treated anyone unfairly! And truly every human being, even the most occupied, also has sufficient time to come to know the truth. Nothing is more certain, since he shall have time. That the busy person has just as little time as the loafer for it is surely by no means a refutation! And since every person has sufficient ability and time, then, of course, neither can it be so difficult a matter to make it obvious in proper fashion—if a person himself wants to have it made obvious. But herein lies the very difficulty: it is so easy to shove the blame onto the lack of ability, onto the lack of time, and onto the obscurity of truth, and then, on the other hand, it looks so neat and is so comfortable that one would very much like to recognize the truth.
Truly, truly, this is not so. The one who only knows himself to a degree knows the answer from his own experience; it is rather that, deep down, the person has a secret dread of and reserve toward the truth, a fear of getting to know too much. Or do you actually believe that it is every human being’s sincere wish to get to know fully what self-denial is, to get it made so clear that every excuse, every evasion, every mitigation, every retreat to the untrue but favorable opinion of others is to be cut off for him! Do you believe that? Yes, I need not wait for your answer. For if it were the case, then every human being would truly have self-denial, since just this is the principal form of self-denial. Oh, but even the better person who really has overcome the initial shudder at the truth and does not shrink in an entirely worldly way from getting to know it—even he, or rather precisely he, will no doubt confess that he often and often enough suspects himself with reason, that he still hides from the truth like Adam among the trees, that he still steals away from something and still creeps to something, that sometimes he still wants to slip into darkness, where there is only twilight, than have the truth make it all too bright around him.
Be on guard, then, when you go up to the house of the Lord. For there you will get to hear the truth—for upbuilding. Yes, it is true, but watch out for the upbuilding. There is nothing, nothing as gentle as the upbuilding, yet there is nothing as domineering either. The upbuilding is vague talk least of all; there is nothing so binding. And in God’s house you get to know the truth—not from the pastor (whose influence, after all, you easily can evade and even in a certain sense should evade) but from God or before God. This is the very earnestness of truth, is the truth—that you get to know it before God. What it especially depends on is this: before God. In God’s house, there is one present who, with you, knows that you—precisely you—have gotten to know the truth. Be on guard for this shared knowledge. You will never be able to slip back into ignorance from this shared knowledge. That is to say, you will not slip back without guilt, and you will not slip away from the consciousness of this guilt either.
Be on guard, then, that you do not get to know too much, that you do not get to know that the assurance—which made you comely in your own eyes, agreeable in the eyes of others, while your life went on pleasantly under it—the assurance that you very much wished to get to know the truth: this is a fancy or, even worse, an untruth. Be on guard that, in God’s house, you do not get to know—but, of course, you do know it. In all your knowledge, perhaps you raise yourself above the simple speakers, who want to talk about such outdated things, which every child knows—but nevertheless be on guard that, in God’s house, you do not get to know in such a way that you have to understand it: that you can be required, in self-denial, to give up everything in which the natural human being has life, pleasure, and pastime.
Have you considered what it means to have a distaste for life? That a distaste for life appears just when everything finite is taken from a human being, while one is still allowed to hold onto life, so that then everything around him becomes desolate and empty and undesirable. Then time becomes so indescribably long; yes, it is to him as if he were dead. Now, indeed, self-denial calls it to die to [at afdøe]—and the truth teaches that a human being is to die to finitude (its pleasures, its occupations, its games, its pastimes), is to go through this death to life, is to taste (to taste death, as it is said) and to grasp how empty is that with which busyness fills up life, how insignificant is that which is the eye’s desire and the carnal heart’s demand. Alas, the natural human being understands the matter in the just the opposite way. He believes that the eternal is what is empty. There is probably no instinct as strong in a human being as that with which he clings to life—when death comes, we all pray that we may be allowed to live, but the dying to [Afdøen] of self-denial is just as bitter as death. And you get to know the truth in the house of the Lord—that you are to die to the world. And if God has gotten to know that you got to know it (which, after all, is inevitable), then no escape will help you in all eternity. Be on guard, then, when you go to the house of the Lord.
Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord. For even if you came from the most horrifying thing that can happen to a person in the world, even if you entered into God’s house running away before the horror out there: you really are coming to something even more terrible. Here, in God’s house, there is essentially discourse about a danger that the world does not know—a danger in comparison with which everything that the world calls danger is child’s play: the danger of sin. And here, in God’s house, there is essentially discourse about a terror that has never happened either before or after, in comparison with which the most terrible thing that can happen to the most unfortunate of all persons is a trifle: the terror that the human race crucified God.
Why, then, are you going into God’s house? Is it poverty or sickness or other hardships—in short, any earthly need and misery? This is not spoken about in God’s house, at least not at first. Sin is spoken about first and must be spoken about first—about the fact that you are a sinner, that you are a sinner before God, that you in fear and trembling are to forget your earthly need before this thought. It is a peculiar way to comfort, is it not? Instead of sympathetically asking about your health, instead of giving you advice and tips…if you had recourse there for that reason, then you have indeed made a mistake. After all, you are coming to something even more terrible. For instead of having sympathy for your earthly misery and busily remedying it, an even heavier weight is put on you: you are made a sinner. That there is salvation for sinners, comfort for the repentant, is what is spoken about—and truly for upbuilding.
But perhaps all this does not concern you, you who, solely occupied with your earthly suffering, fled here. And yet, it does concern you. In vain would you say that it does not concern you; in vain would you leave again. It is said to you, and God knows with you that it was said to you—and that you heard it!
Why, then, are you going into God’s house? Perhaps you have suffered wrong. It is possible that you are the innocent one, the lovable one, and yet perhaps people treacherously deceived you. It is possible that you are the noble one, the good one. It is possible that, one day, you will even be counted among the benefactors of this generation, and yet, yet, perhaps people ostracized you from their community as a reward, mistreated, insulted, mocked you, indeed plotted against your life—and you flee into God’s house in order to seek comfort. Whoever you are, you are making a mistake. You are coming to something even more terrible!
Here, in God’s house, the talk is not, at least not at first, about you and me, about what we human beings could suffer in the world for a little injustice, which, in another way, we still have richly earned. No, in God’s house, here the talk is first and foremost about the terror, whose equal was never seen and never shall be seen later in the world’s confusion; about the injustice, crying to heaven, which was never committed before and never shall be later; about that rebellion, more terrible than the ocean’s wildest, when the human race rebelled against God—not with the usual powerlessness but, as it were, victoriously—grabbed and crucified him. Therefore the one who flees in here from the terror outside really is making a mistake—is fleeing to something even more terrible!
Really, the talk shall be about that first and foremost. His figure, that of our Lord Jesus Christ, is to be evoked—not in the way that the artist finds and takes his time to portray it, not in the way that it is taken out of the environment of terror and is made an object for calm observation. No, he must be remembered in the moment of danger and terror, when the calm spectator doubtless would prefer to remain home, since it would have been suspicious if anyone would have looked upon him worshipfully or merely lovingly, when there was nothing to see except this “Behold the man,” when there was not even time to look upon him, because the terror averted one’s eyes and drew them on oneself, staring. And Christ’s suffering is not to be remembered as something bygone—oh, save your sympathy! No, as this terror is depicted, it is a present thing, and you are present, and I am at a present thing—and as an accomplice!
But then, after all, you did make a mistake when you went to the house of the Lord. Instead of getting to hear the comfort that could comfort you in whatever injustice you are suffering, instead of proving to be right against people who are doing wrong to you, so instead you are shown to be wrong, you, precisely you, the innocently persecuted, insulted, wronged one! You get a guilt, a guilt that cries to heaven, laid upon your conscience—that even you are an accomplice in his innocent suffering and death. Oh, what hard words of comfort! Who can listen to them? O, rigorous way to divert your dark and mournful thoughts—to give you something even more terrible to weep over!
Watch your step when you go to the house of the Lord—and why? Just because the only saving thing, the most blessed comfort, is offered to you in God’s house; the highest thing—friendship with God, his grace in Christ Jesus—is offered to you. That is why we still should not abandon inviting persons to come into God’s house; we should always be willing to pray for others as for ourselves that our visit to God’s house may be blessed. But therefore, precisely therefore, we should not hesitate to cry out to people: for the sake of God in heaven, be on guard, watch for everything, so that you worthily make use of what is offered to you—just because there is everything to win, that is why there is everything to lose too.
Use it in faith! There is no conviction as heartfelt, as strong and as blessed as that of faith. But faith’s conviction is not something one is born with, the confidence of a youthful, cheerful mind. Still less is faith something one pulls out of the air. Faith is the conviction, the blessed conviction, which is in fear and trembling. When faith is seen from its one side—the heavenly—then one only sees the reflection of eternal blessedness in it. But seen from its other side—the human side alone—one sees nothing but fear and trembling. Yet, in that case, the discourse that continually and never in any other way than invitingly, enticingly, winningly wants to talk about the visit to God’s house is indeed also untrue. For, seen from the other side, it is horrifying. The discourse is also untrue, then, that finally ends by frightening people away from coming into the house of the Lord. For, from the other side, it is blessed. One day in God’s house is better than a thousand elsewhere.
Oh, and that is why it is a difficult matter to steer the right way, and surely that is why only very rarely is a person successful in doing it—and yet always in frailty. For it is easy to win people enticingly; it is also easy to frighten them away forbiddingly. But to invite them to come, if possible, with a fervor that no one could resist, and moreover with a terror that could teach even the bravest to shudder, to cry out: “Be on guard!”—yes, that is difficult. In other words, what the speaker argues is what applies to him. For it is said to the speaker: “Use every ability granted to you, ready for every sacrifice and compliance in self-denial; use it to win human beings—but woe to you if you win them in such a way that you leave out the terror. Therefore use all the ability given to you, ready for every sacrifice in self-denial; use it to terrify persons—but woe to you if you do not use it, after all, to win them for the truth.”