Christian Discourses

"Thus the upbuilding discourse is fighting in many ways for the eternal to be victorious in a person, but in the appropriate place and with the aid of the lily and the bird, it does not forget first and foremost to relax into a smile. Relax, you struggling one! One can forget how to laugh, but God keeps a person from ever forgetting how to smile! A person can forget much without any harm and in his old age certainly has to put up with forgetting a lot that he could wish to remember, but God forbid that a person would forget the lily and the bird before his final blessed end!"

"Paganism forms the opposition to Christianity, but the lily and the bird form no opposition to either of these contending parties – they play outside, if one may put it this way, and shrewdly keep out of all oppositions. In order, then, not to judge and condemn, the Gospel uses the lily and the bird to make clear what paganism is, but thereby in turn to make clear what is required of the Christian."

"Therefore you should not worry and say, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink? – the pagans seek all these things. Matthew 6:31-32"

"What, then, does the poor Christian live on? On the daily bread. In that he resembles the bird. But the bird, which certainly is not a pagan, is not a Christian either - because the Christian prays for the daily bread. But then is he even poorer than the bird, since he even has to pray for it, whereas the bird receives it without praying? Yes, the pagan is of this opinion."

"What is the temptation that in itself is many temptations? Certainly it is not the glutton’s temptation to live in order to eat; no (what rebellion against the divine order!) it is to live in order to slave. The temptation is this, to lose oneself, to lose one’s soul, to cease to be a human being and live as a human being instead of being freer than the bird, and godforsaken to slave more wretchedly than the animal. Yes, to slave!"

"The bird, like that simple wise man of antiquity, is a teacher of ignorance."

"The rich Christian indeed realizes that in the highest sense the wealth is not his own property. Oh no, the owner is God, who expressly wants it administered in this way. That is how far it is from the rich Christian’s being able to call the earthly wealth “mine” – it is God’s property; and as far as possible it is to be managed according to the owner’s wishes, managed with the owner’s indifference to money and monetary value, managed by being given away at the right time and place."

"What, then, is the lowly Christian who before God is himself? He is a human being. Inasmuch as he is a human being, he in a certain sense is like the bird, which is what it is. But he is also a Christian, which is indeed implied in the question about what the lowly Christian is. To that extent he is not like the bird, because the bird is what it is. But one cannot be a Christian in this way; if one is a Christin, one must have become that. And he can continually become more and more, because he can continually become more and more a Christian. As a human being he was created in God’s image, but as a Christian he has God as the prototype."

"The rich Christian became ignorant of it; he is rich, poor, rich. The rich pagan is poor, poor, poor. The rich Christian does not talk about his earthly wealth at all but only about the wealth. The rich pagan knows nothing else to talk about except his mammon."

"“What.….lowly?” says the bird. “Let us never think about such things; one flies away from that!” “What.….lowly?” says the Christian. “I am a Christian!” “Alas, lowly!” says the pagan.“ “I am what I am,” says the bird; “What I shall become has not yet been disclosed,” says the lowly Christian; “I am nothing and will never become anything,” says the lowly pagan. “I exist,” says the bird; “Life begins in death,” says the lowly Christian; “I am nothing, and in death I remain nothing,” says the lowly pagan."

"What, then, is the eminent Christian? Well, if you ask in a worldly way whether he is a king or an emperor or his lordship or his grace, etc., it is, of course, generally an impossibility to answer. But if you ask in the Christian sense, the answer is easy: He is a Christian."

"Prayer Father in heaven! In springtime everything in nature comes back again with new freshness and beauty. The bird and the lily have lost nothing since last year – would that we, too, might come back unaltered to the instruction of these teachers! But if, alas, our health has been damaged in times past, would that we might recover it by learning again from the lilies in the field and form the birds of the air!"