St. Lamberti Church Oldenburg
25. May 2014

Dear congregation,
When Pastor Hennings asked me almost a year ago if I would take part in the university sermons, I hesitated.

Is faith something academic? What was expected, what aspects could I bring to a sermon as a professor of neurogenetics? Could it be about brain research and religion, about the freedom of Christians in the light of the latest neuroscientific findings?

I have to disappoint you. Neuroscientists may be able to explain some human behaviours such as empathy and economic behaviour better today, but I fundamentally doubt that the topics of faith and God will ever leave the private-subjective realm and become less speculative. I agree with my colleague Appelrath, who was up here three months ago with the realisation: I simply believe - despite the scientific untenability of many biblical texts. To be honest, however, I have to add that I often just try to believe because faith gives me a sense of security and the resulting trust carried me so well in my childhood and youth. And you shouldn't discard the tried and tested so easily. In science, we call this: never change a winning protocol.

However, the Bible gives me a much more poetic language for this security, for this trust, than science: "If I take the wings of the dawn and stay at the edge of the sea, your hand will guide me there too, and your right hand will hold me. So says the 139th Psalm. As a neurogeneticist, I will unfortunately never be able to write such a wonderful metaphor, but I wouldn't want to do without such a sentence either.

The fact that I then decided to make the enquiry has to do with the sermon text that I came across, with the promise: "Listen, and you will live". On the one hand, I am attracted by the contrast inherent in the text to our society, which is increasingly focussed on material values, consumption and success. On the other hand, this promise also invites a dialogue between the biblical text and my field of research, aural research. In this way, the university sermon would also be able to reflect the university sermon.

Let us first listen again to the sermon text:
Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the water!
And you who have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come and buy without money and free wine and milk!
Why do you count money for that which is not bread,
and sour money for that which does not satisfy?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good and savour what is delicious.
Incline your ears and come to me!
Listen, and you will live!
I will make an everlasting covenant with you to give you the lasting graces of David.

This text addresses those who are aware of their hunger, their thirst, their longing and their neediness - and who dare to make this hunger, this thirst, this longing and this neediness their theme. Dorothee Sölle once said that all those who believe limp a little, like Jacob after he fought with the angel. Here in the context of a church service, we expect such recipients, which coincides with our expectations of a Bible text and a sermon. After all, in the minds of many, the church is the place for the weak and draws its social recognition and esteem from this. Paradoxically, this admission of being needy and limping often requires self-confidence and inner strength in today's world. Those who do so are swimming against the tide, as we will hear in a moment.

Because let's move on to everyday life! Aren't the addressees of the vast majority of speeches and brochures much more likely to be those who are successful in the meritocracy, the high earners, the healthy? Isn't there more of an obligation to be in a good mood and to work on self-optimisation?

"Like it" polls on social networks for even the most private areas, embellished Facebook profiles for HR managers, top model shows and fitness studios on every street corner: all of this constantly reminds us that we are being judged, that we have to improve if we want to keep up. And as a scientist in particular, I am very aware of this problem, as we are also regularly evaluated and are in international competition for publications, third-party funding, etc. Publish or perish, is the pithy way of summarising the current academic world. I myself evaluate others every day and comment on their performance, and I think it's fair and necessary.

The church community and everyday life are therefore two different worlds for me in this matter, and I admit that I don't know an easy way out of this dilemma. In the church community, I am confronted with my neediness - but in such a way that it is a necessary part of my life. In the meritocracy of everyday life, everything that looks like neediness is seen as a deficit to be overcome. This everyday message that we must continue to work on our never-achievable perfection puts many of us on the hamster wheel. We become hyperactive and believe that multitasking is a desirable skill rather than a regression to the animal kingdom.

There, it is essential for survival, for example, to always keep an eye on your surroundings when looking for food and never concentrate on anything for too long. However, hyperactivity does not produce anything new, but only reproduces and accelerates what already exists.

The clairvoyant Nietzsche put it succinctly: "The active roll as the stone rolls, according to the stupidity of mechanics". However, most scientific and cultural achievements and original ideas are the result of contemplative phases. Here in Oldenburg, some people will think of Karl Jaspers in this context. He suffered from a lung disease throughout his life and had to spend most of his time lying on his sofa. This enforced leisure, the slowed-down life and the concentration that went with it resulted in a work that is hardly conceivable today, when we are expected to be constantly available. In my opinion, the essential task for us today is therefore not to discover who we are and who we can still become. The really important question is what we should refuse to be, where we do not give in to the impulses from our environment.

The sermon text, with its centuries of wisdom, reinforces my scepticism towards these tendencies in our society when Isaiah says: "Why do you count money for what is not bread, and sour money for what does not satisfy? The Judeo-Christian faith contradicts our meritocracy: you will not be satisfied by your own efforts, the source that quenches your thirst is not to be found in yourself, your longing will not reach its goal if you have become even better. We can see that Isaiah is at least partly right about this from the fact that the constant striving for perfection is increasingly leading to mental breakdown, burnout and depression. The downside of our meritocracy.

What is strange, however, is what Isaiah calls the thirsty and hungry, the poor, to do: Let the thirsty hear, and that shall quench their thirst; let the hungry hear, and that shall satisfy their hunger? Listen, and you will live. So that brings me to my area of expertise, the study of hearing.

A quote from Helen Keller, a deaf-mute and blind American, should illustrate how essential hearing is for us humans: "Blindness takes us away from things, deafness from people". Deafness makes you lonely, deafness locks you into a world of your own. For this reason, deaf parents in Great Britain wanted to obtain a genetic test for their offspring. It should ensure that their child will also be deaf - and then live in the same world as them.

I don't know how many of you know the film "Beyond Silence" by Caroline Link. It tells the story of Lara, a girl who lives in two worlds: that of her deaf-mute parents and - as a hearing person - in our world. When Lara discovers her interest in music and begins to play the clarinet, she becomes increasingly distant from her parents, who literally do not feel that they belong to Lara due to her deafness.

It is only through speaking and listening that a familiar community is created. Because listening - like love - requires a counterpart. Listening means showing interest in a person, taking their concerns and needs seriously. When communities take this to heart, when we listen, then communities come alive and receive encouragement. Go there. Listening. Getting involved - for Pope Francis, this is the task of the Church. Bonhoeffer put it like this over 60 years ago: 'The church is only the church when it is there for others'. For me, the church is one of the few remaining public spaces where people of very different backgrounds and colours can meet, enter into dialogue, exchange ideas and be perceived as equals. This turning away from oneself towards the other, towards compassionate listening, is becoming increasingly important in our society, in which the gap between rich and poor is currently widening, in which more and more people are becoming lonely and thrown back on themselves. We also learn to see more in others than just what they are capable of. We show each other that we are important to each other. And so it is not just a case of "listen and you will live", but also "those who are heard, those who belong, will thrive". This is not just a diaconal task that we fulfil for the sake of others, because listening to each other opens up a wider horizon and our lives and our world of thought become richer, as we experience after every lively discussion, every intensive conversation.

I spoke earlier about the two worlds in the film "Beyond Silence", that of the hearing and that of the deaf. But there are actually three worlds. Because Lara plays the clarinet. And here in Lamberti, of course, something has to be said about music when talking about hearing. Listening can have a passive character and this aspect can be explained very well using the example of listening to music. I may be passive, but at the same time I experience new things when I listen, experiences that would otherwise remain closed to me.

In tenth grade, we read a text in French that told the story of a boy in Catholic rural France. He is terribly bored during the Sunday service. So far, we pupils were all able to understand the text very well, but then organ music starts in the church and a new world opens up for the boy. This is where our understanding of the text ended - and not just for linguistic reasons. But it needn't have been so strange to us, because if rock music had been used in the text instead of organ music, we would have been there immediately - may Mr Götting forgive me for that. Because the music of the Beatles, The Who, Joe Cocker, Lou Reed or Pink Floyd told us, even if we didn't always understand all the lyrics, of an experience beyond our tranquil small town. We don't always have to be active to enrich our lives, to broaden our horizons, there are other ways than a hectic pace, new experiences open up when we take a step back and listen. For example, some people who are closed to other approaches find access to God through the music of Bach or Handel.

But we have digressed somewhat from the sermon text, because Isaiah is not primarily concerned with listening to other people, nor with enjoying music, but with listening to God. For me, this echoes the triad: Listen, trust, live. The invitation "Listen" could then mean "Trust me and you will live." He who hears, trusts. Those who trust will live more confidently. I come back to the words of the 139th Psalm: "And if I take the wings of the dawn and stay at the edge of the sea, your hand will guide me there too and your right hand will hold me. I let myself hear these words and make them my own - and hope that they will come true again.

At the beginning of my sermon, I emphasised and admired the poetry of these words. However, this biblical passage, indeed the whole Bible, is not only more poetic than a scientific text, but like music, it strikes a chord in me that resists or complements my scientific way of looking at things. It shows me another part of the truth about the world and us humans and provides me with a guide. Today, we can explain and understand the origin of the earth and life better scientifically than in biblical times. But the responsibility that arises for me and each individual is revealed to me by the biblical account of creation and the "God saw that it was good."

When geneticists deciphered human DNA, the then US President Bill Clinton said that we had now learnt the language in which God created living things. Our genetic information as the language of God? No, I would like to disagree with Clinton. The language of God is precisely not the scientific view of things and us humans; the language of God complements this scientific view. Human dignity, the double commandment of love, the mandate to preserve creation - I cannot derive any of this from a purely scientific view of things. The Bible is not exclusive in this respect, because other religions, philosophies and value catalogues also know these values. However, the Bible contains an enormous wealth of life experience and wisdom, insights into human abysses and hopes, as well as ethical guidelines that provide me with guidance and complement my scientific view.

Listen, and you will live. For me, that means: Listen, and you will live a richer and more fulfilling life.

Amen.