Sermon preached at the Opening Service of the Italian Session of the Waldensian Synod
Sunday, August 24th, 2008

«4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord, 5 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; 7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.»
(Deuteronomy 6: 4-9)

1. "Hear, O Israel!" The "Shemà is recited to this day as a prayer. It stands at the centre of Deuteronomy's theology. But these verses are not so much a prayer as a confession of faith. The order to listen is not given to God but to him who recites the prayer: this is declaration of God's will for his people. God's will for his people can only be received if his people listens! For to listen to something involves more than hust hearing it. You need to concentrate, you need to open yourself, you need to participate in the speaker's project.

2. In our own times the call to listen is particularly important. We need to find a new way of living the Gospel, and for that we need to listent to society, so that we can connect the world around us with the Word of God. But there are many ways of listening. One very easy way is to find out what the majority of the people want to hear and confirm them in what they already want to believe. But a more difficult way of listening is to construct bridges of understanding between diverse cultures and ways of seeing the world. This means constructing a culture of dialogue.

3. This Synod will discuss "culture." But what do we mean by the word? A major problem for us is that Italy has no theological understanding of culture - and no cultural understanding of theology. So how do we Protestants start to speak of culture? There is a danger that we might start with our own Protestant cultural baggage. But the Biblical text calls on first to listen - to listen to the culture (or rather, the cultures) which we find round about us, because often our priorities are not the priorities of those whom we meet. Remember the old joke? Written on a wall were the words "Christ is the answer." Underneath, someone else had written "But what is the question?" We need to listen to those around us, and to their profound disquiet, before we propose anything.

4. "Hear, O Israel!" Listen to the times in which you live. Because if you wish to say something significant to those around you, you must first listen to the Lord and then listen to the society in which you are placed. This is what it mean to take upon yourself the yolk of the kingdom of God. But this does not mean, in the first instance, "obedience", but "love". You shall love the Lord your God..... You shall obey God, certainly, but out of love. It will be the love of God which guides you. "No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me...." It is out of love that you are to teach the next generation, for example. It is love - God's love for us and then our love for God and for our neighbour - which motivates us.

5. But prior to launching out, proclaiming God's love to all and sundry, we need to ask ourselves some questions. Over the past eighty years, the Waldensian Church has gone through two very different periods of self understanding. The first, bewteen the wars, was what we might call "steadfastness" - which led to strong congregations, but with the risk of a rather closed mentality. Then, in the second half of the last century, there was period of what we might call "openness". The risk here was to lose a sense of identity, because only those with a clear sense of who they are can be truly open to the other. So, little flock, listen to yourself, look at yourself, and ask if you have the strength for the road ahead.

6. But to be truly Church you must not rely on yourself, just as Christ never looked to himself for authority and strength. The God who loves you has heard your cry, just as he heard the cry of Abel, and the cry of Israel in Egypt, and the cry of Rachel who weeps for her children. And because God hears our cry, so, too, must we listen to the cry of those around us: the cry of the immigrant in danger of drowning off the coast of Sicily; the cry of the woman who wants to die in peace, but finds herself the centre of a cynical ethical discussion regarding euthanesia.
Hear the mandate which the Lord gives you, to preach the Gospel and to offer yourself in service.
"Hear, O Israel!"