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Right at the beginning she talks about the letters she received in advance of her appearance in the pulpit.
She was asked whether she could leave the church in the village.
She doesn't say much more.
But the hints that Luisa Neubauer makes about the reactions to the announcement of her fasting sermon on Sunday evening in the Berlin Cathedral suggest that they were not always friendly.
In any case, the wave of outrage that triggered the invitation of the climate activist to the pulpit of the Berlin Cathedral was violent.
The church policy spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament, Daniel Rottmann, accused the cathedral parish of ennobling “the green substitute religion for climate rescue”.
The AfD member of the Bundestag Sebastian Münzenmaier saw his opinion about a "massive left twist" of the Evangelical Church (EKD) confirmed.
After all, she is also financing a refugee ship and campaigning for an expanded reception of migrants from the Greek camps.
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TV presenter Peter Hahne wrote in a comment published in the “Tagespost” and the “Axis des Guten” that the EKD crowned “madness as a red-red-green NGO” when the climate activist stepped into the pulpit.
The fasting sermon is the tip of a wrong path that makes the church “an insignificant NGO”.
Gender asterisks in tweets from the diocese and biblical slogans in gender-appropriate language are just as much a reference as the “climate fast”, to which eleven Protestant regional churches and four Catholic dioceses have called for this year.
The practical tips contained therein for a consciously cultivated ecological lifestyle from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, according to Hahne, missed the actual meaning of Lent.
According to the motto "We used to fast for God, today for Greta".
Luisa Neubauer worries
And then Luisa Neubauer speaks in the Berlin Cathedral!
So much anger.
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And Luisa Neubauer?
She preaches “Of worry”.
The text of the sermon is in Matthew 6: 25-33, those famous lines in which Jesus calls his listeners: “Look at the birds under the sky: they do not sow, they do not reap, they do not gather in the barns;
and your heavenly Father nourishes them. "
Luisa Neubauer is still worried.
About the environment, about the climate.
She mourns everything that has been irrevocably destroyed.
But she does not speak as a representative of a green substitute religion.
But as a Christian who has hope and appeals to responsibility for creation.
“We have everything we need to make this world a good place,” she says.
She also speaks of the concern Corona is causing people.
From her mother, who as a nurse is there every day under great pressure for those who are suffering.
From people lonely in the pandemic.
Neubauer speaks empathetically.
And yet it is radical.
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She speaks of greed.
The overexploitation of nature.
Of ruthlessness that is misunderstood as freedom.
“We ourselves created the world that makes the transmission of infectious diseases between humans and animals so likely.
We have created a risk planet. ”She blames the industrialized nations for the environmental disasters in poorer countries.
"Sometimes I wonder how we can even look each other in the eye across the continents."
Luisa Neubauer polarizes.
Sometimes it is one-sided.
And not differentiated down to the last detail.
But is that a sign of left politics?
Or is that exactly what fasting sermons do in the pre-Easter penance period?
Because this special form of preaching - the tradition of which is to allow “laypeople”, non-clergymen to have their say - should always question life plans, call for repentance, put a finger in the wound.
It's not cozy.
The question that Neubauer raised with her Lenten sermon and the discussions about it remains: Is the church too political?
The advocates of a church that has to interfere refer to the charity demanded by Jesus: The church could not help but speak out as an advocate for freedom and those in need.
The CDU member of the Bundestag and Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Thomas Rachel, said at the request of WELT: "Church should not make politics, but make politics possible."
"Church should not make politics, but should make politics possible": Thomas Rachel, CDU
Source: Tobias Koch
Rachel, who is also a member of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) and federal chairman of the Evangelical Working Group of the CDU / CSU (EAK), rejects the church taking a one-sided and unbalanced side in positioning itself on current social issues or itself staged as a political actor.
It is their job to build bridges and bring them together.
He is also critical of a “Lent” overloaded with political messages.
In an already tense pandemic, this would meet with incomprehension among many community members.
“Climate fasting” is “secular fasting”.
"The preservation of creation is a deeply civic concern"
And yet he too emphasizes that Christian faith must acknowledge God as the Creator and at the same time acknowledge human responsibility for God's creation.
“The preservation of creation is a deeply civic and conservative concern.” Exploitation of nature, destruction of one's own livelihoods contradict the wording and spirit of the biblical message.
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The Christian belief in creation could thus be an important impetus for deeper political reflection on the existential challenges of climate change and environmental destruction.
"As Christians in politics and as a church, we can make an important contribution to the formation of public opinion on all these crucial questions."
Neubauer says in her sermon with a view to her critics: "One could believe that that was a stupid idea: I was here during Lent." Perhaps it would be a good idea if the church would speak to Neubauer much more often.