Introduction to the catechism: My only comfort: That I belong... to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. This corresponds to the promise of God to the children of Israel. God's people belong to God and always will, as Joseph says to his brothers just before his death, "...God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" (Genesis 50:24).
Part One (the greatness of our sin and misery). The catechism titles this part, "Misery." And we all know the story of the greatness of the misery of God's people in Egypt. A new king came to power--one who knew nothing of Joseph--and "...they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly" (Exodus 1:11-14).
Part Two - Deliverance corresponds to the deliverance from Egypt. And we can dig into connections between the Passover Lamb and the Lamb of God, right? And the crossing through the Red Sea as a picture of our crossing over from death into life through the waters of baptism. And more.
Part Three - Gratitude corresponds to the Ten Commandments! The catechism places the exposition of the Decalogue in the third part as a guide to grateful living! Still thinking this through, but the catechism puts the Lord's Prayer in the third part as well, because prayer is the "most important part of the thankfulness God requires of us." So might the section on prayer in the catechism correspond to the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant? Could one preach the 52 Lord's Days of the catechism and preach through the book of Exodus simultaneously? And, to continue the analogy, where are we now? Still wandering in the desert, I guess? Still longing for the promised land? Still praying, "thy kingdom come..."?
Footnote on Freedom
My only comfort, says the Heidelberg Catechism: "That I belong... to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ." For some folks this doesn't sound like freedom. I remember a good friend who essentially said, "I don't want to BELONG to ANYONE." In other words, "I have no desire to be owned. Not. By. Anyone."That's a valid concern, especially for persons who have felt "owned" at some point in their lives. Or all their lives. You might be a woman who has felt "owned" by a domineering or abusive husband; or, as a child or young person, you may have felt "owned" by an abusive father, by bullies, by addictions, by an eating disorder, by depression, by high and unattainable expectations of parents or others or yourself. Others feel owned by their jobs, owned by their inability to "do the right thing" no matter how hard they try.
We don't want to be set free just to be owned again, right?
But, as Eberhard Busch points out, belonging to our faithful savior Jesus
...Does not mean that we selfish persons are subjected to another selfish person. It does not throw us from one comfortless situation into another. "That I belong to my faithful savior" says that through him and in him, who as ours is surely not selfish, I am graciously drawn out of this being who circles around itself, who lurks in me, and also meets me from outside in the form of selfish tyrants. It says that through him and in him I am freed--from abandonment to such alien rulers, but also from the "tyrant in my own breast" [Karl Barth]. If I belong to the one who frees me, then I am really free; free not for myself alone, but free through him, so also with him and for him. I am free from my egoistic loneliness, in which all those alien rulers try to attack me, or in which I may try to defend myself by asserting my will against them, resulting in a still more tenacious circling around my self.
That I "belong to my faithful savior" tells me: You are not alone, and not for yourself only, as you vainly think and accordingly act, and as, to your sorrow, you also experience from the outside. You are not deserted by God. In Christ, God is truly and inseparably with you. Because God belongs to you completely, you also belong completely to God. As God invested the divine freedom in being our God, so our being destined for freedom depends on God's choosing us as God's own. As our God takes part in our existence, just as it is, with all we are up against, so we are God's in that God grants us to take part in the life of God, in the divine peace, righteousness, and mercy.... (Eberhard Busch, 43-44).We are all owned--in bondage--like the children of Israel. We all want to be set free. That freedom we long for is not found in becoming free "to me and me only" for then I'm even deeper in bondage. Indeed, there may be no more cruel taskmaster than our own "egoistic loneliness," our own "tenacious circling" around ourselves. To be free to live, Jesus teaches, we must die to our tenacious circling around our own lives. To live we must die.
For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:7-8, NIV).
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