Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
25 September 2016
Old Testament: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2 At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, 3 where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.
6 Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: 7 Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.’ 8 Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, ‘Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.’ Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.
9 And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. 11 Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; 12 and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. 13 In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 14 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. 15 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
Old Testament Alternate: Amos 6:1a, 4-7
1 Alas for those who are at ease in Zion,
and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
4 Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the stall;
5 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
and like David improvise on instruments of music;
6 who drink wine from bowls,
and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
7 Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.
Psalm: Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, *
abides under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 He shall say to the Lord,
“You are my refuge and my stronghold, *
my God in whom I put my trust.”
3 He shall deliver you from the snare of the hunter *
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He shall cover you with his pinions,
and you shall find refuge under his wings; *
his faithfulness shall be a shield and buckler.
5 You shall not be afraid of any terror by night, *
nor of the arrow that flies by day;
6 Of the plague that stalks in the darkness, *
nor of the sickness that lays waste at mid-day.
14 Because he is bound to me in love,
therefore will I deliver him; *
I will protect him, because he knows my Name.
15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him; *
I am with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and bring him to honor.
16 With long life will I satisfy him, *
and show him my salvation.
Psalm Alternate: Psalm 146
1 Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord, O my soul! *
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
2 Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, *
for there is no help in them.
3 When they breathe their last, they return to earth, *
and in that day their thoughts perish.
4 Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! *
whose hope is in the Lord their God;
5 Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; *
who keeps his promise for ever;
6 Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, *
and food to those who hunger.
7 The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind; *
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
8 The Lord loves the righteous;
the Lord cares for the stranger; *
he sustains the orphan and widow,
but frustrates the way of the wicked.
9 The Lord shall reign for ever, *
your God, O Zion, throughout all generations.
Hallelujah!
Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
6 Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; 7 for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; 8 but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. 9 But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.
11 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. 16 It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.
17 As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, 19 thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
Gospel: Luke 16:19-31
19 ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” 25 But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 27 He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” 29 Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 30 He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” 31 He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’
Earlier I posted a brief comment titled The Gospel Is Not Play Dough. The occasion of that post was my audition of a sermon delivered on Nineteen Pentacost. The sermon (1) contradicted the Gospel at the point of the impassable chasm between heaven and hell and (2) ignored the Resurrection message at the root of the day’s lectionary.
The sermon I heard was the same one I hear every Sunday at my parish church: collectivist drivel, stronger together, virtue signaling by the affluent for their friends. The pitch was to bridge the chasm between one and whomever, overcome estrangement between one and neighbors, family members, associates, etc. Nothing inherently objectionable apart from the fact that it has nothing to do with the lectionary readings and in fact quite defies them while also transgressing their subject and its import.
The modern sermon, collectivist to the core, is less sophisticated and more sanctimonious than a Psych 101 lecture. It’s premise is that Christianity is fulfilled in what New Agers call spirituality, which is to say, ego indulgence, aka subsuming personality in an idealized, abstracted generality of connectivity. Communism, in fact. Soviet monumental art (aka brutalism) comes to mind. The purifying, detaching blasts of Christian Orthodoxy are repugnant to the modern cleric and parishioner, devotees as they are of cutie-pie left wing politics and newsstand psychology. What the Bible actually says is something they wish not to hear, much less be compelled to ruminate upon.
Well, the lectionary this Sunday, Nineteen Pentacost, is about the Resurrection. The Fathers as well say so. And it says that between the Crucified and Risen Spirit and the un-Crucified and punished — because rejecting, defiant — spirit there is no possibility of communication. Either as forecast or as anachronistic observation (theo-existentially it matters not which), the Gospel is saying that those who reject the Call of the Christ — i.e., specifically, Jews — do not have another chance. Post their rejection, a chasm is made — by them, by God, by both? — between them and God, a chasm they can not and God will not cross. Even the Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ, can not — or will not — cross the chasm to bring rejecting, defiant Jews and their Talmudist descendants into union with God. Their God!
This is a terrible, terrible thing to say, to mean. Its finality is unappealable. It has no peer in the annals of condemnation. Yet there it is. Adjunct the bright sun of the Resurrection, there is this absolute, irrevocable termination of preceding conditions for an entire religion, Judaism. It is a spiritual shut-out. The Roman Army of Titus made the spiritual shut-out physical in AD 70.
There is a logical flow to these lectionary readings, although the liturgical sequence disrupts it. The Jeremiah reading sets the theme: buried deed of ownership portending reinstitution of life’s felicities. Reading from New Testament POV, an obvious Resurrection foreshadow, just as Fathers and Reformers took it, though spiritualized, not of this world, as The Christ and God would have it, though with effective internal/existential (spiritual) protections and felicitations for the faithful in this world. Reinforcing Jeremiah’s first point — you are going into exile and God does not give one fig for your cultus — is the Amos alternative. Good old Amos. His name means: belch of the camel. Not what a typical mother would name her son. Yet, he is counted among the Great Prophets.
Next in the logical flow comes the Lucan Gospel passage. This was the one Jews would not accept. There had been a glorious restoration of sorts of which we learn from the later prophets, such as Nehemiah. But it was not of the sort over which Jeremiah would have enthused. It was bloody. Terribly, terribly bloody. Romans were horrified at the amount of blood conjured by the killing of animals at the rebuilt Temple of Solomon, and its occasion of contagion. So much so were they that Romans demanded Jewish priests channel the daily rivers of the blood down the Temple Mount to the Valley of the Kidron below. They complied. Previously, they merely let it run out over ground outside the Temple, on Temple Mount itself, where it dried, stank and bred disease. Jesus the Christ cut to the heart of Jewish priests’ perversity when He called them businessmen.
Jews would not accept that a reacquisition of God’s favor would involve subjugating ego — in fact, crucifying it — and abandoning the Second Temple. They had no choice regarding the latter. Rome made that decision for them. They did make a choice regarding the former, and it was lethal. Permanently. That is the meaning of the chasm.
St. Paul’s counsel to Timothy follows next in the logical flow. Timothy wants to know how to deal with wealthy Christians, a condition not contemplated in the Gospel parable for Nineteen Pentacost. Aware of how wealthy people, Christian and otherwise, tend to regard themselves and their position during affairs of the world, Paul advises Timothy on the primacy of spiritual riches, internal delectations, experience which actually quenches the thirst for God. The gist of these is freedom. In all things, freedom. For all and for all creatures, freedom. In Christ, in Whom there is no fear or anger. Freedom. To that Paul commends Timothy’s wealthy Christian acquaintances.
Following the sermon on 25 September 2016, a parishioner said during the Announcements period, that while he had read The Bible three or four times cover-to-cover, he never before noticed that Jeremiah engaged in a real estate transaction. I shook my head in silence. That passage was a prominent aspect of our course on Jeremiah at seminary! It is a key passage in the Book! I had noted it long before in my own reading of that Great Prophet. The preacher’s response to that parishioner was unprofessional and mindless.
NEWS FLASH: Communism — collectivism — is not the culmination of Christianity. It is Talmudic anti-Christianity by yet another name. Talmudism is the successor to Judaism and is Communist. Judaism ceased to exist, permanently, in AD 70. Talmudism is the rich man in the Gospel reading for Nineteen Pentacost.
Christianity is detachment, the very opposite of connectivity. Christianity is eliminating garbage, the very opposite of hoarding relics. Christianity is Saivite, not Humanist. Christianity is wholesome, not scientific; ecstatic, not religious. Christianity, as one with Sanathana Dharma, is the world’s great anti-religion religion.
Update 1:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.
David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion. I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.
Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow. Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?
David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means. It also is in Hebrew Prophetism. Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end. Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways. In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways. Far, far more. Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance. Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound. Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.
Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct. Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society. Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S. And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
