FOCUS April 2019

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FOCUS April 2019 Vol. 7 No: 2

Is the World Only a Market Place?

Dr. Zac Varghese, London – Page 14

Cover Photo: Painting (Source Internet, Author Unknown): Jesus Christ Cleansing the Jerusalem Temple

A Publication of Diaspora FOCUS A Letter to People of God, Pope Francis – Page 20

Editorial, God so loved the world . . . But Do we? Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum - Page 3

Escaping the Market Culture- Lal Varghese, Esq., Dallas – Page 7

Can Churches be Redeemed? Revd. Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum – Page 10

Seeking Spiritual Dimensions of Wealth, Rev. Dr. M. J. Joseph, Kottayam – Page 12

Ask FOCUS Series - Responses by David Brand and Revd. Dr. Valson Thampu – Page 22 & 23

The Holy Books: Part-1, Dr. Ian Fry, University of Divinity, Australia – Page 25

Book Review – ‘An Ecumenical Journey Towards Transformation’, Philoxenos Thirumeni whom we never knew - Page 28

Why Christianity Reduced to Rituals Alone?

Revd. Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum - Page 29

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EDITORIAL GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD . . . BUT DO WE? I am glad that the focus of the April issue of the FOCUS is the question, “Is the world only a market Place?” Its scriptural matrix is the cleaning of the Temple by Jesus as recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel according to St. John (vs. 13-22). The mandate is ‘to explore the significance of the Temple cleansing incident for us today’. At the time of writing this editorial, I have before me only the well-thought out, sturdily researched piece

by Zac Varghese. I am sure that the other contributions included in this edition too are incisive. The mission of FOCUS as an inter-denominational Christian forum for thinking biblically and relevantly is to stay engaged with the Word as a lantern to our feet and a light to our path.

The Word is to be understood existentially and missionally.

The line of approach I propose for ourselves in this context is one that emphasizes the spiritual connection between Jesus embodying God’s love for the whole world (Jn. 3:16) and his cleansing the Temple. Let me put the principle as starkly as I can -cleansing is an act of love. Or, love cleanses. Pollution results necessarily from loveless-ness. Also, whatever is undertaken without love does not cleanse. It only corrupts further. So, we are not to resist evil, but to overcome evil with good. The foremost expression of loveless-ness is not hatred towards God, but love for Mammon, the money principle, which is the principle of corruption.

How does this Satanic principle work? If God is light; Mammon is darkness. The function of darkness is to render us blind. Physical blindness is the inability to see anything. Spiritual blindness is the ability to see only in part – the part that profits me most. The inevitable outcome of this sort of blind seeing – sorry for the paradox – is the creation of a conflict between personal profit and collective good. As Immanuel Kant argued, following Rousseau, corruption results when individuals see the given situation -opportunity, position, etc., - in terms of what is good for them and at the expense of what is good for the whole. (In our context, for the church and its witness is the body of Christ.) The essence of ethical behaviour – or ethical demand, as Kant would say – is that we act according to universal – that is, spiritualmaxims or principles.

Suppose I am a bishop and, in that capacity, I am the chief office bearer of a Charitable Trust that manages the landed properties of the church. How do I decided what should be done, and what should not be done? In terms of what would ensure the largest profit for me? Or, in terms of ensuring the best advantage of the church, especially its purity and integrity?

The reason why scandals – including sex scandals – are tumbling out of the cupboards of some of our churches in Kerala and elsewhere should now be obvious. Their remedy too should be obvious. The remedy is to ensure that decisions are taken strictly under the discipline implied in the two-fold commandments – to love God absolutely and to love neighbours equally. For a bishop or church office bearer, the immediate neighbours are members of his diocese. If only a bishop would love his people as he loves himself, there will be neither any corruption nor any show of pomp, splendour or arrogance. Only a bishop who loves God absolutely will be able assuredly to live by this principle. In my experience – which alas is quite extensive – this is fast becoming the exception than the rule. And that’s the heartbreak. It is against this sombre reality that the following reflections are offered in fear and trembling.

Since I am writing a separate piece, focused on the question, “Is the world only a market place?”– I choose to be rather general and discursive in formulating this editorial. It is requested that my readers read the two pieces, if possible, as continuous with each other.

We are all experts in loving God. It is in loving the world that we are deficient. But it so happens – and that’s where the Way of Jesus is so radically unique – that we cannot love God without loving the world. Or, our love for the world is the best proof that we love God. It was to express God’s love for the world that Jesus came into it.

From what little I know of the spiritual impulse immanent in Creation, it is reasonably clear that God created the world as an act of worship. Worship is, hence, not an optional extra, but something encoded in the very being of Creation itself. (The dictum, ‘to work is to worship’ makes sense only in this light; else it is a cope out.) For the life of me, I cannot separate creativity from worship or work. What is not creative is anything other than worship.

It is this core discipline that we have lost sight of almost entirely.

The alternative to worship as a creative experience is worship as a mechanical exercise, an obligation. It is basic that we understand this distinction clearly; for herein lies the chink in our ecclesial armour. It explains why our church-centred life becomes progressively uninspiring, almost lifeless.

What is mechanical is dull and repetitive. What is repetitive is merely habitual. I remember reading somewhere years ago that, for most people, religion is only ‘an indolent habit’. ‘Indolent’ means, ‘wanting to avoid exertion, lazy’. Habits are formed to spare efforts, to save oneself the bother. What is not formed into a habit demands conscious attention and deliberation. Or, in the words of Jesus, it involves ‘seeking . . . finding’ (Mt 7: 7). This is seen by most Christians as an avoidable burden. It seems far more advantages to have readymade exercises, like junk food or instant coffee.

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Now add ‘indolence’ – say, existential laziness – to such a state of mere existence. Then you have the substance of our habitual, or nominal, Christianity. I remember a fellow Christian of the Orthodox persuasion telling me, “Achen, my sole begins to itch on Sunday morning. It will subside only after I receive qurbana.” (I am translating his words word for word. You cannot miss the authentic Malayalam flavour in the sentence.)

This made me think. It is the sole, not the soul that matters in church life? My friend was only more candid than most of us are. Frankly, our religious predicament is hardly different. We are hard-wired Sabbatarians, second only to Pharisees and Sadducees.

Let us fix this in our minds. We are not ‘indolent’ or lazy in our churchmanship. The itching on our soles takes care of that. We are indolent in our spiritual life. There is a religious pattern immanent in laziness, which may adequately be denoted as consumerism. Consumerism, on the face of it, is unilateral. Spirituality is anything but unilateral. Reciprocity, or mutuality, is the essence of spirituality. That is why our sins will be forgiven – as the Lord’s Prayer reminds us daily – only to the extent that we forgive those who sin against us. The sort of religiosity that our indolence has invented seems an improvement on this. We are entitled to be forgiven, even if we don’t forgive. Priestly authority comes to our help in this regard. The priest tilts the balance wholly and extravagantly in our favour, but for a small problem. The problem is that it simply doesn’t work that way.

Let us return to the question of ‘habit’. Habit excludes the need and burden to think. Whatever is done habitually – as in attending church services or tying shoelaces or driving – is done without thinking attentively to specifics.

Such activities are done un-thinkingly, ‘mechanically’. To behave mechanically is to become, de facto, machines.

This is an insult at once to oneself and to the Creator.

God created us in his own image and likeness. He did not design us as a piece of machine, like a mixer, a tractor, a watch or a hatch. Doing anything mechanically, especially worship is an insult to God. If you examine the teachings of Jesus about religious practices, you will be struck by the emphasis implied in all of it on the duty to seek and understand the meaning of what is being done and to do everything in a spirit proper to it. Jesus’ teachings on the three pillars of Judaism – alms giving, praying, and fasting – found in the 6th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew illustrate it.

You may well ask what all this has to do with our loving the world as God continues to?

Well, the answer is implied in the biblical idea of love.

Love, as incarnated in Jesus, is not merely a nice, feelgood sentiment. It is a transformative power. God loves the world. What is its intent? It is that humankind as a

whole ‘should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (Jn 3: 16). That is why the Cross stands at the nerve-centre of that loving, redemptive engagement with the world.

There is nothing habitual, mechanical or indolent about love! Spiritual love is an invigorating thing; new each day, day after day. It cannot be reduced to a habit, as in the lacklustre relationship of a long-married couple, who haven’t understood the miracle of Jesus’ turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (Jn 2).

If you ask me what is missing from our church life, I would readily say, “It’s love”. The Spirit of God anticipated this at the outset of the historical existence of the church. The church at Ephesus had many good qualities, many things to be proud of. There was, however, a problem – “You have lost your first love!” With that, all was lost. The church that loses its first love for the Lord may have the ‘reputation of being alive’, but is indeed dead as a door nail.

When the church dies, it is not buried as individuals are. A dead church doesn’t become a corpse. It becomes only a caricature. Jesus has a beautifully relevant metaphor for this reality: ‘the salt that has lost its saltiness’ which is good only to be ‘cast out and trampled underfoot by men’.

We are so conditioned in our thinking, when it comes to religious life that we fail to see what is obvious in scriptural texts. When we come to the phrase ‘trampled underfoot by men’, we think that these feet are hostile nether limbs poised aggressively against us from antiChristian quarters. The text doesn’t say that, does it? I cannot help the feeling that the feet that trample us underfoot are also ecclesial in fact.

Our awareness of being trampled underfoot depends on our aliveness. If we are alive in a material sense, we feel the material outrages inflicted on us. Spiritually dead, we remain unaware of the spiritual degradation heaped on us. If I am insulted in a language that I do not understand, I could even feel flattered that I am being taken note of!

Don’t we have a proverb to the effect, “A people get the leader they deserve”? Don’t we know from history that tyranny follows the moral and spiritual degradation of the people? Doesn’t the Bible teach us that cities are destroyed – as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah – in the wake of human depravity? Didn’t Jesus warn the Jews that their religious pride could activate forces of history to bring down the Jerusalem Temple, leaving not one stone standing on another?

Now we understand why ‘cleansing the Jerusalem Temple’ was Jesus’ quintessential witness. He did not cleanse the political structures of the time. He did not denounce heathen worships and Gentile religions. To him, the key to loving the world was cleaning the Temple.

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Through this, Jesus has given us an insight and a pattern that cannot become redundant till his Second Coming.

To lose our first love for the Lord Jesus Christ, the foundation of the church, is to fall in love with the principle contrary to what he embodied. Power was that principle. The contrast, as we know through the Nativity Narrative, is between Jesus and Herod. It is paradigmatic contrast. Two principles – the polarities in the social and historical predicament of humankind – are: love (the Babe) and power (the king). To renounce love for Jesus is, therefore, to be infected with lust for power. Since we are human, we cannot but ‘love’. The choice is not between loving or not loving; it is between loving and lusting. To cease to love Jesus is to renounce love as the shaping principle of our personal and ecclesial life. It is to lust after ‘power’ as the ruling passion of our life.

Money is the demonic spirit of Power; just as ‘devotion’ is the Holy Spirit of love. In the 7th chapter of St. Luke, this core contrast is acted out. Jesus is at dinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. There comes a woman (a sinner, as seen by men!) and expresses her devotion to Jesus.

The Pharisee, who has lost the joy of loving God, feels it as a personal insult, which is psychologically consistent.

Envy is activated at the sight of a beauty in others for which one feels oneself incapable. Simon has money. He is rich enough ‘to throw a smashing party’. The woman has devotion, no money. It is the woman’s devotion, not the Pharisee’s opulence that shines through the ages.

That’s God’s justice. I cannot tell my readers adequately how much encouragement and spiritual sustenance this spiritual truth has afforded me all through my life.

This, friends, is the issue. Indeed, there is no other core issue. Or, if it seems that there a million other issues, don’t get confused. They are all variations of the simple pattern: no love, all money; all money, no love! I remember reading in one of the novels by Paul S. Scott that only the poor of the world stand in any chance of being loved for who they are. The rich are ‘loved’ for what they have. Wonder why it is still called love!

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that money is inherently evil. How can it be? Money is like your chappal. It is a useful thing, provided it is used for its rightful purpose. What if you begin to think that your chappal is your heart!? Or, an ample substitute for personal dignity? If my love for money makes me like a piece of stone, or blind to God and my fellow human beings, even to my own personal dignity, then the advice that Jesus gave to the ‘rich, young man’ becomes critically relevant to me: “Go, sell all you have, give to the poor and follow me.” This bad news is the essence of the Good News for all humankind. I believe that is why there are the three vows associated with ordination, on which I shall conclude this editorial -of poverty, chastity and obedience.

First of all, isn’t it surprising that the respect, even reverence, that a bishop or thirumeni commands today is directly proportionate to his manifest, sustained violation of at least the vow of poverty? Which Christian leader, pray tell me, lives in material poverty? What surprises me is not that those who are in positions of power lose sight of their vows. What shocks me is that the rest of us, who have no excuse for not seeing it for what it is, have no problem with it. Not only that. We vie with each other in heaping the wealth of the world upon our ‘spiritual fathers’. We tempt and urge them to break their vows.

There is a logic to this, which needs to be grasped. We know only one expression for our piety – money. We express our ‘commitment’ to our churches by giving more and more money. (The comfort this affords is the reassuring lie that nothing more is required.) We are recognized and lauded for the volumes of money we contribute. The weight we command in our congregations is proportionate to that. Episcopal eyes fall upon us with greater affection, which makes us feel so nice, nearly perfect! But we don’t realize the contradiction immanent in this. We are financing God with the resources of Mammon. The sacrifices acceptable to God, says King David, are a contrite heart, which is nowhere in sight.

So, we will feel ill-at-ease if we find a holy father living in faithfulness to his vows – especially the vow of poverty.

(The trick is that with a slight twist of the pen, it could be read as the ‘vow of property’!) Can you imagine a bishop visiting your parish, arriving there by a Maruti Alto? You will be sorely disappointed, if the episcopal vehicle is less than a ‘luxury’ sedan, in perfect fidelity to his vow of poverty.

Now the all-important truth is this: there is an organic connection between the three vows. You cannot keep, in spirit and in truth, only one or two of the three vows.

Either you keep all the three or you break them all. The vow of chastity may not be broken in fact or in act, but it stays broken in spirit. Not breaking a vow for want of opportunities to violate it with impunity is no proof for keeping it, except by feeling bound and oppressed by that vow, like being bound in chains. Only what is a genuine, spontaneous expression of the truth of one’s being has any spiritual value in the sight of God; for God searches the secrets of our hearts. He knows our inmost thoughts.

You may think I am being cynical. No, Sir! This is the simple truth. The time is come for us to dare to look reality in the face. Religious leaders are human beings, like you and I. It is in fairness to them that we need to recognize this to be the case. A sure way of corrupting individuals

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expectations altogether beyond their capability. I want to bear witness that the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are beyond the unaided capacities of human beings. If we refuse to recognize this it is because, if

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recognized, it will dispel our illusions and yoke us to burdensome responsibilities. As Jesus said, only the truth will set you free. If the truth is not acknowledged, the outcome will be hypocrisy, which has been the perennial curse, as Jesus said, in the sphere of religion. He said prostitutes were, in principle, spiritually better off than Pharisees.

I remember visiting Bishop Parmar, the Methodist bishop in Delhi, on the eve of his retirement. “Now that I am retiring,” he said to me rather lost in thoughtful melancholy, “I want to serve Jesus Christ.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact tone that his words scared me.

As followers of Jesus, we must stop outsourcing our spiritual responsibilities to others, no matter who they are. No one can carry our crosses. No one else can undertake our spiritual pilgrimages through history. No functionary can win us special favours from God, lead us to heaven, or atone for our sins. Our spiritual wholeness is strictly between Jesus and us. Those who pretend to be agents, retailers and wholesale dealers are hypocrites. There is no truth in them.

Worse, they are hindrances to our spiritual growth. This is what four decades of spiritual struggles and suffering has taught me. I know no truth to the contrary.

Let me end on what I consider to be a necessary corrective to our disembodied, church-exclusive (as against churchcentred) piety. Love the world. God did it! If our ‘separation’ from (in effect, ‘indifference’ to) the world results only in our soulless worldliness – as symbolized by the commercialization of the Jerusalem Temple at the time of Jesus Christ – then the logic holds good that we shall be cleansed more by being in responsible solidarity with the world than by being escapist about the world. The irony should not be lost on us: it is the ‘pattern of the world’ (Rom 12: 2) – the pattern of its fallen state – that makes us indifferent to the world.

Here is what I passionately believe – the need and the urge to cleanse the Temple will not be clear or felt if we do not love the world as Jesus did. What safeguards the purity of the Temple – don’t be shocked – is our love for the world. To love the church in irresponsible indifference to the giant agony of the world is to be a party to degrading ‘the house of prayer for all nations’ into a den of thieves. That is the stark, irreducible spiritual truth. If you dare to heed to Jesus, you will believe it.

The lesson that history teaches is stark and simple. You will be overcome by what you deny. You deny the world today?

In the sense of wanting to have nothing to do with the world out there? Rest assured: that very world will spring up in the sanctuary of your life someday, if not tomorrow. It will spring upon you like a tiger from the forest of the superstitions you mistook for faith. When that happens, you will be utterly bewildered and lost; for you wouldn’t have developed, because of your escapist indifference, any resource or strength for overcoming that crisis. The world that thus springs upon you is fiercer and more frightening for your not having ministered to its spiritual needs. This is the truth

about the emerging national scenario in India, as it will become increasingly clear in the days ahead.

So it make sense that Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. It is the bounden duty of your church to help you to be truly so. If, instead, your church educates you with willful parochial selfishness that your responsibilities are to be confined strictly to the expectations of the church, those who do this fatal disservice to you are no better than ‘the blind leading the blind’.

A Proposal Given the gravity of the issues comprehended in the theme of this issue of the FOCUS I propose that we start a dialogue on it, and sustain it over time. Readers are requested, therefore, to send in their responses, concerns and insights.

They shall be responded to. To make this a worthwhile undertaking, it is necessary that we hold ourselves scrupulously responsible for what we write or advocate.

Formulate your concerns as precisely and candidly as you can. Think deeply and biblically. Keep the big picture in mind. Think long-term. It is possible that our continued, shared reflections could generate enough spiritual insights and resources to constitute a book over a period of time! It may serve, who knows, as a resource book for the Christian community worldwide. And why not?

Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum Member, FOCUS Editorial Board http://www.issuu.com/diasporafocus http://www.scribd.com/diasporafocus

Disclaimer: Diaspora FOCUS is a non-profit organization registered in United States, originally formed in late Nineties in London for the Diaspora Marthomites. Now it is an independent lay-movement of the Diaspora laity of the Syrian Christians; and as such Focus is not an official publication of any denominations. It is an ecumenical journal to focus attention more sharply on issues to help churches and other faith communities to examine their own commitment to loving their neighbors and God, justice, and peace. Opinions expressed in any article or statements are of the individuals and are not to be deemed as an endorsement of the view expressed therein by Diaspora FOCUS. Thanks.

Web Site: www.facebook.com/groups/mtfocus E-Mail: mtfousgroup@gmail.com

FOCUS EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS: Dr. Zac Varghese, London Dr. Titus Mathews, Calgary Revd Dr. M. J. Joseph, Kottayam Lal Varghese, Esq., Dallas Dr. Jesudas M. Athyal, Thiruvalla Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum

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Escaping the Market Culture: Lal Varghese, Esq., Dallas “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons” (Matt 21:12–13).

Herod expanded the Jerusalem temple and none of his building projects was greater than this. Only priests could enter the inner temple and was surrounded by three courts: Israelite men could enter the court closest to the temple. Israelite men and women could occupy the next court. But the Court of the Gentiles, which was the court farthest from the temple, was the closest any non-Jew could get to the sanctuary. So, the temple is divided among the faithful believers and set apart each portion for group of people to worship the Lord, just like in the market places items for sale are graded.

parishes also as long as we can make money, it does not matter the way in which it is accumulated.

Jesus’s cleansing of the temple at the very least illustrates how concerned He is with the purity of worship. Our corporate praise and prayer is something that is always in need of reformation, for it is easy for anti-Christian practices to slip in unnoticed.

Consider the importance of pure worship from a devoted heart and make it your aim to show reverence and awe when you praise the Lord alongside His people. We tend to make our worship a ritual and so many market place practices are associated with our worship to please God, like offering sacrifices, offering money, lighting candles, climbing the steps reminding Jesus journey with cross to Golgotha etc. These market place practices in our worship caused our worship to lose its purity and divinity.

German sociologist Max Weber in his 1905 masterpiece, ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, observed: “The mighty cosmos of the modern economic order,” he warned, “determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed.” We’re still burning that fuel, the fuel of market culture in our spirituality well more than a century on, and we’re still as trapped as ever.

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Jews from around the world came to the temple at Passover to sacrifice to the Lord (Ex 12:1–28; Lev 23:4–8). It was not practical for them to bring sacrificial animals from long distances; so, they were made available in the temple for a price. Most Jews also paid the temple tax at Passover, and moneychangers were there to convert Roman coinage into appropriate temple currency: pagan mottoes on Roman money made it unacceptable for Yahweh’s house. Though not inherently evil, these practices became occasions for sin.

Pilgrims paid exorbitant rates to change money, and sellers exploited people in poverty, overcharging for the poor man’s offering of pigeons and doves (Lev 5:7). To make things worse, these merchants set up shops in the Court of the Gentiles, making it useless as a place of prayer due to the hustle and bustle the buying and selling created.

Therefore, Jesus drove out the sellers (Matt 21:12). These merchants, and the priests who allowed their presence, cared nothing for true worship as long as they could make money and keep up the rituals. Our Savior hated this sacrilege, which kept the nations from learning about the living God in His sanctuary.

We cannot underestimate the importance of this act. It showed Jesus as having authority to purify and take charge of the temple, a messianic task (Ezek 43:1–12) that only put Him more at odds with the Sanhedrin. This is same thing happening in our

Word of God revealed through the Holy Bible and given through Jesus Christ is sacred and truthful and also unique and every Christian believes it as true words of Jesus Christ. Hence, it is the fundamental duty of everyone who believes the Word and also believes that salvation is gained through faith has a responsibility of spreading the Word; As Emil Brunner pointed: “Mission work does not arise from any arrogance in the Christian Church; mission is its cause and its life. The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission, there is no Church; and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith. It is a secondary question whether by that we mean Foreign Missions, or simply the preaching of the Gospel in the home Church. Mission, Gospel preaching is the spreading out of the fire, which Christ has thrown upon the earth. He who does not propagate this fire shows that he is not burning. He who burns propagates the fire. This ‘must’ is both things – an urge and a command. It is an urge, because living faith feels God’s purpose as its own. ‘Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel,’ says Paul.” Woe to our parishes if we do not preach and practice the gospel in its pure and untainted form instead of making it to attain our materialistic goals.

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The real question is: Are we preaching the gospel or just mere a worshipping community within the four walls of our secluded sanctuary on Sundays? It appears that our parishes are in the business of building multimillion-dollar sanctuaries and just throwing couple of hundreds or thousands dollars for the 1

Max Weber in his 1905 masterpiece, ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, (Christianity Today, February 8, 2019 Article by 2

Emil Burnner, The Word and the World (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1931) p. 108

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mission work. We believe that our responsibility and commitment is only to worship on Sunday and to partake in the Holy Communion and live our life as we like on all other days.

On Sunday we are the perfect faithful believers attending the church regularly, sitting on the front raw pews, appearing to be listening to the sermon from the pulpit. If a church does not have mission whether it is foreign mission or local mission or mission among its own people, it has no faith. Jesus never established any religion or church or parish or served as a priest or bishop of any church, but He did His mission entrusted to Him by His Father in Heaven during His short life in this world and lived by His faith. He wanted us also to do the same mission, which He has entrusted to us.

The famous theologian Kathryn Tanner’s contention in her sophisticated and carefully aimed treatise, ‘Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism’, affirms that which Weber famously imagined: moderns imprisoned within an “iron cage”. Tanner sees our present confinement as, if anything, yet more tantalizing. A more recent translation of Weber’s metaphor renders it as ‘a shell as hard as steel’, and this image with its acute sense of enclosure seems closer to the way Tanner imagines our lives as capitalism’s revolutionary course surges on. She believes, in fact, that we are experiencing the restructuring of “human subjectivity” itself. Beneath all of the obvious material changes of our age—symbolized and effected by the digital revolution—what is going on? Is our traditional market place giving up to the digital market place, which may affect our spirituality more than ever as it done in the past? Yes, we are giving way to our traditional market place to digital market place now.

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The disciples who followed Jesus did the same by propagating the mission of Jesus Christ. All the disciples were martyred except John. The first thirteen Bishops of the early Church in Jerusalem were also martyred as well as the first three Bishops of the Church in Rome. The church faced persecution both from Jews and also from the Roman Empire until Constantine, in the 4 century AD, recognized Christianity as the official religion of Rome. The early Church had its purpose and mission and it is evident from its belief and faith of its members. When they were persecuted they did not abandon their faith, but closely adhered to it and gave their life as a sacrifice for their faith. When their leaders were martyred they did not abandon their faith, but they joined together and worshipped the risen Lord, while they are burned or beaten at the stakes. They did not have multimillion sanctuaries adorned with stained glasses to worship, but they th

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Kathryn Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism, 2017 Gifford Lectures. (Christianity Today, February 8, 2019 Article by Eric Miller ‘Submit to God and Not to the Market’)

assembled in homes and caves, and listened to the Word of God. Everything was common to them and they shared it together. There were faithful believers and followers of Jesus Christ and they spread the mission of Christ and never took the name Christians for the namesake. They lived their faith and continued their faith journey as faithful believers of Christ. Our faith seems to be self-centered (want to save only oneself) like in a market place, where seller’s intention is to make profit only for them.

We live in a comfortable zone now and we have multimillion sanctuaries and we worship with all comforts. But it appears that our faith does not overflow the four walls of our sanctuaries in to the streets outside by witnessing through our deeds. We do not visit the Samaritan wells and tread the unknown roads or spread the gospel to our friends or neighbors. We are confined ourselves as a worshipping community and not doing the mission of Jesus Christ by spreading the Word of God. Listening to preaching and worshipping has become our only goals and not practicing what we heard. We forget to build the people or the relationship between us and ultimately the relationship with the Lord. We have turned our parishes as a market place and our faith is a commodity now.

Recently both in Kerala and outside we see trend of dismantling old church buildings and building new sanctuaries with all comforts to worship the Lord. We forget the poor widow at the roadside or the orphan or the one who does not have a place to sleep. We live in multimillion dollar houses, travel on the highend cars and we wear the most expensive clothes while attending church. We all fail to see the poor, the less fortunate and marginalized at the street corner. We fail to see the Samaritan lady, the prostitute, the leper, and the blind living around us. Jesus never told that if we worship regularly and partake on the Holy Communion, we would be faithful believers entitled for eternal life. He will definitely judge each of us according to our actions and not on our superficial faith. St. James wrote: “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but have no deeds? Can such faith save him?”(James 2: 14) On the other hand, Jesus asked to continue His mission by living the faith and not as a fake worshiping community. In reality in our life, there is little space for “mission” in the average week of work, family obligations, and events that demand the time, attention and hearts of most church members. We have become only Sunday Christians and worship in our comfortable zones of our own secular community. Our parishes find that their mission commitments are like a messy bulletin board. The signs of activity are represented by pieces of paper tacked to the board in a random manner. A poster, an annual report, picnic photos, mission trip photos, an organization’s newsletter, an appeal to join mission trips, a reminder to bring canned vegetables and food for the food bank, summer camp registration forms, social media postings etc. have become commodities.

“It is our acquiescence, our succumbing—perhaps above all, our disfiguring—that has compelled Tanner to write to Christians on how to escape the cage. She does so primarily out of pastoral concern and with pastoral intent, in an effort to reorient Christians toward a truer spirit and a higher vision.

Christian faith exists, she insists, to effect “revolutionary alteration” even in this unprecedented circumstance. In every

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chapter of her book, she details the contours of the new spirit of capitalism, she also, chapter-by-chapter, illumines a Christian response, one that she hopes will add up to a counter-surge in real time and space. She continues that, rather than being chained to the past, Christians have unlimited treasure in Christ and the promise of enlarging freedom as his kingdom comes. If Christ requires total commitment, it’s not commitment to the market—it’s devotion to a God who relativizes and subjugates all other would-be lords. Christianity may be present-driven, but the present it proffers is filled with grace that is, blessedly, in no short supply. “Instead of being here today and gone tomorrow,” writes Tanner, “what allows one to turn one’s life around in the present—the grace of Christ—is permanently on offer.”

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The gospels, themselves, present the mission of God as Jesus accomplished his part of the mission: Matthew presents him as the King on mission, Mark presents him as the Servant on mission, Luke presents him as the Perfect Man on mission, and John presents him as God on mission. In the Gospel of John; Jesus said, “as the father has sent me [on mission], so I send you [on mission]" (John 20:21). The book of Acts is overwhelmed by the evangelistic emphasis, the book of Romans is the message of the mission, 1st and 2nd Corinthians deal with conflicts and church discipline on mission, the book of Galatians defends the gospel mission from religion, the book of Ephesians emphasizes the church on mission, the pastoral Epistles describes the leaders of the mission, and the book of Revelation describes to us the completion and goal of the mission.

The church and its members need to be involved actively in the local, regional and global ministries to spread the Word of God. The annual budget of the church may have a variety of line items including amounts sent to Diocese, parent church, Vicars salary and allowances, and various missions supported by the church. But it will be difficult to find a strategy behind the financial investment other than those for mission works. The organizations and people may seem detached from the life of the congregation when the church moves away from its basic purpose and mission. The relationship and love between the faithful is lost and they view the other as an enemy when the church involves in urging materialistic things. We hear only solicitation for funds for the building projects from the pulpit and no more words of wisdom for building the relationship between the people and ultimately our relationship with the Lord. As Emil Burner summarized “The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning. Where there is no mission, there is no Church; and where there is neither Church nor mission, there is no faith.”

We need to build the people and their relationship between each other and ultimately our relationship with our Lord, instead of building the structures. We need to reform our parishes where faithful believers can find love and peace.

Unfortunately, our parishes have become market places for selling different commodities to people like the selling of indulgences. We see people selling different items for collecting money in the name of mission work. My question is why people do not contribute a portion of their income to the mission of the church instead of selling items and making our parishes a market place. Some wanted the priests to bless their new luxury 4 Kathryn

Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism, 2017 Gifford Lectures. (Christianity Today, February 8, 2019 Article by Eric Miller ‘Submit to God and Not to the Market’)

car, bless the foundation of their new home to be built and priests are interested in doing so also for their gain. What a tragedy it is when the mission of the church becomes a business enterprise of the people and the priests. This is the same situation in which Jesus intervened and cleansed the temple at Jerusalem, when the sellers and the so-called priesthood turned the temple in to a market place. Our sanctuaries must become a market place to sell and share the experience of faith and witnessing to others. It should not remain as a place where people can simply obtain Qurbana, but it should be place where people can change themselves (metanoia) and transform in to a new being, witnessing the life and death of Jesus Christ. Markets are where commodities are sold and bought, but sanctuaries should be places where people should be brought in to faith and commitment to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Anything less than this is to be cleansed at the coast of losing the profit made in the name of the Jesus Christ.

The question is how to escape the market culture crept into our faith life. Let me quote, Willem H. Vanderburg: “When Jesus was pursued by large crowds, he made no attempts to consolidate his ministry, as our churches did and continue to do. He did not invite people in the crowds to come forward to become members. He did not organize his disciples into a kind of management committee, nor did he attempt to create a physical infrastructure to house all the necessary activities that would have been involved. Instead, just prior to his betrayal, Jesus instructed his disciples to love one another as he loved them and to open themselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Hence, we need to look carefully at what Jesus taught them regarding the Spirit, while keeping in mind everything our Bible teaches regarding the Christian life. This life is to be based on loving one another because it will reveal to others who Jesus Christ is and how to love one another without any limits. This love is the fruit held out towards the world.” Thus the only way to escape market culture in our faith life is to love one another without limits.

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To conclude let me quote Eric Miller: “With the God of grace in view we come, finally, to see that, rather than living in a world dominated by capital, we live in a world dominated by a God who is surely pulling the world in his direction, directing it to purposes that we—with joy—are only beginning to glimpse.”

Tanner argues that this theological vision adds up to a revolutionary way of life. Let us invest in God and in His mission for expanding God's love-domain and for doing His will for bringing heaven on earth. This would remove the financecentred capitalism and its disruptive dehumanising effects and replace it with God's unconditional love. We are the people of God and our life should reflect the life of Jesus Christ, the one who cleansed the Temple and gave His life for our Salvation.

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5 Willem

H. Vanderburg, Secular Nations Under New Gods – Christianity’s subversion by technology and politics, University of Toronto Press, 2018 6 Eric Miller is professor of history and the humanities at Geneva College, where he directs the honors program. He is the co-editor of Brazilian Evangelicalism in the Twenty-First Century: An Inside and Outside Look (Palgrave Macmillan).

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CAN CHURCHES BE REDEEMED? Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum Of late, I have heard far too many of my fellow Christians saying that churches have decayed so hopelessly that it is futile to even think of their regeneration.

I don’t agree. Let me tell you why. To that end, I propose the following maxims or principles. Please think about them.

And, if possible, discuss them in small groups.

Principle No. 1 Simple logic has it that if an institution -church, in this context- deteriorates, it can also improve. What goes up can come down and what comes down can go up. History has produced within itself regenerative forces. As people of faith we believe that God intervenes. Man has no final authority.

solution, often, is simple. We must not get obsessed with the magnitude of the problem. Magnitude relates to the period of neglect. Any problem, including corruption in the church, neglected over time steadily grows in size and finally looks too huge to be managed.

Principle No. 5 What makes the problem look too difficult to manage is lack of relevant knowledge and understanding, which was also the reason why people failed to respond correctively when the rot began. Understanding issues and afflictions aright is, therefore, basic to rectifying a situation. External realities change only when our thinking changes. We must not underestimate our power to change, provided we act out of pure and godly intentions.

Principle No. 6 Clarity of understanding involves being precise about the principles involved. It is also crucial for our morale. One of the principles critically relevant to the present situation is transparency, as set out in Acts of the Apostles. If the principle of transparency can be implemented in church administration at all levels, 95% of the problems will be solved.

Principle No. 7

Principle No. 2 Nothing happens by itself. We are placed in a position of responsibility. Of course, God intervenes; as he did in the case of the Jews suffering in Egypt to set them free. But for God to respond, we have to do what we can and become what we ought to be. Our laziness and indifference are a serious hindrance. It was because of our disinclination to be vigilant that we got into the present mess in the first place.

Principle No. 3 Solutions to the problem, or means of healing, have to come from sources other than what caused the disease. If Jesus were born in the palace of Herod, he would have been part of the problem! The problem is that we are conditioned, through church life, to think that all solutions must come from priests and bishops. Rest assure; it is in their interests to protect and perpetuate the present rot. It is wholly to their advantage. It is in our interest - the interest of ordinary Christians- to have the church cleaned up and to put in place preventive provisions.

Principle No. 4 The problem may look huge and unmanageable, but the

The rot is systemic, solutions too need to be systemic. The system of church administration is prehistoric and antidemocratic in practice. Its instrumentalities and outlook are borrowed from 5th century Rome, when accountability was offset by authority. This explains why our bishops -and priests too, at their levels- are so authoritarian. We are so used to this that we don’t feel the offence of it.

Principle No. 8 Agents of corruption are, by nature, oppressive and intolerant of criticism and free-thinking. They are at home only with de facto slaves. They insist on faith-life being a one-way traffic, which is to their advantage. They will never accept Jesus’ teaching “Do to others what you would that they should do to you.” They treat you as they would never tolerate your treating them. Try, if you are not convinced!

Principle No. 9 Fear is the weapon of choice that the corrupt use against their fellow human beings. It is also the means of disability the people inflict on themselves. Most people keep quiet, even when they know the gravity of the problem, because of fear. They don’t realize that the fear of man is rebellion against God’s authority. We have only one Lord, one Master.

Anyone who pretends to be our earthly master mocks the

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authority of God. Jesus says, “Fear not!”

Principle No.10 Mere resistance to the agents of evil will not do. Reformative agenda is out and out positive. There is no use in opposing anyone as an end in itself. Opposition is not our hobby!

Opposition is spiritually valid only as integral to heralding what is good and godly. The agenda is not to resist evil; it is to come home to Jesus, who is our Lord and our Master.

Now Think!

Even politicians are accountable at least once in five years to the people. Shouldn’t church functionaries also be?

Shouldn’t members of the church be entitled to know how it is being administered? We are urged, Sunday after Sunday, to donate and to contribute; but we have no right to know. Is that not strange?

Church assets are community assets. How can they be sold or alienated without the knowledge and approval of believers?

Shouldn’t there be effective provisions for ensuring discipline in respect of priests and bishops? (Why should church matters sink so low that law enforcing agencies have to crack the whip on us?) The ecclesiastical court is so structured as to render it wholly ineffective in dealing with the depravities of bishops. How can the accused, or those in solidarity with him, sit in judgment of the offender? When it comes to protecting bishops, all of them gang up. It is a chain of corruption. Every link has to be in place. They ensure that it is.

Most importantly, are we aware and mindful of the glory and greatness are missing on account of the shallowness and venality of these monarchs of mediocrity? They are fouling our nests. They are tarnishing our image. They are ruining the material and spiritual assets of the community. They are infecting us with despair.

They don’t have to bear the stain of it. You, your children and their children will have to. Is that fair?

Already, it is an embarrassment to be identified as a Christian in India, thanks to these termites of covetousness. Do we have the right or spiritual authority, any more, to preach the gospel to our fellow Indians?

Simon of Cyrene: A Symbol of the Cross (A spiritual dialogue) Revd Dr. M. J. Joseph, Kottayam

I lost my way at Nilackal and asked for the landmark The Good Samaritan, Thomas, told me: “Go straight, You will see a statue of Mary with a cross and turn left” I found the way.

I lost my way at Devanahalli The Good Samaritan Balakrishan told me: “Go straight, You will see a temple with an OM sign and turn left”.

I found the way.

I lost my way at Chetpet The Good Samaritan Murali told me: “Go straight, You will see a Cinema Theater and turn left I found the way.

I lost my way at Muscat The Good Samaritan Sadic told me: “Go straight, You will see a mosque with a Crescent-star and turn left I found the way.

I found a religious man with a golden cross around his neck at Jerusalem He told me: “Go straight to the church gate and Turn left”.

I did But I could not find the way.

I found another man with a wooden cross around his neck in the same street He told me: “Go straight to the market gate and turn left.”

I found the way.

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) is, reportedly, beginning investigation of the frauds practised over the last ten years. Just think of that! From now onwards the public will associate the church with SERIOUS FRAUDS. That is what these holy fathers have gained for us.

I see the Cross everywhere On all the Good Samaritans without any religious divide They are the Simons of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

The least that we can do, as the Psalmist says, is to count the wicked as repugnant. And to refuse to accord them the respect they do not deserve. Jesus gave the example. He called the corrupt clergy of his times, “whited sepulchres”.

I see the cross in places of gossip Where people carry the towel of service Where people talk about the sharing of food, Where people ask us to forgive one another.

To accord respect to men of depravity is to patronize their corruption and promote our own degradation. Those who do so are as much to blame as those who sell the church for truckloads of silver, as a vast improvement on the track record of Judas Iscariot, who was satisfied with thirty pieces, which is small change for his present-day disciples.

I heard a VOICE from above: The wood of the cross is easy to be nailed If the cross is made of gold, it resists it’s nailing!

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SEEKING SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF WEALTH Revd Dr. M. J. Joseph*, Kottayam Is the world a market place? The wedding finale of the daughter of the Money Giant, Ambani, was raised umpteen questions before us. For several of us today, money matters. Yes. But it should not rule the religious kingdoms and their caretakers. “In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” (George Orwell). Money is the fulcrum on which market moves around. ‘Mammon’ is so powerful today and it has extended its tentacles to every sector of human life including the religious sanctuaries. What Jesus said in Mt 6:24: “No one can be a slave of two masters; or otherwise he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other”. The age old saying of Jesus, “You cannot serve God and Mammon “has now become a religious myth. In the creation of the market friendly-people rather than peoplefriendly markets around the globe, the advertisement for a product sometimes ends with a market slogan: “Yours temptingly”. The number of oniomaniacs (people who are obsessed with the purchase of things) has increased tremendously even in the religious sectors. Market has now become a New Deity: Raising questions of authentic existence: Lord, I see a New Deity in the world around His name is MARKET. His hands are long like the tentacles of an octopus; His feet are made of gold and silver; He is being decorated with costly pearls; He is being worshipped with incense by the devotees of all religions; He enjoys the music of religious elites; And he likes only the company of the rich.

His caretakers ward off the poor.

He asks only one question: How much do you have?

He sings songs of praise to Profit.

For him, “having” rather than “being” is the prime question.

The words like, ‘sisterhood’ and ‘brotherhood’ have no place in his dictionary.

Lord, I am poor and I live on the margins, I am unskilled, I knock at the closed doors of the globalized world, But have no reply.

Lord, how long? How long? How long?

I want you to tell the market giants: Not to hoard, but to share And exhort them with the words of eternal life.

“It is in giving that you save yourself for a better tomorrow.”

I want you, Lord, to ask them to join the pilgrimage of life.

It is the movement of the self from “me to us”.

I want you, dear Lord, to raise prophets in our midst And empower them to shout without fear “Temple is mine, not the market.”

Life is meant to be lived with godliness. “For we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it. For the love of money is the 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"(1 Tim 6:10). One may find various economic combinations of internalization and externalizations of society in certain personalities like Mahatma Gandhi, Mao Tse Tung and Karl Marx. Gandhiji’s view of a free India and its economics is worth recalling. He wrote: “I am not interested in freeing India merely from the English yoke. I am bent upon freeing India from any yoke whatsoever. I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall feel that it is their country in whose making they have an effective voice, an India in which all communities shall live in perfect harmony.” This economic vision is the social philosophy of Jaya Prakash Narayan, who said: “The India of my dreams is a community in which every individual, every resource is dedicated to serving the weak—a community dedicated to the well-being of the least and the weakest.”

Philosophy of ‘having’, not ‘being’: Wealth should be treated as one's servant, not as a master. The question touches upon the bottom line when the market paradigms are uncritically accepted. The economic division of the globe as the North and the South has widened our corporate existence in terms of wealth. In the global community with the market paradigms, there arose a new value system, which simply asks the question: How much do you have?

"Having" rather than "being" is given an exalted position in relationships. The ebb of violence is also associated with the philosophy of ‘having’. The needs of the humans have been replaced by their wants. In the parable of the Rich farmer as told

by Jesus in Luke 12: 13-21, the issue is not about the possession of wealth; but of his attitude of hoarding wealth in total disregard for others’ needs. The wealth as such does not make us fools. Wealth is only a servant in the hands of the people. "Becoming rich toward God" is not a negation of wealth, but a call to search for the proper placement of wealth in God's order of relationships. In the global village of today, the market paradigms through the media has virtually invaded us.

The introduction of a monoculture and homogenization of ‘taste’ have become the basics of the philosophy of Mammon. This has contributed to the marginalization of several millions in the world.

Remember the poor: The instruction given to St. Paul by the pillar apostles of Jerusalem when he-set out for his missionary journey among the non-Jewish communities is worth recalling: "Remember the poor" (Gal 2:10). Market giants are exhorting us, "Forget the poor"! The poor is deprived of the privilege to make use of usable knowledge, which has the potential to generate wealth.

In the service of the market one is likely to be led to ‘debt trap’, which is also qualified as ‘death trap’. In the service of God, there is always an attitude of care for others. Concern for the weak and the defenseless is a sign of the maturity of the heart.

“A great city is that which handles its art and garbage equally well.” The challenge is to ensure a globalization in solidarity and a globalization without marginalization, as Pope John Paul II said in his message for the World day of Peace in 1998. The ethical call demands us “not to sit on a man's back, chocking him and making him carry us, and yet assure ourselves and

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others that we are very sorry"! Joseph Stiglitz, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, is quite frank when he said, "Life is difficult enough for developing countries, and you shouldn't make it more difficult by having unfair rules of the game."

Wealth meant to be shared: The Lazarus at the gate of the Rich man (Lk 16:19-31) is not a liability, but a divine agent for the liberation of the rich man. By caring for the marginalized, the rich and the strong attain their true divinity. The spirituality of the global community is made clear when Kofi Annan, former the Secretary General of the UN, said in a speech with the following words: "Either we help the outsiders in a globalized world out of a sense of moral obligation, and enlightened self-internalization, or we find ourselves compelled to do so tomorrow when their problems become our problems in a world without walls." This is indeed a religious truth. The Gita in IX, vs. 27 is quite vocal when it says: "Whatever you do, or eat, or offer as sacrifice, whatever you give or practise as austerity, do it as an offering to me." In the same rein, St. Paul writes: "Render service with enthusiasm as to the Lord and not to men and women." (Eph 6:7). Here is a call to forsake, to share and to discover the meaning of life. The market philosophy of the consumerist culture demands people to repeat: "What is mine is mine; what is yours is also mine" (Mar Osthathios). Men of wisdom have told us about the limits of money. It concludes: "I can buy bed not sleep; books but not brains; food but not appetite; a house but not a home; medicine but not health; luxuries but not culture; amusement but not happiness; a Church pew but not heaven." Yes, the impossibility of money should make us humble.

Debt forgiveness –Need of the hour In the global economic scenario, giving and taking loans through the Financial Institutions such as IMF, WTO and World Bank have become a daily style of living. The credit cards play a significant role in the life of the people all over the world. In such transactions, there is an element of trust and stewardship.

When the loans are given to a country or to a person, it is good to make their terms clear. But in due course, the relationship between the parties become bad if the terms are not honoured due to various reasons: either due to man-made or natural calamities or political upheavals or corruptions from the bottom to the top. The sense of brotherhood/sisterhood disappears.

This could be remedied through several measures particularly ‘debt forgiveness/cancellation’. The Jubilee Year mandated in the book of Leviticus 25 is a clear guidance for the rich nations to follow as a spiritual manual. It speaks of a new beginning, which leads to the restoration of wholeness of the community.

In the Incarnation of Jesus, there is a call to think of the world in not in a worldly way but in a godly way. The spirituality of the secular is a matter of relationship, which is indeed a search for truth and justice as social norms.

Jubilee vision-Survival of all living beings The Jubilee vision in the Old Testament times (Lev 25:10) is a call to rejoice in the Divine mandate. The purpose is to bring about Shalom (Shanti) all over the world. The year of Jobel (Jubilee) “is a year of release of slaves; cancellation of debts and return of property to its former owners.” This was proclaimed in the olden times by the blowing of a cornet, the

horn of a ram. The sound of Jobel proclaims the inauguration of the Jobel year (Lev 25:9ff), the year of freedom and release, the year of rejoicing and thanksgiving. It is an invitation to return to the future. All the key concepts of restoration begins with "re"repentance, remission, restitution, reparation, restoration, regeneration, recreation, reconstruction, rebuilding, reconciliation, etc. Cosmos (order) is to be created in the midst of chaos. What is required today is affirmation of human dignity, freedom and sustainable development. In this respect, human rights issues are integral to all sectors of life. The land also has inherent freedom to enjoy the Sabbath, i.e. to lie fallow without being cultivated (Lev 25:1-7; 20-22). No sowing or harvesting is allowed. (Lev 23:11).The Sabbath rest for the land is not meant for keeping it idle but to equip it refreshed and rejuvenated for better service to the rich and the poor. Really speaking the Jobel year, when it speaks of a bio-centric attitude to life, there is a search for a global ethic for community life. The debts are cancelled, the slaves are made free and the marginals are brought to the core of the community: This is meant to make a new beginning for the weak. What matters is to release the potentials of the poor and the marginalized. ‘Debt forgiveness or remission’ is now being advocated in the global economic scenario. This could be done with a human face. It is desirable to consider the matter with a good planning and strategy. No doubt that the liberating ideal of Jobel is a sign of hope for humanity. The incidents of Farmer’s suicide in the recent past in India could be attributed to crop failure and inability for the repayment of soft loans taken from the banks. Such a situation could happen to a few countries in the globalized world today.

Even a country could be taken as ransom by the rich multinational companies of the world!! What is required today is a new mode of ethics and morals for a better tomorrow. The ecumenical dictum of old is indeed prophetic when it says: “Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.”

Solidarity with the less privileged is the measure of a nation's greatness. The Canberra Assembly of the WCC has made it clear to the world that ‘a new ethic of economy and ecology by upholding the values of sustainability and human freedom’ is the need of the hour. This is the message of the Nazareth Manifesto of Jesus (Lk 4: 16-21), which challenges the economic philosophy of today and pleads for a just and participatory society. For the Christian church Jobel vision and the Nazareth Manifesto enacted in the Magnificat (Lk 1: 46-55) are not optional issues of mission to the world. Consumer values lead us to temptations of various kinds, e.g. conversion of agricultural lands to cash crops and destruction of the natural habitat of birds and animals. In an anthropocentric attitude to life, other creatures are denied of their basic right to eat and to drink and even to have their shelter. As the trees are being cut down, the birds of the air have no place to make their nests! The nations of the world are encouraged to convert food-money into the arms race! As market has never developed brotherhood or sisterhood, we should be quite aware of the designs of “the evil one." "Lead us not to temptation in the Lord's prayer" has its social implications. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched and every rocket fired signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are cold and are not clothed" (Eisenhower). *Formerly, Revd Dr. J. Joseph was the Professor of New Testament and the Principal, Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kottayam; he was also the Director Ecumenical Christian Centre, Bangalore, and a member of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, Geneva.

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Is the World Only a Market Place?

“How Dare You Turn My Father’s House into a Market”(Jn 2: 16)!

Dr. Zac Varghese, London This is an important question, and could find its answers from different perspectives. A wide range of people assemble at market places and there are even markets within markets. A market is an old system for the exchange of goods and services. Markets existed even before money was invented. People exchanged services and materials for other kind of services and goods through a system known as bartering. Physicians provided healing services for chicken and eggs in farming communities. In the 21st century, we are finding new ways of creating a market economy through digital technology, which is challenging whole sets and patterns of townships, shopping enclaves, and trading techniques.

Markets have dynamics of its own for changing our attitudes and lifestyles. Globalisation is a new face of the market economy with its own specialised dimensions and impacts. A market place is also an arena where people meet for all sorts of transactions including exchanging ideas, as St. Paul came across in Athens; Paul used this forum for exchanging ideas and for introducing the story of Jesus. “So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the market-place day by day with those who happened to be there” (Acts17: 17). The world is more than a market place; it is a place where we could see the love of God and the face of God in human interactions.

Revd Dr. Konrad Raiser, a former Secretary General of the WCC, in his foreword to ‘Mission in the Market Place’ wrote: “Metropolitan Chrysostom is a passionate advocate of ‘mission in the market place’, i. e., a form of mission and evangelism which is people-centred rather than church-centred.” This to me implies a hidden criticism in some areas of church-centred mission and an appreciation for the possibilities of presenting Christ in the market place. Soon after his election, Pope Francis expressed the following vision for the Church: “We need a Church unafraid of going into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church entering into their conversation. We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning.”

There are now so many disillusioned Christians who left their churches and moved to the market places for economic reasons, or found attractive markets of spirituality catering for body, mind and spirit; it could also be that churches themselves have become market places, for different reasons, as Jesus observed during his temple visits, as described in

the gospels (Mt 21: 12-16; Mk 11: 15-18: Lk 19: 45-48; Jn 2: 13-17). I have written before about the need for the ‘church of the people’ for addressing the day today needs of the local faith communities in places where they meet for conducting daily business7. Therefore, in this article, I would be developing two thoughts: firstly of the need to use the ‘temple cleansing’ processes of Jesus in our churches today, as some of them have become markets of fake-spirituality; selling indulgences for sending people to heaven; secondly, to use the opportunities available in the market place, as indicated earlier, for God’s mission as guided by the Holy Spirit and use markets as mission fields.

In one of Shakespeare’s frequently quoted passages in ‘As you like it’ we read about seven ages of man: “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant . . .”

According to Shakespeare people are playing the roles of infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, justice, pantalon, old age, and finally death. The unusual word ‘pantalon’ refers to the sixth stage of life; the character of pantalon or pantaloon is a weak old man from Italian comedy who is an abject slave to money and markets. Sometime people also think of the world only as a market place. The world has its ups and downs as markets; markets have shifting or floating values and in that sense it has no permanency.

Similarly the world that we inhabit is not a permanent place; we are sojourners in this transient world. But thinking of the world as a simple market or a stage is meaningless as Ecclesiastes reminds us over and over again. The writer of Ecclesiastes, probably an old man, concludes that much of his life has been meaningless because he has sought to do things by himself and for himself. But everything is meaningless is not a fancy notion, but these expressions are tightly packed with meanings when we look at them under the light that God has given us. It is the life away from God, which is meaningless. God gave us meaning and truth in the life and the ministry of Jesus, for he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn.14: 6).

7

Zac Varghese, ‘A Church of the people rather than Church for the People’, ‘Expanses of Grace’, CSS Publications, Tiruvalla, ISBN 978-81-7821-766-6; 2017; page 110-115.

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We have a tendency to look at the world, man and God separately as disconnected entities, but these are three dimension of a single reality. Raimundo Panikkar explained this reality as perichoresis, meaning dwelling within one another. Carl Sagan, a great philosopher, argued that ‘Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.’ Such arguments are for factoring God out of the equation of tri-unity. There is indeed a God-shaped hole in such philosophies and living styles. The Indian mystic, Sri Aurobindo’s,8 assertion is of interest in this context: “A yoga which requires me to give up the world is not for me; a solitary salvation leaving the world to its fate was felt almost distasteful;” he further added, “nothing can be saved until everything is saved. . . . There can be no paradise so long as a single man is in hell!” Pope Francis in his ‘Letter to God’s people’, published in the Vatican News of 20th August 2018, wrote: “It is always helpful to remember that in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community.” In Jesus we see these three dimensions, divinity, humanity and the world coming together in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. This indwelling is the key to Jesus’ ministry, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The purpose of creation was for the intimate fellowship with the creator and the creation, unity in diversity. We are no longer isolated individuals in conflict with each other or our surroundings; we are parts of a whole, elements in a universal harmony. Religions create differences and disunity, fellowship becomes mere transactions and power play.

how the whole cosmos declares the glory of God and God’s words in the Scripture guide us to give Him Glory in all aspects of our living. At the age of 12 when Jesus visited the temple in Jerusalem with his parents for the Feast of the Passover, he called the temple as his Father’s house (Lk 2: 50). Jesus found at home in the temple because at that time it was a place of worship and study, but twenty years later when he visited the temple, as we read in John’s gospel, it became a market place as Jesus asked: “How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market” ( Jn 2: 16)!

The Temple Traditions and its Cleansing:

In the Abrahamic tradition, it was at the temple that the three realities of God, man and the world came together in glorifying God’s name through worship. Psalm 19 tells

When the Abrahamic people wandered through the desert for their freedom from Pharaoh, God instructed Moses to build a ‘tent of the meeting or a tabernacle’, within the tabernacle there was a sanctuary with the Ark of the Covenant. “Let them make me a sanctuary, I may dwell with them” (Ex 25:8). This sanctuary was shrouded with a holy cloud, indicating the presence and the glory of God. Thus, “The weight of his glory descends and abides in the tabernacle. The barren soil of the desert becomes transformed into a new Eden as YHWH returns to dwell among his people.”9 Many years later, Solomon built a most beautiful permanent temple for God, a dwelling place for God. The priests relocated the Ark of the Covenant in the new temple and again, the cloud indicated the presence of God in the temple. Years later a second and a third temple was built at the same site. The temple was the place where they worshipped God and it was a constant reminder of their identity as God’s chosen people. But over the centuries, traditions have changed Jesus saw his Father’s house as a ‘den of robbers’. Jesus quoted from Scripture: “‘It is written.’ he said to them, ‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers” (Lk 19: 46). How did this happen?

When Jesus went there as a child, he found it a good place to have a discussion and study with the teachers, but at the beginning (Jn 2: 13-17) and towards the end of his ministry (Mt 21: 12-16; Mk 11: 15-18: Lk 19: 45-48), he found it necessary to clean up the temple. The business transactions in the temple and the money exchanges for profit making destroyed the rhythm and the beauty of the temple worship; it absolutely destroyed the very purpose of the temple. The chief priests and his family were seen to be crooks and hypocrites. The commercialism in religion and the cultivation of personality-cults and guru-cults in religions create a wall between dedicated worshippers and God. Sounds of the salesmen and stallholders drowned the payer of the worshippers: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” The temple was intended for such confessional prayers, blessings and for giving glory to God.

8 Satprem, in ‘Aurobindo’, published by Mother’s Institute of

9 Mark Scarlata, ‘The Abiding Presence’ ISBN 978 0 334

Research, Delhi, 2003; page 41 and 226.

055044, SCM Press, London, 2018; Page 24.

Religions became market places for selling spirituality.

Such markets provide ‘I-me-myself’ individualistic personalised attitudes for salvation and securing a safe journey to heaven of one’s dreams. Markets have existed in various forms from the earliest of times, from bartering system to auction houses, stock markets, money markets, digital bit coins and so on and on. The world is at present dominated and guided by markets and market economy, the present crisis is all about movement of capital, tariffs, trade wars and embargoes, movement of labour, acquisition of technology and such. It is finally a game for dominance of one section of people over another through the juggling tricks of marketers.

Globalisation and globalised-markets are creating new sets of problems.

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Do we need a ‘temple cleansing’ in our churches and also in our daily living?

Cleaning temples and their precincts every morning is a holy and important ritual in many religious traditions of Asia. It is also part of one’s monastic discipline and training. The temple cleansing incidence in John’s gospel is also the beginning of the revelation of the inauguration of a new temple in the person of Jesus (Jn 2: 21) Jesus told us and finally demonstrated that his own body is the temple of God through his resurrection. It is Jesus’ love for his Father, which makes it a permanent dwelling place, a temple of God. We in turn have the opportunity to become dwelling places of God through our love for God. “If anyone loves me, and he will obey my teaching.

My Father will love him, and we will come to him and

make our home with him” (Jn 14: 23). St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? . . . God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1Cor 3: 16, 17). This is a radically new understanding. We, each one of us, are dwelling places of God, and as a result the Church is also a dwelling place, a temple of God. What does it mean to clean the temple within us under this new insight? The temple-cleansing incidence reminds us to be aware of the struggle between, Mammon, money and God. God is reminding us to understand the burden of becoming a place where God dwells. We are called to be the temples of God. Individually and collectively we are the temple of God. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it” (1Cor 12:27). So we have an individual and corporate responsibility to keep the temple clean.

From the apostolic times we have noticed the growth of the Church and St. Paul and other apostles wrote pastoral letters for introducing corrective measures. We have witnessed the influence of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Knox, Martin Luther and John Calvin in this cleaning up. In the Mar Thoma Church we saw the influence of Abraham Malpan, Sadhu Kochukunju Upadesi, Mammen Upadesi and such people bringing changes to our worship, liturgy, daily living, and spiritual growth. What happened in the Jerusalem temple has happened in our churches and in our personal lives. However, today many people feel that the Church has failed them by not engaging with their needs. The practice of faith often appears too intellectual, far too other worldly and detached from everyday needs; it is often adhered to doctrines and rituals; clergy often fail to see the spiritual life as such beyond the strict practice of a few well-worn daily rituals; they are often resistant to change or learn communicating skills to reach out to people, and have become managers and administrators, primarily to maintain themselves. Making churches into markets of superficial spirituality in various disguises is an easy way out and evading responsibilities.

It is time to be aware of this tragedy and take measures with utter humility. It is so easy to point the finger at others and become experts in ‘virtual signalling’. It takes lots of courage and absolute humility to kneel down and accept our roles or our indifference in allowing such things to happen in our personal lives and our faith communities. This malady is spreading in all religions and we need to be aware of this and confess that each one of us is responsible in various degrees. Yes, indeed we need cleansing, commitment, meditation, and transformation.

Mission in the Market Place: The world is indeed a market place and hence we are called upon to do God’s mission in this market place.

Market is at the cutting edge of life today. There is church-oriented, market-directed mission, and also a

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God’s mission (missio Dei) based on loving our neighbours as ourselves. Understanding and sensing the difference between the two would help us to direct the mission in the right way. Church is more than a collection of members, dogmas and liturgical worship. Church is a missionary community and a community with a mandate to live the gospel in the market place because it is where most people are. This is the place of everyday activity.

The characteristic of the missionary community is to meet people where they are and accept them for what they are.

If the mission of the Church is the salvation of the world to establish kingdom values, then the concern of the Church cannot be her self-preservation or market ratings or her desire to cling to rigid traditions and languages which younger people cannot appreciate or understand.

The church needs to use a rhythm, style and language, which could attract young people. Communication is the heartbeat of a community and there is an urgent need to communicate the love of God through her actions.

The Church as a missionary community should be the sign and sacrament of God’s kingdom, expressing its core values through social transactions. The Church should be the moral consciousness of society, always working for the elimination of unjust structures and for the rendering of justice and to give emphasis for establishing new social awareness and practices. The formation of this new social order through God’s mission is firmly founded on the theological foundations expressed in Mary’s song (Lk 1: 46-55) of bringing down aristocracy from their thrones, including ecclesial aristocracy, and lifting up the humble. This visionary agenda is expected to scatter even those who are proud in their inner most thoughts and extend mercy to those who fear the Lord from generation to generation.

A critical attitude towards institutionalised religion, religious establishments, and their vested interests, hereditary and hierarchical manipulations is unavoidable.

As long as the clergy continue to dominate the agenda of the Church, there will be clashes between their institutional interests and actions in the secular/civil society. Challenging power structures and challenging religious awareness are part of the prophetic heritage of Nathan who rebuked King David (2 Sam 11 and 12), and John the Baptist who bore the brunt of Herodias’ anger (Mt 14: 1-12). By healing the hand of the paralysed man (Mt 12: 9-13) and the crippled woman on the Sabbath (Lk 13: 10-17), Jesus taught a new socio-spiritual interface and understanding of the Sabbath of helping people and not leaving them helpless. Jesus taught us that the Sabbath is for the mankind and not the mankind for the Sabbath. It is a movement to fullness; it is a kick at their hard-nosed religion; it is a stand against all existing unjust structures of society. It is a challenge for the transformation of society. It is searching for order.

Dependence on past achievements is symbolic of this degeneration and decadence. We have become a decrepit ancient monument with inability to respond meaningfully to today’s issues, challenges and realities.

As a result, nobody is taking the church seriously; church has become irrelevant and decadent. Those who are called out to be different, those who are called out to reform the world through them being different have been transformed into nothingness or meaninglessness, they have lost their savour. In order to respond meaningfully to contemporary challenges, to develop new styles of action and awareness through which to create an agenda based on core kingdom values, the church needs to develop an in depth self-analysis and seeks dynamics for becoming promoters of justice and social reformation. We need to develop a longing for justice, relationships, truth and spirituality. In all these, we see the consummation of all ideas of the kingdom of God. The creation of this new society is only possible though repentance, regeneration and reformation for becoming a new being in Christ. This realisation may be very painful; it is like going through a kind of death or birth pangs. But it is the one thing, which makes life worth living. Mission in the market place is very difficult when selfishness and self-interests become the hallmarks of the new social order.

Pope Francis said, “The mission of the Church is not building walls, but breaking them down.” Revd Dr. Valson Thampu recently compared walls to darkness, but we are the children of ‘Light’ and we are ‘lighted to lighten’. This would help members of the Church to welcome strangers without any reservation. We need to learn to welcome others who are different from ourselves.

A missionary Church is a ‘Church of the people and not church for the people’. Lay people do not need spoonfeeding at all times, they should be allowed to walk and learn everyday realities in the market place. Bede Griffiths wrote: “To discover God is not discover an idea but to discover oneself.” Give them space for this discovery. A hierarchical Church often fails to notice the spiritual gifts of laity because it is more concerned with generating catch phrases, sound bites, and the acceptability of the media. It is often very common that people who always emphasise religious rituals forget that the spirit of love and mercy is at the heart of the Christian gospel. Karl Barth advocated the following ancient saying for the continuing cleansing of the Church: “ecclesia reformata semper reformanda.” This means that the reformed Church must always be reformed; the continued reformation is essential for our spiritual and emotional health.

Let me conclude this article with a quote from prophet Amos: “I hate, and despise your solemn feasts . . . I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5; 21-24)!

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Pearls of Wisdom Series: No.10 The Whole Body of the Church must be cleansed from all Defilement.

[A reading from a sermon of Pope St. Leo the Great] Of all the days celebrated in varying degrees of solemnity by the Christian liturgy, beloved brethren, none ranks higher than the Paschal feast, by which the whole series of festivals is consecrated and confirmed in honour in the Church of God. If it is true that the very birth of our Lord from his mother looked forward to its culmination in this mystery, then it is clear that the sole purpose of God’s son in being born was to make his crucifixion possible.

For in the virgin’s womb he assumed mortal flesh the unfolding of his passion was accomplished. Thus the mercy of God fulfilled a plan too deep for words: Christ’s humanity became for us a redemptive sacrifice, annulment of sin, and the first-fruit of resurrection to eternal life.

When we consider what the entire world owes to our Lord’s cross, we realise our need to prepare for the celebration of Easter by a fast of forty days if we are to take part worthily in these sacred mysteries. Not only every defilement to be purged away from bishops who have received the fullness of the sacrament order, from priests who hold second place, and from deacons who administer the sacraments, but the whole body of the Church and entire company of the faithful must be purified, so that in the temple of God, whose foundation is the founder himself, every stone may be beautiful and every section radiant. If it is reasonable to embellish a king’s palace or governor’s residence with every ornamental art, so that the greater a man’s importance the more splendid his dwelling, what zeal ought to be expended in building the house of God himself, and how distinguished should be its furnishing! No doubt such a task can be neither undertaken nor completed without the architect; nevertheless the builder of the house has given it the power to grow in stature through its own efforts. For in the erection of this temple of living and intelligent materials are being used, which of their own free will assemble themselves into a single structure at the prompting of the Spirit of grace. There was a time when they neither loved God nor sought him; but he loved them and sought them so that they might begin to love and seek him in return. This is what the blessed apostle John speaks of when he says: Let us love God, for he first loves us.

Since therefore the entire company of the faithful and each believer in particular form and the same temple of God, there must be the same perfection in each individual as there is in the whole; for even if all are not alike in beauty nor is there equal merit in such a diversity of membership, yet the bond of love ensures communion of

beauty between them all. While those who are united in holy love may not all have received the same gift of grace, they rejoice nonetheless in their mutual blessings.

Nothing that they love can be wanting to them, for by finding happiness in the progress of others they increase their own store of riches.

• Taken from “A Word in Season’ edited by Henry Ashworth O. S.B; The Talbot Press, Dublin, 1974.

FOCUS The Editorial Board of the FOCUS has decided to introduce a new initiative of ‘Ask FOCUS' to enable its readers and well wishers to interact with issues-specificity with FOCUS about the biblical and theological themes addressed in this journal. We request your active participation in this new interactive feature focused especially, though not exclusively, on the youth.

You could begin with sending us your thoughts and queries about the themes and insights offered through the FOCUS issues. It would help if you would be brief and limit your queries to, ideally, about 50 to 100 words. We are, however, somewhat flexible about the word limit. Even so, brevity is the envisaged golden rule. You may send your thoughts by e-mail to Rev. Valson Thampu (you could address him as Valson) at his e-mail address vthampu@gmail.com The editorial board reserves the freedom to edit the submissions and also to reject any which is contrary to the editorial policies and mission of FOCUS. You may access all the previous issues of FOCUS online magazine by visiting any of the two web sites below and reading the thematic articles in each issue.

We guarantee that your privacy will be protected and that your name will be published only with your prior permission; otherwise, your views/statement will be published under the caption: A Reader’s View. We hope that our readers and wellwishers would make use of this new initiative and take part actively in the mission and purpose of FOCUS. www.issuu.com/diasporafocus www.scribd.com/diasporafocus

Editorial Board

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THE NEED FOR A NEW VISION IS REAL AND PRESSING - Part 3 Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum [Part-2 of this article was published in the 2019, January, issue of the FOCUS; FOCUS2018, Vol7 (1), p 19-20] A new vision is not born of the will of man; but the repentance of man is a pre-condition for openness to that vision. Regeneration, or being born again, is the outcome of that acceptance in spirit and in truth, as against pietistic pretenses.

This new vision will embrace all aspects of human existence.

Nothing, including politics and commerce, will be out of bounds for it. It will not distance itself from the world but relate to the world in love; love not as the world knows it.

Love is the authentic expression of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit begins with love. It is the essence of all Commandments. To love the world in a godly manner is to be different from the ways of the world. The world is in trouble because of its ways! And we deem it a virtue, or tact, to be well-schooled in it; and that too for the sake of the Kingdom of God! The difference between Jesus and the religious leaders of the time was one of vision. His vision embraced the whole of humanity, which is the hallmark of the spiritual. The Spirit, Jesus clarified, is like the wind. It blows where it pleases. No one knows where it comes from and where it goes. That is to say, it allows no divisive labels and restrictions. It holds no exclusivist loyalties. It was precisely this that rattled the Jews. It went right contrary to the misdirection in which they were conditioned.

What we tend to forget at the present time is that no one can, in honesty, be a caring person so long as he remains parochial. A priest with a parochial mindset may do all he can to seem to be caring towards his ‘sheep’. (The value of a lamb is situated between the milk and meat it is meant to yield.) But it is rarely a sign of a caring spirit. It is driven, in most cases, by considerations of income for the church and popularity for the priest. This is not being cynical! This is the point that Jesus makes through the parable of the Good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite would have cared for the wounded victim if he were a subscribing member of their congregation. Between the thieves who attack the man because he is not one of them, and the priest and the Levite who turn their faces away from his pain and helplessness, the difference is notional. The Samaritan, on the other hand, was not a Samaritan in his outlook. That’s the profound paradox on which the parable is structured. He was, as Jesus says, a neighbour to the man in need. And that’s the revolution the world is waiting for. In the new vision, the Samaritan and the Jew, the Christian and the non-Christian would all be neighbours. Their wounds and bloods will carry no alienating labels.

Today the caring culture of the church is at its lowest ebb.

The show goes on, no doubt. But no one bothers about how

the people are faring. It is assumed, as Robert Browning says, “God is in his heavens and all is right with the world.”

Subscriptions, special donations, birth and wedding anniversary offerings. . . And prayers based on membership . . . That’s called pastoral ministry. It was looking at a similar situation that Jesus said, ‘the people are like sheep without a shepherd.’

This reminds us of the church in Laodicea: the lukewarm church, a church in accommodation with the ways of the world. It is a church, hardly distinguishable from the world. It is like the change from the Congress to the BJP. The BJP justifies its misdeeds by citing those of the Congress. Yet it claims to be a party with a difference. Wonder how different we are from this pattern. We claim to be different from the world by replicating its patterns and adopting its ways.

Except, perhaps, that the world has less need of hypocrisy than we have.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing that there is no hope or that the gates of hell have prevailed over the church. If Jesus has said that such a thing won’t happen ever, I believe in it firmly and passionately; else I won’t have bothered to write this piece, advocating a new vision for a magazine of that title.

My point is that the more these signs of contradiction and hypocrisy multiply the closer we are to a new vision; for these evident and distressing signs of disarray prove that the old is wearing itself out. Its shelf-life is expiring. But we should not be so naïve as to expect that a new vision will be born and ascendant irrespective of us. We have to, like the blessed Mother of the Lord, be willing to be the medium through which that vision is born according to the sovereign will of God. The good news is that we don’t have to be distinguished and well-plumed people, individuals of distinction and gravity, to serve in this capacity. What is required of us is quite simple, which is the justice of God. Be the salt of the earth and the light of the world; which we can so because Jesus lives today. Our hope is well-founded because ours is a living faith.

This is not to say that birthing a new vision is a walk in the park. No! It is a pilgrimage over which the shadow of the cross rests perennially. The prerequisite for being the medium through which the new vision will come into the world is well stated by Jesus himself, “He who wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mtt.16:24). Jesus himself was distinguished by this kenotic strength (Phil.2:5-11). Only he who denies himself will be filled by God. Hence it is that the first will be the last; and the last, first. The new vision is like light. It is coming continuously into the world. The problem is that our face is turned away from it. That is the hallmark of a living faith. Hence it is that there is an inevitable connection between vision and sight. Like Bartimaeus on the Jericho road, we too need to cry out, “Lord, I want to see.”

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A Letter to the People of God Pope Francis [Pope Francis has responded to new reports of clerical sexual abuse and the ecclesial cover-up of abuse. On 20 August, 2018, in an impassioned letter, addressed to the whole People of God, the Holy Father calls on the Church to be close to victims in solidarity, and to join in the acts of prayer and fasting in penance for such "atrocities". We owe it and are grateful to Vatican City news for this report.

Following this, Pope called the bishops from across the world for four days of consultation in Rome from 21-24 , February, 2019.]

when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.

th

th

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1Cor 12:26). These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

1.

If one member suffers…

In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).

2. … all suffer together with it The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. Solidarity summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen 4:9).

I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in

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applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.

Together with those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command. [1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.

It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualties and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives. [2] This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”. [3] Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.

It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for

sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).

It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allow us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.

Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice should impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice, prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ. May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.

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IN OFFENCE TO DAVID BRAND’S DEFENCE OF JUDAS (Ask FOCUS) Revd. Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum [Did Judas have a choice, or was he predestined to betray Jesus?(Re: Mt. 26: 25; Jn. 13: 27-30; Jn. 17: 11-12; Ps. 41: 9; Acts 1: 16) The following response is based on an article, ‘In Defence of Judas’ by David Brand, which appeared in the October (2018) issue of the FOCUS (Vol. 6 (4), 2018, Page 17).]

I respect Mr. David Brand (In Defence of Judas) for saying what he has. But I disagree with him. As Voltaire said, “I disagree with what you say, but I shall defend with my life your right to say it.”

David’s idea of Judas would lend itself admirably to a Bollywood or Hollywood treatment of this enigmatic individual. But art, alas, is not quite the same as theology or the truth of experience. Fact and fiction need not be congruous. Our concern here is with the truth; at least with seeking it.

Without wanting to be uncharitable to David, I would refer to Kierkegaard’s observation that one of the essential features of the modern man is his penchant for ‘over-intellectualization’.

The outcome is that truth is lost like a needle in a haystack.

Soren Kierkegaard is not saying that nothing should be subjected to rational scrutiny. He is suspicious only about ‘overintellectualisation’, which involves weaving webs of tautology that resemble the sinews of truth, but aren’t what they purport to be. Tautological constructs are alternatives to truth.

David’s first premise is that Jesus had to do what he did in order to fulfil the scripture. This is perilously close to the truth; because it is a ‘one-half truth’. Jesus said, ‘it is necessary that offence comes; but ‘woe unto him through whom the offence comes’. The fact that Jesus had to be betrayed and arrested doesn’t mean that Judas had to do it. Or, that he was coerced even covertly to do it. If we deviate from the logic Jesus himself provided with specific reference to this instance, we create a situation in which anything can be justified. The very foundation of moral responsibility will be dismantled in the process. It is a path we shall not walk. No human being has the right to decide that he will be the agent for fulfilling a divine or historical purpose; or, to put it in Eliot’s words, ‘to force the moment to its crisis’.

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment treats this theme poignantly.

The fact that, as David says, “Judas threw the money away and committed suicide – rather than live smartly ever thereafter – doesn’t prove that he was not ‘a betrayer successfully earning his reward and spending it’. Judas comes through, in the Gospels, as one who hasn’t come to terms with himself. [See the paragraph below] That is why he is akin to most of us and why he appeals to our sentimental bias. Most of us are in the same predicament. I suspect that is why he is there in the Passion Narrative in the first place. We have an extreme representation of this theme in Shakespeare’s Iago, described

by Coleridge as ‘the motiveless malignity of a motive-hunting villain’. Judas, unlike Iago, is not a villain; he is human, all too human. To that extent, David is right. And we are obliged to be grateful to him for illumining this dim aspect of the narrative.

There is a subtle and profound distinction between Peter and Judas. Peter acts impulsively. Those who do so are supposed to be -in common parlance – in poor control of themselves.

Judas, in contrast, acts deliberately, almost calculatingly.

Persons of this type – by “Aristotle’s analysis- are supposed to be ‘virtuous’. They can be expected to avoid ‘extremes’ in conduct. Yet – for all his deliberation – Judas is an alien to himself. The significance of this, I’m sure, will not be lost on my readers. The question that emerges from this scenario is, “How are we to understand ourselves?” This is raised, as readers would know, repeatedly in the Gospels. (I suggest that the readers make a study of this biblical theme on their own.)

The anomaly in labouring to condone Judas’ role on the premise that he was ‘ordained’ to do what he did, needs to be faced. If this line of argument is pushed, we land up in a realm of mere human instrumentality. Judas then becomes a less-than-fullyhuman thing; a mere instrument. And I agree with Immanuel Kant that treating a human being as an instrument is an unforgivable insult to the human. Not even God has the right to treat human beings in that fashion! The problem with the instrumentalization of human being is that it excludes freedom of choice and, with that, the notion of responsibility altogether.

Only what is done in freedom has spiritual value. To introduce coercive instrumentality of the human agent of action is to go right against the logic of spirituality.

David’s argument that Judas allowed himself to be carried away by the rousing reception Jesus got on his way to Jerusalem and that the same anaesthetized Judas into the complacency of assuming that, irrespective of what he did, Jesus would remain unharmed. (Smart bargain! He sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, without selling Jesus! This is the only instance of a transaction in history in which the seller keeps the money and without the item being sold!) In arguing this, David overlooks what Jesus said in unambiguous terms: that he would be ensure that the Romans do not go berserk and take out their Jesus-induced ire on the Jews. Jesus was a piece of red cloth to the Roman bulls.

True. But, if David had recalled Aesop’s Fables, he would have seen that those who have power need no valid excuse, if they are inclined to do something. How could Judas be, so suddenly, such an astute reader of political undercurrents and yet, in relation to Jesus’ ministry, so deficient in comprehension?

David’s theory weakens further when it comes to the explanation for Judas’ casting away the blood money, the thirty pieces of silver. If David is familiar with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, he would know that the way a person experiences an act prospectively – i.e., when it is only being contemplated – is radically and dramatically different from how he experiences in retrospect. The heart-rending pathos of Macbeth stems from this contrast. This is a significant existential angst, and the Bard of England could have learned it only from Jesus. Macbeth is Shakespeare’s version – well, nearly – of Judas. The same pattern is reflected in Crime and Punishment. Every human being, who has crossed the ethical limit, would know this to be true. It is irreducibly universal.

(Continued on Page 24)

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In Response to Revd Valson Thampu’s Analysis (Ask FOCUS) Dear Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum Your letter has been passed to me by my very good friend, Prof.

Zac Varghese, who is one of the editors of the Focus.

You may be surprised to learn that they have only ever received two responses to all articles published so far and apparently they were both from yours truly, which surprises me just as it possibly surprises you considering the quality of the other submissions.

Your first statement struck a chord in my memory banks and reminded me of an incident circa 1979 at an event on the grounds of Windsor Castle when a young man came up to me very embarrassed and uncomfortable. I instantly knew he was about to apologise for something he had said and had been advised to make amends. I interrupted what he was about to say with this statement. “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it”, Dear Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, His embarrassed expression immediately changed to that of complete amazement and he replied; “Now I know why you are the boss of M . . . Industries”. He had realised in an instant that it did not matter to me what he said, I had forgiven him and did not require him to humble himself in public, much to his relief.

I am honoured to know now that a giant like Aristotle beat me to it centuries earlier!

There is another Giant I would like to bring to your attention and that is Omar Khayyam, the Persian Mathematician, Astronomer and Poet who wrote: “The moving Finger writes; and having writ, moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back. To cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

From the above you have probably gathered that I am not a Theologian but an Engineer.

Theology is a minefield to me and like the law the brightest mind wins. The only individual who confounded the Theologians in his time was Jesus Christ who won the arguments but was executed by them for his truths.

However the Editors very much appreciate you making the effort to present your point of view, which I heartily applaud and encourage. I, on my part am not qualified to make any decision on what is right or wrong and must decline your offer but maybe in the future we could meet and have a discussion to exchange our viewpoints without a debate.

In order to understand where I am coming from you might appreciate a little of my background. At the age of sixteen I went through a life changing experience (when I was at an alltime low) that produced a profound change in me that my mother detected immediately, being the first to see me after the event. I never told anybody about it until 2000 in case I ended up in front of a child or possibly an adult psychiatrist! I wrote about it in an earlier Focus that resulted in the only other letter received by the editors.

memory of where I had come from, why I was here and what was expected of me. Unfortunately I cannot tell you where I shall be going when I depart this life, but I can say I was promised a good and long life and can confirm that was no idle promise.

I have now reached my 83’rd year, having cheated death and serious injury on several occasions and even been photographed for a newspaper under the title “Miraculous Escape”. Another result of this experience is that I tend to reflect a pale image of what I received to sensitive people like Zac who detect outward warmth of Spirit and respond accordingly. I believe there is purpose, design and a learning curve in all our lives but it can be changed if we voluntary decide to terminate ourselves.

My writing is promoted by the Spirit not me, it keeps prompting me with ideas all the time that are radical to conventional theology and keeps making me wonder as a consequence, I liken my writing to somebody that throws stones into a still pond and observes the ripples.

I will never claim that I am right and that every critic is wrong, because we must not Judge and are not privileged or mature enough to know the absolute truth; all I ask is for the reader to wonder.

When artificial intelligence learns to wonder that will be the end of the human race.

The simple act of “I wonder how we could do that?” has got us across oceans, into the air, in space and will eventually get us to the stars given enough time. But never forget Jesus’ advice “Seek the truth and it will set you free”, unfortunately those seeking human truths will end up like Pontius Pilate asking “what is truth?” Here is something for you to consider, why is the Gospel of Saint Thomas, your patron Saint, and Mary Magdalene’s not in the New Testament? I would be interested in your comments as I am working on my next submission titled “In defence of Mary Magdalene”.

Peter was forgiven his three counts of denial when Jesus asked him three times “Do you love me?” He then became Peter the Rock as Jesus had predicted, probably in complete opposition to all human logic, which would have written him off as unreliable.

I wonder about Judas and will not let myself be hidebound by conventional thinking that traps the mind. For example, as Peter was forgiven I firmly believe that if Judas had not terminated his life – a pure fallible human intervention (not Bollywood, Hollywood, Shakespeare or even a Greek Tragedy) – he would have been forgiven also. A forgiven Judas would fully appreciate that Jesus had washed and dried his feet knowing that he would be betrayed by him, the full impact of the quality of his forgiveness would surely have motivated him to become possibly one of the most active and successful evangelical disciples.

I now know why Paul took several days to recover his eyesight, but more importantly I was made aware of what I really was, a

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I firmly believe that the way to God cannot be through intellectual argument as that would preclude many. Jesus made that point when he chose fishermen and ordinary people to follow him. The way to God is via your spirit and how it interacts with the Divine Spirit. Your spirit is your eternal life, not the flesh as it must remain here when you pass on. The link between spirits is through divine love, worship and faith as demonstrated

by Jesus who is the divine human interface between God and man and our role model. When you eventually face our Heavenly Father do it with love and gratitude, remember he has heard all the intellectual arguments and knows all the answers.

This brings me right back to the man in Windsor, a human example of motivation through absolute forgiveness. We should be more forgiving, less condemning, practise our faith and ask ourselves if we had been Pontius Pilate would we have condemned Jesus? Hindsight is a marvellous gift that we all enjoy by being (against all the odds), allowed to exist at all.

provide spaces for interrogation. Why can’t we have interactive sessions on the Word on Sundays, in lieu of the present soliloquies by preachers; especially given the fact that there are many in congregations who are better educated and familiar with the Bible? Some of them remind me of Robert Browning.

When he was asked as to what a particular poem of his meant he said, “In the beginning only two people knew it: God and me.

Now only the former does.”

Just think of this: but for David, I would not have shared my thoughts with you on this issue. So, I am grateful to David. Let me, in ending this argument, assure him that he is most welcome to be as critical as he wishes to be with what I say here timidly and tentatively. Let us sharpen each other, like iron sharpening iron.

MARAMON CONVENTION 2019

I hope this letter clarifies my point of view, please do not change yours it would be a poor world and a life not worth experiencing if we were all clones.

With great respect for your contributions to our beliefs.

David Brand C.Eng. M.I.E.T. (Continued from Page 22 – Rev. Dr. Valson Thampu) There are other threads in David’s argument that can be – and need to be – countered. A desirable discipline in writing is to be suggestive, and not to be exhaustive, lest the author exhaust the reader. Even so, one last point may be made. When too many arguments are advanced for a phenomenon, and each thread in the argument is dyed in the eagerness to sound polemically persuasive – as against offering a sequential statement of facts, the theory advanced becomes suspect. The problem gets worse when the strands of thought become, unwittingly or otherwise, either mutually contradictory or mutually unresponsive.

Notwithstanding what I have argued above, I thank David for caring to stand up for what he believes. It is necessary that we all do so. I value in particular David’s eagerness to break out of the common rut and to venture off the beaten track. I am sure that, this being David’s forte, he would welcome my dissenting views which are submitted to David and his readers (as also mine) in humility, in the hope that it would generate a free and rational discussion amidst us.

It is necessary that we discuss. God is not insecure about our expressing ourselves freely. It is not necessary that we state only profoundest and most impregnable truths. What is unacceptable is that one tries to wilfully mislead by distorting texts and facts. Every attempt to seek the truth and to state what is learned in the process freely and fearlessly must be welcome.

This is an urgent need in our churches, where all the time it is only a dull and deadening monologue. (In the Anglican lingo, the preacher stands six feet above contradiction.) This ensures that the occupants of pulpits don’t have to sharpen, or even to apply, their minds. I believe very fervently that the ministry of the Word becomes less than sincere and robust if it does not

The Maramon Convention, one of the largest Christian convention in Asia, is held at Maramon. It is organised by the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church. The origin and growth of this annual convention can be traced to the great revival movement, which gathered momentum during the reformation period in the Syrian Churches of Kerala under the pioneering leadership of Abraham Malpan in the latter part of the 19th century. This brought about the transformation in resurgence of the ancient apostolic Churches in Kerala founded [1]

by St. Thomas the Apostle approximately in AD 52.

Maramon Convention Photo courtesy: Gloria News

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The Holy Books: Part-1 Authorship and interpretation: for better or worse?

Dr. Ian Fry, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate, University of Divinity, Australia [This article is written for the 8th Holy Book Conference held at Kuala Lumpur in April 2019 under the auspices of the United Religious Initiative (URI).]

relationships by the adherents of a recognized faith,

Introduction

‘holy books.’ They include some that are included in a

whether Abrahamic, Avatar, Saoshyant, Axial or a community of non-theist philosophy, are considered as canon of authorized literature and others that are not.

Our conference theme, Holy Books and World Literature,

Similarly, the entire range of published materials that are

opens a Pandora’s Box. It is very sweeping and without

written to explain, expand upon as teaching aids, or to

delineation. No holy book has ever been composed in

compare

contextual isolation. They all flow in one stream or

compliment or denigrate any of them, are considered as

another, and although each stream might appear to have

‘literature’.

or

explore

the

holy

books,

whether

to

a separate physical source they all originate from the search for an understanding of the relationship between

There is brief coverage of the origins of the main holy

humanity and the Divine. x

books, their authorship, when, where and in what circumstances they were composed and accepted for, or

If they think about it at all, most people assume that the

rejected from, inclusion in a canon?

beliefs and traditions of the major faiths of their

contain material that has provoked challenge, and what

communities are static, that they have always existed

we know about subsequent literature.

together, and that they were established in similar

challenge, to clarify, to illustrate or to teach a particular

circumstances. They are surprised to find that the extant

holy book; to clarify or expand on it, to provide rules,

faiths have actually evolved in sequence over about four

prohibitions or penalties for conduct; for comparison of

thousand years, in isolation from each other, and in

one text or faith and another, or for critical assessment to

widely differing circumstances, and that they have a

complement, denigrate or condemn a particular faith,

common basic role: to provide a system of ethics and

belief or practice? It is evident from the myriad of faiths

morals to enable their communities to live in harmony in

and

the presence of, and responding to, the sole Divine Being.

rejections, that not every statement or claim that is made

In spite of that common role they have produced

is correct, truthful and above challenge. This has resulted

contradictory doctrines and self-understandings that have

in conflict within and between communities and has

triggered a mass of literature, resulted in conflict, and

contributed to global crises that threaten the stability and

brought us to the point of global crisis that requires

the future of humanity.

philosophies,

criticisms,

Whether they Was it written to

contradictions

and

urgent resolution.

According to George Lindbeck, religious understandings That pattern is illustrated in two charts. The first chart,

shape the entirety of life, cause conflict because believers

sets out the sequence of their development. The second,

find it impossible to surrender exclusivist claims,10 and

shows their interaction from the time humanity reached

that “interreligious dialogue and cooperation (are) urgently

the foothills of an unexpected cliff of exponential

needed in a divided yet shrinking world.”11 The inevitable

expansion to the present, and the current critical crisis.

conclusion is that if our descendants are to enjoy a

The context for this paper is that there are three main streams of faith: pre-Abrahamic, Abrahamic and Axial Age. They each have a number of sub-streams and a range of holy books.

In this paper all texts, whether

offered separately or in a cluster, that are regarded as containing truths or guidelines for human conduct and

harmonious and stable human future we, and especially our political and religious leaders, must have a better 10 George A. Lindbeck The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and

Theology in a Postliberal Age, First Ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). P.55.

11 Ibid. p. 23.

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understanding of these issues, how they developed, what

Yes. They must use all of the energy, literature and other

is being taught about them, and what materials are in

resources available to them to begin a universal religious

circulation. Traditionally people have waited to be told by

reformation. That is a tall order, but the situation is now

their religious leaders what to believe and how to behave

so critical that it can no longer be avoided. The process

towards others, but that is no longer good enough.

of universal reform will not undermine their individual

It is clear that this will require a great deal of research and discussion so that we can, together, reassess the fundamental concepts around which our faiths and philosophies divide and then act to offset them. It is also clear that both discussion and action will be necessary at several

levels,

and

because

each

faith’s

self-

understanding is deeply held, this will be difficult.

At community, congregational and early school level, discussion and learning aids must be focussed on practical matters of how we live and work together, and understanding enough about the faiths of those around us so that there is acceptance and cooperation that is not disrupted by niggling press reports about differences. At the regional level, where leaders are concerned with what is taught at senior school levels, and training for educators, police, and those who work with offenders or in chaplaincy services and community administration, the focus needs to be on the provision of background materials that encourage a responsible approach to dialogue and discussion of differences in culture religion and ethnicity.

written out of history. They must maintain those aspects of their culture that are consistent with their covenantal commitments while they discard those that might be distractions from the biblical compilation processes of the past

and

which

might

not

be

consistent

with

reconciliation and cooperation.

That is the critical point and shows another observation

by Lindbeck to be inconsistent with his statement that religious understandings cause conflict because believers find it impossible to surrender exclusivist claims. He noted that a ground for interreligious dialogue should not involve “what for many believers is the impossible condition of surrendering exclusivist claims,”12 that there is no common foundation for religions to come together, that formulation of a single ground for dialogue applicable to any and every religious encounter is not possible13, and that it is a widely held view that because covenant is a divisive and polarizing consideration it must be avoided in interfaith discussion.

That view does not recognize that the three community-

It is at the third level – the peak of institutional faith level – that leaders have the most challenging tasks. They must guide institutional leaders, administrators, heads of universities and clergy training centres, missionaries and evangelists,

existence. Nor will covenantal obligations and heritage be

away

from

attitudes

of

exclusivity

or

superiority in their religious beliefs and practices which lead to irritation, antagonism, disputes and conflict. They must also encourage the study and recognition of faiths other than their own and in doing so they should initiate and engage in the identification and reassessment of fundamental issues around which religious division

specific divine covenants that were imposed on the communities of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths each have different emphases, and that their community leaderships each focus on one particular aspect or component of the applicable covenant. This is discussed in two later sections devoted to covenant, so it is sufficient to note here that the process of reformation through

collaborative

reassessment

of

beliefs

and

attitudes must begin with the Holy Books, not with subsequent literature, and that the concept of covenant is the starting point. There is no other way.

occurs, and engage in the purging of creeds, statements

The knowledge of the circumstances in which each faith

of doctrine, worship materials, teaching materials, hymn

came into existence and how they are now being called

and

together in a time of critical conflict should enable their

prayer

publications

books, that

exclusiveness,

codes,

newspapers

perpetuate

superiority,

or

and

other

self-understandings intolerance

denigration of other faiths – and conflict.

and

of the

12

Ibid. p. 11.

13 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine. p. 55..

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leaders to respond to the task that is common to each of

Such matters continued to challenge people across Asia

them – either as a condition of their community-specific

and Europe, but in Australia about 4000 BCE its

covenants or the universal covenant – to enable all

indigenous communities became the first to recognize

humanity to understand and to respond to their

and understand the reality of a direct covenantal

relationship with the Divine – with God – and therefore

relationship between themselves and God, the divine

with each other. Unfortunately, world history, both ancient

reality. Their belief was circumstantial and a clear

and immediate, indicates that there is likely to be strong

demonstration of rational deduction. In their harsh

resistance among the institutional leadership of world

environments they became aware that if they damaged

faiths to take up that challenge. It therefore falls to

the land and their environment they suffered as a

scholars of both faith and philosophical disposition to

consequence through floods, erosion, fire and the loss of

work together to initiate that reformation, and when they

food sources. As they saw it, they were being punished

do the outcome will not be the result of a trickle-down

for irresponsible conduct, and rewarded by divine grace

process. It will be an upward capillary movement.

for responsible conduct, flourishing when they cared for

The Holy Books: their origins and authorship

their environment. They developed creation myths and ‘dreaming,’ taught how to maintain proper relations with

Pre-Abrahamic Period and its big question: the reality of existence First phase Humans apparently had no interest in the idea of a power

neighbouring tribes, and recorded their experience in the

greater than themselves until about forty thousand years

or pre-Vedic era, concurrent with the actions noted in

after migration from Africa to Europe began. A search for

Egypt and Mesopotamia.

a meaning for life, and for a greater power than

understanding as Australia’s Aborigines about their direct

themselves to guide their existence then started. People

relationship with the Divine, except that they saw the

began to ponder the reality of existence, how it came

divinity being a composite of Gods: Vishnu, the absolute

about, and whether they had a special role in it. The chart

power; Krishna, the eighth Avatar of Vishnu, and creator;

following indicates when people began to care for their

Brahma, the manager of creation and spiritual mentor;

companions as community, to bury their dead, and to

and Shiva, the judge, punisher and destroyer.

think that there might be a power greater than

scholars place that development between 3500 BCE and

themselves. Probably 35,000 years ago, they turned to

2500 BCE; the earliest Vedic hymns were probably

totems and sharman who exploited claims to have direct

composed in that period, committed to memory, and

access to such a power and to be able to influence the

transmitted from generation to generation orally, but it

welfare of others. In some regions a belief developed that

was not until between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE that they

fertile women enjoyed special powers, and this led to

were recorded in Sanskrit. The RgVeda Samhita was then

female-god worship about 6000 BCE.

codified

Across China primitive village life involved belief in life after death, burial rituals, worship of ancestors, things of nature and cosmic spirits. In Egypt there was also belief in life after death and a mix of myths, magic, medicines

oldest cave rock art yet discovered anywhere.

The next development was in the Indus region in the early

progressively

People came to a similar

from

1200

to

900

Hindu

BCE,14

concurrent with early Hebrew prophecy.

Third phase The reality of the Divine experienced

and multiple gods that led to a pharaoh having a

Compared with today’s population of 7.83 billion, the

classification of gods drawn up. However, people did not

world population was a miniscule one third of one percent

come to an understanding that a supreme being, God, is

of that – about 27 million – 3,800 years ago when the

a reality to whom they are bound in a direct relationship.

Hebrew Patriarch, Abraham, is thought to have been

Second phase 14

Recognition of the reality of a relationship with God.

Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1966) p. 37.

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born. It has grown by almost three hundred times since then, and three quarters of that increase has taken place in only one hundred years, from 1919 when the Great War ended to 2019.15 However, in spite of the miniscule population, governance in the region of Mesopotamia was chaotic and despotic; whole cities were destroyed and their people slaughtered in kingly battles for regional superiority. There are very few records prior to the Abrahamic era, but the situation is illustrated by the 9th century BCE victory of an Eblaite king, Ashurnasirpal II, over a challenger.

“I cut off their heads; I burned them with fire; a pile of living men and of heads over against the city gate I set up; men I impaled on stakes; the city I destroyed … I turned it into mounts and ruin heaps; the young men and maidens … I burned.” 16

own very important God-given circumstances, but when you read this festschrift volume you will realise, for the first time, various contours and dimensions of Philoxenos Thirumeni’s life that most of us never knew. Therefore, this volume presents to the Church and to the World a Philoxenos Thirumeni whom we never knew.

Helen Keller, who gave hope to millions of deaf and blind people, once said: “Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much.” This festschrift volume is an example of this. Forty-eight authors from across the world, the editorial board, the CSS Press, and the Vettathu Digital came together to produce a very beautiful book under the title, ‘An Ecumenical Journey Towards Transformation’. It is adorned with a beautiful foreword from our Metropolitan Thirumeni.

Life was traumatic, intervention was urgently needed to guide humanity towards harmony and stability, and nothing has changed – except the technology and scale of warfare.

Book Review “An Ecumenical Journey Towards Transformation” Philoxenos Thirumeni whom we never knew [A Festschrift Volume in honour of the Episcopal Silver Jubilee of Rt. Revd Dr. Isaac Mar Philoxenos, published by the Diocese of North America and Europe and CSS Tiruvalla, Kerala, India, Oct, 2018. Pp380, Rs300. ISBN 978-81-7821-814-4: Dr. Zac Varghese, London.]

The Silver Jubilee of His Grace, The Rt. Revd Dr. Isaac Mar Philoxenos, was an occasion to thank the Lord for an exceptional blessing to the Church through him, for in him we have an amazing ’silent-servant leader’ with unique gifts of compassion, endearing humanitarian attitudes, intellectual abilities, spirt-led theological insights and ecumenical endowment. Since the reformation in 1836, God has blessed our Church with amazing bishops, clergy and lay leaders; they are all very special in their 15

Historical data, McEvedy, Atlas of World Population History, (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1978); current data, UNDESA ST/ESA/SER.A/417

16 Paolo Matthiae, Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered (New York,

Philoxenos Thirumeni did little things day by day for the glory of God, but when we look back over the last 25 years, we realise that they are indeed very big things; it is like feeding the five thousands with five loaves and two fish. St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”

There are so many resounding gongs and clanging cymbals, noisy persons, around us trumpeting and advertising the work they do. There is a word for this in English, which is ‘virtual signalling’. Jesus said, ‘. . . let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing.’

Thirumeni does so many amazing things with love and compassion without any kind of publicity and that is the quality of his ‘silent-servant ministry’ for God and for God’s glory.

I do not want to pre-empt anything in this amazing book.

The glittering stories in this book will challenge many of the existing models of mission and ministry. Thirumeni is creating fresh challenges to which readers are invited to indulge in as co-travellers in this ‘ecumenical journey towards transformation’.

Doubleday, 1981)

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WHY IS CHRISTIANITY REDUCED TO RITUALS ALONE? Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum Before we examine this crucial question, we must fix the first principle clearly and firmly in our minds. For us, first principles are derived from the teachings of Jesus Christ.

We know nothing except through him.

The first principle is: “I have come that they may have life in all its fullness” (Jn 10:10).

So, ‘fullness’ is the first principle by which we are to judge the spiritual worth and validity of all things Christian.

Now apply this principle to church life.

Religion comprises two aspects: rituals and doctrines. Rituals are observances, repeated and maintained over time.

Doctrines, derived from the teachings of Jesus, are mostly, if not wholly, ethical in character.

The first principle of “fullness” dictates that rituals and doctrines -the two essential arms of religion- exist in mutuality. One is incomplete without the other. Whatever is incomplete is not only worthless but also dangerous, like a moving car without brakes. Rituals derive their relevance and power only from doctrines. Doctrines could fade out if they are not continually renewed through rituals.

The example of the Lord’s Supper - the Eucharist, or the Mass - illustrates this. In its most obvious sense, it is a sacrament of memory. Its essence is that we are to do all that we do – and not merely celebrating or receiving the sacrament – in memory of Jesus. That is to say, if I am sacramental in my spiritual personality, I will do all that I do ‘in remembrance of Jesus’; or, as if Jesus is with me.

That is when the ritual of ‘communion’, or being with (cf.

Jn 15: 4), becomes lived communion. Ritual, when it is divorced from lived realities, becomes empty and lifeless.

This was the point Jesus raised with the woman of Samaria. God must be worshipped, he told her, “in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4: 24). That is to say, worship must

impact how we live. That happens through the sacrament of memory. What the Samaritan religion did – as indeed also the Jewish religion – was to polarize the two. Rituals went on with mechanical solemnity in the temple on Mount Gerizim. But life continued to rot for the devotees.

The plight of the woman is a condemnation of what the temple worship had come to be. Put bluntly, priests flourished, people perished.

Historically, the ascendancy of the priestly class in every religion effected, without exception, the compartmentalization between rituals and doctrines. The priestly class will not renounce doctrines outrightly. They will only build an invisible wall of separation between them. They will be maintained as water-tight compartments, each complete in itself. This means that the meanings of rituals – which are necessarily derived from doctrines – cease to matter and are forgotten.

Why does the priestly class configure church life with an exclusive focus on rituals? And why do they obscure doctrines?

These two all-important questions can be answered only with reference to power. Rituals arm priests with power.

That is the reason priests have, across centuries, claimed total control of rituals. (There is nothing in the teachings of Jesus that justify priestly hegemony.) Through a distorted teaching of the Bible, believers are made to assume that rituals have the power to control and manipulate God. By implication, those who have exclusive power and authority to do this are at least as powerful as God. At any rate, they are incomparably more ‘spiritually’ powerful than the laity. This entitles priests and bishops to have unquestioned and unquestionable power over believers.

Doctrines, on the other hand, have exactly the opposite effect. If the people understand doctrines – or the teachings of Jesus – aright, they will be ‘liberated’. To be liberated is to be empowered. If empowered, they become, as Peter puts it, ‘a royal priesthood and a holy nation’. This is an unthinkable calamity for professional and parasitical priests. They are at peril of becoming redundant. At any rate, the irrational supremacy they enjoy will be shattered.

This explains why the priestly class was, especially since the 5th century AD, over-eager to prevent the laity from reading and understanding the Bible. The history of Christianity is darkened by the persecution of those who tried to translate the Bible and bring it within reach of the common man. From that alone, it is plain how brutally monopolistic the priestly class in Christendom has been.

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This continues to our times, though it has changed its mode of operation somewhat. Now, nobody is burned at stake. But anyone who refuses to slavishly endorse irrational priestly and episcopal authority is stigmatized and excluded from the fold.

It is high time believers realized that the shocking scandals of priestly and episcopal crimes are a natural and inevitable outcome of the polarization between rituals and doctrines. This polarization is meant to keep Jesus out of the church, for which the church in Laodicea is the biblical fore-warning (Rev 3: 20).

The exclusive focus on rituals is a deliberate strategy to keep Jesus excluded from the life of the church. The tyrannical authority of priests is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus who said that he who wishes to be the leader must be the ‘servant of all’. Jesus came to serve and not to be served (Mk 10: 45). All Christians - priests and bishops - are to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness’ (Mt 6: 33) To get a clear idea of whither have been hijacked by the priestly oligarchs of our times, consider the Franco Mulakkal case. The victim, in this case, sought justice, first, within the church. Every conceivable door was knocked at. No door opened! The victim was forced, hence, to seek help from the law enforcing agencies of the state.

This most regrettable state of affairs needs to be seen for what it is. If we think that Pope Francis can, using his papal authority, wield a magic wand over the Catholic Church, and other churches, and rid Christendom of this moral darkness, we are laughably naïve. Nothing less than a total regeneration of the spiritual roots of the church -involving the restoration of the synergy between rituals and doctrines - can redeem the situation.

This is something that cannot be imported from a distance; though a forthright papal stand in this regard could help. The spiritual regeneration of the church has to happen locally. The role of the laity is the most crucial factor in this. The priestly class is sure not only to neglect this but also to resist this. The spiritual regeneration of the laity, their godly empowerment, is bad news for priests and bishops as they have come to be. The reason for it is clear and it must be faced.

Priests and bishops have nothing to recommend themselves in terms of their spiritual and moral superiority to the laity. If anything, they are, on the average, spiritually and intellectually inferior to believers. Yet, they thrive on absolute and unquestioned control over them.

But the spiritual superiority they ought to maintain – which alone can justify their supremacy – is an impossible ideal for them. Currently they enjoy the best of both worlds. And that is ensured for them by the present state of affairs, in which Jesus is continually crucified and pieces of silver accumulate in the hands of the Judases of our times.

This is horrendously bad for believers. The good news is that Jesus came to set the ‘captives’ free. Today the laity is captives. They are captives of priestly pretensions, aberrations and conspiracies. The Franco Mulakkal case has come to us as an eye-opener. If this cannot open our eyes, nothing else ever will.

But the signs are encouraging. Indignation is mounting right across Kerala. People are beginning to think for themselves. They are able now to recognize the wolf from the sheep. It is only a matter of days before they begin to call a wolf a wolf, and cause masks of hypocrisy to crumble like cookies.

The priests and bishops of the church should have ‘sought the Kingdom God and his righteousness’ in this case. Did they? No! They did all they could to suppress the cry for justice. They stand in palpable solidarity with the alleged aggressor. The nuns in solidarity with the victim are targeted. All the while rites and rituals go on, practised with solemn earnestness. But they have no connection to lived realities.

This works flatteringly to the advantage of priests and bishops. Rituals and rites enable them to keep the laity subdued and morally anaesthetized. In effect, they help to disable them from seeking the righteousness of God.

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