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10/4/26 The Gospel According to Nietzsche · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Reflecting on this gospel that we have today,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think the question that occurs to me is, can we kill God?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can we kill God?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was certainly Friedrich Nietzsche's contention that we can kill.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's one of the more honest philosophers of the last century or so.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he thought that we could fill God.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he thought that we had filled God.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: He said, God is dead.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have killed him.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nietzsche's famous phrase, which there's more there than I think that we think that there is.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it's related to this gospel that we have today because what happens?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have this gospel,
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  SPEAKER_00: this parable of these wicked tenants who kill the son of the owner who's coming
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: to them.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's a very poignant parable spoken to the Jewish people by Christ in their own time
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: because that is what they did.
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  SPEAKER_00: They did kill Jesus Christ, the son of the master of the vineyard who was sent to them.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't have these readings in our scriptures,
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  SPEAKER_00: so we might look back and wag our fingers at the Jewish people 2,000 years ago
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  SPEAKER_00: and say, you know, tut, tut, tut, not good, you shouldn't have done that, you know.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's not why we read these scriptures in the liturgy.
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  SPEAKER_00: We read these scriptures in the liturgy so that they might touch our hearts and so
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: that they might speak to us.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where Nietzsche's contention comes in.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because Nietzsche doesn't say that we have physically He killed God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that cannot be done.
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  SPEAKER_00: But his point is that effectively in our society, that's what we have done.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Our society has removed God from the center of our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he wants to keep everything else running.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it says that everything else can just be running.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, Nietzsche's parable, this madman who comes down from the mountain.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says, God is dead.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: God is dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
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  SPEAKER_00: You're crazy.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's saying that society thinks that everything can be okay,
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  SPEAKER_00: thinks that we can just keep doing everything that we've been doing without God.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can get rid of God and we can have everything else.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can eat our cake and have it too, if you will.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And Nietzsche's point is that we can't do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says if we kill God,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we lose that heart and center of our society,
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  SPEAKER_00: then nihilism is the inevitable result.
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  SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is what must inevitably result from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what do we do in the face of that nothing?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do we feel in the face of that nothing perhaps is a better way of saying it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us to these tenants yet again and how these tenants must have felt
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  SPEAKER_00: when they had so intelligently and with such foresight killed the son of the master
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: of the vineyard where they're working,
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: knowing that the master is still out there and is coming for them.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine that they felt a lot of anxiety and fear after that.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a culture that's consumed by anxiety and fear.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the hallmark of our times
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  SPEAKER_00: that we are constantly laboring underneath this incredible weight.
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  SPEAKER_00: Where does this come from?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, perhaps it comes from the fact that we have, like those tenants, killed God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it comes from the fact that we have allowed something important
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: to be missing in the center of our lives.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we're programmed with anxiety for a very good reason.
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  SPEAKER_00: The anxiety that we feel is meant to tell us that something is wrong.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say something is deeply wrong with our society
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  SPEAKER_00: and our anxiety is not misplaced in that sense.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not an easy fix, of course.
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  SPEAKER_00: And those who struggle with that or suffer with that,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's not easy saying, oh, you can just make that magic if you go away.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, of course not.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that people who live in integrated tribal societies
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  SPEAKER_00: in their cultural context that they've always had do not struggle with depression
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  SPEAKER_00: or anxiety is a good sign That it has something to do with our society and with
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: the way that we're living.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: In that context, I think it's beautiful to read again the second reading that we just had.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Philippians.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: What does St. Paul say?
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these readings, they just pass us by.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as we're here trying to survive the heat.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because guess what?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: It got hot again all of a sudden.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how that happened.
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  SPEAKER_00: But just let me turn the air conditioning off.
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  SPEAKER_00: So here we are, you know, just trying to get through.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the second reading says, brothers and sisters.
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  SPEAKER_00: Have no anxiety at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: But in everything, by prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, make a request known to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts
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  SPEAKER_00: and minds in Christ Jesus.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is an incredibly beautiful passage, an incredibly hopeful passage for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as we're living in the societies,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're laboring underneath the weight of disillusionment and disconnection
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  SPEAKER_00: that we experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's because we have gotten rid of,
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  SPEAKER_00: killed that center of our society, that center of our lives, God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because God's not some old guy up in the sky.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's sometimes what we think,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, sometimes vast people and that's basically what they tell me.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not true.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is not what God is.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is this relational core,
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  SPEAKER_00: this relational powerhouse,
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  SPEAKER_00: this nuclear furnace of relationship with the center of everything,
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  SPEAKER_00: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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  SPEAKER_00: Family, Trinity, love pouring out, pouring forth into all of us.
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  SPEAKER_00: To be connected to that is the meaning of everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what gives meaning to everything in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: And to be connected to other people, we're touching that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So when I tell someone, like,
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  SPEAKER_00: you need God in your life,
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  SPEAKER_00: like, well, I don't need some old guy in the sky in my life.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, of course you don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: But you need relationship in your life.
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  SPEAKER_00: You need that core to be in place.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if that core is in place,
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  SPEAKER_00: and if you can trust in that,
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  SPEAKER_00: then you don't have to live a miserable, anxious, depressed life.
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  SPEAKER_00: You really don't.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you can let everything go into the hands of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: if you can pull away from those addictions,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: because addictions are another thing that fills our lives with anxiety and despair
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: and all those other things because the dopamine circle that we've talked about.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: If we can do that,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we can on the one hand be freed from the obstacles and on
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  SPEAKER_00: the other hand be connected,
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  SPEAKER_00: To the source and center of everything
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  SPEAKER_00: that we will not labor underneath debilitating anxiety and fear.
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  SPEAKER_00: We will experience connection and in connection we will experience peace
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  SPEAKER_00: and we will experience life the way that God wants it to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because the Father
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not coming to avenge us.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we've all killed God.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've all participated in Christ's own suffering because he died for our sins
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  SPEAKER_00: and we have done our best to eject him from our lives through our own personal sins.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not coming to punish us.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not coming to beat us up for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not this vengeful master of the vineyard, even though that's what we've done.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's coming to help us and to save us and to raise us up and to tell us that it's
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  SPEAKER_00: through the death of his son we have been redeemed.
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  SPEAKER_00: He took that on himself so that we might own the vineyard
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  SPEAKER_00: and no longer just be tenants who are working there.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what is on offer.
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  SPEAKER_00: And all we have to do is let go and let ourselves go into the hands of God and stop clinging on.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what love is based on.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's based on abandonment, trust.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can only do that in the context of relationship, and that's what we're being invited into.
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  SPEAKER_00: So with that in mind,
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  SPEAKER_00: let us once again reflect on these beautiful words out of St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul, who sum up everything that we're saying so much better than I ever could.
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  SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have no anxiety at all,
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  SPEAKER_00: but in everything,
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  SPEAKER_00: by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Then the peace of God Surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Christ Jesus.