Why would the bishop be wearing all this jewelry on his person while delivering his sermon?
SOthe good Brooklyn bishop is in the midst of his sermon when three masked men burst into the church. (See New York media, week of July 25, 2022.) Are they wearing corona masks? Not quite. They are wearing masks for the traditional age-old reason: to hide their faces. Why do they want to hide their faces? Because they are about to commit a traditional age-old robbery, which can be deduced from the fact that they are brandishing pistols.
And whom are they going to rob? The churchgoers? No. The church treasury? No. They have planned this carefully and they know exactly whom they are going to rob. They are going to rob Bishop Lamor Whitehead himself. The bishop? Why would they want to rob the bishop? Because, as Willie Sutton once famously observed, that’s where the money is. The bishop has money on him in the midst of a church service? Not precisely money, but very expensive jewelry, worth about one million dollars, and he is wearing all of it while delivering his sermon.
What was the subject of his interrupted sermon? Was it on the evils of the flesh and the dangers of neglecting the spiritual? Was this Christian bishop discoursing on the apostles’ comment about the impossibility of serving both G-d and money? Or was he simply illustrating Mishlei 8:20 that “those who love G-d, He will fill with treasures.” Or perhaps the bishop, in a heroic act of self-immolation, wanted to serve as a living visual aid to demonstrate with his own body the truth of Mishlei 11:4 that “wealth hath no value on the day of wrath.”
Why would he be wearing all this jewelry on his person while delivering his sermon? Why millions in jewelry? Why not millions invested in bonds or stocks or real estate? Perhaps he was fearful of leaving it at home, or did not trust a safety deposit box, or perhaps it gave him a sense of self-esteem and self-worth.
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