The Christ, the Buddha, and .38 Special

19^th Sunday after Pentecost – 29 September 2013

Christian Hawley

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Luke 16:19-31

*Below you will find my sermon script, however the Spirit blows me off script from time to time. I think that wonderful third member of the Trinity blew me a little farther than usual this week, so I would encourage you to listen to the homily on the Ascension website.

In my very first semester of my very year of divinity school, I got booted from a class in the philosophy of religion. Apparently, they were looking for PhD students or at least people with undergraduate concentrations in philosophy or theology. My sorry engineering background didn't fit either criteria. As a result, I had to scramble at the last minute to find another class in order to carry a full time load. Anything that was even the least bit appealing to me was already full, and so in an act of desperation the registrar just put me in this class called Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Looking back, I can see the Holy Spirit moving in that moment, because engagement with the Buddhist tradition has done wonders for my Christian faith. Looking through the eyes of the Buddha has revealed some wonderful treasures in the Christian scriptures.

Take today's readings for instance. For a long time I read the story of the rich man and Lazarus as a cautionary tale to the rich. I thought the rich man was the villain in this story and poor lazarus was the victim. I thought Jesus was warning the rich to give to the poor or else burn in hell. I have always framed this text as one about divine preference for the materially poor and divine wrath for the materially wealthy. I thought this was a story about suffering and justice.

But that's not how a Buddhist would see this text. I've spent a fair bit of time with Buddhists both here in the US and over in Nepal, and I think I'm on solid ground in saying that a Buddhist would read this text as one about suffering and compassion. Most recently I finished Thich Nhat Hanh's book Living Buddha, Living Christ. In this book, the Vietnamese Buddhist author highlights the radical practice of compassion as a defining characteristic in the ministries of both the Buddha and the Christ.

Through this compassionate lens the story of the Rich man and Lazarus takes on a completely different tone. From a Buddhist perspective both men in the parable are suffering and both are in need of compassion and aid. I think we can all get on board with compassion for Lazarus, but I wanted to spend a few moments and walk through the rich man's suffering.

• I want to start by highlighting the rich man's isolation. Just as much as the gate keeps Lazarus out, it keeps the rich man in. I picture the rich man in luxurious purple robes dining alone. And although he has a whole lamb in front of him on a giant marble table, he is miserable in his isolation. The torment the rich man faces in Hades is the same one he face inside his gated home – it is the torment of being separated from his fellow humans and God.
• The rich man is also without relief. The hades imagery shows unrelief as flames that are literally unquenchable, but I imagine the rich man knew these flames in his earthly life as his unquenchable need for more material goods. No matter how nice his robes were, or how big his house was, or how many horsepower his chariot had, he could never feel satisfied. He could never have enough. He could find no fulfillment in all his stuff.
• The rich man is also heap of broken relationships. It is admirable that he wants Abraham to send Lazarus to his dad's house, but it is also evident that the rich man contributed to his family's unhealthy, and quite literally, damnable lifestyle. Here I picture the six brothers in constant competition with one another, each one trying to out do the other in wealth and worldly prestige. I picture them all gathering for Passover at their parents house and gossiping over too many cups of Manishewitz about one another's unvirtuous successes or silently rejoicing in the others' failures. Even if some of the brothers were not as materialistic as their brother in Hades, they are still caught up in a system that values all the wrong things.

I don't think its that much of a leap to say we Americans are caught up in a similar system.

• I see our isolation as we spend more time looking at our phone than at our neighbors.
• I see our emptiness and un-fulfillment in every story of mid-life crisis. I think back to a time when I thought getting on a motorcycle and riding the open road would provide the meaning I could not find in my life as corporate professional.
• I see our broken relationships in my cat's face when I come home late from the office for the third night in a row, or I skip prayer time to answer emails.
• I see our paranoia as we lock everything from our cars to our homes to our wireless accounts because we're afraid someone is going to take what we have accumulated.

I see all of these symptoms; isolation, empty gratification, broken relationships, and paranoia and it dawns on me that the pursuit of wealth is an addiction. I smoked for ten years and I remember saying things like, “I can quit anytime I want.” And now I listen to my self saying things like, “I can own nice things just as long as they don't own me,” and I realize I might have a different kind of addiction. I tell myself I could give up my iphone anytime, and then I freak out about ios7.

I hope the Buddhists are right when they say the rich man does not deserve condemnation, but instead he needs compassion and aid. I hope this because I think a lot of us could use that same kind of compassion and aid in our own struggles with material abundance.

Listening to this parable now, I don't hear Jesus carrying out a stewardship campaign or passing judgment; I hear him performing an intervention.

Jesus is trying to tell us that material wealth clogs up the flow of the Holy Spirit through our lives, like tar clogs up lungs or cholesterol clogs up arteries. Therefore, giving up the pursuit of wealth is like quitting smoking or giving up fast food. Letting go of our material wealth is not a sacrifice or a duty; it is an exercise in healthy Christian discipleship.

The Buddhists are big on this concept of letting go, but I don't think it is absent from our tradition either. Thich Nhat Hanh points out that in both the Buddha and the Christ, their lives were their teachings. Along with radical compassion we see a radical simplicity in the life of Christ and his followers. Certain parts of the Christian tradition, especially in the monastic strains, interpret letting go as a call to poverty, and while I think that is a noble interpretation, I also think there is room for discipleship as a call to simplicity.

Take our Timothy reading today.

Read 1 Tim 6:6-8.

Upon consulting the lectionary ladies, I am pretty sure Paul is not using contentment here to refer to a lack of drive to create, work, or do good for the kingdom of God. I think he is using the word contentment in the sense of being satisfied, and even happy, about having our basic needs met, and in that sense, I think many of us have lost the ability to be content.

There are always faster cars, bigger houses, flatter TVs, more beautiful shoes, and the one that gets, me more intriguing books. I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to be content with my book collection. I have footlockers of books hidden throughout the country from my sister's basement to my mother's barn. This summer, when I moved yet again, I noticed I had more books than clothes and housewares combined, and I realized I had a problem.

I went to my spiritual advisor about this addiction. Luckily, he happens to be a third order Franciscan, a group highly skilled in simplifying a life for the love of Christ, and he has helped me work on my material contentment issues. No surprise, one of recommendations was to practice letting go. So for the last two months, I've been practicing something called zero-sum living, where for every nonperishable item I buy I must give one away. If I buy a new pair of running shoes I have to give an old pair away (not so bad). If I get a new pint glass from Aubrey's, I have to give a BBM one away (a little tougher). If I download a new movie, I have to give a DVD away. And most challenging of all, if I buy a new book, I have to give one away. It has been kind of a miserable two months. Detox is never easy, but I'm starting to see dividends. My life is becoming less cluttered, I impulse buy a lot less, I read the Bibles I have a lot more, and I'm starting to really appreciate the things I already have. I still have way more than I need, but at least I'm no longer accumulating out of control. Through this practice, Paul's idea of contentment is growing on me.

We all have our book addictions. For some of us its shoes, for others its technological gadgets, for still others of us it is jewelry, which makes our most recent Tennessee to Toliara event such a powerful exercise in discipleship.

By letting go of some precious stones or metals we were able to nourish the Kingdom of God. And while I know a number of us walked away with some great gifts, I suspect those of you who donated felt like you received an even greater gift. We know our possessions don't own us when we offer them freely to the service of God. Letting go is good for the soul. We don't have to wait for fundraisers or Lent to practice this kind of discipleship.

[Insert a big movement of the Holy Spirit here. I'm pretty sure I said something about Ann and John Nelson giving me a Greek New Testament, but I have no idea how that oration went.]

Finally, I'll leave you with a famous Buddhist saying, "the number one spiritual injury in the world is rope burn, and all we need to do to ease the suffering is let go of things that are pulling us away from our true life."¹ As Christians, our true life resides in Christ, and being his disciples includes following his example in radical compassion and intentional letting go.

Namaste my friends and may the peace of the Lord be always with us.

1I really wanted to make a reference to .38 Special here...“Hold on loosely, and don't let go. If you cling to tightly, you're going to lose control.” Alas, though, I don't think my 80's hair metal voice would have been appropria­te.