September 03, 2024
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
September 1, 2024
Labor Day Weekend
Finding Your Mountain
“Karma, Prayer and Rituals”
Colossians 1:15-20
Communion Sunday
We complete today a series called Finding Your Mountain based on a trek to Everest Base Camp my wife, Susan, and I did to start a sabbatical back in May. I conclude today thinking about the role of karma, prayer and rituals in the spiritual life. It doesn’t take long in the Himalayas to realize the belief in karma is important. The first morning on our trek I awoke early and went to the dining room to get a cup of tea and journal. I was the first to arrive. I sat at a table hoping someone would come to the kitchen soon to heat water. Instead, the first person to arrive was an elderly man who walked through the dining room waving a pot held by a chain. It had something burning in it, so it produced a smoke. He looked just like a Catholic priest waving a censer. Later I asked my guide about this. He said, “He was bringing good karma to the dining room for that day.”
Then I noticed on the trail how we passed many stupas, or Buddhist memorials, as well as stations that had many tablets, stones that had prayers or mantras inscribed on them. The word mani means “jewel.” The trail went both ways around these objects, but our guides always walked on the left side, keeping the religious object on their right.
This was the same practice when it came to Prayer Wheels. Whenever we passed them, our guides would spin the wheels in a clockwise direction, which goes to the right
(we have a clip) because there’s an association with rightness and right-side. The right place is on the right side. This shows up in Christian language. The oldest creed in the church says, “(Jesus) ascended into heaven and sits at the RIGHT hand of God the Father Almighty.”
Now the belief in Buddhism is that keeping religious objects on your right, spinning prayer wheels to your right, produce good karma. But what exactly is karma? Karma is the energy or life force we produce by our behaviors and actions that determines what happens to us later on. And Karma is not reduced to just religious observances. Even more importantly karma is generated by the way we treat people. So, by our respect and compassion we generate good karma that will reward us later in life or the next life. Conversely, when we are disrespectful or treat people poorly, we create bad karma which shapes what will happen to us.
Some Christians are very critical of Buddhism and eastern religions. They say this all sounds superstitious, and we don’t believe in things like karma. But there are actually some strong similarities between karma and Christianity, so I want to do three things in the remainder of this message. I want to explore what karma has in common with Christianity; then consider what is an important distinction of Christian faith; and close by looking things we can learn from Buddhism that can make our Christian faith stronger.
So let’s start with What Karma Has in Common with Christianity.
1. For one, karma teaches Personal Empowerment. Or to use a more modern term,
karma emphasizes personal agency. Karma teaches that our personal actions and choices matter, and we have control over our destinies. Tina Turner found the courage in her Buddhist faith to take charge of her life and leave an abusive marriage.
As Christians, particularly United Methodist Christians, we believe this. We believe God gives us free will to make decisions for ourselves and take responsibility for our lives. We share this belief. Of course, this isn’t all we believe our two faiths do share in this idea of personal empowerment.
2. Karma also teaches that you reap what you sow. What you do in life has
Consequences. The good karma you create will reward you. The bad karma will be a punishment. We see this clearly in scripture. Ecclesiastes says, “The good you do will come back to you.” (11:1) In the New Testament Paul says, “You reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” (Gal. 6:7-8) Paul doesn’t use the word karma, but can you see the similarity in what he describes?
3. And then third, Karma teaches that the goal of life is no more suffering. In
Buddhism, the goal is nirvana or complete enlightenment. This is where we are released from the cycle of karma in which we seek to go to newer and better lives by the power of karma, but eventually the aim is to reach that place of perfection where we are free of suffering.
Now, Christians don’t believe all the same things about suffering that Buddhists do, we do believe that we are headed toward a re-creation of heaven and earth by God who will wipe away every tear from our eyes, where there will be no more suffering. We believe that heaven is a place where the wrongs of the world will be made right and there will be no more pain. We have this in common.
But this now gets to a very important distinction between our faiths, and that is what we believe about God. As Christians we do not believe we bring this about by our willpower or good choices alone. It is God who does this, and it is God who is active in the world, helping us to make our world better. It is God who redeems suffering by suffering Himself, because this God cares about us personally, and cares about what happens to us. And we can know this because of God’s Son, Jesus.
This is why Paul wrote to the Colossians and said, “(Jesus) is the image of the invisible God.” If we want to know what God is like, just look to Jesus. It’s like the little girl who started drawing in art class at school. The teacher stopped at her desk and asked what picture she was working on. The girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” The girl said, “They will in five minutes.”
Well, we do know what God looks like. God looks like Jesus who loved people and healed them; who let all people know they matter to a God who made them; All people; who gave his life for all people; and who was raised from death to let us know that life is bigger than just what happens right now. So Paul went on to say, “He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (v. 17) Paul understood that what holds life together is not just our ability to hold things together, it is a God who holds us together.
In William Butler Yeats’ poem The Second Coming he writes this line, “Widening, widening in the circling gyre, things fall apart the center cannot hold.” My friend Jim Harnish reflected on this thought in a sermon one time. He remembered as a kid the difference between 33 and 45 RPM records. Any of you remember those? He said what he never understood was why the big records had little holes and the little records had big holes.
Anyway, one day he was trying to play a little record on a player that just had a little holder. He tried to get his Ricky Nelson record as centered on the player as he could. He said, “Ricky sounded fine for the first few bars. Then the record started to slide, the needle began to wobble, and the whole thing slide all over the place. I had never heard of William Butler Yeats, but I quickly discovered what it means to say, “Things fall apart the center cannot hold.”
We all need a center that holds us in life; something that keeps us steady. Maybe we’re pretty good at doing that ourselves, but eventually our best efforts run short. We need help, and that is what God provides. “In Him,” says Paul, “all things hold together.” The key distinction in Christianity is that in keeping Christ at the center of our lives, we have help to hold things together.
How do we do this? This is where Buddhism can help us. Tibetan Buddhism is steeped in prayers and rituals that help the believer focus on the kind of people they are becoming. One example is the “Eyes of Buddha” you see on many stupas hiking in Nepal. This isn’t a symbol of judgment though. As my sherpa guide explained one day, the eyes of Buddha represent the truth we know about ourselves. If we lie, we know we are lying. We have to live with that. The Eyes are meant to help us think about who we are and what we are becoming.
In other words, these traditions help me consider their behavior. Many people who go to Nepal make notice of an odd contradiction. They realize that people aren’t Christian, but they behave in a more Christianly manner than many Christians do. When you are greeted, it is with the traditional “Namaste.” One meaning of that word is, “I honor the god in you.” Many Nepalese Buddhists have a very servant nature and are so kind and humble.
The point is their rituals impact their character. So, if we believe that Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, what traditions and rituals might we use? How, for instance, might create our own tradition like Prayer Flags. In Nepal these symbolize many things. There are five colors used that represent 5 elements:
Yellow: earth
Blue: sky and space
White: wind and air
Red: fire
Green: water
Written on them are “prayers” or blessings based on five themes: peace, compassion, strength and wisdom. These prayers aren’t lifted up to a god, but rather the belief is that when the win blows these blessings are being carried to others.
What if adopted a practice like this. Took material and wrote on them prayers that fit the character of Jesus? Maybe words like unconditional love, grace, forgiveness, compassion, service. What if we prayed regularly for these traits to become real in us. You might add other words, or scripture verses that would center your mind as you pray.
When you pass some Nepali homes, you see incense burning in front of them. What practices might we adopt, like having a candle we burn during devotions, to remind us that God’s Spirit is present and with us. We can trust that God is at work. We can take confidence during a crisis or a situation where we just want to take control, and first focus on what God wants. What honors God? Before we make something worse, trust that God can do more than we can.
Our prayers and rituals are what allow our faith to shape our living. If our faith doesn’t change the way we live, what good is it? Really, what does it matter what we believe, if it doesn’t change the way we live?
Who we become is the mountain. That’s the goal. When it comes to finding your mountain that’s not really about getting to a place that gives you joy, it’s about becoming a person of joy. It’s about the journey itself.
I mentioned in the first week of this series about a book I read over sabbatical called The Zen of Climbing. It’s by Francis Sanzaro who has a PhD in the Philosophy of Religion from Syracuse University. He’s also an experienced rock climber. In this book he applies ideas behind Zen Buddhism to rock climbing. There’s a basic theme that runs throughout the book. The biggest hurdle for rock climbers is they focus too much on the finish, the summit, how well they perform, instead of the art of climbing itself. The Zen, if you will, is about being fully in the moment, loving where you are on the mountain, taking delight in that. That is the reward. That is the achievement, letting go of things you believe will give you a reward when you get there, and finding reward in the journey itself.
A few years ago, I saw a commercial that brought this idea home. Take a look…(video)
I love that. “This is my dream now.” That’s really what finding our mountain is all about, not what you get or achieve, but what we give and do; what we leave behind that will be a source of glory for others long after we’re gone.
The center of our faith is one who gave his life away for others. As we keep Him at the center things hold together and we find that every day we can live the dream.
Now that’s good karma.