Amos 8.4-7;1 Timothy 2.1-7; Luke
16.1-13
+ As I’ve shared with some of you, I have been
studying Zen Buddhism intensely this summer. he writer I’ve been reading and
re-reading intensely is the Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. If you do
not know Thich Nhat Hanh (and I will quiz you after Mass on how to spell his
name), I would highly recommend him, especially a book he wrote on the
comparison between Christianity and Buddhism, Living Buddha, Living Christ. Thay is currently on tour of the United
States and I’ve heard it’s quite the impressive.
As I’ve shared many times here over the years, back,
many years ago, when I was doing a lot of spiritual searching after leaving the
Roman Catholic Church, I found Zen Buddhism. Now before you bristle at the
thought of your priest exploring strange Eastern religions my experience with
Zen was a very good one. Zen—like all Buddhism—is not so much a religion, as it
is a philosophy—it is a way of seeing things. And back in those days following
my leaving the Roman Catholic Church, Zen filled a huge void.
Certainly much of what I learned during that time
has stayed with me through the years, and through my faith life as a Christian.
Yes, I am very solid Christian. But I
have a kernel of Zen deep inside me. And
I am very thankful for that Zen kernel.
One of the things I have always enjoyed exploring is
what in Zen—and all Buddhism—is called karma. Karma is one of those Buddhist words
that is thrown around quite a bit. But Karma is more than just some strange
esoteric concept.
Karma is fascinating. Essentially the thinking behind
Karma is this: that when you do something, there will be a reaction. If you are
cruel to someone, someone else will be cruel to you. If you are kind to
someone, someone will be kind to you. It’s
all about balance. A cosmic balance. Anything we do results in a reaction.
Now, for those of you who have known me for any
period time, you have heard me use a phrase that captures karma to some extent.
I often use the term, “The chickens have come home to roost.” Essentially it means that what goes around, comes
around. We reap what we sow. There are consequences to our actions.
For us followers of Jesus, such concepts of karma
might not make as much sense. But today, we get a sense, in our scriptures
readings, of a kind of, dare I say, Christian karma. Jesus’ comments in today’s
Gospel are very difficult for us to wrap our minds around. But probably the
words that speak most clearly o us are those words, “Whoever is faithful in a
very little is faithful in much.”
Essentially, Jesus is telling us this simple fact:
what you do matters. There are consequences to our actions. There are consequences
in this world. And there are consequences in our relation to God.
It often surprises me that Christians think they can
“get by” with dishonest things. We read in the news about clergy doing bad
things. But not just clergy. We hear about
church treasurers doing bad things. We hear about people who claim to be good
Christians doing very unchristian-like things. But Jesus message to us is very clear.
For us, our faithfulness involves how we deal with others. It’s not just the big
stuff, like sexual impropriety and financial misdealing’s. It is also about how
we treat each other. How we treat each other as followers of Jesus and how we
treat others who might not be followers of Jesus.
We have few options, as followers of Jesus, when it
comes to being faithful. We must be faithful. Faithful yes in a little way
brings about great faithfulness. So, logic would tell us, any increase of
faithfulness will bring about even greater faithfulness.
Now, faithfulness in this sense means being righteous.
Or to use a Zen word, Right-minded. Or even another word used in Zen, mindful.
Thich Nhat Hanh, that Vietnamese Zen master, often writes
about mindfulness and, in speaking to Christians, says that mindfulness is the
equivalent for us of the Holy Spirit in us. This Zen writer, I have to admit, is one of the best
writers I know on the Holy Spirit. And when I read about his belief that the
Zen concept of mindfulness is equivalent to the Holy Spirit’s working in our
lives, it made great sense to me. So, if we are faithful—if we are right-minded,
if we are mindful in a few things, we are faithful in much.
Jesus is saying to us that the consequences are the
same if we choose the right path or the wrong path. A little bit of right, will
reap much right. But a little bit of
wrong, reaps much wrong.
I think most of us have found these to be true in
our own lives. Doing wrong is a slippery slope. One we step foot on it, we find
ourselves sliding farther and farther into more wrongness. And it’s hard to stop.
That wrong path is not the path intended for us as
followers of Jesus. Jesus is not walking that path, and if we are his followers,
hen we are not following when we step onto that path. Wrongfulness is not our purpose as followers
of Jesus. We cannot follow Jesus and willfully—mindfully—practice
wrongness. We must strive—again and again—in being faithful. Faithful to God. Faithful
to one another. Faithful to those who need us. Faithful to those who need
someone.
Being faithful, being mindful, being right-minded,
takes work. When we see wrong—and we all do see wrong—we see around us all the
time—our job in cultivating faithfulness means counteracting wrongfulness. If
there are actions and reactions to things, our reaction to wrongfulness should
faithfulness.
Now that seems hard. And it is. But it is not
impossible. We can do something in the
face of wrongfulness. We can, when we step foot on that slippery slope of
wrongfulness, make a concentrated effort to not slip, to turn around and do the
faithful action. We can cultivate
faithfulness in the face of wrongfulness.
One of Thich Nhat Hanh’s students wrote a fun book that I read this
summer and really enjoyed. The book is called The Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin. Bortolin likes to make the comparison between
Jedi master and students of Zen Buddhism. And he does it pretty well. In the
appendix of the book, he includes, in a section called “Zen Contemplations for
the Would-Be Jedi,” a series of thoughts that sound very much like Jesus own
beatitudes. Bartholin writes that the “Young
Pupil” must always remember this:
Where there is anger, offer kindness.
Where there is selfishness, offer generosity
Where there is despair, offer hope.
Where there are lies, offer truth.
Where there is injury, offer
forgiveness.
Where there is sorrow, offer joy.
Where there is hatred, offer love.
Where there is evil, offer goodness.
Those actions are actions each of us as followers of Jesus are also
called to cultivate and live into. As Christians, we are called to not only to ignore
or avoid wrongfulness. We are called to confront it and to counter it. We are
called to offering faithfulness in the face of wrongness.
So, let us do just that in all aspects of our lives. Let us offer kindness and generosity and hope
and truth and forgiveness and joy and
love and goodness, again and again and again whenever we are confronted with
all those forces of wrongfulness. Let us offer light in the face of darkness. Let us strive, again and again, to do good,
even in small ways. For in doing so, we will be faithful in much.
“For surely I will not forget any of their deeds,” God says in our
reading from Amos today.
What we do matters. It makes a difference in our lives and in the lives
of those around us. So let us, as faithful followers of Jesus, strive, always
to truly “lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”
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