Why Karma Is Anti-Gospel

If I eat too much, I get fat. If I drink too much, I wake up with a hangover. If I abuse narcotics, I pretty much throw my life away. Life is full of cause and effect relationships. But the relationship between sin and punishment isn’t one of them.

I think the single biggest threat to Christianity is karma. It’s not the rise of the “nones.” It’s not the creep of secularism. It’s not the spread of atheism. It’s karma. Why? Because karma has the ability to suck the gospel right out of our church.

Pick your favorite movement from recent popular culture. They are all based on cause-and-effect mentalities. The Green movement. The Occupy Wall St. movement. The Organic Food Craze. Crazy people who run half-marathons and put 13.1 stickers on the backs of their cars. They are all about reaping what you sow. Accepting responsibility. Promoting accountability. But Christianity says the opposite. 

Sunday’s gospel starts with some weird language about blood mingling and a historical reference to a construction tragedy of which I am unfamiliar. But the point becomes clear in Jesus’ question of the crowd: “Do you think that they were worse sinners than everyone else?” The repeated answer, of course, is “No!” Sin is equally distributed. All of us—every last person on earth who isn’t the incarnate Son of God—is as sinful as everyone else. When it comes to sin, there are no distinctions.

Stop and think about that for a second. You’re no more sinful than Mother Teresa. You’re no less sinful than Adolf Hitler. Although there’s clearly a huge and almost incomprehensible difference between those two figures of history, we’re all in the same boat when it comes to how God sees us.

Karma takes cause and effect from the human sphere and translates it to the spiritual realm, where it doesn’t belong. But that’s sooooo tempting. I want to think that I’ll be rewarded for my good behavior. It’s easier to avoid sin if I think they’ll come back to haunt me. And, in the human sense, both of those things are true. Good things do come to people who do good things. And bad things happen to bad people. But bad things also happen to good people, and plenty of wicked human beings enjoy life more than society thinks they should. But none of that is God’s work.

God takes sin and forgives it. God takes the lost and calls them home. God takes the oppressed and sets them free. As the parable of the fig tree suggests, those of us who sit in judgment of people who seem more sinful than we are risk being cut down. Bearing fruit starts with the recognition that all need repentance. If you can’t see that everyone shares that need equally, how could you understand that God’s love is likewise offered unconditionally?

If the church is to grow, we must distinguish ourselves from every other movement on the planet. What's unique about Christianity? It's grace. It's God loves you whether you're good or bad. (By the way, you're both.) We believe in a God who accepts the totality of our mistakes and saves us from them anyway. Where else can you hear that?

What the Papal Conclave Could Learn from Matthias

In our diocesan cycle of prayer, we remember a few parishes each week—usually the week of their patronal or titular feast day. Yesterday, we prayed for “St. Matthias, Tuscaloosa,” but one of the readers had a hard time saying “Matthias.” And who can blame her? He’s a saint that doesn’t get a lot of air time.

Judas, who was numbered with the twelve, betrayed Jesus, and, as Acts puts it, he fell headfirst and burst in the middle with his bowels gushing out. Nice job, Judas. He’s easy to remember. We all know the story of Judas. But, when the eleven remaining disciples got together and chose a successor, the lot fell to a man whom we never hear from again. Matthias who?

In honor of St. Matthias day, which was transferred from yesterday to today, here are some things to think about:

1. St. Matthias’ name is only mentioned twice in the bible—once when he is named as a candidate for apostleship and once when he is chosen. The end. Never again.
2. The other guy standing with Matthias in the election was “Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus.” It seems like he was better known to the community than the guy who won. (What was his name again?)
3. Matthias and Justus were chosen as candidates because, as Peter puts it, they “have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us.” In other words, even though they were never named until now, they had been there the whole time.
4. Matthias is chosen by lot, which is to say that “chance” or “luck” or “God’s divine providence” is the reason he was made one of the twelve. However you look at it, Matthias himself didn’t have a whole lot to do with it.

 We are called to be disciples. And I think Matthias is our disciple. He’s there the whole time. He’s ready to stand in. He’s chosen by lot. He jumps into the ministry, but still nothing changes. He is the perfect example of what it means to follow Jesus—quiet, steady, faithful, anonymous, and prepared.

I don’t know what God will call me to do today. Matthias reminds me that I don’t need to know. I just need to be available to him. Does it matter whether anyone notices? Not really. All that matters is God’s election—that he chooses me to be his servant. 

Starting Over

For the last few days, the Old Testament lesson in the Daily Office has been in Deuteronomy. We’ve been reading in piecemeal fashion Moses’ speech to the Israelites before the cross over the Jordan River and head into the Promised Land. Like many memorable leaders who have led their people to the edge of success, Moses has a few words he wants to share before the moment has passed.

At first, it was a speech of encouragement: “Know therefore that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God.” Then, it turned to a call for humility: “Do not say…[that] it is because my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.” Today, the speech turns full circle and presents a powerful message of God’s mercy and forgiveness that transcend any specific moment in time.

Ultimately, the law given to God’s people through Moses is a second copy. The law—the single most important disclosure of God to the world in the history of the Jewish people—is a do-over. As Moses puts it, “At that time the LORD said to me, ‘Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.’” What an amazing foundation of our faith!

God’s law—the rules, the structure, the commandments—are etched into the reality of a mistake. We screwed up, but God did not abandon us. He tried again. As a friend of mine from Montgomery wrote earlier this week, this is a story about second chances—and, of all places to find it, at the actual giving of the law.

The cosmic significance of this makes me laugh. How amazing it is that the story behind the giving of the law is based on a need for forgiveness! That is a reflection both of our propensity for sin and God’s nature of mercy. The next time you see a statue or monument or picture of the tablets of stone—remember that they are a second copy. The first one was destroyed so that we wouldn’t have to be.

Visit to the Psychiatrist

My dad recently bought a coat. It’s a big, red, super-duper coat from Land’s End. He’s been eying it for a while, and my mother snatched it up while it was on sale. This past weekend, when they were in town for our son’s first birthday, he took time to show off his jacket. “Only $65.00,” he said, proudly. I was excited, too. I love a good deal. And my dad knows that. Which is probably why he told me (and everyone else in the house) at least four times that the jacket was only $65.

On Saturday morning, my father and I went to the grocery store. On the way back, the conversation turned to the weather and how it gets bone-chillingly cold every time my parents come to visit. (You’d think residents of Baldwin County, Alabama, could manage to bring warm weather with them.) As we pulled up to a red light, I chuckled to myself. “What?” my dad asked. “Oh nothing,” I replied. “I was just going to ask how much you paid for your jacket as a way of joking about how many times you’ve already told me…but I was afraid you wouldn’t get the joke and would actually answer my question,” I explained. My father pretended to be amused.

I usually find it funny when someone doesn’t get a joke or a subtle jab. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but often the misunderstand itself becomes a source of comedy.

Early this morning, I had breakfast with some of our youth. After we ate, we played a game called “Psychiatrist.” In this game, one person (the psychiatrist) leaves the room while the other people (the patients) make up a condition, which they all share. Then, when the psychiatrist returns and asks questions about the condition, the players betray the ailment in their answers. For example, all the patients could decide that every time they give an answer to the psychiatrist’s questions they will touch their nose. If that seems obvious, it is. But, when you pick something far more subtle, the game is fun.

For our third or fourth round, we decided that the third word of every answer we gave would be “the.” It proved to be as tough for the patients as it was for the psychiatrist. When one of the patients broke character and complained about how hard it was, I whispered back at him to stay with the game. He looked at me disapprovingly. “You weren’t listening,” he said. Sure enough, when I replayed his comment in my head, I realized that the third word had actually been “the.” He was being clever, and I just didn’t get it.

In today’s gospel lesson (John 2:23-3:15), we read about Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews who has a hard time picking up on what Jesus is saying. Jesus stresses the need to be born anew, but Nicodemus is lost in the literal: “How can someone climb into his mother’s womb and be born a second time?” Of course, as Jesus makes clear, he is talking about a spiritual rebirth. And, just when we think Nicodemus will grasp what is being said to him, he stumbles again: “How can this be?” Jesus shakes his head in exasperation.

I used to think this passage of the gospel is about the religious tension between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. I used to think that Christians (like me) were able to see what the rest of the world (like the Pharisees) couldn’t grasp. But then, thinking about my visit to the psychiatrist this morning, I realized that the problem isn’t a Jewish-Christian issue. It’s a human issue.

God is God, and we are not. God shows his love to the world, and we’re still trying to use words to describe it. And guess what! We don’t get it. We’re obtuse. We’re slow on the uptake. We’re like Nicodemus, trying as hard as we can to understand what God is doing, but we’re looking through flesh-colored glasses.

God’s salvation is bigger than we realize. God’s love is more powerful than we know. What it means to be a disciple of Jesus is more involved than words can describe. We’re still using images and analogies to explain it. Perhaps the whole Jesus event—Incarnation, Death, Resurrection—is itself a pronouncement of a deeper truth (God loves us). My prayer today is that the scales might fall off my eyes long enough to get even the tiniest glimpse of what God is really doing in my life and in the world around me.

Vicious Victory

Winning is dangerous. Whether you hoist the Lombardi Trophy or accept a golden statuette on stage, receiving the top prize in your field can lead to trouble. How many celebrated athletes and movie stars have crashed and burned just as the bubbles of success threatened to lift their feet off the ground? Similarly, those same challenges extend all the way down to victories in the most humble of venues. On the golf course, on the playground, in the classroom—winners of all sorts run the risk of confusing victory with accomplishment.

Although my own victories have been small and often obscure, I recognize a treacherous tendency in my own celebrations to take credit where credit is not due. How did I finally manage to beat my boss playing golf? Why did our kickball team win the big game? What made me successful in my run for class president? The short and deadly answer in each of those cases is “me.” I made that long putt on the seventeenth green. I caught that line-drive and doubled-up the runner on second base. I gave the speech of my life and won over my fourth-grade classmates. But that only tells half of the story.

Sometimes we win simply because someone else loses. An opponent’s last-minute interception does not take away from our victory, but it does remind us that there are as many reasons that one side loses as there are that the other side wins. When Moses addressed God’s people in Deuteronomy 9, it seems that he knew that his compatriots would struggle to stay grounded in their victory over the inhabitants of the land that they were entering: “When the LORD your God thrusts them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to occupy this land’; it is rather because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is dispossessing them before you.” The pride of victory can be especially dangerous when God is thought to be on your side.

Over the centuries, human beings repeatedly have cited divine right as the justification for their actions and the explanation of their victories. In doing so, however, we have often fallen victim to the sin of pride, which, at its root, involves casting God in our image rather than seeking to be conformed to the image of our creator. What is God’s will in a particular circumstance? Our tendency is simply to ask the winning side. Moses’ warning to Israel, however, is a warning to us that such celebratory gusto often mistakes a gracious gift for a personal accomplishment.

The season of Lent is typically marked by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. That three-fold pattern of spiritual discipline has the ability to transform our pride into humility by reminding us that all that we are given is just that—a gift. As I come to God in prayer, I am reminded of his impetus behind all things as creator and sustainer. As I give up some of the sustenance I usually consume, I discover how to eat without taking food for granted. As I give away some of my possessions, I learn to count all that I have as blessing. Through these forty days of preparation, I am patterned into the sort of person who can glimpse the gift behind all the successes that I enjoy. Ultimately, embracing the gift of new and everlasting life with God in heaven requires us to recognize that this life, too, is God’s gift to us.

A Weird Sort of Promise

It will be hard for me to preach on anything but the Genesislesson this week. That’s not because I know what the Spirit is leading me to say about. It’s only because the story of Abraham and the smoking fire pot is utterly cool.

 Here’s how the story goes down:

1.      God promises old-man Abram (and his barren wife) descendants as numerous as the stars.

2.      Abram believes God’s promise.

3.      God reckons Abram’s belief as righteousness—implying a right relationship.

4.      Then, God promises Abram the land.

5.      Abram asks God for proof.

6.      Through a bizarre mixture of animal sacrifice, hallucinatory dreaming, and ancient custom, God pledges his commitment to Abram and makes a covenant with him.

Almost any part of that could be a sermon. St. Paul makes a big deal about the belief leading to righteousness in his letter to the Romans. Some might say that this passage—more than any other in the bible—is responsible for the Evangelical movement in Christianity. Abram’s model becomes Paul’s model for explaining the Jesus-event, and, thus, we are encouraged to believe in Jesus with faith like Abram in order to be made righteous. It’s a big deal.

But what about the covenant? What sort of humanity believes that God would enter a covenant with a human being and his descendants? Imagine an A-list celebrity going to prom with a C-list student. Why would that happen? Well, maybe as a publicity stunt. And maybe that’s true for God as well. Is God reaching out to Abram in covenant primarily to show the world who he is—a God of relationship? It’s interesting to me that we believe in a God of covenants—such a human, transactional way of talking about God—but that unfathomable combination of God as totally other and God as intimately related is at the heart of our faith.

If I had to guess at this point where a sermon will come from, I’d say it’s from the smoking fire pot. Not only does God make a covenant with Abram and his descendants, but he also seemingly puts his life on the line. That gesture—walking between the slain animals—was a way of saying, “If I break my promise, let me be as these carcasses.” That’s a silly thing to suggest God might do, but that’s the point. Not only does God make promises, but God is promise. God is defined as the one who is faithful and true. How is it possible for human beings to have such a vision and to talk of God in this way? Because God is primarily the faithful one. No crazy ancient image of promise is too extreme. 

Lenten First-Fruits

This Sunday’s OT lesson (Deut. 26:1-11) sounds more like a stewardship topic than a Lenten reading. In his farewell speech to the people of Israel, Moses gives very specific instructions for what to do when they’ve settled in the land God will give them: “When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you…you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground…and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.”

This practice becomes a part of Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. The first fruits of the harvest are brought to the Lord and given as an offering of remembrance. There is particular power in the formulaic saying prescribed for the one bringing the offering: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” The words that follow are a beautiful encapsulation of God’s salvation—how he led them from captivity in Egypt through the wilderness and into the promised land. This process—the giving of first fruits and the recitation of salvation history—was a way to make sure God’s people didn’t forget where their blessings came from.

We are beginning a pilgrimage. During Lent, we journey back into the wilderness for forty days. Why do we bother? To remember that it is only by God’s grace that we are saved. Lent is an experience of stewardship. We give back to God a piece of our lives (fasting, praying, almsgiving) to remind ourselves that only he can sustain us. Unlike Jesus, we cannot make it through the wilderness on our own, but, with Jesus’ help, we can. This Lent, I feel called to consider my discipline a first-fruits offering to God—a reminder of what he has done for me as I seek to deepen my faith that he will always provide.