Lent III, Year C

Exodus 3:1-15
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A guy who had the temerity to cut me off the other day had a bumper sticker: " My karma ran over your dogma." It's not cute, and not just because I was cut off. It is the smugness which annoys me, the ignorance which annoys me. Catholic dogma expresses the good news of Jesus Christ; it is all about making human beings free, purposeful, and more humane. Karma has its own dogma, mounds of it, and it's not very attractive stuff. If you buy into karma, it doesn't set you free; it doesn't make you more humane.

Most Americans know that karma can be good or bad, but not much else. Karma means 'action' or 'work' or 'function.' Some actions are right, and some are wrong, and these actions, someone's karma, is either rewarded or punished. There's a strict correlation between our actions, our karma, and our fate: that is, good karma is rewarded with good things and bad karma with bad things. However, we'll recognize that good karma does not always appear to be rewarded, and bad karma sometimes appears to be rewarded. In such a system, how is it possible to have justice?

Like Christianity, Hinduism is intensely interested in justice, but proclaims much different ideas about it. The Hindu concept of karma insists that when bad things happen to good people it is the result of some prior wrong action, some prior misdeed, we might even say some prior sin, of the good person. And conversely, when good things happen to bad people it is the result of some prior righteous deed of the bad person. And - here's the big catch - possibly this prior misdeed, or righteous deed, occurred in a previous lifetime. Karma teaches that individuals reap the rewards of their good and bad actions through all of their lifetimes.

Hinduism teaches re-incarnation, that death leads to rebirth and our status in our reincarnated life depends upon our karma, our actions, from previous lives. In other words, for Hindus, as many as a billion people, life is circular, a continual cycle of birth, life, death, then rebirth. And just to avoid any confusion, Christianity rejects reincarnation. Our religion is about straight lines, not circles. We have a beginning and an end. We do not repeat life. Our ideas, our understandings, our dogmas of these ultimate realities have a very definite impact on how we live life. Everyone has ideas about life; everyone embraces some kind of dogma. Those who say that all dogmas are nonsense are proclaiming a dogma. Ideas matter. Dogma matters. It directs the way we live.

If we follow the dogmas associated with karma, then nothing is a matter of luck or misfortune. Winning the lottery, getting a hot date, driving a Ferrari, these are the rewards of good karma, of previous good deeds. Conversely, going bankrupt, losing the girl, being car-jacked, being killed by Pilate, having a tower fall on you, these are the rewards of bad karma, of bad deeds. There is no crooked winner, and there is no innocent victim. George Steinbrenner deserves Alex Rodriguez, and the sniper victims deserved it. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet merit their billions; the sick, the destitute, the hungry merit their misery and suffering. There is no random good fortune, and there is no random suffering. The consequence is that belief in karma promotes callousness, and much more profound callousness than cutting people off.

It gets even worse. This understanding of karma, of justice, is essential to justify India's caste system. At the top are the Brahmans, the priestly and learned class; second, there are the Kshatriyas, the warriors and rulers; third, the Vaisyas, the farmers and merchants. These three class constitute nearly fifty percent of the population. The fourth class is the Sudras, the peasants and laborers. Then the lowest categories are those 15 to 20 percent who are outside the caste system, the Panchamas, the outcastes, the untouchables relegated to the most menial and humble tasks in society, like dealing with the sewage system. Due to the belief in karma, the caste that you are born into is what you morally deserve, and there's not much you can do about it. Movement from one caste to another is extremely rare.

The good news is that in modern India, especially in cities, the caste system is disintegrating, and social customs are becoming more flexible. Part of Mahatma Gandhi's greatness was to encourage Indian society to accept the untouchables, whom he called Harijan, the children of God. Although in some rural areas the caste system still causes enormous tension, even mass violence, in the cities people of different castes have begun to socialize with one another.

Thomas Friedman had a column last week noticing that "there are 555 million Indians under the age of 25, and a lot of them want a piece of 'The Great Indian Dream,' which is a lot like the American version." ⁽¹⁾ The American Dream is all about moving up, taking opportunities to make a better life for yourself and for your children. Last week when my credit card company called me, I shouldn't have been surprised that the caller, and his female supervisor, had Indian accents. Outsourcing jobs to India may, or may not, cost Americans jobs, but I'd bet it's good for the gospel. My bet is that as more Indians get a taste of 'the Great Indian Dream', they'll also get a taste for Christianity.

Now this is not to imply that Hinduism is not a noble religion. It deserves our respect and admiration. I've just focused on one aspect about which I'm not at all keen. Unfortunately, at times, parts of the Church have erred in the same way, though probably not in the same magnitude. Classic Calvinism makes the same fundamental mistake, that is, in practice, our worldly fate matches our spiritual well-being. Again, this promotes callousness, not compassion, and authentic Christianity promotes compassion.

In today's gospel, the people questioning Jesus about the death of the Galileans assume that their suffering is the result of their sin, that the Galileans had died because they were sinners. This error is found in the Bible. The first psalm says, "Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly. . . his delight is in the law of the Lord. . . His leaf shall not wither; and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper." (Ps 1:1-4) In other words, righteousness is rewarded with prosperity.

It's a good thing that the Bible occasionally contradicts itself. Of course, the good, the righteous are not always healthy and prosperous, and the Psalms themselves recognize this. In Psalm 73, the Psalmist cries, "I see the ungodly in such prosperity. For they are in no peril of death; but are lusty and strong. They come in no misfortune like other folk; neither are they plagued like other men." (Ps. 73:3b-5) Think also of the Beatitudes. Who is blessed? Who is enjoys God's favor? It is the poor, the meek, the lame, the mourners, the persecuted. In John's gospel, the disciples saw a blind man and asked Jesus, "'Who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.'" (Jn 9:2-3) Jesus shoots down his disciples' assumption of a direct, proportional correlation between sin and suffering. The biggest sign of God's disapproval of that point of view is the Cross and Passion of our Lord. A man without sin, a righteous man becomes a man of sorrows, despised and rejected by men, wounded, stricken, smitten, bruised, chastised, oppressed, afflicted - an innocent victim. If you follow the dogma of karma, Jesus was crucified because he had bad karma!

If the Galileans didn't die because of their sin, why then did they die? Unlike the impression given by some of the evangelists and by Mel Gibson, Pontius Pilate was brutal, cruel, severe, ruthless in maintaining his rule of Judea. That's the answer. But really it answers the wrong question. The real issue is not: are violence and suffering random or in accordance with divine justice? "Jesus rejects such attempts at calculation, not only because they are futile, but also because they deflect attention from the primary issue: the obligation of every person to live in penitence and trust before God." ⁽²⁾

In today's gospel, what Jesus is talking about is the urgency of repenting: "Don't worry about the sins of other people. Worry about your own sins." When we worry about the sins of other people, most religious people become smug and cut themselves off from God. We start thinking that we're better than other people. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Jesus is saying, "Don't put it off. You don't know when your end will come. Repentance is not for another day. It's for now. It's for you."

We think of repentance of being sorry for our sins. But it is more. It is changing our course in life, turning around and following Jesus, instead of ourselves. There's an element of self-denial in repentance: not my way, God's way. It's being aware that everything we do, whether it's going to work, eating lunch, sitting on the couch, reading the paper, we are doing it for God, not for ourselves. When we repent and follow Christ, everything changes. Everything changes not because our lives become full of wholly different tasks, but because our attitude about what we do changes. We still go to the movies, we still play sports, we still do our work, we still love and enjoy our families and friends, but now we do it for God, as a way of loving God.

The first time we repent may be the most difficult. We decide to re-orient our lives so that we may follow Christ. But the first time must not be the last time. Repentance must mark all of our lives. We continually have to turn around and follow Jesus anew. If we think that Jesus' warning to repent is only for non-Christians, only for other people, then we've not heard the warning. Every human being has an urgent need to focus on their relationship with God, and if we don't focus on our own relationship to God, if we don't allow God to change our lives, then we're trying God's patience. Lent is for us once again to turn around and to renew our relationship with God. Because all Christians know that our karma is not perfect, and the good news is that God forgives us. The good news is that God does not punish as we deserve. The good news is that God loves us and wants to reward us with life.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Thomas L. Friedman, 'The Great Indian Dream,' The New York Times, 11 March 2004.

2. Fred B. Craddock, Luke, John Knox Press (1990), pp. 168-69.