The Buddha and the Saint

Midweek Advent 1 Vespers

Propers: St Nicholas Day, 2018 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Years ago, behind the counter of a Chinese restaurant down by the Twin Cities, I saw a stuffed Santa Claus sitting next to the statue of a smiling, fat little Buddha. And this struck me as odd, because as I recall it was the middle of May, about as far from Christmas or St Nicholas Day as one can get.

The figures were surprisingly similar. Each was a fat, smiling, jolly little old man, carrying with him a great burlap sack. Each has been universally beloved either as a great religious sage or, by some, as a sort of primordial pagan deity. And each of them represents more of a spiritual ideal than a concrete historical reality.

Take Santa Claus, for instance. St Nicholas was a real man, a monk, bishop, and wonderworker from what is today Turkey, but back then was part of Greece. You wouldn’t believe the stories they tell about this guy. He is said to have raised the dead, calmed storms, flown about through the air, visited the Emperor in dreams, and been able to appear in multiple places at once—a rare gift attributed to the holiest of saints.

He really did drop gifts down people’s chimneys, or at least through the window into their shoes. And after he died—or rather, rose to Heaven—his very bones leaked a fragrant healing oil that could be found in churches throughout the Christian world. Nicholas Manna, they called it. I have a bottle tucked away in my office, and quite a story to go with it. But Nicholas, historically, was a rather tall and slender fellow, who does not appear to have been in the habit of carrying about a sack.

As for the Buddha, well, that fat little fellow whom so many of us associate with Buddhism is not, in fact, the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, but a later Buddhist sage of the tenth century known as Budai, or Hotei, the Laughing Buddha. He looks almost exactly like Santa Claus, if Santa shaved himself for warmer weather. While some worship him as a god (the same way that Western pagans insist against all historical evidence that Santa used to be Odin) Buddhists view Hotei as a bodhisattva, one who has achieved Enlightenment—what we might call a transformational love of God and love of neighbor—only then to re-enter society in order to teach and to benefit others.

And so in both cultures, East and West, we have this image of a holy man whose holiness is not otherworldly but consists in the very earthy things of daily life; who lives out his faith in joy and generosity, always thankful, always giving, always placing the happiness of others before his own, not as a dour ascetic but as the life of the party.

That’s what the big fat belly and the bursting sack of toys represent: someone who gives and gives and gives, yet is not lessened by his giving but nourished from it: someone who is most alive when living for others, for strangers, for families, and most especially for children. How amazing that the proprietors of that restaurant came to a completely alien culture half a world away and the first thing they recognized was Santa. They took one look at St Nick and said, “Hey, we know that guy. He’s here too.”

Now, I am in no way denying the legitimate differences between the teachings of the Christ and the teachings of the Buddha. I do not mean to say of other cultures, “They’re just like us; they just don’t know it yet.” But how remarkable is it that two faiths, two religions, produced such similar saints, who in response to encounters with God became identical examples of how a holy person lives: with generosity, with joy, with an all-embracing love of things earthy and homey and everyday, because that is where the sacred truly lies: beneath the reality we experience each day.

Beneath the love of parent and child lies the love of God. Beneath the love of husband and wife resides the love of God. Beneath the love of stranger and saint we find the love of God. We find it in the food that we cook and the fires we tend and the gifts that we give and the joys that we sing. Faith is not denial of the world, denial of what is good, but rather the affirmation that holiness is to be found hidden in plain sight, and especially in the home.

Santa Claus was a real man, and Hotei probably was too. What made them saints, what made them holy, is that when the love of God found them they did not horde it, did not hide it, did not shut it off from the world, but let it flow through them, pour out of them, flooding into everyone and everything about them! Thus did they bring redemption to the fallen, holiness to the household, and the love of God to a people and a world still desperately in need of Him.

If you want to live as a saint—if you want to live with eyes enlightened and awake—all you have to do is give unto others whatever it is you wish in good faith to receive. This is both the Golden Rule of Jesus Christ and the Noble Truth of the Buddha. Live in love as you are loved, and someday your image as well might sit on a shelf, perhaps in a restaurant in some faraway land, as a reminder to some thankful soul that Christ lives on reflected in the life and love of those whom He has saved.

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