Escaping Buddha's Palm

Buddha Palm by Fengua-Zhong

Propers: The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, A.D. 2019 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.

One of the most famous characters in all world literature comes to us from a 16th century Chinese novel entitled Journey to the West. I speak here of the Monkey King.

The Monkey King is a rollicking hero, a sort of medieval Superman, who can fly on the clouds, change his shape, grow to incredible size, shatter mountains, and who possesses an indestructible iron bar by which he defeats gods and monsters alike. In the story, the Monkey King rampages across the earth, defeating giants and dragons; then descends into the underworld to defeat the armies of Yama, King of Hell; before finally ascending to the heavens to wreak havoc amongst sages and saints.

The Jade Emperor, ruler of Heaven, cannot defeat him. Lao Tzu, the founding sage of Confucianism, cannot defeat him. Finally the Buddha himself confronts the Monkey King, and proposes to him a remarkable wager. “If you can leap out of the palm of my hand,” the Buddha says, “then I will make you the new Jade Emperor, ruler of the heavens.”

Arrogant and brash, the Monkey King boldly leaps upon the Buddha’s palm and launches himself skyward with superhuman force. He soars far beyond the heavens, deep into outer space, to the very edges of the universe. There he sees the five pillars that hold up the whole of reality, and he inscribes his name upon one—“Monkey King was here”—before plunging back down through the various layers of the cosmos, landing once again beside the Buddha.

“Not only did I leap from your palm,” boasts the Monkey King, “but I leapt to the far limits of the universe, to the Pillars of Creation!” And the Buddha responds by holding up his hand—where the Monkey King sees his own name written upon one of the Buddha’s fingers. For in his enlightenment, you see, the Buddha had become one with all of Creation. And so it is impossible to escape from the Buddha’s hand, for it is the universe itself.

I find this story quite telling, not only for its striking imagery but for its worldview. In Journey to the West, the universe is all there is. Every story, every god, every buddha, every saint, operates only within the confines of this vast yet finite world. And this is the very essence of paganism.

I don’t use that term here disparagingly, mind you. There’s something deeply evocative about the classical pagan faiths. The gods of paganism embody aspects of this world, the forces of nature that surround us. This is why they are at times beautiful and inspiring, while at other times petty, mean, and cruel. Poseidon, as the sea, is capricious—as is Apollo the sun, and Zeus the sky. Like Mt Everest, the gods of this world are by turns murderous and awe-inspiring; changing, fickle, unpredictable. Nature giveth, and Nature taketh away.

We can talk about karmic balance or cosmic harmony, but ultimately there is nothing in paganism beyond this world. There simply is no escaping the Buddha’s palm.

The biblical witness takes all that and shakes it. The biblical witness claims that there is in fact something beyond this finite world of life and death, of natural forces ever fickle, often cruel; that there is in fact a deeper level of reality, true reality. And this reality is infinite Goodness and Truth and Beauty, perfectly simple, eternally unchanging, beyond the limitations of time and space and human thought. In a word, this reality is God. And this God, with a capital G, is no fickle embodiment of the mercurial aspects of this world.

Indeed, He is not “a being” at all, as though one of many, differing from us in degree but not in kind. Rather, the God of the Bible is Being itself, the Source and Font of all existence, in whom we all live and move and have our being. He does not exist within the universe, but this and all possible universes exist within Him. And this God, this unchanging, inexhaustible reality beyond all realities, is nothing other than infinite self-giving Love.

By this I don’t mean that He’s merely a loving or loveable God, but that He is Love itself, true Love, of which all earthly loves are but pale reflections. Every love we know—our very life itself—is in fact our participation in the Love of God.

And now here we must as always clarify that love, in Christian understanding, is not merely an emotion. Love is not some saccharine sentiment. Love is not the same thing as feeling in love. Christianity is not an episode of the Care Bears. Rather, love is the willful choice to put the good of another before our own. It is giving of ourselves for the life of our beloved. And that hurts. To give of oneself hurts. And so to love and to suffer are often one and the same, the very definition of passion.

Note that love is not the same as lust. Love needs to give, while lust seeks only to take. Note also that love is not the same thing as being nice. Sometimes loving another means that we must tell hard truths, yet tell them in love, for their own good. Love is a hard and a scandalous thing. It breaks us down and builds us up. It kills us and resurrects us again. Love slays who we think we are—the prideful, sinful self that we mistake for our very soul—and shapes us instead into who we were always meant to be: images of the God who eternally pours out His Life for the world.

That’s why the symbol of our faith is Christ on the Cross: the perfect Man, pouring out God’s own perfect love, through His perfect suffering.

This is no sweet-smelling, wilting-lily, namby-pamby love. This is the love of life and death, of heaven and hell, the love that burns away everything in us that is not of God and purifies us as silver in the crucible, as gold refined seven times by fire. This is the Love that weighs like a cross, that stings like a lash, that pierces like a spear. This is the true love, the strong love, the love that hurts; the love that raises the dead; the love that births and upholds and redeems all the world. Far beyond the Buddha’s palm we discover the crucified hands of the Christ.

Think of this, when we read from 1 Corinthians, that perennial favorite of weddings:

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude … It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Paul here is not being sweet. He’s not indulging in maudlin sentiment. This is a polemic! He’s telling us what love must be, what love must do. Our love must be like the love of God: robust, conquering, indefatigable, always striving, always giving. It must shake us, shock us, rock us to our core. It has to be the sort of love that will change the very world, else it’s not the love of God but our own sickly substitute.

Or look to our Gospel reading this morning, in which Jesus announces to the synagogue of His own hometown that, yes, He is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed of God, the one to whom all the prophets point: our God incarnate on this earth. And the people love it! This is exactly what they wanted to hear. One of their own, a local boy made good, has at long last revealed Himself as the Messiah whom they have awaited with bated breath for over a thousand years.

But He doesn’t stop there. His love, He says, the love of God on earth, will not be limited to the Nazoreans, the Root of Jesse, the Branch of the House of David. Rather, He will be sent out to the pagans, to the gentiles, to the godless nations of the world. For the love of God will flow and flow and flow and flood the world with new life! And this the people of Nazareth cannot countenance. Messianic claims are all well and good, but this—this—inclusivity? This scandalous, willy-nilly, all-encompassing grace of God, poured out even upon the heathens, even upon the godless?

That’s the sort of talk that gets you killed. That’s the sort of talk that gets you thrown off a cliff, or nailed to a cross.

Yet Jesus passes through them, not lifting a finger against them, nor even a condemning word, utterly nonviolent. For the love of God is neither fickle nor malleable. It does not falter, does not change. He never ceases to love His people, love His children, love His Creation from one end to another. The only thing He hates is sin—for sin is not a thing, but an absence, a separation from our God. And the loving Father hates anything that separates Him from His child.

Let us ponder this as we go out into our fallen world. The love of God does not change, does not falter, does not end. And it will countenance no rivals in our souls.

This is the Love that will kill us all—and then raise us to life everlasting.

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