Samsara

Wheel of Life, by Dharma Moon

Propers: The Baptism of Our Lord, AD 2024 B

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, I read of a Sufi mystic who taught to his disciples the theory of reincarnation. This would be neither noteworthy nor unusual were he of a karmic faith, a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Jain. But Sufis are Muslim, an Abrahamic faith, similar to our own. They generally do not believe in the transmigration of souls.

The notion of reincarnation has always left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t like the idea of forgetting. The things that I’ve learned, the people I love, they make me who I am. Nor would I be enamored of having to do all of this again, of starting over from scratch. In fairness, those faiths that believe in reincarnation are all attempting to escape it. The karmics call it samsara, the endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth that makes up our world here below. It’s basically their version of damnation, and they want out.

Those who manage to escape the cycle, to achieve union with Truth or with God, are known as arhats or as buddhas. They are free; they are eternal. Yet some take the bodhisattva vow, to return to samsara until all of sentient life achieves enlightenment, until all are saved. The paradox is that even as the bodhisattvas leave the highest heaven to return to lower realms, they bring their salvation with them. In sacrificing heavenly bliss for the betterment of all, they are, if anything, even holier, even freer, than they were before.

The way to the Kingdom of Heaven, in other words, is to give it all up for love. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

The twist for that Sufi—that Muslim who taught reincarnation—came one day when he finally said to his students, “Don’t you understand? All this talk of reincarnation, of life and death and rebirth, all of that happens to each of us within a single lifetime.” You, me, all of us, are constantly, daily, dying and being reborn. It’s the only way any of us can coherently speak of our lives.

Are you the same person whom you were back in high school? Are you the same person whom you were as a baby? Are you even the same person whom you were when you got up this morning? And of course the answer is yes—but also no. We are all of us an intermixing of breakage and continuity. If we weren’t at once both the same, yet also different, from whom we used to be, then we would never change, never grow, and never be alive. The soul is not the self, but it’s not no-self either.

Every moment of every day, we are faced with choices. There are myriad possibilities laid out before us on every step of the way, a thousand paths which we could take. Yet we must choose but one. We can only walk one at a time. And so to actualize that possibility, to pick one option and to make it real, we must then sacrifice all of the others. We must kill the person we might have been to be the person we are. Life is made up of our choices, and every choice is a sacrifice, a cycle of death and rebirth. That’s samsara.

Today, my brothers and sisters, we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord, a clearly momentous event in all four canonical gospels. It marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, such that His cousin and Forerunner John shall ever after be known as John the Baptist. Water has a role to play in every major religion, every spiritual system. It cleanses us, nourishes us. As rain it gives life to the earth. As rivers it connects our communities. As the sea it both terrifies and enchants, offering treasures and monsters and storms.

We are born through water. We live by water. We drown in water. It is life and death and renewal. How then could it not be religious? Baptism is an ablution, a religious and ritual bath. In the time of Jesus, it could signify the entry of someone into the Jewish community. It served as a conversion, a once and done rebirth. Other denominations treated it as a daily affair, a priestly washing and purification. John baptizes for repentance, for a turning back to God, turning to the coming of the Christ.

When Jesus shows up to be baptized by John, something miraculous happens. The heavens are torn asunder; the Holy Spirit descends; the voice of the Lord thunders, “This is My Son, the beloved.” Clearly Jesus’ Baptism isn’t your run-of-the-mill repentance. Christ doesn’t need to be turned toward Himself. Nor must He be made into a Jew: He’s been Jewish since His birth and His bris. His Baptism, then, does not change Jesus, but Jesus changes baptism.

He has entered into the waters of life and death and rebirth. He has entered into the chaos of our world. Jesus is indeed our bodhisattva, the one come down from heaven in order to save us all. Yet He’s no mere mortal escaped from samsara. Christ is our God in the flesh. And as He enters, heaven comes with Him. The sky is sundered. The Spirit descends. The voice of God echoes above the waters once again. This here is our new Genesis, our new beginning and birth. Here God walks again with Adam, with all of humankind.

Christ joins us in the waters of our Baptism. Here we have His Spirit and His Word. Here we are drowned in our sins, drowned in our pride, to rise again with the Name and Breath of Jesus Christ within us. His Spirit burns as fire in our lungs and blood and souls. We are baptized into Jesus’ death and Resurrection, baptized into His eternal life already begun. It is once and done, forever accomplished; you cannot expunge the mark that you bear. Yet ours is a daily drowning, ever returning to these waters, ever rising forgiven again.

Baptism is birth and death and resurrection, and so is Christian life. We are forever being crucified, forever being raised. That’s what it is to be human. And no-one is more human than the Christ.

Things have really been a mess lately, haven’t they? Economically, politically, pandemically. We hear of wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and fires. We’re dealing with stresses and uncertainties, with societal and spiritual collapse. And just here in our area we’ve taken some heavy hits of late. We’ve lost neighbors and brothers and sons; dealt with surgeries and cancers, incarcerations and dementia. This world is always shifting, around, beneath, above us. The only thing that’s permanent is change.

For those in mourning, for those who are suffering, I have no magic bullet. I cannot tell you that it’s all part of some cosmic plan. I would never say that life is not so bad as it may seem. Life is hard. Love is hard. It is death and resurrection every day. We live in an age of loneliness, isolation, insecurity, and rootlessness, shouldering great burdens by ourselves. Silver and gold I do not have, but what I have I give you: Jesus Christ has entered our world and brought salvation with Him! He is all I have to offer, and all that we could need.

Bad things don’t happen because they’re supposed to happen, or because God wants them to happen. Bad things happen because this is a broken world, a fallen world which does not operate in the ways we know it ought. We don’t need platitudes or simple solutions or self-help plans. We need a savior! Someone down here in the mud and the blood who can raise us all up from the dead, snatch us from samsara. “Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Jesus Christ has entered the chat. He has broken into samsara and torn wide the curtain of heaven. He has plunged with us into the waters of life and death and rebirth. He has seized our sin in His own two hands and throttled the serpent in hell. Everything that you have suffered He will suffer too, with you and for you and in you. And He will do it for love of you; because evil is His enemy, injustice is His foe, death is His nemesis. And it cannot escape Him! That which harms His children, He will set aflame.

Christ has joined us in the waters. He descends to break the tomb. He rises to hallow the heavens. And all the fallen angels, all the powers of the cosmos, all the gods who would oppress us, He has trampled beneath His pierced and sandaled feet. Christ is with you. He will save you. He will save us all! Amidst the storms of change and chance He stands as Light and Life. And everything that we have lost shall be restored at last. For there is nowhere Christ won’t go to bring His children home.

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

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