Sunday, July 7, 2019

Instant Karma?


 Scripture   Galatians 6:1-10  CEB  


Brothers and sisters, if a person is caught doing something wrong, you who are spiritual should restore someone like this with a spirit of gentleness. Watch out for yourselves so you won’t be tempted too. Carry each other’s burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are important when they aren’t, they’re fooling themselves. Each person should test their own work and be happy with doing a good job and not compare themselves with others. Each person will have to carry their own load.

Those who are taught the word should share all good things with their teacher.  Make no mistake, God is not mocked. A person will harvest what they plant. Those who plant only for their own benefit will harvest devastation from their selfishness, but those who plant for the benefit of the Spirit will harvest eternal life from the Spirit. Let’s not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up. 10 So then, let’s work for the good of all whenever we have an opportunity, and especially for those in the household of faith.

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This is one of those passages that has so much meat in it that it really deserves to be preached verse by verse.  But that would require 40 minutes or more of your undivided attention, and I think we all know that’s not going to happen.  

Typically, when I am deciding which of four or more possible scripture readings to preach on for each week, I see one phrase or idea that leaps out at me, and I decide at that point where my message is going to go.  I chose a title and a hymn to follow-up the point I want to make, and maybe even the artwork a month or two in advance of when I’m going to preach that message.  Obviously, when I read this one I saw verse 7, “Make no mistake, God is not mocked. A person will harvest what they plant.”  And my mind went immediately to the idea of Instant Karma.

I found this cartoon online and thought, wouldn’t that be nice?   Immediate response from God chastising the person who is literally kicking someone while they are down.  But that’s not how Karma works.  Karma is the way things work out over the long run, and by long run the Hindus and Buddhists meant over a period of lifetimes.   Being a bad person in this life might bring you back as a cockroach, while being a helpless victim in this life might mean you are brought back into a life of ease and pampering - maybe as one of my cats.  Being a Mother Theresa might mean that your cycle through lifetimes was over, and it was time for eternal rest.  (This, by the way, is a very general and only vaguely accurate description of Karma.)   Of course we Christians believe that punishment for bad behavior in this lifetime will come after death, when we come before the Judgment Seat to learn whether we enter into heaven or go the other way.  

But somehow the idea of Instant Karma is alive and well in our culture.  John Lennon may have had something to do with that.  But well before the song Instant Karma was released in 1970, we have used phrases like “What goes around, comes around.”  We somehow fully expect people are good to have good things happen for them, and people who are bad to have bad things happen to them.   For that matter, we expect good looking people to be good, and bad looking people to be bad, and vice versa.  It causes us great discomfort when the opposite happens, when bad things happen to good people, or when perpetrators of horrific crimes against humanity seem to prosper.  Waiting for reward or punishment at the end of our days really doesn’t work for us. We kind of want to see Instant Karma, immediate reward and punishment meted out.  This mindset is not new.   The Book of Job was written in order to try to explain that sometimes bad things do happen to good, devout, God loving people, through no fault of their own.    Y’know, people used to tell me that I should read the Psalms when I was going through stuff, but that never really worked for me.  Then my pastor suggested I read Job.  Yes!  Reading Job always cheered me up.  No matter what was going on in my life, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened to him!  

Of course, if Job had been in their midst, our Puritan forefathers would have been convinced that his bad fortune meant he was not one of the elect.  That no matter how hard he tried, or how good a person he was, he was never going to heaven, because they believed not only that “God freely and unchangeably ordained whatsoever comes to pass”  but that God pre-ordained precisely who would be saved and who wouldn’t.  So your actions in this life mattered not at all.  As a result of these beliefs, they equated success in business with salvation. If you were predestined to be saved then you would succeed.  If you did not succeed or had a terrible life, it was because you were predestined to go to Hell.  Kind of the opposite of Karma, or reaping what you sow.  This is what can happen when you read the Bible line by line instead of holistically.  

If, for example, we looked at this passage line by line . . .  Verse 2 says, “Carry each other’s burdens and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.  But verse 5 says, “Each person will have to carry their own load.   Wait, what?  I am confused.  These seem to be contradictory statements.  The Bible tells us in many places that 1) we are supposed to help each other - remember the Love Commandment? - and 2) we are responsible for and will be judged on our own actions.  Hence verse 4, “Each person should test their own work and be happy with doing a good job and not compare themselves with others.  It is not good or just to say, “Well yeah, I did this, but did you see what that other guy did?  Because each person is responsible for their own actions, we should not try to deflect attention from our own behavior by pointing out the flaws of others.  

Brothers and sisters, if a person is caught doing something wrong, you who are spiritual should restore someone like this with a spirit of gentleness. Watch out for yourselves so you won’t be tempted too.  This is something that is not happening in our world today.  When anyone is even accused of wrongdoing, there is immediate and hateful response.  Ok, I get being angry at a lot of the situations in our world, in our nation, today.   But being hateful, calling names, being violent in our responses to situations is not the answer.  Some months ago, in response to an ongoing and rather ugly disagreement in our City, Jennifer stood up at the beginning of a City Council meeting and gently, spiritually, reminded those present of the need to treat one another with respect and decorum, even though they disagreed.  They listened to her, and behaved better (that night).  That is what we are called to do.  We are called to watch ourselves, to avoid the temptation to get angry back, to repay evil with evil.  We are called to help one another.  Paul says,  Let’s not get tired of doing good, because in time we’ll have a harvest if we don’t give up. So then, let’s work for the good of all whenever we have an opportunity”   

I know how frustrating it can be to keep trying to affect change, not seeing any progress.  It can seem like we are chipping away at a rock with a pencil, hoping to create a beautiful sculpture.  The struggle to change the world, to bring God’s kingdom into fruition on earth as it is in heaven - that struggle is real.  We, Christians, have been working for it for nearly 2,000 years!  But it is our job, to proclaim the Good News, to heal those who are sick at heart, to gently and spiritually reprove and change the hearts of those who have done wrong.  And yes, sometimes turning over tables and public whippings are necessary to get people’s attention.  But over the long run, chipping away at stone hard hearts with the pencil of God’s love will result in change.  It has happened, slowly and painfully.  But it has happened.  Slavery was ended.  Voting rights were extended.  Segregation ended - sort of.  We withdrew from Vietnam.  Christians were in the forefront of all of these struggles and are in the forefront of other struggles for change today.  

John Lennon said, 
Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
(in) Ev’ryone you meet”  

Instant Karma may not be a real thing, as much as we would like it to be, but he was right in that we had better recognize our brothers and sisters in everyone we meet - treat them with respect and love, and “work for the good of all whenever we have an opportunity,” in order that we might create a world “where love is lived and all is done with justice and with praise”.  (Marian Therese Winter, O For a World, 1987)  In Jesus’ name.

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