More on karma

This week I was lucky enough to beat a sermon into creation…

… addressing the pervasive idea we have in our culture that our actions in this life create the circumstances of our lives.

The idea goes that we get what we deserve and that the more righteous we are, the more present blessings will be in our lives. The flipside being that those who do evil eventually get paid back for the evil they inspire around them.

I say that I beat a sermon into creation because that really is how it goes sometimes. Sometimes I am able to open a blank document and words fall out of my head. I have a hard time sleeping Saturday night because I am so excited to share what has been laid on my heart. My outline is to the team by Wednesday morning and I get excited to share it with you all.

And then there are weeks like this where I feel like the sermon is coming to me but it’s being shouted over very loud music. I get every fifth word and when I try to fill in the blanks, I can tell that I am getting it wrong. It’s like being at a concert and Amanda is asking me “to go buy her a water” but I just know she is saying, “Mo is driving your mother!” Who is Mo? Where is my mom going?

And that is what the sermon writing process was this week.

Because I am not entirely convinced we know what we want to believe on karma. We read Psalm 94:

“The Lord is a God who avenges.

O God who avenges, shine forth.

Rise up, Judge of the earth;

pay back to the proud what they deserve.

How long, Lord, will the wicked,

how long will the wicked be jubilant?

And then I hear on the news that 2 kids got killed at a Catholic school in Minnesota and I find myself whispering much worse than the psalm.

But then we also read Matthew 5:

“You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.”

I want the Psalms. I don’t want the Beatitudes.

When I asked on social media what people think about karma, I got brilliant, honest responses. One friend wrote, “Karma is fairness without justice.” That rang true. When I want karma, I want the one at fault to suffer. I don’t care about repairing.

The only way I had an actual sermon to preach was the last line of the fifth chapter of Matthew:

Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

It’s not even about justice so much as it is about being complete. You see, the torment and destruction I desire to be visited upon my enemies— or more realistically the people who keep hurting kids or creating a political climate where neither side wants to help this insanity cease— is actually just ripping me apart.

There’s a saying from AA that speaks to me in moments like this:

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison, hoping the other person will die.

I don’t mean that quippy line to solve anything.

I think I just have to hear it sometimes because I keep being miserable in the judge’s chair.

Because that is the reality of karma. For every damnation I put onto someone else, I end putting more onto myself. I end up critiquing and seeing more and more of the ways that I have failed.

The karma of hinduism is more akin to a weight that a person carries that they spend their whole lives trying to work off. In some ways, karma is like a mortgage that takes a whole life to pay.

And that’s not what the Gospel offers us. Instead, the Gospel offers us wholeness. Completeness. Not that we need to put our lives together like a broken vase but instead that our lives have already been put back together through Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.

So I plan to let karma aside and instead allow Christ to put me back together. One moment at a time.