Sermon: Enlightenment Guaranteed
“Enlightenment
Guaranteed” is a film I saw a number of years ago. It was in German with English subtitles, and
another minister told me this week she saw it as well, but with Japanese
subtitles. It’s about two brothers –
Gustav and Uwe, who journey together from Germany to study at a Zen monastery
in Japan in a quest to sort out the mess of their lives and find themselves.
The brothers
are very different. Gustav – a loner,
has always been burdened with a sense of not being enough and the journey to
the monastery is something he has been planning for some time. Uwe – who is married when we meet him, begs
to be taken along only at the last minute, when his wife and children suddenly
leave him because of his emotional coldness.
For him, the journey is a desperate escape from his sudden loneliness.
When the
brothers make it to the monastery the physical
and spiritual discipline of the place affects each of them in different and unexpected
ways.
But
it’s the journey to the monastery that really is the subject of the movie, and
the catalyst of enlightenment in both the brothers’ lives. Their first night in Tokyo they go out
drinking, get lost, can’t find a way back to their hotel, also lose their wallets,
credit cards and ID, and end up without their clothes, money or identity sleeping
in boxes on a street in a city with a language and a culture that makes them
totally alien and powerless. And it’s this
– the discipline of life as it is, the spiritual discipline of loss and
helplessness as it overtakes them, that really brings them to the spiritual
transformation and opening that they need.
The
message seems to be, stay around life long enough and enlightenment is
guaranteed.
In my
own life, I know my difficulties and disasters of the past few years are what’s
giving me the chance now to learn things about myself and God and what I am and
can be, that I wish I had been able to learn 20, 30 or even 40 years ago. And instead of living in that regret , to
live instead in gratitude for where I am now, and what I am now finally able to
learn.
Stick
around long enough, and enlightenment is guaranteed. Or so we like to think, anyway. It’s the best case scenario, and the ancients
believed it firmly.
In the
Semitic tradition – in the faith of the Hebrews and then also of Christians and
Muslims, it’s expressed in some of the teaching of the Old Testament – that God
is in charge of the world as a righteous judge and will not be mocked, that
even if evil, greed and willful blindness seem to triumph for a while, in the
end they will be undone and what is right and true – and those who are right
and true, will be vindicated. We see it
in our reading this morning, when God’s Wisdom says of those who refuse to
follow her ways:
Because they hated knowledge
and did not choose the fear of the
Lord,
would have none of my counsel,
and despised all my reproof,
therefore they shall eat the fruit of
their way
and be sated with their own devices.
For waywardness kills the simple,
and the complacency of fools destroys
them;
but those who listen to me will be
secure
and will live at ease, without dread
of disaster.
In
other words, what goes around comes around.
Your sins will find you out. As
Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some
of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc
of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Abraham
Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. truly believed those things. That’s why they were the leaders and
re-shapers of society that they were.
It’s why what they did and said are worth being remembered.
But many
people today, including many of our leaders and cultural icons, are not so sure
about the moral arc of the universe – about the sureness of people being found
out in their sins – about evil, greed and willful blindness having their day
and then being punished – about the justice and morality of something beyond
personal interest really mattering– about good always being rewarded and vindicated
in the end.
We see
too many people getting away with too many things for too long a time. We wonder if there is a moral universe at all
– maybe the universe is simply and only what we decide to make of it, no matter
the suffering it usually means for other people, other creatures, and even
Earth itself.
Hindus
have long believed in karma and reincarnation – that somewhere along the way, you
get what you deserve – you reap what you sow, and what you don’t reap and learn
from in this life you get chances to learn in new lives more in keeping with your
character over and over again until you finally achieve enlightenment.
I
wonder if that’s what the traditional Catholic teaching of purgatory is also about
– that whatever deadly sins of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and
gluttony – in other words, whatever dominant characteristics of our culture we don’t purge
ourselves of in this life, we have time to get burned out of us after death. Suddenly purgatory seems like a gracious
thing.
But
the Bible overall seems more interested in inviting us to be cleansed and enlightened
in this life, to be among those who walk and live with God’s Wisdom in this
world for the good of others, for our own good, and for the good of planet
Earth as a whole.
Gerhard
von Rad, one of the more notable Old Testament scholars of the last century,
once described the Hebrew idea of Wisdom as “primeval world order” – or as the
basic way the world is meant to work if it’s to be any good at all, and reflect
in any way the original and good intent of God in making it. And it’s that with which the Bible calls us
to live in harmony – to learn to live in accord with the way the world and all
its creatures are meant to be in Earth’s original glory.
In the
end that’s what it’s about. As Evelyn
Underhill says, “the object of our salvation [-- the point of why we even bother
to be disciples] is God’s glory, not our happiness.”
So we
read in Isaiah 50 of the servant of God – whoever it is at different times,
being willing to be taught by God, morning by morning listening for what God
has to say and not rebelling against it, throughout his (or her) life following
the way God reveals, and in that commitment finding the strength to stand up to
whatever ridicule, opposition and even persecution may come – because in the
end is there any other way of living, worth living?
We
believe this is the way Jesus lived, and the way he calls us to live as well in
his name and in his spirit.
Not
everybody is ready to accept that invitation.
Probably there are more than we think, or than we count as being
faithful to God’s way.
But
it’s never a matter of numbers.
The
only real question is whether I am willing at this stage of my life with who I
am and what I have, to learn what God and life and the world are trying to
teach me about honest and faithful living.
The
longer I live, do I accept the discipline of life and the disasters of loss and
helplessness that come my way, to come to whatever enlightenment still eludes
and awaits me, but is guaranteed?
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