Jesus and the Buddha

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St JOHN’S, EAST BENTLEIGH

No tiger, but ... the best I can do

EVE of St JAMES (July 24^th) 1988

 

“Anyone who wants to be great amongst you must be your servant”

 

The Buddha told the following story to one of his disciples:

Once upon a time, long ago, there lived a king who had three sons. They were like young gods to look at.

One day the king was relaxing in a park. The three sons left the king and their servants and wandered around the park together until they came to a large thicket of bamboo. Two of the princes expressed fear of wild beasts – though fear at different levels – but one expressed only excitement and hope at what might befall him in this place.

Asked the Prince strolled about amongst the bamboo they came upon a tigress, surrounded by her five seven-day-old cubs. She was exhausted by hunger and thirst, and unable to hunt for food.

The first brother, who had earlier expressed fear of meeting wild beasts in the thicket, remarked that if the animal did not soon find food she and her Cubs would perish. The second brother, who had earlier expressed not so much the fear of death at the hands of wild animals, but rather the fear of separation in death from those he loved, this brother wondered aloud how the poor animal might find food.

But the third brother cast himself down in front of the tigress so that she might devour him. When she proved to be not strong enough to kill him as he lay there he cut his own throat and collapsed to die at her feet. She devoured him, and received the strength she needed to live and to give life to her cubs.

The Buddha concluded the story,

It was I who at that time and on that occasion was the prince.

 

When the mother of the sons of Thunder came to Jesus seeking greatness for her sons she received an unexpected response. Jesus took the request of the mother of two of his disciples – an entirely reasonable response in his culture – and used it to drive home to his followers A radical message that lies close to the heart of his teachings.

Whoever would be great amongst you must be your servant.

 

It is for our purposes today a happy coincidence that the Buddha in his teachings sought to communicate the same theme, and provided such a vivid illustration of it. The Buddha’s tale, if gory, is hard to misinterpret.

The church that our Lord called to being in the world is a servant church. It is called to serve the world. I hear too little of this as I hear church strategists planning the new way forward into the coming century. We are called to be a servant people. It is not our task to gain a position of power in the community, and from that position to make pronouncements on issues of ethics or morality.

We are called not to remain silent in the face of injustices. We must speak out on behalf of the exploited and the abused. But in order to do that we need not attempt to regain some kind of mediaeval strength. Strength is not the way of the cross. The Crusades slaughtered countless innocents in the name of Christianity, but such is not the way of the cross. American military strategists seek to argue for disarmament from a position of military supremacy, but such is not the way of the cross. The cross is not a symbol of power, in which we should conquer, but rather a sign of powerlessness in which God conquers turning evil to good, tears to joy.

The church, then, is not called to be powerful. It's going to be a servant church imaging for the world the ironic powerlessness of Jesus before Pilate. Like the church, we as Christians are called to announce strategies of power and seek instead to imitate Christ’s outspoken powerlessness. In that way we can begin to be a servant church. We as Christians are called to be Christlike.

We are called to be Christ’s body and blood in the world, like the young incarnation of the Buddha providing our lives to be the food by which those around us may be given life.