James and the Gita by the Rev. Eva S. Hochgraf Opening Words: from the Bhagavad Gita Part III, The Secret of Work "... there are two roads to the goal you seek. The first of these is the road of Right Thought; and the second that of Right Action. Each road has its travelers, who declare their own road to be the only true one. And yet, I say to you, that both of these roads are one when seen from above." Readings: from James 2: 14-18 and from the Bhagavad Gita, which is an episode in the epic the Mahabharata. It is spoken by Krishna, who is seen as the Great One incarnate, to a man who is poised trying to decide whether or not to take an action. "Rule your actions and thoughts that your motive be Right Doing rather than the Reward which may come from the action. Be not moved by hope or expectation of what may come as the result of your action. But also you must avoid the temptation of Inaction, which comes so often to one who has lost the illusion of the hope of reward for action." "One, who, living in this world, attempts to refrain from action, one, who, enjoying the fruits of action of the acting world, would still shirk from his or her share of the work and the action of the world--one who would in this way idle away his or her life, lives a life most vain and shameful. One who profits by the turn of the wheel, at every moment of his or her life, yet refuses to touch her or his hand to it to impart motion, is a shirker of tasks and a thief who takes, giving nothing in return." "But wise is the one who acts otherwise, and who performs well her or his work of the world, providing, that he or she, be unattached to the fruits there of, and that he or she be centered in the knowledge of the Real Self." "When you rise beyond the plane of illusion, then you’ll cease to disturb yourself regarding doctrines, theology, disputations concerning rites or ceremonies, and other useless trimmings upon the cloth of spiritual thought. Then you’ll be liberated from attachments to sacred books, to writings of learned theologians, or to those who would interpret that which they themselves fail to understand; but instead, you should fix your mind in earnest contemplation of the Spirit, and thus reach the harmony with your Real Self, which underlies all." Sermon: Deep in your center you reach a place of stillness it is hard and firm, strong straight and sure. It is from this place that we can work and our work will be true. It will be for something beyond us and our small view, our personal desires which call to us like a bowl full of chocolate candies. I need a new car, a new computer, more clothes, more books, more toys, more, more. . More is the sin of our time. We define ourselves primarily by how we make money. I’m a lawyer, a real estate agent, a teacher, a social worker, an accountant, a nurse. What if we defined ourselves primarily by how we spent our money. I’m a car owner, house owner, movie go-er, the latest, fastest computer owner. I’m a fancy new running shoe owner, a 23 suit man or a 34 sweater woman. There would be the good side to this labeling--many of you could say I’m a church supporter and a church builder. We live in a consumer society but even though we all know it, somehow saying that we own 16 pair of shoes, to anyone, or 3 cars, or a TV for each room in the house-- all this concrete labeling seems wrong. Perhaps because deep inside we know that it is not our things which give us happiness, at least not true and lasting happiness. Sure there is a rush of excitement at the time you purchase something new. Mostly from the novelty of having something new. It is easy to get addicted to this rush of excitement over novelty and come to view it as actual happiness. But true happiness abides. It comes from connecting deep within ourselves. Reaching down to that which is beyond all this shallow desiring, craving, wanting ... --I think of that part of each of us as the hoarding two year old,-- Beyond to the self which can see a bigger picture and act keeping a firm eye on that view. This is the self that the Gita calls the True Self. And it is doing things from this point of view, that the two roads of faith and action become one road-- echoing those words I spoke first thing this morning. A month or so ago, I got a letter from Population Institute asking me to preach to you on overpopulation issues. At first, I felt kind of flat. What was there to say I thought. I remember when I was a little kid, that every summer my family would spend a week at the county fair running a booth. It was my parents’ cause--ZPG, but I did my best at passing out buttons and bumper stickers. Never heard of ZPG-- it stands for Zero Population Growth. I used to pass out buttons filled with faces and one little thought-bubble emerging from one face, reading only "Gasp!" And although ZPG still exists today, many more people had heard of ZPG back in those days. Their important message--"stop at two!" is well known now by people in this country. Most families do stop at two, a few people have three, there are the occasional family with many kids. But not at all like the families of not-so-long-ago, where 6, 8, 10 kids was quite normal in many circles. So, having gotten the message--and feeling that we really aren’t growing due to birth rates in this country, we have turned our eyes to other things. The issue of Overpopulation has become outdated--like a pair of shoes, still with good leather and a good sole--but heels aren’t the right shape anymore, and toe isn’t either. And wow, that color is definitely from a different time! So like an outdated shoe, relegated to the dusty regions of the back of our closet--the issue of overpopulation lingers far from our daily activities and thoughts. Then I read some of the Population Institute’s materials, and I thought they made some good points. I’ve posted some of it on the bulletin board out back, so you can look at it. But two things called me to do this sermon. The first was their focus for this year, which asks us to do what we can to conserve the resources of the globe given our ever increasing population. The second thing which captured my attention was the need for religious liberals to fight in the political arena against those religious people who oppose all kinds of birth control support that we have been offering people in developing countries. Support that they dearly desire. We are just the people to offer this kind of help. If we will pay attention to this problem. The problem is--the population of the globe is still rising dramatically. Many of the pressing issues which consume our time, our energy, and our money are directly related to the fact that there are just too many people on this planet. Air pollution, water pollution, hazardous wastes, joblessness and homelessness, depletion of the oil reserves, loss of arable farmlands, global warming--all of these things are related to the ever growing number of people on this planet. And our problem is--that unless we join the Peace Corps and go off to teach birth control to people is some other land, we feel there is nothing we can do. And there is nothing like a feeling of helplessness to make people ignore a problem. I had a friend back in college who did that with his car. He knew nothing about cars or how they worked or how to fix them. One day when he was giving me a lift home, I noticed his engine light was on, on the dash. I said something to him--knowing that he wasn’t a wiz with cars, thinking maybe he just didn’t know what it meant. He told me, "yeah I know it on. Its been on for a long time now--and I just don’t worry about it. I had a different light go on once for a while and I just left it alone and didn’t do anything and eventually the light went off. I’m figuring that this one will go away too, if I ignore it long enough." Sometimes we just ignore signs of trouble, even when they are flashing bright red at us--if we just feel like there is nothing we can do. And I think that’s what has happened to the general population of the United States--the red light’s flashing at us, and we just keep saying, "I’m just goin’ keep on driving! I don’t even see you, you big old light!" It is time for us to be leaders. We think of the United States as leaders of the global economy, of the leaders of democracy. We are the leaders it is true. But where are we leading the world? We march on, churning out things to buy and sell, living lives of wealth and privilege by comparison of many in other spots in the world. We march on, driving everywhere we want to go, exhaust and fuel economy forgotten because we can afford the gas and we can’t afford the time to travel any other way, lest our impatient society marches on without us. We are leaders. People all over the world would love to come to America and live our lives. Having health care, so much food, nice houses, pretty clothes, warmth in the winter and cool in the summer, TV’s VCR’s, computers, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers--it sounds like a mythical fairy tale world to most of the world’s population. We are the leaders, they are following us in our consumption. They are trying--in their own way-- "to keep up with the Joneses." We are the Joneses. The question is: do we lead as if we know we are leaders? Have we thought about it at all? When we do, we immediately know that in a world which doesn’t even have enough for everyone to live the good life here in these United States, there surely isn’t enough for the whole population to consume as we do. We know this--yet what to we do? We feel the problem is so immense, we do nothing. What we do do, we do with apology instead of pride. We must begin to act as leaders. Keeping our minds on the bigger picture, of a world population which lives in a way which sustains itself. It is a BIG job. A big job, when you go home and the laundry still needs doing, the kids need to be driven here and there, and you are trying to get a jump start on Christmas this year. So many little things to do. The incessant pace keeps us running blindly without time to question what we do and how to do it differently. No time to hang the clothes out on the line, no time to have the kids bike where they need to be and no time to fight city hall to get buses to run where and when you need them. No time to reeducate the family on having a holiday which isn't’ consumer based. Where has the time gone? Why don’t we have the time to do what we care about? I think its like a treadmill which runs faster and faster. You find yourselves busier and busier, buying more and more, owning more and more, more and more in debt or in need of creating a large income to keep up the lifestyle. Running, running, faster, faster. At some point you just need to jump off the treadmill. Catch your breath, stand there for a while and allow the world, your world to slowly come into focus. Take some time. Take some time to remember the Gita which was written so long ago, to a different people in different time than ours, a different culture. But the message still holds. A spiritual person discerns actions taken for the smaller self, that hoarding two-year-old, from those taken for the Real Self. And when our actions are that of the Real Self, those actions are indeed the same path as our faith. And take the time to remember the book of James. Again words spoken so long ago --probably a sermon to people long gone who’s ways were very alien to us. But in thinking of these people, these Hellenistic people living sometime in the 1st century, we still can see how human they were, (with the same struggles and issues we have) which is wise. Because it reminds us that all our stuff which seems so much a part of our life, which makes us feel like us, is really not at the center of humanity. They didn’t have any of it!! I find comfort in that. Just as I find comfort in tales of travelers to far distant lands, places where people live very close to the edge, have little and live very hard lives--and these travelers always come back with incredible tales of how surprised they were by the laughter, the joy and the warmth of their hospitality shown to them by the people. People with nothing, by our standards. It is comforting to know that people can be fully alive and happy even when they have so little. So what do we need so much for!!! Why can’t we find happiness? Let us remember the book of James that says "what does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works? Can his faith save him?" We can’t not only vaguely believe that one day everything will work out --and then blindly march on, running faster and faster on our treadmills. We must move beyond this vague faith to actively doing what we can in our lifetime to see that our actions match out faith. Perhaps we feel we can’t make a difference. But stranger things have happened. Since I was a child--which wasn’t that long ago by the standards of many of you!--since then some miracles have happened: -the Berlin Wall is down and gone -smoking, once ubiquitous, is now gone from public places, and the tobacco industry is paying out millions in lawsuits; and -institutional racial segregation is gone. Blacks can use public toilets, go to schools, playgrounds, ride in the front of buses. Who would imagine any of these happening? They all seemed so fixed, so solidly in place, so immense! And I’m sure that if asked, you could easily give me some more miracles. But as miraculous as these events seem, we must truly honor the labor by which they were won. Someone, somewhere decided to be a leader. Someone, somewhere stopped running long enough to say, "Wait a minute! This running isn’t getting me where I truly want to be. Deep in my heart, I believe that something must be done." And Rosa Parks sat down on that bus. And we can bet that as the following struggle ensued, the words of James rang in her ears. Let us leave here today with them ringing in our ears. Wise words. Words to live by. Words to lead by. Let us let our faith, our deepest abiding love guide us to act so that our children can look back at our time as truly miraculous. Closing Words: from the book of James 2:17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.