TonioTimeDaily

"We are in the Christian season of Lent, a good time to talk about Jesus. My sermon title, “How Buddhism Saves Jesus,” is meant to be both serious and somewhat provocative.

I know some people who would immediately react, “Jesus doesn’t need saving; Jesus is the one who saves us all.” Many Christians believe that Jesus, by dying on the cross, saves those who believe, so we might go to heaven and avoid hell. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I don’t believe we need to be saved from a God who will punish us for billions upon billions of years, in fact for all of eternity. What kind of God would punish us forever for things we may have done in a mere ninety years here on earth? That would not be justice.

In our UU tradition, the Universalists were historically the “no hell” church. They said that a loving and just God would not create a torture chamber called hell, and then create people so flawed that we needed to be sent there. The Universalists said that sin is like an illness; it should be healed, not punished. That makes more sense to me than a God who would set up a system in which many people, created in God’s image, have to be punished for eternity.

So I’m not talking about that kind of salvation. Yet I do believe that we need a kind of saving, here on earth, in this lifetime. To me, “salvation” – which is related to the word “salve,” a balm for healing – salvation means healing ourselves and the world, which we do by living a life that is not self- centered or self-absorbed, but is a life of loving-kindness and compassion. And that, in fact, is very close to the Buddhist idea of enlightenment."

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