Passion and Compassion:

Jesus and the Buddha

A Sermon Offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church

March 24, 2002

By Reverend Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Today is also Palm Sunday – the day that Jesus is said to have ridden into Jerusalem on an ass to fulfill a prophecy. The people greeted him along the roadsides waving palm leaves. Jerusalem was his prize, too – the city he circled and desired and dreaded. Whether the story is true to the life of Jesus, what is true is that the city has been a prize for generations. Is it the land of milk and honey? Is it the city of freedom? Of earthly power? Carly Simon wrote:

let all the dreamers wake the nation.. Come, the New Jerusalem – it has kindled desires and fed dreams – but it has also sparked nightmares. It has generation after generation cost so much life – it has too often asked for the first born – as it does today.

And so I ask is this a flaw in the Seder? How can we reverence a place over the people working and struggling to live in it? How can we not see our own faces in every others face? It must be false hunger that generates violence over holy ground. The hunger of Passover and the story that is told over and over must serve the purpose of teaching and enlightening and that can only happen when the Seder is fresh and alive – vigorous and rigorous – when the questions run deeper and tougher, when we open the door to the prophet of redemption and reconciliation and see that he is us and no other.

The New Jerusalem can’t be a bone of contention – it can’t be a place on the map with streets and stores – or if it is any place on the map it must be every place -- every sacred inch of earth.

Growing up I believed the Seder to be an open invitation – after all, the story is in our western roots. And I still believe the Seder is and should be an open invitation – may all who are hungry come and eat, may all who thirst come and drink, may all who yearn for freedom find those who will stand with them for freedom. The New Jerusalem can only come to pass when the celebrations of freedom are both nourishing and demanding – when they offer us sustenance and strength and challenge us to use that strength for all.

Unitarian Universalism is the ground we stand together upon – we are diverse – Unitarian Universalist but also Christian, Jewish, Hindu, humanist, Muslim, Buddhist, pagan… many visions and many origins meeting in this place. The Passover that we would share says that the New Jerusalem is a place in each of us and all of us. It is the place where all of our traditions meet, where they find agreement and mutual affirmation, where we find allies for the journey and helpmeets for the labor. That is true holy ground where we seek freedom, peace, and true nourishment for all. Perhaps our Sunday and Passover are not such odd partners…

There are hungers of the body and hungers of the spirit – hunger because people live in suffering and isolation – hunger because people live without vision and healing. We live with hungers of many kinds – and in part it is a hunger inside each of us that calls us here. So let this morning’s open invitation be a prayer also – that you each that we each heed our wise and real hungers and are not tricked by false ones. Let us together prepare the Seder that will mark this as the place where people are truly preparing and feasting on the most profound nourishment and renewal.

Therefore let our hope be that Next Year the New Jerusalem will be here and every place on earth.