Call to Worship
Good morning. Welcome to the second of our Big Answer sermon series. A major theme for our church this year is “The Challenge of Religious Pluralism.” The team ministers are delivering eight sermons on this theme, each relating to one of the major religions of the world, and there are also monthly lectures by religious leaders from the various faiths. And 20 covenant groups are just starting up that give our members and friends the opportunity to meet together monthly to share thoughts and feelings about the Big Answers. We may not agree with all of those answers, but if we are to truly respect and appreciate the various faiths, we must be willing to listen and learn from their messages.
I Believe
by John ZerayWhen William Ellery Channing wrote: " I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith," he could not know about my rather unorthodox path into Unitarian Universalism that began in Afghanistan. My mother is Irish-American and grew up Catholic. My father was from Afghanistan and grew up Muslim. I believe the best gift they have given me is the freedom to choose my religion and to possess a free mind.
The Community Christian Church of Kabul, an interdenominational church, was founded by Dr. Christy Wilson in the 1950s. The church had no Afghan congregants; almost everyone was American. As a young boy I spent virtually every Sunday morning in Sunday school and at Dr. Wilson's services. What I believe today has roots in both Christianity and Islam. Reverend McGee will be talking about Islam today, and so I turn to how Islam may have informed my beliefs. I had not given this much thought in recent years, but my finding the First Unitarian Church at 33rd and Harney in Omaha some 15 years ago was a resolution of the two faiths in a way.
Islam was all around me when I was growing up. My grandmother taught me the Muslim catechism before I was five. I learned that there is no God but God and that Mohammad is His prophet: This simple confession of faith made one a Muslim. "La illaha illallaha," there is no God but God, professes a deity but does not leave room for the concept of the Trinity, and thus the connection to our Unitarian history.
My grandmother, affectionately "Babo," was a devout Muslim. Born in 1903 in Kandahar, she had made the pilgrimage to Mecca with her father when she was seven. She was nearly 60 when I got to know her. She wore a white cotton scarf always, and would put on her glasses when she did her embroidery or when she studied the Quran.
Babo's faith was demanding, for it required that she pray facing Mecca five times every day. Among other reasons it was this physical discipline that made Islam not a choice for me. What I imitated easily as a child of four or five, I did not look forward to as I approached 12, the age it is incumbent upon Muslims to perform the ritual prayers. I would have to kneel and bow and stand and I resisted the idea.
I went to two school systems, attending the local Afghan school during the afternoons and summers when the American International school wasn't in session. About three hours a week we learned about Islam. The language of the Quran is Arabic, and like all the kids in my class I learned to recite portions from memory and later learned how to read the Quran. Tafsir, or the interpretation of what we were reading, was to come in secondary school. This disconnect between rote recitation and comprehension made Islam intellectually inaccessible to me.
But it was the commonality of religious stories between Christianity and Islam that worked my brain and caused me to search for some integration of the two. I did not know the history of the two faiths then, but took quiet comfort in what was in common: Adam, Moses (Moussa), Abraham (Ibrahim), Isaac (Isaak), Ishmael (Ismael), Mary (Mariam), Jesus (Isaa), these names were both in the Bible and the Quran.
Islam has been politicized by some, but political Islam is not the Islam I knew growing up, nor is it the faith of Muslims around the world for whom it is the touchstone for living their lives. In this land we do not hear the muezzin's call to prayer five times every day. In my reflections about Afghanistan I can sometimes hear it, particularly the call at dusk when families came together to break bread and talk to each other. My grandmother taught me by her example: there was strength, modesty, peace, hope, love and charity in her life and in her faith. Those values and virtues, I believe, are a part of me, and belong to all of us as well.
Spoken Prayer & Meditation
A Muslim poet writes these words:
To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people.
It does not need rosaries, prayer carpets, or robes.
All peoples are members of the same body, created from one essence.
If fate brings suffering to one member, the others cannot stay at rest.
Let us join together in the spirit of prayer:
We live in fear.
To fear is part of the human condition,
But we should not have to fear leaving our homes,
Walking on the streets,
Putting gas in our cars,
Going to church.
We should not have to fear a madman hunting down innocent human beings like animals.
We should not have to keep our children indoors.
And we should not have to feel our fear flourish into hatred.
The fear is real, and yet there is something below the fear that gives us strength and courage.
It is the realization that for every act of violence and hatred, there are countless acts of kindness and love.
For every act of greed and selfishness, there are unfathomable depths of generosity and compassion.
For every act of denial and deception, there are untold blessings of honesty and openness.
Let us combat hatred with love, violence with peace, greed with selflessness, and fear with courage.
May we let go of that which diminishes our humanity, and surrender to that which rises out of the center of our being, yearning for and seeking out the joy of fulfillment and wholeness.
Let us now open our minds and hearts to the place of quiet,
to the silent prayer for the healing of pain,
and the soft, gentle coming of love...
Sermon:
The story of Abraham is at the heart of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures. Sarah, who was Abraham's wife, was barren, and so she gave her husband, in accordance with the custom of the time, her handmaid, Hagar, as concubine, in order to provide children. Hagar gave birth to a son, Ishmael, who was very dear to Abraham. But when Abraham was 100 and Sarah 90, God blessed them with a child of their own who was named Isaac.
Sarah and Isaac were jealous of the close relationship between Abraham and Ishmael, and they were fearful that the patriarch would give his blessing to Ishmael since he was the eldest son. One day the nearly blind Abraham attempted to do just that, but Isaac tricked him by pretending to be Ishmael and received the covenantal blessing instead. Isaac went on to inherit Abraham’s wealth as well as his legacy as a great patriarch in Judaism while Ishmael became an outcast and was adopted as the progenitor of the Islamic nations.
This story may sound like a soap opera, but in actuality it represents both the commonality of the three Abrahamic religions as well as their differences. As the scholar, Bruce Feiler, writes in his book called "Abraham":
“The great patriarch of the Hebrew Bible is also the spiritual forefather of the New Testament and the grand holy architect of the Koran. Abraham is the shared ancestor of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He is the linchpin of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is the centerpiece of the battle between the West and Islamic extremists. He is the father--in many cases, the purported biological father--of 12 million Jews, 2 billion Christians, and 1 billion Muslims around the world. He is history’s first monotheist.” [Beliefnet.com]
So what we’re talking about here is a family feud between more than 3 billion people, and it is a conflict that affects all of our lives. As I study these Religions of the Book, I’m continually amazed at their commonality of heritage, beliefs, rituals and customs. But I’m frustrated, as I’m sure you are, that the extremists in all of these religions choose to focus on the insignificant differences they have blown up into causes for terror and war.
In this church and in this series, we are attempting to bridge the gap between these religions by seeking a deeper understanding and a closer relationship with all faiths. As we explore the different religious traditions we should keep in mind the purpose of the religious impulse. The book we are encouraging all Big Answer covenant group members to read and discuss is The World’s Religions by Huston Smith (which is available on our book table). In his preface Huston Smith expresses the relevance of religion in our world. He writes:
“Religion alive confronts the individual with the most momentous option this world can present. It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit. The call is to confront reality, to master the self. Those who dare to hear and follow this secret call soon learn the dangers and difficulties of its lonely journey.”
Fortunately, in this church the religious adventure is not a lonely one, but it is dangerous. As I said last Sunday, we welcome the danger of being a church that has no limits on what we can explore and discuss, a church that confronts all truths and transcends all boundaries.
Last year we discovered that the Big Questions grow out of our anxiety about life and death. One of the biggest questions concerns our fear of death, and today with terrorists and snipers threatening us, we are especially anxious. But the most significant question religion asks of us concerns the meaning of life. We fear, perhaps more than anything, living and dying without a purpose.
We desire some form of transformation that will help us transcend the frustrations and problems of our lives so that we may experience a sense of sacredness and a calling beyond the mundane. Religion gives us hope that we may be able to cope with suffering, loss and loneliness with courage, creativity and compassion.
And yet, it doesn’t always work out that way, does it? What we have today is a mess. We are witnesses to Islamic terrorists attacking and threatening to attack our nation, Jewish and Islamic extremists slaughtering each other in Israel and Palestine, and Christian America on the verge of a second full-scale attack on the Islamic nation of Iraq.
Certainly, much of this fear and hatred is entangled in nationalism and culture, but religion is an inextricable piece of this violent mosaic. Our question is how can such an idealistic calling turn into a motivator for war and terror? How can we so easily use religion as a cause for killing? Let us see how Islam answers those big questions.
Mohammed was born into the hostile and desolate world of the Arabian Desert. At that same time in history the great world religions had spread across much of the earth, but on the arid Arabian Peninsula people worshipped a multitude of gods and spirits that were overseen by the mysterious and magical Allah. No workable ethical system had emerged in this antagonistic environment and the senseless violence and abundant tribal wars made life a precarious commodity.
Mohammed grew up with no formal education, spending his youth herding goats in the desert. By the age of 21, he had become a leader of caravans that traversed the desert between Damascus and Jerusalem. He married the widow for whom he worked, and they had three daughters together.
At the age of 40 Mohammed claimed to be visited by the Angel Gabriel, who commanded him to read from a heavenly scroll and to write the words into a book called the Koran. Mohammed didn't know if he had been called to be a prophet or whether he was going mad, but with the encouragement of his wife he decided to advance the cause of Allah.
Mohammed told his followers that God's revelation to humanity has proceeded through four great stages. First, through Abraham God revealed the truth of monotheism, God's oneness. Second, through Moses he revealed the Ten Commandments. Third, through Jesus he revealed the Golden Rule, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. But a final prophet was needed to teach us how we should love our neighbors, and so the Seal of the Prophets was Mohammed himself.
In the first three years of his ministry Mohammed converted a total of thirty persons to Islam, most of whom were family or friends. The leaders of Mecca condemned and persecuted Mohammed and his followers for threatening the power structure itself. He preached radical egalitarianism and democracy, with every person being equal in the eyes of Allah, no matter how much they possessed.
Like the prophets and Jesus, Mohammed cried out for justice and proclaimed that a Muslim’s duty was to "Feed the hungry, visit the sick, and free the captive if he be unjustly confined. Assist any person oppressed, whether Muslim or non-Muslim."
Finally in 622 Mohammed was forced to move from Mecca to Medina in what is called the “Hegira.” His fame soon spread far and wide and when his outnumbered army defeated an attacking army from Mecca, Mohammed was able to march into the holy city and tear down the idols that had been worshipped for so long. After capturing Mecca the people expected Mohammed to seek revenge by killing his former persecutors, but instead he granted amnesty to all and as a result converted virtually the entire city to Islam.
Two years later Mohammed died, but Islam continued to grow at a spectacular rate. Only a century after his death the faith had spread throughout Palestine, Egypt, Persia, North Africa, Southwest Spain, eastward to the borders of India and into Turkestand, and even France. In fact, exactly 100 years after Mohammed's death a powerful Muslim army was defeated in a bloody battle in Tours, France. If that battle had a different outcome all of Europe and later America could very well be Muslim today.
Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam succeeded in providing the Arabic people with an ethical and spiritual path that vastly improved their lives. Mohammed proclaimed that "...every Muslim is a brother to every other Muslim, and that you are now one brotherhood." Islam taught the Arab people that their family was much greater than their tribe, that they shared a rich commonality with people who lived far distances from them and who were even of different races and tongues.
Mohammed also taught his followers the importance of submitting to the divine. In fact, the Big Answer of Islam is that our selfishness, fear and loneliness can be resolved by surrendering ourselves to Allah. The word Islam is derived from the word salam which means peace, or more precisely “the perfect peace that comes when one’s life is surrendered to God.”
Islam tells us that life is an ongoing battle with ourselves, what they call a jihad. Unfortunately that word has been misused to mean a holy war against unbelievers, but its truer meaning is the struggle within us to implement the divine imperative to the flawed and tragic conditions of life.
Once when Mohammed returned from battle, he said, “We are returning from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.” The meaning is that the greatest challenge for every person is to answer the call to transcend our egotistical selves so that we may do God’s will. Mohammed also established a set of disciplines that would help his followers to surrender to God. These are called the Five Pillars of Islam.
The first pillar is the creed, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet." The belief in one God, as in Judaism and our own Unitarian Universalist tradition, is a denunciation of all kinds of idolatry, and an enthusiastic affirmation of the wholeness and holiness of that nourishing reality which sustains us all.
The second pillar of Islam is prayer. Every Muslim is required to pray five times a day, barefooted, and facing Mecca. The Prophet taught his followers to prostrate themselves on the ground as a way to learn humility. One Muslim described the sustenance of prayer in this way: "If I don't pray my heart is empty. When I pray my heart is still."
The third pillar is the annual period of fasting at the month of Ramadan. A pilgrimage to Mecca at least once during the lifetime of each Muslim is the fourth pillar. And the fifth is the practice of giving to charity. Muslims are required to give 2 1/2 % of one's income and possessions to the poor -- an excellent example for us all.
These five pillars are ways in which Muslims learn to submit to the divine. My question to you this morning is how do we learn to submit to the divine, whatever that word may mean to us – conscience, nature, the ultimate reality, or God?
Isn’t this our spiritual struggle? Don’t you and I constantly wrestle with the shadow of egotism that tempts us to consider ourselves before all others? And don’t we seek in our heart of hearts to let go of those selfish needs and to rely instead on a deeper calling, a vaster wisdom, a sustaining peace?
The Big Answer of Islam is similar to what people learn in Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs. The first three steps of AA are:
1. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol --- that our lives had become unmanageable".
2. "We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity".
3. "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him."
In AA you learn to “let go and let God,” to surrender your smaller self for the larger Self of a higher power.
Karen Armstrong, the author of the book, The Battle for God, as well as other books on the world religions, tells us that all the major religions of the world teach this same truth to one degree or another, that to undergo transformation we must give ourselves over to that which we cannot comprehend.
But all religious institutions are also plagued by those who are addicted to the self and use faith as a way to project their broken personalities onto the sacred. The extremists coop religion by making it serve their petty and prejudiced purposes instead of the greater cause of humanity. They become convinced that God is as narrow-minded and hateful as they are.
The most extreme and dangerous form of projection is to think that “I am God,” as the murderous sniper wrote on the Tarot card. Another extreme form of idolatry is to believe that “I am a personal messenger of God.” I’ve noticed that these messengers seem to always think God is in perfect agreement with their own beliefs. Another obvious projection is to imagine God in our own image. How egotistical can we get!
Religion evolved as a way to help humanity balance our egotistical needs so that it is only a minority of us who are religious extremists and Enron CEOs. At its best, religion teaches us that we are most fully human when we surrender that frightened part of ourselves that seeks to grasp for more power and privilege. When we can do that, then we experience a radical freedom to reach out beyond ourselves with love for humanity. And we are able to experience the divine not as a projection of ourselves but as the Great Mystery of life itself.
Islam, like all religions, has fallen short of its ideals. But at its heart it is a religion of tolerance and acceptance. Karen Armstrong tells of a Sufi philosopher who expressed the most tolerant aspect of Islam by proclaiming that every single person who has ever been born in the world of whatever faith tradition is a unique and unrepeatable manifestation of one of gods hidden secret names, and that therefore every single human being is a unique and unrepeatable revelation of god, each one of us an incarnation of the divine.
I only wish we could all affirm and live out that vision. No matter what our faith, our challenge is to look past the superficial exterior of each other to the kernel of integrity and sanctity within each and every human being. It is the ego that blocks our vision of the sacred, but with the help of the great religious teachers throughout history, and with the support of this spiritual community, we may overcome that egotism and glimpse the divine spark enshrined in every human being.
Amen.
Resources:
The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong.
A History of God by Karen Armstrong.
The World’s Religions by Huston Smith.
A series of lectures on “Religion and Human Nature” by Karen Armstrong delivered at Chautauqua Institution in the summer of 2001.
Questions To Be Considered by Covenant Groups:
What are your feelings about the religion of Islam? What are your feelings based on?
How is your view of the sacred in life obstructed by ego? How have you been successful – or unsuccessful – at overcoming the ego? Do you believe it’s necessary to overcome the ego to be a spiritual person?
How have you – or haven’t you – surrendered to the divine in your life? What does the divine mean to you? Is it your conscience, nature, cosmos, ultimate reality, God? What part does the divine play in your life?
Do the first three steps of the Twelve Step program make sense to you? Have you used them? Would they be useful to you?
How does our congregation help you – or hinder you – in overcoming the ego and surrendering to the divine?
