Matthew 22: 34-40; John 13: 31-35
There is a video of the sermon here.
It was late on a Friday afternoon in November of 2005. I was with folks from 23 different nations at a conference at the International Center in Bethlehem – a project of Rev. Mitri Raheb, the Lutheran pastor who some folks here have gotten to know over the years for his work to be an instrument of justice and peace in his native city.
One of the people at the conference was a young woman from Sweden. She was Jewish, so she asked if some of us would like to join her for a Shabbat service to mark the beginning of the Sabbath – that time from sundown on Friday until Saturday evening.
We gathered in the parish hall of Christmas Lutheran Church, where Mitri was the pastor. I held hands with a Palestinian Christian who was born in Bethlehem who now is a German citizen. He read a Psalm – a Jewish prayer – in Aramaic. As we sang a Christian Taizé hymn in Swedish for this traditional Jewish family service, the Muslim chant for the call to prayer rang out from the mosque down the street.
Here we were in the Holy Land – a site of religious wars across the centuries – joining the prayers of three faith traditions in this special moment. None of us were giving up our own beliefs. All of us were respecting the beliefs and prayers of each other. All of us recognized that there is more than one way to understand the divine being we call God.
The people of this region know the stories of those who would kill others who do not follow their God. They also know the stories of those who have tried to reach across the religious divides with respect, building relationships that can transcend those divides.
Folks here at Christ Presbyterian know what it is like to get over those religious divides. When we work with people who have come to Madison from around the world, we encounter the many faith traditions they bring with them.
We have worked closely with Jewish Social Services on helping to resettle a family from the Democratic Republic of the Congo this month. And connections we have with various members of the Jewish community in town mean that we can take note of their high holydays that begin tonight with Rosh Hashanah.
So we as a congregation have some experience in this. But that does not mean that we have it all figured out – either as individuals or as a community of God’s people.
We know from what we see around us and what we read about the wider world that a variety of religious traditions encounter each other in new ways. We know that the dominance of Christianity in the U.S. has diminished some in recent decades. About 64 percent of Americans now identify as Christian.
While the largest group of people who do not identify as Christian are those who say they are not affiliated with any faith tradition – that’s about 30 percent of all adults – there are growing groups of people identifying with faiths like Islam or Buddhism, Judaism or Hinduism, and many more. That’s about 6 percent of the current U.S. population.
Globally, of course, Christians and Muslims are the dominant groups, followed by Hindus, Buddhists and Jews.
So we live in a religiously pluralistic world. The question is how do we live as faithful followers of Jesus without giving up what we believe while still respecting and learning from the beliefs of others?
When Eboo Patel was a young man, he had a chance to meet the Dalai Lama. I think his experience is useful to help us realize that to respect and honor other people’s faith traditions does not mean we have to give up our own.
Eboo grew up the son of Indian parents in a Chicago suburb. He was raised as a Muslim, spent time as college student working at a Catholic Worker house in Champaign, Illinois, explored Buddhism, was best friends with a Jewish man named Kevin. The two of them traveled to India and immersed themselves in the rich culture and pluralistic religious scene of that nation. And they had a chance to meet the Dalai Lama.
Like Eboo, Kevin had studied Buddhism, but then was reconnecting with his Jewish roots. The Dalai Lama said to him: “Judaism and Buddhism are very much alike. You should learn more about both and become a better Jew.”
Then the Dalai Lama turned to Eboo and Eboo was getting nervous. He really had no particular religious identity at this point, although he was seeking one. How could he tell the Dalai Lama that he was a failure at trying Buddhism? He could not meditate the way he thought he should.
“You are a Muslim,” the Dalai Lama said to Eboo, having been clued in ahead of time.
Eboo swallowed hard. “Yes,” he said, as the Dalai Lama giggled at his obvious discomfort.
“Islam is a very good religion,” the Dalai Lama said. “Buddhists and Muslims lived in peace in Tibet for many centuries.”
They talked awhile longer and then the Dalai Lama said this to Kevin and Eboo: “Religions must dialogue, but even more, they must come together to serve others. Service is the most important. And common values, finding common values between different religions. And as you study the other religions, you must learn more about your own and believe more in your own.”
The organization that Eboo founded – Interfaith America (formerly known as the Interfaith Youth Core) – is built on those principles, learning while serving together, respecting each other as you delve deeper into your own tradition.
I have found as I have developed relationships with people from other faith traditions – and relationships are really the key here – that I have had to clarify my own understanding of Christianity in order to be able to discuss it with them.
Here’s one example. Muslim friends will be puzzled over the notion that Christians say that we, like Muslims, only worship one God. They say you really talk about worshipping three gods. They are not referring to the Packers, the Badgers and the Bucks. They are talking about the Christian idea of the Trinity.
For a lot of Christians, the idea of the Trinity – three persons in one God to use the traditional terminology – is hard enough for us to understand on our own. Now try to explain it to someone who thinks we are not really being true to what we profess about worshipping only one God.
Don’t worry – I am not going to go into a theological deep dive about the Trinity right now. It’s a great topic to explore. My point here is that my conversation with Muslim friends pushed me to dig deeper into my own faith tradition.
Those scripture readings we heard this morning from the Gospels according to Matthew and John contain some of the central messages of Jesus. “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” the Pharisees asked Jesus.
He had lots of Jewish laws to choose from. He had to navigate the divisions among Jews of his era about mattered most. Love God, he told them. And love your neighbor as yourself.
Not just your family. Not just your Jewish neighbor. He told the story of the Samaritan being a good neighbor to a Jewish victim. He offered living water to a Samaritan woman at a well. So love those beyond your immediate community of believers.
And then at that Passover meal with his closest followers on the night before he was executed, Jesus told them “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” He wanted them – he wanted us – to follow the model he had given them.
Some of our fellow Christians in our time are not doing so well at that. We have seen the growth of Christian nationalism that conflates religion and politics in dangerous ways. We have seen the attacks on places worship – the Sikh gurdwara in Oak Cree, Wisconsin; the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; the burning of mosques and the churches of Black congregations.
Animosity among religious believers is not new, of course. There were those Crusades in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition in Spain, the religious wars in Europe, the troubles in Northern Ireland, the battles between Hindus and Muslims in India and on and on.
But we do not have to let that animosity define how we will live as followers of Jesus. We can embrace his ethic of love for neighbor and reach out across the religious boundaries that get in the way.
In Omaha, the Tri-Faith Initiative has brought together a church, a synagogue and a mosque on 38-acres of land as a place for interfaith learning, collaboration and celebration. They define their work in these words: “Together, we offer antidotes to fear and hate. We connect interfaith neighbors in community, nurturing relationships. We cultivate trust and understanding, celebrating religious differences.”
Ten days ago at the White House Summit on Hate, the work of Eboo Patel and Interfaith America were cited for their Nation of Bridgebuilders project, launched in partnership with Habitat for Humanity and the YMCA.
Madison’s own Masood Akhtar – a Muslim leader here - was honored at the White House for his efforts with the local organization he created, We Are Many – United Against Hate.
On a global scale, look at what happened at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral last Monday.
There was no doubt that this was a service steeped in Christianity. The queen – and now the king – after all have as one of their titles “Defender of the Faith.”
But back in 2012, Queen Elizabeth had this to say: “Gently and assuredly, the Church of England has created an environment for other faith communities and indeed people of no faith to live freely…In the course of the last 70 years we have seen our society become one of many cultures and many faiths.”
This is a nation where Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs now have a significant presence. And you could see that under the vast ceiling of Westminster Abbey. There was a procession of religious representatives that entered ahead of the main funeral party - Jews, Baha’is, Jains, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus, as well as the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth and a high-level representative of Pope Francis.
There are, in other words, good things happening in the midst of the religious tensions in our world. And that leaves the question, what might we do?
As I noted at the beginning, folks here at Christ Presbyterian are already doing a lot. This is not a new concept for us here.
As individuals, we might look for ways we can connect locally with people from other faith traditions. Keep your eyes open for those opportunities. You can share stories and find places where we have shared values without glossing over the differences that may exist among our beliefs and our practices. There are books, there are videos, there is music.
And speaking of music, here’s a personal note. On Sunday evening, Oct. 23, here at Christ Pres, my friend Michael Bryant are I are going to be doing a multifaith program of word and song called “One Light, Many Candles.” This was created by Betty and Noel Paul Stookey and we have adapted it with their guidance for our community. Watch for details in the weeks ahead.
Notice that none of this involves trying to convince people of other faiths to become Christians. Our job, after all, is not to make God in our image but to find God’s image in all those human beings who are part of God’s creation.
Let me end back where I began – in Bethlehem, in the heart of one of the world’s long-standing and intense places of religious conflict.
At the beginning of the international conference, about 200 of us marched through the streets of Bethlehem on a windy, drizzly night carrying candles that we struggled to keep burning – an apt symbol of the fragility of this work.
The procession was led by drummers and the leaders of the main Christian religious traditions in the city. We moved from Christmas Lutheran Church to the Greek Orthodox Church to the Syrian Orthodox Church to the entrance of the Omar Mosque, where the imam greeted the Christians who account for only about a quarter of the population of Bethlehem had come in solidarity with the Muslims of that city.
We ended at St. Catherine's Church, the Roman Catholic facility next to the Basilica of the Nativity. The crowd joined the religious leaders arrayed across the sanctuary in reciting the Lord's Prayer, each in the language of their homeland. All the candles now glowed with hope as we sang the Latin words, "Dona nobis pacem" -- give us peace.
That is our challenge, my friends. To love our neighbors as Jesus told us. To let that love break down the barriers and the injustices of the world to bring peace to all.
Amen.
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