Month: March 2016

Today is one of those days when people are saying, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  We’ve heard it said before.  To hear it said once is already to have heard it said too many times, I suppose.  Because people only ask for mercy when bad stuff is going down.  If we were wise and a bit more caring towards ourselves and others than maybe we’d ask for mercy before the water’s already passed over the dam.  But that’s a big MAYBE.  If we were good students of history and honest enough to know our own tendencies than we’d never assume that what’s been done before can’t be done again and we’d ask for mercy in the morning, before our feet ever hit the floor.  “Lord, in your mercy, keep me from being stupid and mean towards anyone and everything today.”  Most of the time, however, the prayer comes after we’re already down on our hands and knees with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water, trying to scrub away the proof of whatever has just been done.  Today is one of those days.

This morning, after hearing again the news of the shooting in Brussels, Belgium—dozens dead and hundreds injured; ISIL has claimed responsibility—I clicked off the television.  My head was spinning, my heart raging, and I needed a reality check, a dose of sanity.  Naturally I signed on to my Facebook page.

Perhaps I ought to have been comforted by what I read there.  Where you can post an answer to the question, What’s on your mind? a goodly number of my friends had plastered the simple prayer, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  For 600 years, if not more, these words have been the trusting, crying response of many a nation, many a church, many a spirit-filled community.  In the face of indescribable, illogical human suffering at the hands of madmen; from the gas chambers of Treblinka to the bean fields of Rwanda; at the front of the line in Birmingham to the back of the line in Yuma; “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer,” has been our greatest last ditch effort to see the will of God done on earth as in heaven.

Like I said, perhaps I of all people should have been comforted by these words.  After all, I am a Minister, a man of the cloth, a seer of things not yet seen.  Why then did these words feel only and suddenly like an exercise in futility to me?

On the drive to work I called my friend, Bob.  “What’s the point?  What good does it do any of us to ask for mercy after the dirty deed has been done, after the innocents have been blown to pieces?  It seems to me that mercy has a shelf life.”  Bob told me to walk gently and to put my stick down.  “As for the rest, I’ll have to get back to you,” which is what he usually tells me.

I went about my day determined to follow Bob’s advice.  I visited with patients who were dying of cancer, or old age, or both.  I played my guitar for them.  One 99 year old lady who had an oxygen tube sticking up each of her nostrils sang a verse of Amazing Grace with me.  I sat beside a Catholic man who asked me to pray in his language.  We said, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.”  But silently I confessed that it felt too late.

On my way home from work I turned the radio up loud and then shut it off completely.  I wondered about my friends on Facebook.  What do they know anyway?  Are they just like crazy old Abraham, with a faith in God so preposterous that he would serve up his own flesh and blood on a plate of sacrifice just because God says to?

When Søren Kierkegaard sat down to reflect on the call of God to Abraham—“Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountaintop in Moriah”—it’s said that Kierkegaard got up again.  I mean, we all know what’s at the trail’s end!  Hell, Abraham knows what’s at the trail’s end!  He will stack the wood that Isaac has carried and that Isaac will now be hogtied to.  He will pull a knife from his pouch and raising it to the sun he will thrust it decisively into Isaac’s veins.  And despite Isaac’s question, “Father, where is the lamb for a burnt offering,” and despite Abraham’s inspiring answer, “God himself will provide a lamb,” Abraham gives us no sign that he isn’t fully prepared to end his own son, that he doesn’t believe Isaac is God’s lamb.  In his heart and mind, as in my own, the deed is already done.  There is, therefore, no prayer begging, “Lord, in your mercy…,” for what could mercy do now that mercy hasn’t not done already?

In his treatise, unavoidably entitled, Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard concludes about Abraham that if, on the verge of action, he had judged himself according to the outcome, he never would have even set out from his house that day.  “Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and it is not the result that makes him a hero.  It is the virtue of the fact that he began.”

So, pulling into my driveway, I tried not to think about the results of the day thus far, which, given the day’s production, was a very difficult thing to do.  (Really, I felt it would be enough to not be paralyzed by certain thoughts.  To not think about those whose lives had been wiped off the map in Brussels, to not wrap my heart strings around the families that have been so violently deflated of love now, to not risk compassion for the killers and hope peace for their children, to ignore the fear and paranoia that lately looms heavy in all our neighborhoods, felt unnecessarily pitiless on my part, humanly disdainful.)  I would try to be virtuous and begin again.

My son, Rowan, was waiting for me on the front porch steps.  As soon as he heard the car click into park he came running over to open my door for me.

“Will you play basketball, baseball, street hockey, and soccer with me?”

A freak spring snowstorm three days ago had grounded him inside for two days and he was determined to make up for lost time.  Today was sunny, a balmy 62 degrees outside.  We were going to do it all.

Street hockey came first.  I tried just standing in place and smacking the ball back and forth between us, but he insisted we both run around the driveway like we were two teams caught in an epic showdown for world domination.

“What team are you?” he wanted to know.  I picked The Mighty Ducks.  Mind you, I don’t think they’re an actual hockey team, but for a 4 year old, they were the absolute right pick.

“Who are you?” I asked him.  “The Mighty Squirrels,” he declared.

After digging the ball out from underneath the car and chasing it down the street a few dozen times, I suggested maybe he could take a turn playing ball boy.  He didn’t much care for my suggestion and we promptly moved on to soccer.

Again, standing still was not an option.  Fortunately, however, falling down was.  Who knew that in soccer, running after the ball and scoring goals isn’t always necessary, or at all?  Sometimes, most of the time, running in circles and throwing yourself into the net is the way to win.

After realizing we had more grass stains than we have Spray ‘N Wash for I strongly suggested we try out basketball.  “Want to go for a walk instead?”  Rowan asked me.  He grabbed his scooter and I hopped on my bike.

Going down our street, whenever we went by a driveway with any speck of incline to it, Rowan would turn in and start pushing uphill.  The first time he did it I scolded him, “Rowan, that’s not our driveway.  You can’t just ride up other people’s driveways.”  “But I have to,” he retorted.  “It’s a hill.”  As if to declare, what good is a hill if you’re not going to go up and down it?  “Besides,” he went on, “when I go for walks with Grampy in his neighborhood he lets me ride down every driveway, and Grampy has no arms!”  It was the first time in more than 2 years that he’d used Bernard’s handicap to his advantage.  I got his point though.  Who’s going to argue with an armless man?

There is only one road through our neighborhood.  To get back home Rowan and I would have to go back the same way we came.  There’s no loops or shortcuts back to the beginning, which also means that the small hill at the end of our street—the one that makes the prospect of heading out on your scooter so exhilarating—that same hill is going to be there on your return trip.  Now for you or me it’s a hill not worth mentioning, but if you’re 4 and on your scooter, it goes on forever and ever.  And because Rowan knows the hill is going to be there (we’ve been down this road before), he doesn’t even bother to take it on.  He just stops his scooter at the bottom and keels over in a pathetic display of yammering.

“Rowan, don’t do this.  It’s a hill, not a mountain,” I plead.  I remind him of the 12 other hills he’s already gone up and down today and then say something like, “You know, if you’re going to go down a hill, you’re also going to have to go back up it at some point.”  From his perch on the curb he shoots me a look that makes it clear he thinks I am ridiculous.

Under my breath I mutter a version of a prayer I thought I had all but given up on.  “Good Lord, have mercy.”

Does mercy have a shelf life?  It turns out, after all, that mercy does not.  There is never a bad time to ask for mercy.  And more than this—the best time to ask for mercy is after the dirty deed has been done.  When all our disappointment and anger over what mercy could’ve done and should’ve done has played out, and we see just how ugly we’ve become, we turn to find mercy is still with us, and we pray.

“Lord, for the mercy of sunshine and soft breezes and safe neighborhoods and scooters and resting curbs, we thank you.  Please hear our prayer.

Lord, for the mercy of hope, of a light just waiting to be flicked on in the darkness, of a shattered world that can be built anew, and the part we can play in making it so, we thank you.  Please hear our prayer.”

I hoisted Rowan onto my shoulders and told him he’d have to hold himself there.  With one hand I picked up his scooter, with the other hand I pushed my bike, as up the hill we went, headed for home.

Recently my friend Becky wrote me to say she’s heard that Christians and Muslims both belong to the family tree of Abraham.  She’s also heard that Allah, the God of Muslims, is not the same God Christians worship.  “Which is it?” she asked.  “Same family, different gods?  Same God, estranged family?  Or something else all together?  I read a bit, I go to church, I’ve been watching some of the presidential news coverage lately.  Can you shed some light for me?”  With no disrespect to the light, here is my response…

Dear Becky,

Off the cuff, I would have to ask a follow-up question to anyone who is asking your question.  My question is: “What do you personally stand to gain or lose if the God of Muslims and the God of Christians is the same God?”  Notice my question isn’t, “…the God of Islam and the God of Christianity…”  Islam and Christianity are the names of religions, neither of which have gods.  Religions have their traditions and customs and buildings, and to whatever degree we treat these like they are our gods, we give religion a god and even make religion our God.  But religion has no god.  And we know this is true because God has no religion.  God has people.  In the Old Testament of the Jews, in the Koran of the Muslims, and in the New Testament of Christians, God calls and claims a people, not a religion.  In all our effort to get a hold of this God who has already taken hold of us, we form and fashion things that are more conceivable and manageable to us, things that will help us actually wrap our heads and hearts around God, things like buildings and hymnals and prayer rituals and holy meals, and we call these things…religion.  These are not inherently wrong or unhelpful things.  Quite to the contrary, they are some of my favorite things.  The distinction between Christians and Christianity and between Muslims and Islam is an important distinction, however.  It exists along a razor thin edge, because obviously the world would not have Islam without Muslims or Christianity without Christians.  For me, the distinction is important for several reasons, not least of which is that to reject a religion is to reject an idea, or at best, an ideal.  It is to get up from the table without taking a bite and to walk away still hungry.  It may also be to reject those buildings and hymnals and prayer rituals.  But to reject Christians or Muslims or Jews is to reject people.  I’m not sure we ever think of ourselves as rejecting each other.  Most of the time we simply think of ourselves as being one thing—Christian or Jewish or Muslim—and not something else—Christian, Jewish, or Muslim.  We simply don’t know anyone who is both Christian and Muslim (at least I don’t), and so our choosing of one over another is a harmless distinction.  But then comes your question asking if the God of Muslims is the same as the God of Christians and the line separating the two indeed becomes razor thin.

I don’t know much, and certainly not enough, about Islam.  I don’t know in any definitive ways what the differences are between the God of Muslims who is called Allah and the God of Christians.  Is Allah the only name Muslims use for God?  As you and I refer to a Trinity and speak of one God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or speak of God as a human being named Jesus who was also called Teacher, Master, Lord, and Heretic, do Muslims call their God only Allah?  I do know that the word “Elohim,” translated, Lord God, in the Old Testament is translated, “Allah,” in Arabic and that Arab Christians refer to God as Allah.  And Wikipedia, which I don’t usually trust fully but in this instance am going to, says the top name Muslims give to their God is, The Compassionate.  This little bit to say that name-calling never seems to be sufficient help for distinguishing between two things.

Biblically speaking, it’s hard to refute that in the beginning, as in the end, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all belong to the same God.  Now this too is an important use of words—Christians, Jews, and Muslims all belong to the same God.  This is not the same thing as saying that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all claim to believe in the same God or that we all treat each other like we were spawned by the same merciful and loving God or that we all think of ourselves as worshiping the same God.  But, returning to my earlier point, God claims a people, because what God desires is love and what that requires is a people, particularly a people who love kindness, do justly, and walk humbly.  It may be, and this is my greatest hope, that regardless of our acceptance of each other, in the end we will be surprised to discover that if God cares about how, where, and what we believe, our beliefs will be measured not by how well we defended them but by how gracious we were towards those who questioned and disagreed with them.

Abraham was a Hebrew.  His firstborn son Ishmael, born through slave-woman Hagar, would later be claimed by Muslims.  Isaac, though born second, took precedence over Ishmael.  As Christians we trace the lineage of Jesus back to Abraham, passing not through Ishmael but through Isaac.  That this is the way the Genealogy of Matthew 1 reads is what it is.  What we as Christians in particular need to be aware of, however, is the possible implications involved with any genealogy—that they create in our minds pecking orders and competition.  Do Christians think of themselves as being better than Muslims?  Do Christians treat Muslims like they are better than them?  I’m not necessarily speaking of all Christians in all times here.  But the fact is, the Crusades were engineered by a deadly mixture between Christians and the law leading to the decimation of thousands of Jews and Muslims.  History has argued, and will continue to do so, that Jews and Muslims provoked Christians to the Crusades.  Whatever the cause and effect however, we ought to insist that the punishment far outweighed the crime.  My point is this, regardless of what the history books say about the Crusades and who did what; regardless of what the media and politicians say today about the refugee crisis in Syria and whether the U.S. is less sympathetic towards those refugees because they are Muslim and we are a so-called “Christian” nation; regardless of any of this, nothing can light the path to peaceable and just relations between Christians and Muslims more than our own individual response to each other.

How different might Christian-Muslims relations look today—how different would our world look today?—if we let go of the premise that only one of us worships the one, true God?  What if our starting block was that Christians and Muslims all belong to the same, one, true God, who in the end will claim us all in love and grace?  How would we listen to each other and seek to understand each other even more now if we believed that in the end, God is going to sit us all down at the same family table anyway?  This has never been easy for us to do.  I know that I tend to put agreement and shared belief ahead of unity, and these are good and beautiful ideals, but I just can’t come to a point of saying that I believe God requires them for salvation.  The Christian Gospel proclaims that we do not choose our own salvation, let alone the salvation of others.  No unity that we can either formulate or enforce—be it the unity of a shared confession or a common church or religion—can be our salvation.  Our salvation is in God who renews all creation and makes all things one.  Our holy task is to participate in this renewal.

At the heart of the Jewish and Christian scriptures is the declaration: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one,” from Deuteronomy 6.  Second to this may be this declaration: “And Abraham believed the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness,” from Genesis 15.  I always pause when I read this.  I want to ask, how did Abraham believe?  Was it easy for him to believe or nearly impossible?  Did he have a lot of faith or a pitiful amount of it?  Because we’re told that it was his believing that made him righteous.  Apparently he didn’t have to answer any questions or recite any creeds or agree to abide by the polity and discipline of any synagogue or church.  He believed God and God reckoned that made him righteous.  I firmly believe that inherent to the Christian faith is the belief that all things come from one God and all things return to one God.  On that day of great returning will God judge us?  Yes, the Bible is pretty clear on this point.  Biblical judgment, however, means most simply that God will set things straight again.  Perhaps it also means then that on that day we will all show up at the Pearly Gates and looking around at who is there with us we’ll have to confess first and only all that we didn’t believe, all that we denied was ever possible, and God, who is a merciful judge, will set us straight not by turning us away but by asking us, “Do you believe me now?”  And it won’t be too late for us to believe God and to be made righteous.

It has always been easier for us as Christians to accept that we and the Jews belong to and worship the same God.  We have of course believed this despite our detestable treatment of the Jews during World War II.  But I think we’ve found it easier to accept the premise that we belong to the same God as the Jews because we love our Bible so much and our Bible says clearer than clearly that God has not given up on his covenant with the Jews, that they were and are God’s first love.  I don’t know if we think of it this way, but if we reject the Jews than we reject our Bible, and I think we are less prone sometimes to rejecting our Bible, and especially the New Testament part of it, than we are to rejecting our own Jewish brothers and sisters.  What I can’t figure though is why—if we accept this particular truth regarding the Jews—why don’t we as Christians also accept it for the sake of Muslims?  For again, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all fall like fruit from the same tree of Abraham.  Put another way, what makes it so difficult, and even reprehensible to some Christians, to think that we belong to and worship the same God as Muslims?  This is a theological grace we’re willing to extend to Jews.  Why not stretch out the hand a little farther?  For what we really must remember is that we were not the first twinkle in God’s eye, that truly the hand that reached out to pull us into the family of God was not a Christian one, but a Jewish one.

I can’t answer these questions for anyone but myself.  Answering for myself, I need to remember that as a religion, Christianity wasn’t established as such until 313, some 300 years after Jesus had been born, lived, died, risen again, and been ascended.  Christianity was established as an official religion by the Emperor Constantine, who took this action in order to protect Christians from what was at that time, an intense onslaught of persecution, slaughter, and death at the hands of the Romans.  In doing this Constantine ostensibly legalized being a Christian, putting the full force of the law behind the church.  My guess is, at that time Christians took a deep sigh of relief.  In years to come, however, Constantine’s actions would prove to have an unintended consequence.  As followers of Jesus Christians were never promised safety.  Jesus himself was crucified at the hands of the law.  He certainly wasn’t protected by it.  There is an essential element of personal risk involved in following Jesus.  In 313 Constantine gave this risk a massive safety net.  Granted, in some parts of the world this risk still goes so far as to cost Christians their very lives.  For you and I, though, the risk is probably going to require more of a deep rending of relationship both to ourselves and to others.  (I’ve always felt a certain affinity for the disciples sitting around the table with Jesus on the night he was betrayed.  After Jesus announces that he is going to be betrayed by one of them, they all start asking, “Is it me?  Surely it’s not me?  Jesus, is it me?”  I mean, here is a person they have come to feel a deep allegiance to and yet they are not even self-aware enough to know what their own next move is going to be!)  This is the type of risk I find myself having to take—admitting my own insecurities and fears because I have it in me to betray Jesus without knowing it.  Did Isaac and Ishmael know each other as brothers?  That a part of each of their story was wound up in the other person?  Scripture tells us that allowing Isaac to play with Ishmael was a risk Sarah couldn’t afford to take.  She couldn’t risk losing her stature as Abraham’s preferred wife.  So she betrayed Hagar and Ishmael to the wilderness and thereby secured a safe keeping for herself and Isaac.  She established social protocols, and drew lines in the sand that would make it forever clear who is who and who belongs where.  But of course, God crossed the line and found Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness.  God betrayed neither Sarah nor Hagar, neither Isaac nor Ishmael.  It’s a story that begs me to ask, are there people I have written out of my own story?  Are there people whose stories I have written myself out of because long ago, when I accepted the teaching of my elders, I didn’t know how deep and wide and long and high the love of God actually is?

I have written a lot here, and I’m not really sure I’ve answered your question.  I know Muslims who say they do not worship the same God as me and I know Muslims who say that they do.  To those who say they share the same God as me, I suppose I could ask, why then don’t we also share the same mosque or church, and why don’t we both confess Jesus?  Except I know Christians who don’t all share the same church and whose following of Jesus seems to take them worlds away from mine.  And to those who say they don’t share the same God as me, I suppose I could judge them on account it or accept it as judgment upon me, but what good will that do?  St. Francis of Assisi once prayed, “Let me not so much seek to be understood as to understand…for in this is eternal life.”  I must leave it at that for now.   I  welcome your thoughts and always your prayers.

Fondly –

David