Sermons

WHEN PATHS CROSS

Romans 13:8-10; Genesis 16:1-3, 11-15

Delivered by Tim Tiffany at Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in La Mesa, California, on February 7, 2016

Ishmael was the first son born to Abraham, the great patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and the Islamic faiths. By all rights, today his name might be heard when we mention the Big Three of our heritage: Abraham, Ishmael, and Jacob. But there was one hitch; Ishmael was born, not to Abraham’s wife Sarah, but to Abraham’s concubine, Hagar.

Now in all fairness, Sarah had suggested this arrangement. For Sarah was barren, and Sarah was old. There was no chance of her bearing a child. So she, knowing how important a son was in maintaining the line and the heritage, said to Abraham, “Go in to my slave girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” (Genesis 16:2b) And Abraham did what he was told and had sex with Hagar, and she bore him a son. Ishmael. Well, not immediately. It took about 9 months.

And during that pregnancy things did not sit well for Sarah. Sarah was jealous. Now I have to be careful here as we watch this woman change her mind. I don’t want to stereotype, but if I remember right it was Sarah who had suggested that Abraham have sex with Hagar. Poor guy, he had only done as he was told. And, darn, if the whole thing wasn’t blowing up in his face! Sarah says to her husband, “May the wrong done to me be upon you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” (Genesis 16:5) Abraham is in a fix, and it took all of one verse to move from glorious and permitted sex with the concubine to a tubful of hot water with his wife!

So he does what anyone would do to save his neck. He tells Sarah to do whatever she wants with Hagar. And life becomes a living hell for Hagar from that time on. In fact, things got so bad that Hagar finally ran away.   Out to the wilderness. Out where life might have come to a terrible end except the angel of the Lord met Hagar out there. “Return to your mistress and submit to her….I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitudes.” And Hagar was told that her son should be called Ishmael, “for the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man, with his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; and he shall live at odds with all his kin.” (Genesis 16:6b-12) Hagar returned to the safety of Abraham’s tents and submitted to Sarah and delivered a son. Abraham’s son.

It had to have been a great and moving day for Abraham when first he heard the squall of that just-born child. He had thought to go to his grave childless, without someone to carry on the family name. Now he was a father, a daddy. And of a son no less!

How he must have loved Ishmael. Maybe he took him out under the nighttime bowl of uncountable stars and held him up as the father of Kunta Kinte did in Alex Haley’s great work entitled Roots.   Maybe he said as did that African father, “Behold the only thing greater than yourself.” Ishmael was going to run the family business, inherit all the wealth of his father, and be the father of nations.

Only you and I know that it didn’t turn out quite that way. Amazingly, miraculously, Sarah got pregnant and delivered a son also. Isaac. Things really heated up then.   Noted psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Alfred Adler, believed that the firstborn child is in a very favorable position until the birth of the second child. This second child causes the first born to suffer feelings of dethronement, no longer being the center of attention. Maybe that happened for Ishmael when Isaac was born. He was no longer the center of the universe. Certainly there was tension between the two boys.

Who was the true son? The first-born Ishmael? Or Isaac, the first-born of Abraham and his wife Sarah? You know that Isaac got the brass ring. He inherited the business, and he gets listed in the Big Three. It’s Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Ishmael? Well, he and his mother get thrown out of camp when he was a teenager. Scripture says that this was very distressing to Abraham. He loved Ishamel. But God reassured the patriarch. “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of (Hagar), I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring…..And God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow.” (Genesis 21:12-13, 20)

God was with the boy, and God was with the man. In fact, our Islamic brothers and sisters believe Ishmael to be the ancestor of the prophet Muhammad. Several years back I visited the Islamic Center of San Diego, located in the heart of Clairemont. What I learned were some basics of the Islamic faith that sound much like what many Christians believe.

That day the imam shared Five Pillars of the Islamic faith. They have much in common with Christianity and with Judaism. It begins with the profession of faith that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger. This core belief in one, unique, incomparable God who is the Almighty, the Creator and the Sustainer of everything, is an absolute essential in our own faith.

The second pillar is prayer, and Muslims are called to be in prayer five times a day (at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and evening). Prayer is an essential practice whose basic unit is called a rak’a which comes from an Arabic word meaning “to bow down. Each rak’a begins with the phrase “God is great.” While at the Islamic Center I participated in mid-afternoon prayer, and I found it deeply meaningful and spiritually uplifting.

Giving of one’s wealth (assets plus income) forms the third pillar. Notice how these first three pillars are closely aligned with core values in our own faith: profession of faith, prayer, and giving. The fourth and fifth pillars are not as universally practiced in Christianity, though they are certainly important to many in our faith: fasting and pilgrimages to sites holy to all Muslims.

It was surprising to me to find how deeply respectful Muslims are of some of the famous people of the Christian faith. A key tenet of Islam is belief in messengers, among whom they list Noah, Lot, Ishmael, Moses, and Jesus. Each is held in such profound respect that when their name is spoken, it is immediately followed by the phrase “may peace be upon him.” For example, if they were talking about the great lawgiver, Moses, a Muslim would say that “Moses (may peace be upon him) brought the 10 Commandments down from the mountain.” The phrase is used with each of the messengers including Jesus.

In fact, Islam holds Jesus in high, high regard. John Kaltner, in his book entitled Islam: What Non-Muslims Should Know, tells about giving a lecture in a church. Someone asked during the Q&A, “Is it true that Muslims hate Jesus?” Kaltner gave his answer, and then two Muslim men stepped forward to share their own answers. One said, “It is impossible to be a Muslim and hate Jesus. In fact, a Muslim who does not love Jesus is not a true Muslim.” (pp. 51-52)

These areas of commonality should not hide the fact that there are differences. Islam rejects that God rested on the 7^th day of creation or that God wrestled with one of the angels. They do not believe that Jesus is God. And they do not believe that God is a plotter against humankind unlike the God of our book that sometimes seems to seek the destruction of the very thing that God created. The Flood is one example. Another is from a text in Exodus 4:18-31 where it appears God tried to kill Moses. The story of Job is a third, where God takes everything away from this man of faith—Job’s wife and children, Job’s crops and animals—in order to test the man of faith. Islam does not believe that Allah is ever like that.

And there are substantive issues where Christians can and should disagree with Muslims. Sometimes the Islamic views about women and homosexuality stand over against the progressive views of many Christians. Yet even here we need to be careful. There is, in fact, an exalted position for women in Islam. In the Qur’an, for example, we read, “O humankind, we created you from a male and a female, and made of you peoples and tribes, in order that you might learn from each other. Surely the noblest among you is the one who is most godly.” (No. 49, verse 13) And in the Hadith, composed of sayings from the prophet Muhammad himself, we read that he said, “All people are equal, as equal as the teeth of a comb. An Arab is no better than a non-Arab, nor is a white person over a black person, nor is the male superior to the female. The only people who enjoy preference with God are the devout.” Sounds a lot like Galatians 3:28, doesn’t it?   “In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus,”

Too often, I fear, we have taken our views about Muslims from the press and/or the politicians. We have listened to voices of fear and xenophobia while ignoring the “all are one” proclamation from our own messengers of faith. We have not sought the greater truth or listened to the voices of reason and moderation. Yet Jesus (may peace be upon him) modeled for us how to interact with the person who is different from us in belief or outlook or nationality. He did so when he healed the Roman centurion’s servant (Matthew 15:21-25). He did so when he healed the daughter of a Greek woman. (Luke 7:1-10) He did so when, against all standards of propriety, he sat down at Jacob’s well near the Samaritan city of Sychar and held a life-changing conversation with a woman of questionable moral standards. As we prepare for the beginning of our Lenten journey, we need to decide who we will follow—press or politician or the Prince of Peace?

Lent is often a time for giving up something. Other Christians hold that it is a time for taking on something. Let me suggest that this Lenten Season we give up misinformation and half-truths. Give up fear. Instead, take on:

1. Learning more about our Islamic brothers and sisters through reading one or more books. I have provided a list of possible choices for beginning such a journey, most of which can be easily obtained on Amazon.com
2. Visiting the Islamic Center in Clairemont at 7050 Eckstrom Avenue. Each Sunday at noon an orientation is held that shares many basics of the Islamic faith.
3. Encouraging our Education Committee to set up an interfaith dialogue experience involving us and Muslims in our community.
4. Going out of our way to meet and learn about the Islamic faith from a Muslim neighbor or co-worker.

So much exists that would tell us that we are of the same family. That we have the same parentage, that we can trace our faith family tree back to the same ancestral roots. But we cannot truly know that unless we let go of facts fed to us by purveyors of apprehension and anxiety.

Opposition to Islam is historic, going back to the very beginnings of the Islamic faith, and has been rising in Europe and the United States ever since 9-11. Mosques are defaced. Neighborhoods build fences of hate when a Muslim family moves in, and suspicion abounds over the dress of Islamic women. But if we as Christians take on the commitment to really and truly learn about The Other, we can become beacons of brotherhood, of sisterhood, building brick-by-brick a community where diversity is embraced and love of neighbor is not a phrase but a passion.

Ishmael and Isaac modeled how we moderns might find a way to embrace our wider family. These two who had fussed and feuded as children, whose mothers apparently had had deep enmity for one another, came together in their adulthood. Scripture tells us (Genesis 25:8-9a) that “Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah…” near what is now Hebron in the West Bank.

Imagine the scene as these two half-brothers met with their families after all those years to grieve the death of their father. Perhaps it was much like today, people hugging one another and offering condolences, people laughing amidst their tears as they remembered the patriarch of the families, sharing stories or some sayings of Father Abraham. Food was shared e’re they gathered at the cave to say their last good-byes. Finally, the former combatants for Abraham’s blessing stood shoulder-to-shoulder, arm-in-arm, and wiped the tears that fell to their flowing beards.

Sometimes the gulf between the faiths seems almost impossible to bridge. Sometimes it appears that we can never find a heart for harmony and a passion for peace between peoples. But those two men did. Two who had fought one another found a freedom from division as they gathered at the cave of Machpelah that day so long ago. Ishmael and Isaac—may peace be upon them.