Sermons

“Cross Pollination – Behold, the Lord Is Near”

Matthew 5:43-48; Readings from the Qur’an – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – March 15, 2020

Cross Pollination Lenten Sermon Series #3

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might open our hearts to the wisdom you are sending us through our neighbors.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

God certainly is persistent.  You go to talk to your colleagues in other faith traditions about sin and repentance, and it turns out the thing they most want to emphasize is forgiveness.  Did you hear that in the verses we read from the Qur’an just now?  God, the God who is near whenever we call, is a “true dispenser of grace”.  It’s probably not a phrasing that feels all that natural to us as native English-speakers, but the idea is deeply familiar.

I really wasn’t sure what would happen with this sermon series, when I was basically putting my preaching in the hands of colleagues from outside the Disciples.  But it turns out, so far, that the life themes and experiences that I suspected might be universal really are.  As Imam Taha said at the beginning of our conversation, “We are human beings.”  We all sin; we all make mistakes.  But the mercy of God is right there, just waiting for us to seek it out.  And that’s the trick, right?  All of the traditions and rituals we’ve collected around this issue are to help us do that seeking-it-out step.  So let me walk you through some of the things I learned about how our Muslim friends and neighbors approach that.

Some of what I learned from Imam Taha sounds very familiar, both because they are beliefs we share and because they echo a lot of what we heard last week about Judaism.  If you have sinned against another person, Islam says you need to sincerely seek that person’s forgiveness before you go to God for forgiveness.  There isn’t a set number of times you have to try, like the three required attempts we learned about in Judaism, but the idea is the same.  And the expected obligation to forgive is the same.  Imam Taha shared a story Muhammed told about this point.  Say Person A was treated unjustly by Person B and never got justice in this world.  When the judgment day comes, Person A goes to God and asks for justice.  God lets Person A gaze through the gates of paradise and says this can be theirs.  It looks so magnificent, Person A can’t hardly believe that would be available without an incredible price.  What is the cost?  God says that to enter into paradise, all Person A has to do is reconcile with Person B.  Withholding forgiveness keeps us from entering into the true realm of God’s peace.  This is not an unfamiliar idea.

On the other hand, I got the impression that Islam places slightly more emphasis on the idea of sins that don’t involve other people, the kind of sins we might describe as “sins against God”.  For these sorts of sins, the confession and repentance is just between you and God, a highly intimate experience.  Imam Taha emphasized that as long as we feel guilty about sins, that is a sign of the goodness within us.  It’s when we don’t feel guilty about our mis-steps that we ought to worry about them.

Like Judaism, Islam has a multi-step process of repentance.  The steps aren’t at all the same though.  According to Imam Taha, the first step is regretting or acknowledging the sin.  I got the sense that this part is the more intellectual part, where you’re admitting your failure to maintain the high ethical standards of faith.  It’s about recalling what you know about right and wrong and confessing that you landed on the wrong side of that equation.  The second step is to promise yourself and God not to do it again.  Funny how a teaching can be so simple and so hard at the same time!  And the third step is to hate was you did.  This seemed a lot like the first step to me, but Imam Taha explained that this step is more emotional than the first one; it’s about the feeling of the experience, rather than the mental measurement of your behavior compared to the expected standards.

The meat of the Muslim approach to seeking forgiveness rests upon the structures of prayer within the tradition.  So let’s review what we know about those structures.  There are three layers to this, which you could think of as three concentric circles.  The inner circle is that Muslims are called to pray five times a day.  These prayers are not just any old time.  There are authorities within the tradition who set the exact times for each day, depending on the cycles of the sun.  But more generally, the prayers happen at dawn, mid-day, afternoon, sunset, and nighttime, which is around 90 minutes after sunset.  The prayers that are prayed at these times are mostly readings from the Qur’an, followed by whatever personal prayers you want to add.  This is a wonderful time to seek forgiveness, according to Imam Taha.

These daily prayer times, like the rituals on the next two circles, function as stations.  The way Imam Taha explained this to me, they almost seemed like metaphorical fences.  When you pray at mid-day, you’re following up on the forgiveness you sought at dawn and covering all the sins you’ve committed since then.  You’re also looking ahead to the sins you’ll commit between then and afternoon prayer, which will be fenced in at the other end around 4:30 or so.

This same backward and forward pattern is experienced in the middle circle, which is Friday prayers.  Friday is the day that Muslims gather for prayer at their mosques, also known as masjids. When you come to Friday prayer, you seek forgiveness for the past week and ask God’s mercy on the week ahead, thus setting up fences around a longer period of time.

The biggest circle then is the annual season of Ramadan.  During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast during daylight hours and spend much time in prayer, individually and together at the masjids.  The heightened drama of fasting and of gathering together more often, with bigger crowds, makes this outer circle the most powerful, even though it’s less frequent.  But the pattern is the same: you pray for forgiveness for the whole past year and seek mercy for the year that is to come.  In this way, Muslims weave a three-strand cord of God’s mercy through all their living, with daily, weekly, and yearly practices of seeking forgiveness.

I want to come back to Ramadan in a moment, but there were a number of other interesting facts I learned that I want to share with you first.  Two other things about particularly efficacious times to pray, beyond the appointed five times a day:  The last third of the night, around 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning is considered an especially powerful time to pray, because everyone else is enjoying sleeping, so God is looking for prayers to answer.  Also, praying when it’s raining is special, because the rain is a symbol of God’s goodness.  Living where we do, it’s not hard to see how a religion that developed in the desert would revere the rain.

Two other things, about intercessory prayer.  Muslims do believe in collective repentance for societal sins like racism and exploitation.  They have a long tradition of strong ethical standards for how societies should operate, and their prayer life speaks to those standards just as ours does.  They also practice intercessory prayer for one another.  Imam Taha said it is not uncommon for people to ask him to pray for them, specifically for forgiveness, though they may not share the specifics of the situation.  And he also might ask a particularly righteous person in his community, if he were struggling with something, to pray for him.

I want to close with a few more observations about Ramadan.  It’s probably the closest cousin to Lent within Islam, and there are a few similarities of note.  The obvious connection is the practice of fasting.  Most of us don’t engage in fasting for Lent anymore, but these interfaith conversations are making me want to re-consider.  Part of what fasting does, according to Imam Taha, is to weaken our desire to sin by depriving the body of energy.  Our physical power is weakened, but our spiritual power is increased.  I thought that was an interesting way to interpret it.

The second thing Imam Taha said about the fasting reminded me of what Father Emmet said.  Muslims break their Ramadan fast each night, eating once the sun has gone down.  But the point is not to have a month-long deprivation-binge cycle.  Though the communal nature of the observance tends to make the meals more elaborate, Imam Taha said he likes to break his daily fast with a simple meal of soup and salad and dates.  As Father Emmet talked about Lent being a way to re-set our habits, so that we can be healthier and holier by Easter and keep it going, Ramadan is a similar opportunity to cleanse the body and re-set unhealthy habits of body and soul.

Finally, I was struck that Imam Taha said he has plenty of community members who pretty much only show up at the mosque during Ramadan and not during the rest of the year.  I told him that we call those people “Christmas & Easter Christians”.  He has the same struggle we do with welcoming them in such a way that they feel encouraged to come back more often but not shamed.  I was reminded that Rabbi Devorah had also said that their Yom Kippur services are the most highly attended services of their year.  So we all have these folks who show up for the most important days of the year.  But there is a major difference between our tradition and these two faith cousins.  Yom Kippur and Ramadan are both holy times focused on seeking God’s mercy.  They are comparable to Lent, not Christmas or Easter.  The days people come to church for the first time in months are pure celebrations, with little mention of ethics, or sin, or our need for forgiveness.  I wonder if we are missing something because we haven’t placed a stronger emphasis on our need to gather communally to repent and rejoice in the mercy of God.  With Christianity the dominant religion in our culture, have we done society a disservice by encouraging people to be here only when we’re holding a party?  How would life look different if Lent were the time when our churches were packed?

There are wonderful questions that arise when we explore the similarities and differences of the diverse faiths represented in our communities.  There is so much we can learn from one another.  Let us give thanks for our common, foundational conviction of the nearness of God’s mercy!  Amen.