Aug. 7 Sermon: The Same and the Different
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Holy Covenant UMC
David Braden and Cassie Meyer, preaching
Mark 11:15-18
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Cassie’s Story
I grew up in Seattle, the only major city in the U.S. where, when you take a survey of religious beliefs, “none” is the majority. I wasn’t raised religious, but my parents raised me with very strong values of social justice. Sometimes we served in soup kitchens on Thanksgiving, and we always adopted a local family at Christmas who couldn’t afford gifts. Above all else, my parents taught me, love all people.
But I was always a bit of an existentialist, and spent a lot of time worrying about life, and death, and the meaning of life, and what would happen to humanity when the sun explodes (really). And one day, I realized that I was – when I closed my eyes worrying about these things – praying.
So I talked to Alyson, my only religious friend, and asked her if I could start going to church. And I fell immediately in love – it was one of the most profound, authentic experiences I’d ever had, and I was completely hooked. The only thing that bothered me: that whole love all people thing. It felt like I was supposed to love all people, definitely. But maybe only so they became Christians in the end. My youth group leader told me again and again: “your real friends are your Christian friends.”
The first thing I did when I left Seattle for a small Midwestern college was get involved in the Christian ministry on campus, and because I played the guitar for weekly worship, people started to recognize me on my very secular small campus as “one of the Christians.”
So when a guy came up to me in the library one day and said, “Excuse me, are you a Christian?” I thought I knew what he was after. I knew from his accent that he wasn’t American, and assumed from his skin – he wasn’t white – that he also wasn’t a Christian.
This is the moment, friends, that every young evangelical dreams of. This was the moment that we practiced for – literally – in youth group, only it was never, never this easy even in our role plays – he was actually asking me to share the gospel with him!
“Yes!”
He looked down, a bit embarrassed, “Well, err great. I’m doing a project for my anthropology class, and I need to do an ethnography of an exotic religious movement, so I was hoping I could interview you.”
I narrowed my eyes. Surely he was mistaken. “I think you’ve got me wrong,” I said. “I’m the conservative, white, American, evangelical Christian. I’m not exotic.”
He said, “My name is Ahmed. I’m from Bangladesh. I’m a Muslim. To me, you are exotic.”
So we went upstairs to the fourth floor of the library and sat down with Ahmed’s Anthro-101 ethnography worksheet. It had questions like, “ask the participant about his/her dietary restrictions,” “what are the participant’s sacred texts?”
When we finished, I took Ahmed’s worksheet and let him know it was his turn. He told me about his dietary restrictions – no pork, no alcohol; a little bit harder to do in Appleton, Wisconsin than it had been in Bangladesh – and about the Qur’an, which I’d read a little bit about in religious studies class. Then Ahmed told me about the Muslim practice of praying five times a day.
And I confess that I was completely and totally terrified when he told me that. Because I wanted what he had. Since I had become a Christian, prayer had been one of the most difficult things. So what did it mean that this Muslim prayed five times a day? At the end of our conversation, I was still convinced that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, and that Christianity was true, and therefore, in someway, Islam must not be true. But still. I was inspired by Ahmed.
David’s Story
As some of you may know, I am a born, baptized, raised, confirmed, and professing United Methodist. I grew up in one of those families that was in church every single Sunday. Some of my best friends from grade school were the kids that I met at Sunday School. In The United Methodist Church, I felt at home.
Unfortunately, like many churches – and not just Methodist churches – my home church was silent on issues of sexuality. As a young kid coming out as gay, the silence of my home church was deafening. I didn’t know whom to turn to. My pastor was young and pretty cool – he liked to play in a Beetles impersonation band and always led our youth group during a weeklong canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. However, I had absolutely no desire to talk to him about sex or that I was attracted to men. I mean, did you want to talk to your pastor about sex as a kid? My body and soul ached. I knew in my innermost being that I was gay, but I refused to be miserable about that identity. Without talking to anyone, I decided that I couldn’t be both gay and Christian. After attending church every Sunday for 18 years, I slowly slipped away.
I went to college at DePaul University just down the street from here. I made a bunch of gay friends. I came to adore North Halsted Street like so many young teens and 20 something’s just coming out of the closet. I fell in and out of love. My world was just exploding with rainbows.
Yet, I found myself still unhappy with my life. I missed church. I missed talking about God, ruminating on where the Spirit might be calling our lives. Still, I didn’t think that a church existed where I could be both gay and Christian.
In 2004, I signed up for a service-learning course at DePaul where along with regular course work, students partnered with a nonprofit organization to volunteer and gain practical experience of service in the nonprofit world.
DePaul assigned me to work with an organization called, Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC). At the time it was a small organization, focused on bringing young high school and college students together to engage in concrete community service projects in order that these young folks might have a shared experience and then engage in dialogue about how their faith tradition inspires them to serve their communities.
On a beautifully sunny day in April, I entered an auditorium full of 200 people from across Chicago – Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants from myriad traditions, Hindus, and Tibetan Buddhists. We piled into buses and headed to a South Side YMCA where some began painting walls, others mopped floors, and others still played some games with young children from the neighborhood.
Later, we returned to DePaul for dialogue and reflection time. By reflection time, I mean to say that the leaders of IFYC instructed us to write spoken word pieces about how our faith inspires us. Now, I love the written word, but I’m known for prose, not meter and rhyme. Besides which, they were asking me to write about my faith and to share that out loud. I hadn’t been to church in years. What was I supposed to say – “I’m inspired by my God who loves me but my church doesn’t want me”? Would that even be okay or safe to share?
Somehow, I decided to do it. I wrote a piece about Jeremiah 31 where God proclaims, “I have loved you with a love that lasts forever. And so with unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself.” I wrote about how I felt the love and spirit of God within me, but how I had also felt pain and separation from God and the community within which I so longed to belong.
After I shared my poem with those at my table, a tall, skinny, brown-skinned guy tapped me on the shoulder. He said, “I want to thank you for sharing that piece today. I am a Muslim and in my tradition, G-d is known by many names, including “The Most Merciful” and “The Compassionate.” Remember that G-d cares for you and don’t give up on your faith or community. There are Christians who love you, too.”
I later found out that this man was Eboo Patel, the Executive Director and founder of Interfaith Youth Core. I don’t remember what I said to him in that moment. Probably “Thank You” or something equally mundane. I do remember thinking though, “Why hasn’t a Christian told me this?”
In our scripture reading, Jesus turns the tables in the Temple and recounts what was written in the Hebrew Bible, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” In those days, the Temple in Jerusalem was a very large structure with courts within courts such that the deeper you went into the Temple, the more that access was restricted. The outer courts were for Gentiles – Greeks, non-Jews. A little further in, the Court of Women, then the Court of the Israelites, and so on.
Outside the temple was where observant Jews could purchase their goods and animals for sacrifices. You see, as Jews traveled from all over to get to Jerusalem and worship in the Temple, they didn’t usually bring their sacrificial offerings with them. This practice of buying sacrifices at the Temple was customary and necessary for Jews to fulfill various spiritual obligations as written in the Scriptures.
So if purchasing animals and goods was necessary to fulfill what was required by Jewish tradition, I don’t think Jesus probably had an inherent problem with people buying their sacrifices. But if this is the case, then what’s really going on with Jesus in the Temple?
One very common and probably familiar interpretation is that ritually-based commerce had overrun the Temple and detracted from the real intent of worshiping God. Yet, I’m drawn back to the text where, of all verses, Jesus quotes from Isaiah saying, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Jesus knew his Torah and his Prophets. He could have yelled any number of other verses from Isaiah that give the message – Turn towards God and turn away from your sinful ways. But Jesus doesn’t. He quotes, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
So it seems that Jesus’ anger was more than just about commerce taking place inside the Temple. Maybe it had to do with where the moneychangers were set up. Remember how one of the outer rings of the Temple was known as the Court of the Gentiles – the place in the Temple where Greeks, non-Jews could come and pay homage to the God of Israel? This was a place where both Jew and Gentile could come together, interact. If the moneychangers were located here, maybe Jesus was saying something about the value of spaces where diverse peoples can come together, get to know one another, and talk about God. Maybe Jesus was angry that the commercialism was drowning out opportunities for Jews and non-Jews to engage one another in non-mercantile transactions. Maybe the story of Jesus turning over the tables is a story about you and me making spaces in our lives where we engage non-Christians like the students volunteering with IFYC to clean up a South Side YMCA.
Cassie – How can we still be Christians?
After Ahmed and I shared our stories we kept running into each other on campus. I always felt a little shy when I saw him – was I supposed to be friends with him? A couple of my Christian friends knew that we were close, and they always asked me, “Are you praying for him? Have you tried to convert him?” I was, I had, and the thing was – I think he was praying for me and trying to convert me, too. Neither of us seemed to be getting anywhere. But if, at the end of the day, I just wanted to be friends with him, was I somehow denying my Christian duty?
One day during Lent, I found myself at an afternoon prayer service in the old Episcopal church across the street from campus. Father Patrick, the priest there who swooped around campus in full-length clerical robes like a gangly academic bat – seemed like someone I could trust with these questions. I was still caught up on this whole prayer thing: was there anything like it in the Christian tradition?
Father Patrick leaned across the pew to pull out a battered red book with a cracked spine. “You should explore this, Cassie,” he said, cracking the spine open to “Morning Prayer.” He walked me through the noon prayer, a simple midday breath, and the compline prayer, which contains some of the words that have become dearest to my faith (“Guide us waking, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace”). Father Patrick explained that these scripture-punctuated prayers in The Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican Church’s prayer book, were based on the practices of prayer in medieval monasteries, taken from the most ancient language and rituals of the early church.
It was a completely different way of praying than anything I’d learned so far. I’d been taught that prayer should be spontaneous, Spirit-driven, unhindered by pages and text. It should be that, certainly, sometimes. Yet there was something comforting about letting the written rhythms lead me, and that though praying alone I was also somehow praying within the resonance of many other Christian voices before and behind me. I thought of Ahmed, the longing I felt when he described his daily prayers, that Muslims around the world said the same words in the same ways across time zones and country lines. Was it possible that a Muslim had helped me find my way to a deeply Christian practice?
I’m not the first Christian to have this experience: there’s a beautiful story about St. Francis of Assisi traveling to the Holy Land to debate theology with a Muslim leader during the Crusades. St. Francis returned home to Italy from these debates with a new inspiration for the five daily prayers that he then incorporated into his Rule of Life, or daily practices that helped him stay connected to God. These five daily prayers would become the guide for centuries of Christian practice. Francis didn’t become any less Christian by learning from his Muslim brothers; his faith was enriched as he allowed himself to be inspired by another’s faith.
As historian Thomas Cahill writes, “In Francis’ view, judgment was the exclusive province of the all-merciful God; it was none of a Christian’s concern. True Christians were to befriend all yet condemn no one. Give to others, and it shall be given to you, forgive and you shall be forgiven, was Francis’ constant preaching. “May the Lord give you peace” was the best greeting one could give to all one met. It compromised no one’s dignity and embraced every good; it was a blessing to be bestowed indiscriminately. Francis bestowed it on people named George and Jacques and on people named Osama and Saddam.”
David – Shared Values
In my experience of building interfaith relationships, a lot of people assume that in order for people of different faith traditions to work together, we have to check our faith and beliefs at the door. I don’t know about you, but if someone asked me to check my sexual orientation at the door, I couldn’t do it. My orientation as a gay man is an integral part of who I am. I can’t check that at the door. So, why would I check my faith and belief in Jesus Christ at the door? My Christian identity, just like my sexual orientation, is an integral part of who I am. My old boss Eboo wouldn’t check his identity as a Muslim at the door either. The same is true for folks who don’t identify with any religious tradition, like my friend Chris.
So for kicks, let’s say I find myself in a room with Eboo, a Muslim; Chris, an atheist; and me, a Christian. If we’re not holding back our beliefs, where do we start? Well, it just so happens that Eboo, Chris, and I are all passionate about caring for the environment. Now, the reasons behind why we are passionate about caring for the environment are different. For me and Eboo, we believe that God created the Earth and gave humans the righteous task of keeping it safe and clean. For Chris, he doesn’t believe that a god created the world, but he does think that this is the only inhabitable planet we’ve got, so it’s imperative that we care for it. These differences in belief and motivation are important, but they also do not inhibit the three of us from working together towards our shared value of caring for the environment. Shared values are a great place for people of faith traditions to begin their work together – to identify projects or initiatives that they have in common and how they could work together to achieve a common goal.
Cassie- Closing
In my work I have a chance to work with all different kinds of Christian groups – evangelical college fellowships, seminary students, high school youth groups. And the question I get over and over again is, “can we do interfaith work and be truly Christian?” Folks get that doing interfaith work matters – they have friends of other faiths who they deeply love and admire, but they think that it’s because they are generally nice, liberal, tolerant people living in the 21st century; not, in fact, because they are Christian.
So we challenge you, today, to discover how in fact engaging with others can be a deeply Christian practice. Get involved in the Lakeview Action Coalition and work to transform our community with the diverse religious communities in our neighborhood. Be brave – really brave – and ask that friend you have of another faith why she believes what she believes. Visit another faith community, and see what it reveals to you about your own relationship to God. Discover – and practice – what it means to love all people.
And take comfort in knowing that when you do so, you are locating yourself in an authentic Christian practice. We see this in St. Francis’ insistence that God’s peace extended it to all, and we see it in today’s scripture reading, in Jesus’ deep, deep love for the space in the temple reserved for dialogue, exchange, and interaction. And we name it in our own stories, in the way that Eboo helped David reclaim his own identity as a Christian, and in the ways that Ahmed helped me discover a deeply Christian way to pray. And we take peace in knowing that we meet and know and learn from and love others not in spite of our Christianity, but because of our Christianity. May it be so.
