“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God.” From Torah, Deuteronomy 30:19-20.
Jesus said (to Mary Magdalene), “Don’t cling to me, for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers [and sisters] and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” From The Gospel of John, 20:17.
“Every soul will taste death, then to Us you will be returned.” From Qur’an, Surah 29:57.
The holy month of Ramadan has just ended with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast. As a month of fasting has come to its end, Muslims, worldwide, under the light of Ramadan lanterns, have shared in communal prayers, in celebratory meals with friends and families, and in giving through acts of charity.
As I continue in my own Lenten practice, I am encouraged by prayers from Muslims of thanksgiving and gratitude for their time of spiritual renewal, for the strength they received to complete the month-long fast, and for the opportunity to celebrate community unity.
Passover, which celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery, will begin this year Wednesday evening, April 1st with the first seder and will end eight days later, nightfall Thursday, April 9th. This year, Lent ends on Thursday April 2nd with the beginning of the Triduum, which marks the last three days, by commemorating Jesus’ last meal with his disciples, his trial and crucifixion, and his resurrection on Easter Day, April 5th.
With the gift of celestial and spiritual alignment, during these holy days, we can celebrate all the ways we are kin, Ahl al-kitab, as People of the Book, who honor through our different expressions of faith the dignity of all people and all life.
I offer this sermon in celebration of all that we have received from our faith:
I believe in miracles. I really do. Fully.
I believe in miracles found in our sacred texts. I really do. Fully.
I believe that God appeared to Moses in a burning bush that was not consumed by fire. A showing forth of God which gave him the courage and the faith to accept his calling, to believe that he could triumph over tyrants and lead his people from the hopelessness of slavery to a land of freedom from oppression. I believe Moses crossed the Red Sea and climbed to the heights of Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, the Law which governs by equality and dignity for all.
I believe in the miracle of God appearing to us over and over.
I believe Jesus healed the sick, gave hope to the dispossessed, and preached the Beatitudes, in a sermon from a different mountain, adding to the Law, the grace and beauty of mercy, forgiveness, and love. In the end, Jesus sacrificed his life in defense of Love. Yet the heavy stone sealing his grave had no power as the Source of All Life raised him from the dead, claiming forever that violent blows will never have true power. Love will always be stronger than death.
I believe in the miracle of God raising us from the dead over and over.
I believe that Prophet Muhammad received the gift of the revealed text of the Qur’an from Angel Gabriel, (Jibril in Arabic), as incarnation of the Word, just as Angel Gabriel gave Mary the news that Jesus, as the Anointed One, was in her womb. I believe that Angel Gabriel led Prophet Muhammad on a nightly journey from Mecca to Jerusalem as he ascended to the heavens to be with prophets Adam, Moses, and Jesus. With their support, Prophet Muhammad established five daily prayers, sealing the gift of our heavenly connection through our spiritual practices.
I believe in the miracle of God sustaining us in our journey over and over.
I believe in the stories of Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad in the same way I believe in gravity.
Let’s think about gravity for a moment.
Gravity tugs on matter to form galaxies, stars, and black holes. Yet despite this expansive reach, gravity is the wimpiest of all forces. It’s the sun’s gravity that keeps the earth in its orbit. It’s the moon’s gravity that’s responsible for the ocean tides on earth. And yet, we are not aware of the pull of gravity on our bodies.
Imagine this: it keeps our feet firmly rooted on planet earth, and yet, if we are mobile, we can lift a toothbrush to our mouth without a thought. So goes gravity – such power, yet so faint. It’s very mysterious, indeed miraculous.
When you ask physicists, “What is gravity?” their answer is clear, “We don’t know. We know how it operates; we study its effects, how it behaves. We speak about ‘gravitons that emanate gravitational fields,’ yet they can’t be ‘found.’ We are not discovering empirical evidence of these things. We have to trust that they are there. That’s the only way the math works, but then, where the laws of quantum mechanics operate, the math doesn’t always work.”
It sounds like a metaphor to me. Oh, but wait, gravity is real. We believe gravity exists. Why are scientists granted the privilege of knowing gravity exists even when empirical evidence is lacking? Physicists are well aware that there are things beyond our human capacity to perceive, to see, like infinity, time, and the empty space of the atom.
What does it mean to be real? What does it mean to see?
Maybe, in explaining the miracles surrounding our Prophets, we’ve been going about this all wrong. I don’t know how Moses crossed the Red Sea, or how Jesus was raised from the dead, or how Muhammad traveled to the heavens. The details are a bit unclear. The math doesn’t always work.
I think it’s time to take a page from our physicists’ book of seeing. They seem to get away with quite a bit of not knowing. It doesn’t seem to bother them. We religious, we too, can’t answer a lot of questions, but we experience the miracle of Radical Fidelity gracing our lives; we can study the effects, by relying on the behavior we witness.
You’ve all been there with me. Life over death. You’re down, afraid or overwhelmed, maybe even ashamed, and a smile or a kind word in the grocery store, from a stranger, gives you courage. You know that your closest friends are the ones that you can be vulnerable with, because somehow by sharing your weaknesses you bond. Then there are those friends who can touch your wounds with a gentle hand. There are also those times when you speak, letting the worse be known, and the speaking releases you.
Then there’s the friend who can be silent with you in a moment of despair or confusion; the loved one who can stay with you in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing. Yes, the one who can face with you the reality of powerlessness. Such love, like the pull of gravity, strong and faint all at the same time.
What about those times when you spontaneously cry when a child who’s been abused reaches for a hand? Or when you cheer after a stranger drops off food for those who are fearful to leave their homes? What about those times when you don’t deserve to be forgiven, but your beloved forgives you anyway? And then, of course, there are those times when you’re knee deep in cold spring dirt and tiny impossible shoots of green break through the hard crusty ground.
Our Prophets came into the world to show us a new way of living. Strong and faint all at the same time. It has a lot to do with dying, letting go, and releasing. You have to lose yourself before you will gain yourself. Turn away from your egotistical way of protecting yourself from your fears, to trust that by falling you will rise, by losing you will gain, by giving you will receive. It is here where justice takes root. The first shall be last. The poor will be blessed. The pure in heart shall see God.
Be willing to live passionately, to risk, no matter the cost. Don’t stop loving even though it hurts. See with a third eye, trusting that where God seems most absent, God is most near.
Here’s the crux of it. When we live in this dying which is really living, we are choosing to practice within the miracle of God resurrecting always, living in the hope of the Prophets. A hope that is not about optimism, but rather by believing God is always sustaining us in our journey.
When we believe that, we can look at our lives and see both behind us and forward. As we look back, we see the possibility that our breaking may become our making, that abundance has nothing to do with gaining and everything to do with giving away, and that suffering will not be our end.
We recognize that our suffering can take us to a miraculous awareness that life can come out of death, which opens our hearts, even though, and most probable, because those hearts have been broken. Looking back boldly shapes our moving forward.
Like gravity, the miracle of eternal life is everywhere; foundational. Such power, yet so faint. To trust in its reality takes a lot of courage, a lot of reliance, a lot of dying. And yet when we give our lives over to the way our Prophets travelled, we receive the most amazing gift… the gift of hope…
Because in the despairing darkness, at the midnight of gloom, in a tomb too full, in the hell of someone’s making, you will be able to light a candle and say to the night, “I beg to differ.”
Our tombs become our wombs. More than we can ever imagine.
Halleluyah, Praise Be to God, Alhamdulillah.
