One night last week, I turned on the car to drive home from church and a song started playing on the radio: “I’ll take the world apart to find a place for a peaceful heart.” From a new album by Yusuf/Cat Stevens, the song made me smile for a couple of reasons. First, I was coming from a multi-faith evening cosponsored by HART (Historic Area Religions Together) and the Rumi Friendship Association, a Muslim bridge-building organization — certainly a place for peaceful hearts. Even more strikingly, one of my parishioners had painted bright red hearts on dozens of rocks to give to those attending, and I had just been thinking about where to put mine!
I love synchronicities, those times when our inner and outer worlds align to give us a sense of meaning and order in the seemingly random events of our lives. The coach, writer and teacher Sarah Jackson calls these small moments of goodness and beauty “glimmers” that instill peace and evoke joy, even help improve mood and mental health and regulate our nervous systems. “Becoming a glimmer-seeker,” she writes, “will change your brain and life.”
Our multifaith event was a celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. We shared a meal, listened to wonderful music from the Sufi Melody Group, and heard Jewish, Muslim and Christian perspectives on the stories of Abraham and his sons Isaac and Ishmael. In another synchronicity, we heard those stories in church the last two Sundays, just as our Muslim cousins were keeping their feast, which culminates in the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca. Although there are differences in the ways our three traditions see and respond to the stories of Abraham’s sacrifice, as a shared ancestor he provides an opportunity for multifaith dialogue and fellowship.
Rabbi David Katz from Temple Beth El, the founder of HART, pointed out that Abraham, like all the characters in the Jewish scriptures, is flawed — and famous for the wrestling with God that gives the people of Israel their name. Islam Bedir from Rumi Friendship Association spoke of how Abraham (Ibrahim) is held up as a model of righteousness in the Quran, encouraging belief in the one God instead of idols or things of nature. He and his son Ishmael are seen as icons of faithfulness in trusting God, and part of the Hajj commemorates Ishmael’s mother Hajar (Hagar) running back and forth seven times between two hills to find water for her son.I said that Christian tradition also holds Abraham in high esteem. Jesus’ mother Mary sings about God’s “promise of mercy made to Abraham and his children for ever,” and the apostle Paul celebrates his example of righteousness and says, “he is the father of all of us.” Christian writers have also seen a parallel between Abraham’s sacrifice and Jesus’.
But from whatever tradition we come, perhaps the most important message from this challenging story is that God does not want us to sacrifice our children. Human sacrifice was not unknown in Abraham’s time, and so in one sense this story marks the turning away from that practice in human history. Yet in another sense the sacrifice of our children continues every day: children sacrificed to poverty, greed, border disputes, gun violence, war. The poet Wilfred Owen, who died in the First World War, wrote a poem about Abraham and Isaac called “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” It ends with God saying, “Lay not thy hand upon the lad … Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him. But the old man would not so, but slew his son, And half the seed of Europe, one by one.” A question worth pondering is whose lives, whose potential, whose dignity and worth are we still sacrificing today?
Responding to two of this past week’s Supreme Court decisions, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said this: “All of us — every human child of God — is made in the image of God with infinite value and worth, and that is not decreed by any government. It is decreed by almighty God … I believe deep in my soul that God is always seeking to create a world and a society where all are loved, where justice is done, and where the God-given equality of us all is honored in our relationships, in our social arrangements, and in law . . . (We) create the Beloved Community by facing painful truths from our past, learning from them, and then turning and joining hands together to right wrongs and foster justice and healing. In so doing, we can be and build that community and world where there is truly liberty and justice for all. This is the work of love.”
Let’s look for glimmers of that ongoing work in the world around us. As the Rumi Friendship Association wrote on their Facebook page after our event, “Let’s cherish the spirit of togetherness and continue spreading love and harmony.” Or as Yusuf/Cat Stevens sings, let’s make the world give up, until it leads us to the land of love.
The Rev. Lisa Green is priest-in-charge at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Williamsburg.
