Humane Religion
(following the World Trade Center tragedy)
By Charles Rush
September 16, 2001
Matthew 12: 1-14,
Isaiah 42: 1-7,
2 Cor. 4: 8-18
had intended to start a new book with today's sermon. It would have been a festive day, following last week's ‘ground breaking' for our Barnwell construction project -- cotton candy, balloons, bagpipes. That seems like a month ago now.
But
slowly we've begun to emerge from the debris of the September 11th
tragedy like those firemen
that climbed out of the SUV they were trapped in for a day and a half. Slowly
even a bit of humor has returned. I was in a deli, when the TV reported the
firemen that were found in an SUV under the rubble and were pulled out safely.
A construction worker was standing next to me in a hard hat. He said, “Now,
won't that make a New York commercial”.
In
the welter of articles and op-ed pieces in the major papers, I found myself
thumbing again through the pages of Edward Gibbons, the historian of The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Speaking of the birthplace of
democracy and freedom, Athens, and its eventual end, this is what he had to
say:
“In
the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security and they wanted a
comfortable life. And they lost it all—security, comfort, and freedom… The
freedom they wanted most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to
be free.”
I
pulled from the shelf and reread the very timely words of Lord Acton. Said he:
“Liberty, that great
political idea-sanctifying freedom, and consecrating it to God; teaching men to
treasure the liberties of others as their own; to defend them for the love of
justice and charity more than as a claim of right- has been the soul of what is
great and good.”
Our
commitment to freedom has always been our country's greatest virtue. That is
our contribution to the World. It has not been our material prosperity, though
that has been considerable. It has not been our ability to secure ourselves
from the evils of the world, though that has been impressive. It has always
been our commitment to freedom- that inspiring and noble ideal. It will be
important for us to remember that again in the coming weeks and months- to
defend freedom, to protect it, to nourish it for all.
But
today, I want to talk about humane religion. I was going to talk about this
anyway but it has a haunting relevance in light of the events of this week.
Our
passage from the New Testament this morning is touching. Jesus and his
disciples are walking through a field on the Sabbath and they pluck some wheat
to eat. The religious authorities become visibly upset because Jesus is a
spiritual guru but he won't keep the Sabbath laws of tradition. [Sabbath laws
say that it is unlawful to work on the Sabbath in order to honor God and
harvesting grain is work]. There is a woman that is ill and Jesus heals her.
Again, the religious authorities become visibly upset because Jesus is not
keeping the Sabbath laws of the religious tradition. The gospel of Mark adds
this: “Then Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for people, not people
for the Sabbath'” (Mk. 2:27).
I
think this is a very significant passage. It sums up the spiritual approach of
Jesus' ministry. The point of religion is not about following rules per se. It
is not about getting the liturgy just right. It is not about renouncing
worldliness or becoming holy and getting rid of all evil in your life. What
is fundamental about authentic spirituality is that it helps people become
humane. Feeding people, healing people, very basic humane things. Authentic
spirituality has to do that.
This is a subtle text, but
very significant-especially, the line at the end. It says, “the Pharisees went
out and began to plot with the Herodians, discussing how to destroy Jesus.”
They respected him as a spiritual guru, but he was a threat to organized
religion. He was teaching people that strict adherence to tradition and
orthodoxy was not important. People were important. He was a threat to
organized religion and the religious authorities.
This
is the major theme of his life. A little while after this event, Jesus went to
Galilee. There, some people wanted Jesus to pass moral judgment on someone.
Instead, he said to them “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Rather than get involved in theological hair-splitting, Jesus takes a humane
approach. In effect, he says, ‘identify yourself with those you criticize.'
That doesn't mean we should never make any moral distinctions. But
identification with those you judge forces us to be in relationship with
another person. They can't just be an abstract adulterer, an abstract
thief, an abstract prostitute, juvenile
delinquent. Relationship means compassion, understanding, putting ourselves in
the place of the other. It is a profound and humane approach to
spirituality.
Jesus
goes down to Judea and someone asked him what the greatest commandment is out
of all the hundreds of laws that comprise the Jewish tradition. What is the
essence of our faith, in other words, if you had to reduce it down? Jesus said,
“Love your God with all your heart and all your mind. And love your neighbor
as yourself.” The vertical axis, right relationship with God, is
meaningless without love for other people. This line, so obvious to all of us,
but it was important new ground when it was said.
And
at the end of his life, when he is put on trial and crucified, if you look
closely at that story, and I can't go into it today, he really lives out a very
humane approach to political power and to religious authorities. His humanity
underscores the inhumanity of the political leaders and the religious leaders,
and he suffers the consequences of two inhuman institutions as a result.
Jesus'
words have had a huge impact on spiritual life ever since and a very important
one because the religious life attracts often attracts people that aren't
particularly given over to humanity in their spiritual quest. There are lots of
people drawn to religion that are so otherworldly and interior, they just don't
pay any attention to suffering that is all around them. There are lots of
religious people that are aesthetic dilettantes, so concerned to get the
liturgy right and the architecture right, they lose sight of the people around
them. We have lots of religious people
that are so angry and controlling that they devise books and books of rules and
judgments, losing sight of the humans around them.
Thursday
morning I heard Rabbi Marc Gellman interviewed on the radio. He was asked about
the theology of jihad by an American that had no idea what could motivate
people to engage in this kind of terrorism. Rabbi Gellman said that what needs
to happen and what probably won't happen is that Muslim leaders around the world
need to come together and unilaterally proclaim that the theology of jihad is a
perversion of the tenets of Islam.
He
went on to make an interesting point. He said that every religion goes through
a period where some part of it betrays its highest ideals. Christianity, he
said, did that during the Crusades. But what is important is that they repent,
that they correct themselves. He went on to say that what Islam needs is
something like a Reformation themselves. It may not be our place to tell them
that but it is true nevertheless. In the name of humanity, we need a
Reformation.
In
the latest issue of Commentary, Fiamma Nirenstein wrote an article
entitled “How Suicide Bombers Are Made” in which she puts together for the West
what people who live in the Mideast know all too well.
You
may recall that when Pope John Paul II visited Damascus last May, the new young
president, Bashar al-Assad greeted him with a speech that sought to bond
Muslims and Catholics together in their common hatred of Jews. The Jews have
‘tried', said President Assad, “to kill the principles of all religions with
the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus Christ”, and in “the same way
they tried to betray and kill the prophet Muhammed.”[i]
The
West was dumbfounded by these remarks because they simply do not pay attention
to their proliferation in the region.
Ms.
Nirenstein has a number of examples of this general anti-semitism but she also
lifts up, importantly, the religious leaders. “In May of this year, at the
well- attended pan-Islamic conference in Teheran, Iran's supreme leader, the
Ayatollah Khamenei, said this at the opening. [quote] ‘There is proof that the
Zionists had close ties with the German Nazis, and exaggerated all the data
regarding the killing of the Jews… as an expedient to attract the solidarity of
public opinion and smooth the way for the occupation of Palestine and the
justification of Zionist crimes [end quote].'”[ii]
She
writes, “From such hatred it is but a short step to incitement and acts of
violence. Arab schools teach not just that Israel is evil, but that extirpating
this evil is the noblest of callings. As a text for Syrian tenth graders puts
it, The logic of justice obligates the application of the single verdict [on
the Jews] from which there is no escape; namely, that their criminal intentions
be turned against them and that they be exterminated.' In Gaza and the West
Bank, textbooks at every grade level praise the young man who elects to become
a shahid, a martyr for the cause of Palestine and Islam.
“The
lessons hardly stop at the classroom door. Palestinian television openly urges
children to sacrifice themselves. In one much aired film clip, an image of the
12 year old Mohammed al-Durah- the boy killed last September in an exchange of
gunfire between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen- appears in front of a
landscape of paradise, replete with fountains and flowers, beckoning his peers
to follow.
“In
early June, just two weeks after the fatal collapse of a Jerusalem wedding hall
Palestinian Authority television broacast a sermon by Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi
praying that this [quote] ‘massively oppressive Knesset will [similiarly]
collapse over the head of Jews' and calling down blessings upon ‘whoever has
put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons and plunged into the midst
of the Jews [end quote].”[iii]
Likewise, in an incendiary
sermon delivered last October, I believe in Ramallah, the Imam concluded with
an impassioned, [quote] “death to the Jews, death to the Jews, death to the
Jews [end quote].” The next day in a riot, two Israeli soldiers were dragged
into the police station, thrown from the second floor and killed in a grisly
manner that Western television would not show for fear it might be incendiary.
“The
effect of this”, writes Ms. Nirenstein, “is not hard to discern… Israel has
been transformed into little more than a diabolical abstraction, not a country
at all but a malignant force embodying every possible negative attribute-
aggressor, usurper, sinner, corrupter, infidel, murderer, barbarian.”[iv]
And of course, such a beast allows all manner of beastly response.
This theology must be
condemned as a perversion of Islam. Islam is a religion of peace. Jihad
theology is no more Islamic that people who fire bomb abortion clinics are Christ
like. Jihad theology is no more Islamic than Baruch Goldstein' killing spree
was Jewish. And the Imam's that preach this theology of Jihad are not spiritual
leaders. They are demagogues.
Usually, you expect the religious leaders to be agents of calm, to
be moderating voices of reason. In these cases, they are oil to the fire. They
are giving existing grievances and prejudices religious sanction.
Martyrdom and wanton
violence is not what Islam teaches. And I wish deeply that the real spiritual
leaders of Islam throughout the world would pronounce that this is a
perversion. But they are not likely to for a complex set of reasons of loyalty,
culture, and politics.
And I think it is obvious
that we will not be served by demonizing all Palestinians or all Muslims as
being fanatical terrorist bombers. We get nowhere by hating all Muslims and
Arabs. This is exactly what the terrorists want us to do. They want us
to start an indiscriminate war with Islam that will unite all Islam against us
in a fanatical war.
It will be especially
difficult for Americans to make blanket judgments because we do not know much about people from that part of the
world. We do not know much about Islam. And ignorance is the blank canvas on which
caricature is most easily drawn.
In the next few days and
weeks, we will be subject to a number of incendiary talk show hosts of our own.
We will be subject to bluster and bigotry that mask themselves in the name of
patriotism. They do us a disservice. We will hear loose talk about the wanton
use of force by people who would rather act outrageously than think
courageously. All around us, sadness is dissolving into rage and there will be
a welling collective chorus to ‘do something'.
All through this process, it will be important for
us to pray for our leaders to act in a way that promotes humanity.
It is important to remember the
wave of humane sentiment that has been unleashed by this act of singular
inhumanity. In the first few days, it began to settle over New York like a
profound spiritual resolve. We will stay humane in the face of inhumanity.
It was there with people
helping other people. It was there in the calm civility downtown following the
blast. It was there in those hundreds of Dad's that got home that afternoon and
picked their kids up from school. It was there in the community coming together
for prayer and support for those missing. It is there in the volunteer efforts
that are being made, particularly the thousands and thousands of people picking
up debris downtown. It is there in the many touching memorials that are being
erected around the area. It was there in the 300 fire fighters that went into
the building to help and paid the ultimate sacrifice for service. It was there
in the untold number of people that went back into those buildings trying to
help and paid the ultimate sacrifice for trying to help. It was there in the
passengers of flight United 93, the downed plane in Pennsylvania, who
collectively resisted being taken over and gave their lives to save other
people. They are all heroes for humanity.
This week, I have heard from
people all around the world via e-mail, that are lifting us in their prayers,
having vigils, moments of silence. We are not alone. The wave of humanity
spread world wide in response to this inhumanity.
That is what the best of our
faith has taught us, to promote humanity, to promote compassion to our
neighbors, to treat others as we would want to be treated. Jesus even taught us
to love our enemies. At a minimum, what I think we can hear out of that in our
present context is, ‘don't dehumanize them.' We won't be helped by
wanton violence, bigotry, demagogic speech. It may feel good for a moment to
release some rage but it won't last.
We will have to respond, we
will have to- but as we do, let us pray
that we will remember that what we destroy, our children will have to rebuild.
Ultimately, we have to develop into a world-wide neighborhood. Ultimately, we
will have to stay focused on what is humane.
The towers are gone, a
charred heap of rubble, smoke still rising from it's ruin. But Lady Liberty
still raises her torch in the harbor. May we be guided by her light. I remind
you what is written on her pedestal.
"Keep, ancient lands,
your stored pomp!"
"Give me your tired,
your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Amen.
[i] “How Suicide
Bombers are Made”, Commentary (September, 2001), p. 53.
[ii] Ibid. p.
54.
[iii] Ibid.. p.
54,55.
[iv] Ibid. pl.
54.
© 2001 .
All rights reserved
