Al-Hallaj and St. Paul

My last semester as a student at John Carroll University was mainly spent finishing my thesis on how the new translation of the Roman Missal is a Vatican political move to revert the changes of Vatican II, but every Thursday I took a much needed break from that chaos to study Sufism with Zeki Saratoprak. 

Zeki is a kind man, maybe the kindest I encountered at JCU, which is certainly saying something.  Not only would he offer me his lunch or dinner every single time I ran into him heating it in the staff microwave, but he would treat me with such warm hospitality even when I had interrupted one of his 5 daily prayers.  Through Zeki’s class I not only came to appreciate Islam and Sufism, but to envy their faith.  Daily prayer not only reminds a Muslim, but also helps them put into practice, the literal meaning of the word Islam – surrender to God.

The God which Muslims surrender to is the same God Christian’s call the Creator/Father/Lord Almighty/etc…, but the Muslim imagination projects a few distinct non-Christian traits on our shared Creator.   For instance, a Muslim could never accept Jesus as both God and human because God cannot be man; God is other.  In fact, God is so much so “other” that Muslims say no matter what is said about God is untrue.  God is not of this world; God is other.  This is clearly quite distant from the Christian theology of an incarnate, fleshy God.

Yet listen again to Sunday’s reading from Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are you ways my ways,” says the Lord.  “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.

Is this pre-incarnation image of God so different than that of Islam?  The Lord is clear – our thoughts are not the thoughts of the Lord.  And beyond that, the Lord clarifies that our ways and thoughts are worlds apart.  We’re not even on the same playing field…

…except that we are.  For Christians, we have faith in an incarnate God, a God made human.  Muslims, especially in the Sufi tradition, rest their belief in a God whose reflection can be found in all things.  The 99 names of God can be found in every existing thing.  For example, in a tree is the reflection of Al-Khaliq, God as Creator.  Its fruit is a reflection of Ar-Razzaq, God the Provider.  Its shade reflects Ar-Rahman, God the Merciful.  Its height reflects the Al-Aliyy, God the Most High. And, even when a tree falls and tragically takes a life, it’s a reflection of Al-Mumit, God the Causer of Death.  God’s reflection can be found in all things.  Sound similar?  Sound like the Jesuit idea of “finding God in all things”? 

Al-Hallaj was a famous Sufi martyred in the middle ages for claiming that the only thing inside his cloak was God.  His meditation and prayer brought him to see only Allah’s reflection in everything he encountered, including himself.  For Al-Hallaj, the blasphemous statement made perfect sense, he was a reflection of Allah in all Allah’s glory. 

For Paul this Sunday it’s the same.  He writes, “For if we live, we live for the Lord and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”  He could not have been more right on so many levels.  Literally, yes, our life and death is at the hands of our maker, but it's deeper than that.  We are the Lord’s…image, body, hands, feet, breath, speech…we are the Lord’s reflection AND action in the world.  When we wake each day, we should find ourselves saying, like Al-Hallaj, that everything inside this cloak is God, that everything inside this cloak is the body of Christ.

September 4, 2011
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordnary Time
Ez 33:7-9
Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
Rom 13:8-10
Mt 18:15-20

My best friend, Steve, has no formal religion.  He is like many in my generation. Raised by semi-religious parents in the Christian faith, but without much grounding in a tradition other than democracy and consumerism.  Even after living together for two years and once spending a college summer galavanting around the southwestern national parks with him, Steve and I have talked about faith less than you would think.  Whenever religion did come up, as it often does for someone who works at a church, Steve would interject, "I believe you just have to be good to others."  That's his moral ethic and as close to a religion as he's come.

St. Paul gives us a different one word ethic in Sunday's epistle: love.  "Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another,"  he tells us.  Sure, Paul is crafting an argument that has a more specific goal (includsion of gentiles in salvation) than simplifying religion to a word like Steve, but does this nonethless by borrowing Jesus' revised second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself.

What's odd for both Steve and St. Paul is that they both only tell half the story.  Being "good", whatever one self-defines that to be, is always "I" centered at its root.  The "good" ethic only calls you to be what you desire to be to the point it doesn't knowingly infrindge on others, maybe like non-interventionalist foreign policy.  Paul does more or less the same thing with his one-word-ethic of love.  Loving your neighbor as yourself is dependent on how you love yourself.  His "love" ethic relies on how you choose to love yourself - still an "I" centered activity. 

The broader scope of Christianity, however, calls for a different ethic. Yes, love is at its core, but a love centered first in and of God (see Christ's first great commandment or Thomas Aquinas on moral ethics). This love ethic should push us beyond ourself, beyond our space, to seek a justice-centered love.  The reading from Jewish scripture reminds us of this.  God says to Ezekiel:

You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel;
when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.

God goes on to say that if we do not speak out against injustice we will face the same punishment of the injust.  Depending on how you read Paul, this could fit his love ethic, but surely is not just being "good".  God's guide for how to live this week calls us to be prophets in the world, to live for others in all our actions, whether its what we buy, who we vote for, or the quality of how we listen to our neighbor.  God calls us to be men and women for others.  Goodness and love that is drawn from an ethic of "I" do not begin to encompass this calling.

Here's a small story: Andy is fixing some plaster in the church office for us.  He's the best plaster guy in Charlotte, so I'm told.  He's also dying.  He and cancer have been walking together for three years.  Chemo, radiation, chemo, surgerys, two times being told he was cancer free, and yet a month ago he started waking up every day with piercing headaches.  The doctors found 5 tumors in his brain.  They want to do the chemo, radiation, etc. dance all over again.  Andy refuses.  He'll die with dignity, he tells me.  He'll come to work everyday and do whatever his body and the painkillers will let him.  He says he's ready for heaven, for hell, for whatever death will bring, so long as he begins that journey with the dignity he deserves.

I know Andy's story because he asked me how I was doing.  I told him that I had a headache and he told me to get my coffee and take a seat.  Then he told me his story and called me to give him the dignity he deserved.  To listen, to reach out beyond mysef to be with someone who needs love, to be a man for another.  May God bless Andy, help him continue to call us to be for others, and help us to challenge others to be for the Andys we ignore.