Things of Infinite Importance

A friend who monitors references to this site using google alerts forwarded a link to this internet version of a sermon called “Things Of Infinite Importance” of a priest who is a member of the American Christian sect called “Espiscopalians”

It seems to me from reading about them that they are the American version of the English Christian Sect called the “Church of England”. These episcopalians which seems to mean people who follow the guidance of bishops split from the English sect at the time of the American indpendence from England and called themselves episcopalians because the American revolutionaries forbade that there be a “Church of America.” The “Church of England” are in turn a sect that has split from the sect called “Roman Catholics” because some English king or another wanted a new wife. Wherever they went the English brought wth them their Church except that they called it things like the “Church of Nigeria” and the “Anglican Church in Kenya” Keeping track of all these sects can be confusing and is not relevant to my purpose which is to reply to his criticisms of how America is behaving which he is making using his terms as an American and as a follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH). 

My reply is in my terms as Muslim and as an Iraki. My purpose is not to open a dispute but to show some of the differences and to show that despite those differences all who try to submit to the will of God and who recognise that though we are not brothers and sisters in religon we are brothers and sisters in humanity have common ground and a common interest in opposing the idolatorous worship of empire which is I believe the root of the war against the people of Irak being waged by the modern colonial power called America and that it has its roots in idolatry. To do this I have used the teachings of Islam and also the teachings of another American Christian who was a member of one of the many Christian sects called Baptists.

You can follow this link to read what he preached:

[Snip he sets a scene for the followers of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) who are listening to him as part of how they do things in his sect]

I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and it was Gandhi’s fault.
Well, not exactly Gandhi’s fault … but Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi’s fault. I was flipping through the channels trying to find something that would lull me to sleep and instead I found that movie, one of my favorites of all time.
And it got to the point in the movie where Gandhi is sitting at a table in the government council room. With him are Patel, Nehru, Jinnah and Azad. On the British side are the Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, several generals, and a senior civil servant, Kinnoch. And Gandhi says:

We think it is time you recognized that you are masters in someone else’s home. Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us. General Dyer is but an extreme example of the principle. It is time you left.

Now, the British are stunned almost to speechlessness – the audacity, the impossibility of it – and from Gandhi of all people. The senior civil servant, Kinnoch, is the first to recover.

“With respect, Mr. Gandhi, without British administration, this country would be reduced to chaos.”

To which Gandhi responds, gently and patiently:

Mr. Kinnoch, I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the “good” government of an alien power.

[snip]

Let me play devil’s advocate for a second. Let me take the current administration completely at its word and accept all its best intentions — even as that word has changed from time to time, but no matter. Let’s accept that we went into Iraq as liberators to save the people from a cruel tyrant. Let’s say we came to bring peace and establish order. Even if that is true, there is no escaping the current reality.

You can’t get any decent news of what is happening in Iraq from the major networks or major media. You have to look elsewhere. One place I look is several excellent online diaries written by people on the ground there. This morning, I read an account from a young man named Mohammed Ibn Laith, who lives in Al-Sadriya, Baghdad. It was poetry and tragedy. I want to share an excerpt from it with you;

[Snip I see no reason to waste your time or mine quoting somebody quoting what I have written.]

History speaks to us — if we have the ears to hear. And if we don’t, it will gently, powerfully repeat itself until we get the message.

[He speaks of the Romans and of their polytheist myth of "Pax Romana" that they used to justify their wars of conquest.]

And it was in this empire, in a small backwater of this empire that a teacher arose named Jesus. Now the people were looking for a leader. They were looking for a hero. They were looking for someone to rise up and smack down the Romans, to defeat them and send them back to Rome so that they might have home rule, control over the land they believe was destined for them. And as Jesus’ teaching began to draw crowds and stories of his signs and wonders began to sweep across the countryside, some began to wonder if he was the one — the one who would lead them out of oppression.

But that’s not the leader Jesus was. Jesus was not there to overthrow the Romans by force of might, but eventually he would lead to the downfall of that Empire with a question.

Where is God in this? Where is God’s favor in this life to which we are resigned?

And Luke’s Gospel tells us that a huge throng followed him and crowded around him, drawn by his power. And he lifted up his eyes and said:

Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God
Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied.
Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.

Where is God’s favor? With the poor, the hungry, the weeping, the outcast. Jesus was not going to mount an army and defeat the Romans, but no matter — the war was already won. For the Romans’ strength was not a sign of divine favor, but the Jews’ poverty.

My friends, this passage is not about us.

Yes, there are times when we relative to others we think we are poor, times we feel hungry, times when we are deeply grieved and times when we endure the hatred of others … but not like this. This passage is not to be read in the context of our lives but in the context of life on this planet. Jesus’ words play out in places like Iraq, like Darfur … and on the cold streets of our own city every night.

The word “bless” literally means “to speak well of.” Whom does God side with? Whom does God speak up for and speak well of. It is those. It is Mohammed and his family. It is not us.

But if we are not the blessed, then there is but one question for us to ask:

How can we be part of the blessing? When we see the face of the poor,the hungry, the bereaved, the hated. When we read Mohammed’s words. When we read Nick Kristof’s missives from Darfur. When we hear Deb Goldfeder tell of our daughters and sons in Lui who can’t go to school because there is no water for the makeshift schoolhouse. When we hear and read and see these people, we know that they are the blessed, not us. And so what God leaves for us is not reward but privilege:
How can we be part of the blessing? How can God speak well of them through us?
What will we have to say to them. What will we have to say for them, on their behalf, in the halls of power their voices cannot reach.
What shall we talk about, today you and I?

Source: Things of Infinite Importance

This is my reply, this is a follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) speaking to other Christians using the terms they will understand, I am not a Christian I am a Muslim and I am an Iraki this is how I see the matter:

The Prophet Jesus (PBUH) taught the importance of compassion and performed miracles by the grace and power of God who restrained the children of Israel from violence to him when he showed them the Clear Signs, and they mocked him as nothing more than a magician.

This also is why God lifted him up when they thought they had killed him. My father’s Irish friend markfromireland the follower of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) has told me often of how the Prophet Jesus drove the defilers from the Holy Places because they had turned it into a place thieves. He has told me also that the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) said that he had come to bring not peace but a sword. My Iraki Christian friends and the priest confirm this, which proves to my mind that Christians can agree on something when they put their minds to it :-).

From this we can see that Christians who truly try to follow the teachings of the Prophet Jesus (PBUH) also know that they  are required by God to resist the tyrants who arise using either money or arms and seek to crush those who strive to submit to the will of God under their feet.

This is why I think this:

“History speaks to us — if we have the ears to hear. And if we don’t, it will gently, powerfully repeat itself until we get the message.”

is in error in the Holy Qur’an God speaks and tells us that he created us of a male and a female, and made us into nations and tribes, then God tells us of his purpose in doing this which is that we should know another and not despise each other.

From this we can see that those who despise the different tribes and nations are to be resisted. This is why we fight. Because they despise us they are false prophets and in opposition to God’s will which alone is what we are required to submit to.

As a Muslim you cannot say ”history …..” as though that is some abstract force that exists independently. This is  because history is the unfolding of God’s will as he constantly engages in creation. What Gandhi was saying was that because the British despised his nation they were in opposition to God’s will and that God would destroy their empire which he did.

Similarly America despises all other nations and God is saying “stop or I will punish you” There was an American follower of the prophet Jesus (PBUH) called Martin Luther King who warned of this:

“Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice and it seems I can hear God saying to America “you are too arrogant, and if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name.”

The Vietnamese as communists denied God but still God used them to work his will to start to break the backbone of the power of the American and European tribes who despised and exploited all others because of the colour of their skin.

What Martin Luther King was warning you of was that Americans like to believe that just because they are Americans they are better than everyone else more kind more charitable more benevolent and therefore everybody should be more like them and that therefore all who resist must of their nature be evil. They also believe that they are entitled to take what they want. In the way that a corrupt policeman lies to himself and says that this is not corruption but his just reward. A corrupt policeman is not only a common criminal he is worse than that because he has betrayed his sacred trust to uphold the order decreed by God. This is what America has become.

America has set itself to despise all others in defiance of God’s clear will and see them not as your brothers and sisters either in religon or in humanity but as “legitmate targets” ripe for exploitation to be destroyed if they resist.

My message as a Muslim to those who call themselves Christians is you should listen to the teachings of true Christians like Martin Luther King.

You should be more like us not us more like you :-).

Tags: Briefings, Christianity, Islam, Politics and Security, Religion