Walk Across the Room

(This post is long, I know, but it is only one of two that I'm posting this week, so please take the time to read.  It is, as you will see, a conversation starter.)

There is no water cooler in the office where I work, but there are many water cooler type conversations.  In fact, my office has become a frequent stopping off place for the men who work the gardens and clean the facilities.  These men are mostly Muslim and as blue-collar as blue-collar can get.  I like them.  And more importantly, they seem to like me - go figure.

Azzam is the zealot of the bunch.  He is a Muslim who takes the five pillars of Islam very seriously.  He prays.  He fasts.  He recites the Shahada (Muslim Creed: “There is one God, and Muhammad is God’s prophet.”)  He does deeds of charity.  He longs to make a pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca.  And in addition to the big 5, Azzam witnesses - mostly, I think, to me.  It is his desire, passion really, to convince me of the logic of Islam, and in so doing, make me a convert.  Do you know the Bill Hybel’s idea of “Walking Across the Room?”  Well, for Azzam, I am the person he walks across the room to engage. 

Now, if Azzam is going to convert me to Islam, he has a long row to hoe, so to speak, but I appreciate his willingness to work at the task.  In fact, I welcome his advances.  Azzam comes to talk with me about his faith, and that gives me the opportunity to talk back to him about mine.

Yesterday I was reading in Genesis the story of Jacob and Esau.

As he dusted around my desk, Azzam asked: “What are you reading?” I told him the story. 

Jacob is in the Qu’ran, he tells me, but Esau is not.  He has never heard of Esau. Therefore, for Azzam, there was no Esau.  I told him about the Edomites and gave him some historical background on Herod the Great, who was Idumean – a descendant of Esau. This was new information for him.  He doubted it, of course, but was interested all the same.

“We don’t have Esau in our story,” he finally concluded.  In my experience, when a Muslim man says something like this, it is meant to be the last word.  “We have no Esau in our story,” therefore, end of story.  And the tone is exactly that, dismissive and final, because that’s the way many Muslim men, and women too I image, think – “The Qu’ran says it.  I believe it.  That settles it.”  Or as in this case – “The Qu’ran doesn’t say it.  I don’t believe it.  That settles it.”  Now don’t tell me you don’t recognize this kind of thinking.  It is this kind of thinking that has us, and the world along with us, in the mess we’re in.  So walk across the room and talk to your fundamentalist Christian brother and sister about this, because this might be important for us to do before we walk across the room to talk to our non-religious friends, neighbors and strangers in the room.

“But Esau is in my story,” I said.

“And in the Jews’ story too,” he added.

“Yes,” I said.

“Esau is not in the Qu’ran,” he declared again and this time with the kind of edge that generally would end a conversation.  He got up and headed for the door.

“But …” I said.  He stopped.  “But Esau is in the Jewish Holy Scriptures, and Esau is in the Christian Holy Scriptures as well.”

“Not in the Qu’ran.”

“I know, but what do we do with that?  If someone or something is not in the Qu’ran then does that mean that this someone did not exist, or that this something is not so?”

“The Qu’ran is the holy book.”

“For you,” I said, “but not for me, and not for the Jewish people either.”

“The Qu'ran is the last book and Muhammad is the last prophet,” he said with conviction.

“Yes, and the Jewish people say that Moses was the first prophet, and that their holy book is the first,” I countered.

“And what about you Christians?  Where is your book?  Where is your Jesus?”  He asked.

“Between the two, I guess,” I said.

“Right,” he said, “not the first and not the last.”

Now Azzam and his wife just had a new baby, their third child.  Just a few minutes earlier he showed me a picture of his three children – two girls and a boy.  The boy is the middle child.  I could not resist.

“Which of your three children is the only child?” I asked him.

He stood looking at me, thinking about what I was asking.  “It’s not the same,” he finally said.

“How is it different?” I asked.

“I’m not Allah.”

“No,” I answered, “and good thing too, right?”  I smile at this, but he either doesn't get it, or doesn't like it.  But still, I stand by it.

He didn’t answer, but turned to leave.  “Allah be with you,” he said.

“Go in peace,” I responded.

Then I sat and thought about this conversation, wondering if I agreed with my own point.  And just what exactly was my point? Are there three – or maybe more – faith traditions, each one a child of one God?  Do I believe this?  I’m not sure that I do.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that I don’t agree with this.  However, here we are in this place where people would kill, and do kill, because they believe that their faith tradition trumps all others, or even more so, believe that their faith tradition is the only valid way to get to God, or for God to get to us.  I don’t know what to do with that either.  Do you?

Then add to this the factor of many Christians and Jewish people willing to accept one another as cousins at least, but wanting to have nothing whatsoever to do with Muslims.  Muslims are of a separate family tree, one that has Esau cut off, or so it would seem.  Then what to do with Palestinian Christians who are literally stuck between the Jews and the Muslims, with little or no help from their own Christian brothers and sisters?  One Christian friend says: "The Muslims hate us because we are Christian.  The Jews hate us because we are Arabs.  The one thing both have in come is their hatred of us."  Complicated, huh?

Yes, it is.

“I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16).  When Jesus said this to his Jewish disciples, I always assumed that the “other" he was referring to was someone “other” than me.  I’m not so sure.  Earlier Jesus tells his disciples that first they are to go to the “lost sheep of Israel” (Matthew 10:6).  And on another occasion, Jesus declared, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).  Where am I in this?  Am I one of the “other sheep?”  Maybe.  Is there any other “other sheep” that I don’t know about?  Maybe.

What I am compelled to focus on here in this place, is not who is first, last or in between, but rather, who lies beyond the scope of God’s reach?  I believe that I know who the “one shepherd” is that Jesus refers to in John 10, but what I am not allowed to do is determine who is in the “one flock.”  That, Jesus makes clear, is the shepherd’s job, and the shepherd is quite up to the task.  My job is to live with gratitude and grace, and treat everyone I meet as if we were flocked up together, because we probably are.

The people across the room are people with whom I need to converse.