Submission
SERMON GIVEN BY REV LINDA HART AT RICHMOND & PUTNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
Tomorrow, Muslims around the world will celebrate the festival of Eid al Adha, the festival of sacrifice. It is a celebration of what could be arguably the most difficult story in the Hebrew Bible, the story of Abraham taking his son to a mountain top to sacrifice him to God. Muslims who own animals, sacrifice the best of them and share the meat all around their community, and prayers are said acknowledging their submission to Allah.
Now, it must be said, that this isn’t the sort of festival that most of us would think, ‘Wow! Doesn’t that sound good? We should have one of those ourselves.’ Like my niece when she realised that becoming Jewish meant having long days of prayer and fasting along with Hanukkah’s eight days of presents, it’s not likely to be one of the religious practices that we’re eager to take on. Because at first we’ve got to admit that submission is something that most of us aren’t very good at, I would think. The dissenting tradition from which this congregation has grown, tends to draw people who have strong opinions about matters of religion, who do not easily take strong authority and authoritative teachings, but who prefer to do that work themselves, thank you very much. Indeed it was rebellion against religious authority that was the founding spark of this movement which we are the inheritors of.
Submitting, surrendering, relinquishing our own wills and egos to a divine power are not at the top of our list of things to do this week.
But I am convinced that there are lessons to be learned from even the most alien and difficult of traditions. And in this age where too often other religious traditions, and particularly Muslims are regarded as enemies, we do well to be intentional about finding the ways in which we are alike. We do well to find the family resemblances that exist. This isn’t to suggest that all religions are the same – they surely are not. Each religious tradition has its own particularity and peculiarity. Still, through their rituals and especially their stories – the ones they particularly revere – we can hear some of the eternal truths that may speak to our lives as well. As happens when we eavesdrop on others conversations, we often hear our own stories being told.
This celebration, this festival of Eid al Adha, is one where one of our shared cultural stories is told. Islam, as you likely know, sees itself as building upon Judaism and Christianity. Just as Christianity understands itself as drawing upon the Jewish tradition, Islam draws upon them both as the precursors to the final stage of true religion revealed by the prophet Mohammed.
The story of Abraham going to the mountain to slaughter in sacrifice his own beloved son, Isaac, as I mentioned before, one of the most difficult of the Bible. An angel comes to Abraham and commands him to do this. The story doesn’t tell us that he agonised or wept over what he has been ordered to do. It simply says that he gathered the wood to make the burnt offering of his son, and set out with his donkey and two young men. Upon arrival at the place, Abraham and Isaac go up the mountain. It isn’t until Abraham is at the moment of sacrificing his son that the angel intervenes, declares that Abraham has shown that he does indeed fear God. Abraham raises his eyes and sees a ram caught in a thicket, captures it, sacrifices it and offers his burnt offering to God.
Because Abraham has not withheld his only son, the angel tells him that he shall be blessed, and the generations to come shall be as many as stars in the skies or grains of sand on the beach, and that they, too, will be blessed.
It’s a hard story, and not one that most of us would think of having a celebration around. We would be more likely to want to ask some questions of the so-called God who demanded such a price from a father. We would want to talk to Abraham about his suitability as a parent. With the news filled with stories of children tortured and killed by parents, we might well be especially sensitive to such a story as this. This is the God that so many people would have a hard time believing in: a God that demands that we surrender our beloved child, is not a God many of us would gladly worship.
Islam, though, means surrender. The word itself indicates submission and acceptance of God’s will and commandments. A Muslim is one who submits to God. And this story is one of the greatest surrender and submission to the will of God, is it not?
Not long after Claire was born, a friend of mine lost an adult daughter in a car accident. The young woman was in her 30's and raising children, and it was one of those moments for Sue, my friend, where the world crashed in on her. Keenly aware of my vulnerability as a new parent, I couldn’t manage to write a note to Sue. The thought of losing a child was too terrifying to me. It was nearly a year, I think, before we saw one another, and as we hugged hello, I admitted that I was sorry that I hadn’t written, that her loss had frightened me so profoundly that I couldn’t even think about it. I began to weep, and so did Sue. A gracious and wise friend, she understood the terror. We stood in the lobby of the retreat centre and cried and talked of her daughter and of mine.
For months after the car accident, she was unable to answer when someone asked how many children she had. The question was a bitter reminder of her loss, and Sue felt she must say that she now had two children, not three. She said: ‘I realise now that she is still my daughter, and that I still have her. I see her in her children, but most importantly, she still abides in my heart, and the years we had together were as precious a gift as I could have asked of this life. I have three daughters,’ she told me, ‘and one has died.’
This, too, is a story of submission to what is what is asked of us in this life. Submitting our hearts to the realities of the world, to the bare, painful fact of loss, surrendering, too to the love that abides and endures even beyond death.
This act of submission is not unknown in the traditions that feed into our own, however alien it may feel at initial glance. George Herbert, the Welsh poet, spoke directly to this:
For my hearts desire
Unto thine is bent:
I aspire
To a full consent.
And there is a sweet quiet request that the path that is opened by the one of love:
Throw away thy rod,
Throw away thy wrath:
O my God,
Take the gentle path.
Who among us wouldn’t pray such a prayer? Asking for the gentle path, for the path of love? And acknowledging our own frailty and failings:
Though I fail, I weep:
Though I halt in pace,
Yet I creep
To the throne of grace.
This poem written in the 17th century speaks to our condition even today, as does the story of Abraham.
For at the end, the festival of Eid al Adha is not only about that terrifying willingness to submit to the will of God, but also to that moment of grace that comes in the midst of it: Abraham does not slay his son, his hand is stayed and his son survives. The slaughter of a ram at this festival is a remembrance of the grace that comes, too.
Rumi, the Persian poet, speaks to this, too. Submission for him has a joyousness about it:
I tried to keep quietly repeating
No strength but yours,
but I couldn’t.
I had to clap and sing.
In this poem he suggests the other side of submission: that we are – or can be – upheld when we release ourselves into the emptiness of existence.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the sea-journey goes on and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!
Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.
We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
Life comes to us with so much that we wouldn’t ask for, that we would refuse if we might: illnesses that rob years from our time amongst those we love, deaths that break our hearts, love that dwindles, the numbing of our own hearts, losses great and small that chip away at the love we thought we abided within.
We cannot simply lie ourselves down, passively accept such events, such moments in our lives. We cannot intone the words, ‘thy will, not mine’ as Mary was reported to do as the birth of Jesus was announced to her. We will not climb the mountain, knife in hand, to take the life of one so beloved of us. No, not us. We will fight and battle, we will do what we can and what we must. We will argue and fight, dispute that word that comes from the angel asking that we accept a task too horrible to imagine, asking that the hard truth be taken to heart.
But there does come a moment when we do have to release and relent. There are truths that are too hard, tasks that are too horrible, and situations that are unimaginable until we find ourselves squarely there. There comes a moment when the argument and fight is fruitless and meaningless, become the thing rather than what initially confronted us. There comes a moment when we must lay down our arms, and surrender to what is, and open ourselves to what grace may be there. There comes a time when we must be held by the ocean, when we can feel the motion of tenderness around us, feel the buoyancy, if we open ourselves to it.
My friend Sue and I wept tears of sorrow and grief, along with tears of joy. I looked at a picture of her beloved daughter who had been taken from her, and she exclaimed that two year old Claire was indeed beautiful and a miracle. Submitting to the truth that we live and cannot know the time that we shall die, and that the days of our lives are calculated by an equation that we cannot predict nor understand fully, we found the joy that resided there as well.
Abraham, too, must have felt the burden of needing to take on the task that would break his heart, and known the joy of his hand stayed. It is the recognition of both submission and grace that fuels the celebration that our Muslim brothers and sisters will undertake tomorrow.
We have only barely peeked around the corner to look at Eid al Adha, a quick glance on this wintry morning. I hope in their story, in their festival, we have glimpsed something of our own lives, and that we recognise that though different in custom and culture, though different in belief, still they are joined to us in both trouble and in joy. While there are still many ways in which we differ, and much more to understand, let us accept this gift of community and connection for this day.
So may it be,
That we can accept what we must,
And open to the grace that resides there
Amen.