A FELICITOUS COINCIDENCE
A FELICITOUS COINCIDENCE
March 4th, 2009
The Wellspring Community encourages its members to pray for one another each month. Each year we are asked to write a brief note on some concerns we have.
In using the Wellspring prayer calendar on the fourth of March I read
Mac and Margaret Nicoll
Growing trust between Christians and Muslims in the local community.
A little later in the morning I attended our Wednesday morning Eucharist
[Church of All Nations is the Carlton Uniting Church], and at the end of the service our minister, John Evans, invited us to lunch when there was to be an informal gathering to celebrate the fact that the first seven graduates of our work training group [all Africans from the local housing estate] were to begin regular employment this week in the hospitality industry.
At 12.20, I jumped on my old Malvern Star and rode down Drummond Street to the Church, there to spend a wonderful hour of conversation with a cosmopolitan group of Carlton citizens. The honoured guests were
Amuna, Yirgalem, Nurhussen, Rawa, Ali, Lucy and Sheeba, all from Eritrea and Ethiopia. On this day they were enjoying the presentation of certificates, chatting with members of the congregation, grateful for the opportunity of ongoing employment and excited by the prospect of doing their first shifts the next week at Flemington Racecourse and the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
I was particularly moved as I listened to Yirgalem and Rawa telling of their friendship which has developed in their years on the Carlton Estate. Yirgalem is an Eritrean Christian and her friend Rawa is an Eritrean Moslem. Rawa explained that they are often calling at one another’s flats, sharing baby sitting and supporting one another. “We are like sisters,” she exclaimed.
In the afternoon, towards the end of the homework programme at the local library, I was talking with Ramla, the organizer of the programme. Ramla is a student at Victoria University and a faithful Moslem. She took from her bag a library book she had been reading and thanked me for encouraging her to read it. It was Karen Armstrong’s book Muhammad, a biography of the prophet which I had found most engaging and helpful when I encountered it several years ago.
Two weeks ago, at the official service to mourn the bushfire disaster, hosted by the ABC news presenter Ian Henderson, a group of faith community leaders spent a few minutes on the stage. Three of them [a Buddhist woman and two Christian men] brought a message of support on behalf of all the faith communities. When they had finished and were leaving the stage, Sheik Fehmi, the senior Imam in Australia, was looking fragile and in need of support. I was deeply touched as our Uniting Church Moderator, Jason Kioa, took Sheik Fehmi’s arm and walked slowly with him down the steps. This was a beautiful symbol of our unity in the midst of great sorrow.
This morning I reflected on the experiences that have prompted my interest in relations between Moslems and Christians.
Twenty five years ago I heard Anglican bishop, David Penman, speaking of his years in Lebanon and describing an experience of walking up the rickety old stairs in a Beirut lane to speak with a Moslem scholar to see what he, David, could learn about prayer. This striking image has stayed with me… David Penman, keen evangelical, returned missionary, a passionate Christian, asking a Moslem to teach him about prayer !
At the same period of my life I was teaching at the local High School with its wide range of nationalities and offering a middle school unit on Middle Eastern Studies. It seemed obvious that we should deal with Judaism, Christianity and Islam so I deepened my knowledge of Islam and for several years taught about the basic features of these three great faiths.
Alongside these experiences, possibly shaped by them, my theological pilgrimage was leading me to be much more open to the possibility of our gracious God being also present in the lives of people of other faiths and I had become increasingly troubled by our tendency to see the world in terms of Us and Them, whether it was Christians and Moslems, Catholics and Protestants, Labor and Liberal, public or private school,. radicals or conservatives….whatever the division, I wondered why we needed to define ourselves as over against others. I am still wondering.
Some people fear the growing links between Christians and Moslems because they suspect this involves a watering down of our own faith and convictions and that it marks a descent [horror of horrors] into relativism.
For me, the growing trust and openness between faiths is not a retreat from the good news of the Kingdom or the prelude to the development of some super world faith, but rather a response to the teaching of Jesus. Indeed one of the strengths of this movement is that, as we explore other faiths in a questing, open way, what often happens is a deepening of our understanding of our own faith. Furthermore it is as an opportunity to understand the other and to be involved together in matters of justice and peace with those from other faith communities.
Sometimes I am asked to lead the prayers of the people at our Sunday morning worship. Am I being faithful to Christ when I say these words ?
O God, we pray for people of our faith
for people of other faiths
for people of no faith
We are all created by you
All known by you
All loved by you.
Come Holy Spirit
Renew your whole creation.
In the name of Christ. Amen
You can see then why, on March 4th, I smiled with a deep sense of wonder and appreciation as I realised some Wellspring members would be thinking of us as we celebrated another tiny example of our reconciling God at work.
Mac Nicoll
March, 2009
posted by ledingham at 5:46 PM
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