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Pilgrimage
Thank you for permitting me to speak on this auspicious occasion. When I was a little boy and living in what’s now Yemen, I asked my father why some men had orange in their hair and beards. He told me that they’d been on pilgrimage to the heartland of their faith, just north of where we were. In later years I talked with such hajjis, and came to know the joy that filled their lives because they’d participated in the rites of pilgrimage. In recent days, many recent pilgrims will have returned to their homelands with renewed hope and love for God and for others, because of what they’ve done and seen.
Jews, Christians and Muslims all look upon Abraham as their spiritual father. Ever since our father Abraham left his native land at God’s command to find another sacred place, the children of Abraham have known the importance of pilgrimage. In life, we make many journeys. Many days of the year, I climb into my car and go to Aurora University. Occasionally, I go shopping. Infrequently, I go on vacation. Journeys happen all the time, and we give them barely a thought. But pilgrimages are different, for they are journeys charged with deepest meaning. A pilgrim is a person troubled by truth, who seeks the holy, who travels with God in order to find God. For the pilgrim, this earth is the creation of the Lord, and some of its places are radiant with unique numinous awe and power; for example: Jerusalem, Rome and Mecca. To visit such places is to meet with the living God, if you go as pilgrims, with the eyes of faith to see and the ears of faith to hear.
As a Christian, it’s a great delight to me that today’s event coincides with the night of Epiphany, when Christians remember the pilgrimage of the wise men to the young Jesus, to offer him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, and to find themselves gifted with the joy of salvation. It’s intriguing to speculate who these wise men were, but all we know is that they came ‘from the east’, guided by a star. Over many miles they traveled, guided by God in order to find, not worldly values, but eternal meaning. Quite ordinary people today identify with their hopes and yearnings for meaning and purpose. We too can seek holiness, just as many wise hajjis have done. Tonight’s MC Tim and I went with a group of Aurora University students to Turkey in June, and, in the friendship of its people and the wonders of its historical places, found meanings quite other and more lasting than money and fame or other momentary and fleeting goals of many secular people.
The concept of pilgrimage has much to teach the children of Abraham. Some Christians, Jews and Muslims bring shame upon their religion, by their exclusiveness, anger, hatred and tribalism. I’ve met members of all three religions who don’t reflect the image of God in their lives. If they did, they’d seek justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God. Instead, they make God in their own paranoid image, and so conceive of God as bad-tempered, pitiless and hate-filled. Such people aren’t open to the ever-renewing mercies of God. They already, in their own minds, know everything there is to know about God.
And they’re wrong. Fools they are, indeed! For to go on a journey with God is to be open to new adventures, creative possibilities, amazing discoveries and rediscoveries about God and God’s ways in the world. To be a pilgrim, to travel with God, is to allow your prejudices to be revealed yet overcome, and to rejoice in God’s love, not for the few but for many. As a young man, over thirty years ago I went to India to work in the Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies. As a Christian, I suppose I thought that I was taking God with me to a land of Hindus and Muslims and, as I soon discovered, ancient communities of Jews. India proved the re-making and so the real making of me. I made many Christian friends, whose memories or still-present friendships are utterly special to me. But I also remember, among many other friends and mentors: Banu Tahira Sayeed, a wonderful Parsee poetess, whose works hymned God’s loving care for all; Hayath Khan, my Muslim teacher of Arabic, who would weep as he recounted to me the mercies of God in the Holy Qur’an; Simcha Khedourie, a feisty Jewish teacher, who was thankful for the tolerance of her Hindu friends and who expressed to me the hope that Jews in India would be remembered for the fragrance of their commitment to the one God. How naïve and pompous and young I was in thinking that I was taking God to a place where clearly God already was, and has been from everlasting to everlasting. I would put it like this: God is the God not just of Abraham’s but also of Adam’s children, Adam being the father of all humankind. God’s compassion and mercy extend to but also beyond Jews and Christians and Muslims. In India, I discovered that to go on a pilgrimage with the eyes of faith is to learn to meet with God and all his human children, not with words or deeds of anger or condescension or separation or violence, but in the cave of the heart.
So to my Muslim friends, I offer my congratulations on the conclusion of the month of pilgrimage. May you and all of us grow more deeply in the knowledge of God, whose commitment is startlingly wide, not just for the children of Abraham but for all the children of Adam, as those know who daily walk in the strength of God’s presence and love, in humbleness and hope.
Martin Forward
