An Imam & A Pastor in Conversation on Loving Jesus
Sh. Omar Suleiman sits down with Rev. Dr. Andy Stoker of First United Methodist Church Dallas to discuss the significance of Jesus عليه السلام in Islam and Christianity, and how followers of both faiths can engage in dialogue with one another based on the theological, moral, and narrative elements of his life.
Chapters:
0:00 - Introduction
1:00 - Faith for Dallas
5:45 - How do Muslims and Christians talk about Jesus
10:19 - Favorite moment from the class
21:07 - The Muslim view of Jesus
24:56 - Openness
25:40 - Red lines
26:21 - Reducing Jesus
26:52 - Missing Jesus
33:36 - Insecurity
35:50 - The person of Christ
37:18 - Learning from Palestine
40:54 - Ramallah
42:36 - Pastoral response
46:08 - Nightmares
47:36 - Pastoral Conversations
48:51 - The blessing
50:13 - The four families
50:58 - Why I smile
53:59 - Top 3 things
55:47 - Presence
56:29 - Honor
57:49 - Good Friday
Part of the "Jesus in Islam" Collection. Explore the topic here.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. So I get to interview you. Assalamualaikum everyone. Peace be with you. Peace be with you as well. This is Reverend Dr. Andy Stoker, dear friend, and we're very happy to have you. I'm not a host as you can tell, but for all purposes I get to interview you for this. We have a hard time having a serious conversation. We do, we do, and that's part of the gift of our friendship really, is that we do a lot of hard things and have a lot of difficult conversations, and how we've been in ministry together is more about how we do the difficult things and recognize that friendship is really at the key and the core of it. And friendship is about joy for me, and you have brought me so much joy through the years, and I am so honored that you're back home here at First John A. Methodist Church. So welcome. So glad you're here. I appreciate that, and you know we've had the opportunity to do a lot over the last few years. So we did that video, an Imam, a Pastor, and a Dream, and that was the introduction to a lot of people of some of the stuff that we've been doing together with our communities, and with our community in the singular here in Dallas in particular. And after that, 18 months ago, your church hosted our mosque, the Valley Ranch Islamic Center here for a four-week discussion on Jesus, peace be upon Him, where we went through birth, life, crucifixion, resurrection, and stated the different viewpoints on that, but what really came about that more than anything else, more than just the theological, was that our communities really bonded, and you all really made us feel like home over here, and we're hoping we can repay the favor, and I think we filled up these pews. I would say that you probably had a larger congregation for those. I mean it was... The other powerful thing about that was we decided, you know, for good or for bad,
for good or for ill, we decided that we wouldn't expand this conversation outside of these two communities, because we wanted the two communities to come together and see each other without sort of other neighbors coming in, and we wanted our two congregations to be in conversation with one another, and I think we achieved the great gift of our congregation seeing a very frank discussion between the two of us about Jesus, about Christianity, about Islam, about anything that we might have as critique or criticism. We met it with great hope and love, and that's where we come together best is when hope and love intertwine, and we saw it here in this place. Yeah, it was great until you had Evan push me off the balcony, and that was kind of... That was four feet. You got through three weeks without violence. No, that didn't happen. That didn't happen, but it does... I took his parking spot, too. That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it does... I mean, not to get back to Jesus, but there is a story of Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas where Jesus pushes a friend off a second-floor rooftop, and the friend falls down, and Jesus has to ask for forgiveness, so I mean, I think that Evan should ask for forgiveness for pushing off the balcony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think obviously we wanted to show that we can have a discussion, but we want to bring our communities together, and there's something really unique about what we did, particularly on Jesus, peace be upon him, and I'll kind of take a
step back, and I'll talk about this the way I see it. My vantage point in Trump's America in particular right now, a lot of different groups are forming coalitions for social change. We work together in Faith Forward Dallas, which is a multi-faith coalition. Come with the fullness of your faith, and then contribute to the fullness of society, so we don't ask Christians to be less Christian. We don't ask Jews to be less Jewish. We don't ask Muslims to be less Muslim. We don't ask anyone to be any less of themselves. How do you make a better, fuller society, and there have been examples around the country of Muslims and Christians that have come together across their differences and done wonderful things beyond dialogue. In Memphis, Tennessee, a friend of mine, Dr. Yasir Qadi, his mosque as it was being built, they actually prayed. A church in Memphis gave them their church to be able to hold their services while they were waiting for the construction of their mosque. There are some beautiful things that have happened, and I think that all of that is wonderful, and that there's a lot of potential for Muslims and Christians to build a relationship with one another, as with any two faith groups, so Muslims and Jews, Christians and Jews, everyone together, and beyond even the Abrahamic claimants, you know, Hindus, Sikhs, and others building some sort of a relationship together, but discussing Jesus, peace be upon him, frankly in an academic and theological way was very profound, where it did not descend into anything but the same spirit of love that we came together for in the first place, while still being clear about the differences, and then forming a unity that I'm sure a lot of people that came here did not think would be possible given the circumstances. There was a lot of like, is this gonna be a debate? Are you guys going to? So how do you state your positions differently while still maintaining that love, and this is the the crux of it for me, and this will lead up to this long question that I'm asking you. If a Muslim and Christian
dialogue is very unique in that we both have an affinity towards Jesus, peace be upon him, and it's powerful because the two largest faith groups in the world have an affinity towards Jesus, peace be upon him, but I feel like in the past the Muslim-Christian dialogues that I've been a part of, a lot of them were almost like we should form a relationship and put Jesus, peace be upon him, on the side because those differences are so irreconcilable, and of how we view him that we, you know, the best thing is for us to not talk about it because it'll it'll naturally get offensive, and you know it would almost be better had you not believed in Jesus too, because when you believe in him and you have your narrative about him, then that automatically can make someone feel very threatened with their own conception of Christ. So my question is, what do you think? I mean how is it, just to start off, how do Muslims and Christians talk about Christ? Wow, yeah I think part of my deep dwelling understanding about Jesus is nestled in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus, his longest sermon, which didn't have a golf joke or any football references, I mean so there's some critique there on his preaching. Just kidding. His longest sermons is Sermon on the Mount. It's this series of statements about who's blessed, blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, blessed are the lonely, blessed are the peacemakers. And in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus ends with, blessed are the poor in spirit. And I'd thought about this a lot through the years, well blessed are the poor in spirit, those are just our
friends who are economically disadvantaged, they're distanced from wealth, etc. But upon further reflection, poor in spirit really is about being truly human. Blessed are those who are truly human. That's what Jesus is talking about. So a way to answer your question for me is, Christians and Muslims need to embrace their humanness in order to have a very frank conversation about Jesus. What are the things that we share? We all have hopes and dreams, loves, fears, anxieties, dis-eases and diseases, discomforts, that what draws us together is our humanness. And what Jesus invites us into is the blessed and belovedness of seeing each other as human, and then having a conversation about this one who has made such an impact on our faiths. Not just as global religions, but individually. As clergy, we have modeled ourselves around humility, and kindness, and grace, and peacemaking. All clergy. All clergy. You're trapping me now. I'm sorry. How about just the two of us? Okay, okay. I'm glad to speak for you in this because I have seen humility, and kindness, and peacemaking, and love that you so freely give, and I hope that our relationship exudes that, right? But we'll talk just the two of us.
And we've had a conversation about this, about what it means to be a clergy person. I think living a life that is seeking both our true humanness, our authenticity, and also vulnerability for the world, gives us an understanding about who Jesus really was, and why Jesus still makes an impact on these global movements. Right, and I think that one of the things I really appreciated, my favorite moment from the entirety of that four-week class as far as the discussions are concerned, was at the end when I mentioned that in Islamic tradition, Jesus, peace be upon him, has a grave spot next to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and that Muslims hold him in such high regard that when he returns and completes his mission on earth, that we believe that he would die a Muslim, and that he would be buried next to the Prophet, peace be upon him, next to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and that, you know, what I said was, and I hesitated to talk about that because that's like, that could be like really offensive, right? I mean like how could I bear that? But what I wanted to say there was, if you took all the theology aside, how much does this group of people have to love this man that they would hold a spot in the holiest place on earth to them, you know, right next to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, how much of a status does he have amongst them that they hold that type of reverence for him? And I could tell that everyone appreciated it, and I said we've gotten to a place now where that can be appreciated, so what was your favorite moment from the call? Oh my gosh, well there are so many. You know, part of the four-week process was, and we joked about this, that the first two
weeks, birth and life, those are the first two weeks, we were getting along great, right? I mean our two theological, oh yeah, of course, of course, and it was kind of this shoulder shrugging the whole time, you know, yeah, yeah, move on, move on, come on Andy, we've got some more time here, you know, and so when we took the turn on crucifixion, and maybe it wasn't just that one event, but I think that for the body who gathered, that turning point and that tension, that theological tension, people moved to the edge of their seats and wanted to see and sense how this all was going to end up. It was an opportunity for us to just live in that together, to recognize, to go back to what it means to be truly human. This is something we're all going to share, not crucifixion, but we're all going to share this potentially fear, this awakening to the unknown about the what's next. All of those things were coming around, and I remember that third night, that third evening after the crucifixion, you could feel the weight of it. You could really feel the weight of that conversation. Then that night was the night when most of our dear friends from Valley Ranch said, we want to stay here to pray. So folks who were sharing the pews together moved with their friends down into an open area space in our church and prayed together. It was almost like that was a
unifying action, that when prayer becomes unifying, you know we're doing a good job. You know when hearts and minds are together, you know that we're doing it, that something's happening, something divine is in that midst, and we were talking about a very human moment in the life of Jesus, but it was a divine opportunity. And your wife wrote such a beautiful, Megan wrote such a beautiful piece about her experience praying at the Valley Ranch Islamic Center, and I think that that's what's powerful is the image of Jesus, peace be upon Him, falling on His face in prayer and prostration and kneeling and things of that sort, and she was connecting that all to an Abrahamic conception as well, an Abrahamic root and origin as well, and that was very beautiful. I mean a lot of us read that article, and it was like wow. You know when someone else experiences something that you do all the time, and then they think it's special, so it's like whoa, like yeah. I never looked at it that way, but wow. I mean she brought a great dimension of beauty to the prayer, and definitely going, I mean feeling welcomed enough to go down to the ground floor and to pray our sunset prayer after all of that was definitely extremely beautiful, extremely... it said a lot about the culture that you've created here as well, and you know that you've been able to translate that into so much more here at First United Methodist. So while we were having the dialogue, I mentioned the verse in the Quran of the miracles of Christ, peace be upon Him, one of them molding some clay into the shape of a bird, blowing into it, and by the permission of God it flying, and you had mentioned you picked up a Christian book, and you read it from one of the Gospels that's not traditionally accepted as part of the corpus, but that this is something that
exists within the greater literature of Christianity. As a clergy person, as someone who studied the theology of Christianity, I think to a lot of Muslims they don't really get the spectrum. What's the spectrum in regards to the sonship of Jesus, peace be upon Him, in regards to the question of salvation, in regards to the crucifixion, what's the spectrum? Because for us, the way that we would sort of justify our version of Christ, peace be upon Him, is by really studying the earlier sects of Christianity that were rendered obsolete after the Council of Nicaea, and we would attach ourselves to that and say well there is not only a basis in our divinely revealed scripture, but our conception of Christ actually has a Christian manifestation that existed in the early days. Obviously there was a wide variety, so if you could speak to the wide variety, you're a First United Methodist, so as a United Methodist, if you can speak to like the variety of how Christ is understood in Christianity. Wow, wow. Yeah, this is... We only got like two minutes. Oh great, yeah, no problem. That's actually too much time. That's too much time. I can sum up... A lot. I can say, I can speak 2,000 years of Christian history in a minute and a half. So what I think Muslims overall need to understand is that there have been so many splinters in Christianity. I was just talking to my congregation just a couple of Mondays ago. We were talking about church schism, where churches splinter apart and things start to break apart relatively quickly, and really from the very beginning of Christianity. And so I made the joke that as soon as Jesus was gone from the earth, that the disciples looked
around and said, okay, who's in charge? That was the first split. And from then on, just splinters. So we are, United Methodist Christians, are part of the Anglican Reformation movement. The Church of England, which was attached to the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church, which was part of the one holy apostolic church with the Greek Orthodox Church, Russian Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Orthodox Church, that split in 1054. They were all one church, 1053 and before. And then to your point, all of these strains of theology, where people began to understand their faith along these various different routes and routes, given the culture that they're living in. And also the context by which they received Scripture. So-and-so wrote this letter, and so if so-and-so wrote this letter, this is what we're going to attach to. And we remember the day. We're going to mark the day. March 24th, we got a letter from Andy. And every March 24th, we read the letter out loud, and it becomes ritual. And so as soon as you have this ritual around this letter that has been a gift to you, then you start to take things very seriously in the letter. Now he used the preposition in instead of through when he was talking about Jesus, Jesus's relationship with God. So what's the difference between in and through? And then you have squabbles in the church, and then the church splits. There's one church that goes in, and one church that goes through, and then they have two different... One church is out. One group of people is entirely out. Yeah. The prepositions are terrible.
But yeah, exactly. So I think for Muslims, it's helpful to hear...I hope it's helpful to hear a Christian say, we are products of brokenness and fragmentation, and our theological work...let me say it differently. My theological work. My theological work is to bring people to a full recognition of the brokenness, and then point to God who heals the brokenness in every step of the way. That what may separate us in this human sense of things, the difference between in and through, God is going to make us seem perfect. God will somehow bring us back together. God will somehow make us whole again even in our brokenness. I think that's where much of our conversations together as clergy people, when we're facing all kinds of problems in our congregations or in our clergy covenant groups, that we talk about...you and I have talked about fragmentation, brokenness. And at the end of our conversation, we both agree that this has got to be...we've got to give it to God. This is God's ultimately to care for and give. So if I could ask you, you read a lot, and you ask for books and constantly reading. Is there something that you particularly appreciated about the Muslim Jews? Since I'm interviewing you, was there one thing that caught you that really you appreciated about that?
The seriousness with which Muslims take Jesus' words and actions were very inspiring. For so long, and in a faith community like mine, we read Scripture. We read Scripture and see a justification of doctrine. When I'm looking at another faith community's Scripture, I'm reading it spiritually. I've been trained to read institutionally as an institutional person would read. I have the reverend in front of my name. So when I read the Bible, I see doctrine. I'm bringing a trained perspective to reading the Bible. Here's our belief on Jesus or on God or on the church, on sin. And then I read Scripture and I say, oh, this absolutely justifies this doctrine. What I so appreciated about the Muslim view of Jesus is taking His humanness seriously, and seeing Him as He was, as He lived. Well, here's virgin birth and here's the doctrine of virgin birth. Let's talk about that. Let's be in conversation about that. I have friends in your congregation and we see each other. I live in your neighborhood and I see friends from Valley Ranch all the time. And they talk to me about Jesus. So
one night we were at a restaurant. I wasn't invited. I'm getting a little offended here. Sorry about that. It wasn't our spot. It wasn't our spot. But we were at a restaurant and my kids were there and my wife is there and a gentleman comes up from Valley Ranch and says, I know Easter is this coming Saturday or this coming Sunday. I said, absolutely. Absolutely it is. Thank you so much for remembering. And then we had this really robust conversation about Jesus. And my youngest son, as the family was walking away and we were sitting there, he said, Dad, can we invite him to teach our Sunday school class? We'd learn a lot from him. And I think that's what it means for me to have interfaith relationships, especially an interfaith relationship with a Muslim brother, is to have this conversation and remind me that Jesus was human and to ground me in that. And that's the gift that we have. That's the gift that I see in a Muslim's faith journey with Jesus. It is so inspiring. So inspiring. I appreciate that. And the openness that you've shown, I think it's really inspiring the grace that you have in seeing the beauty in the differences. It's been very inspiring to see how you were open to these conversations, open to these discussions, open to some of
the literature. And I think that your congregation, I could see when we were talking, your congregation was looking to you for affirmation to make sure that, is it okay for us to talk about this? And so I guess the last thing that I'd get to is this. There are similarities that we can build upon in how we view Jesus, peace be upon him. And then there are these red lines theologically. So at some point there are these irreconcilable differences, and they're very serious ones. They're not to minimize them. I mean like the core tenant of Islam, which is to hate the monotheism as we conceive monotheism, is that that's a violation of that once it gets into Christian dogma. And then for Christians to almost reduce Jesus, it's interesting because Jesus, peace be upon him, as part of the line of prophets in Islam is elevated amongst prophets, right? So he's in like the top five, right? We put him up there, right? But I feel like often when I'm talking to Christians, there's this idea that we're reducing him, right? Because we're removing him from divinity, the trinity, this idea of being the begotten son of God. All of that now is removed, and so it can be offensive just in its very nature that you're talking about someone that I worship, and you're reducing him to a human being. But what you just mentioned was viewing the beauty of his humanity, and it's the agreed upon humanity, the way he lived his life and his actions. So the last question is this, and feel free to jump in and comment on that, but would Jesus, peace be upon him, and you can comment and answer this question at the same time, would the person of Jesus, peace be upon him, what do you think is missing so much about his person in the way that both Muslims and Christians live today? Yeah, let me tackle the red line, and then I need just a minute to think about it. That's
an excellent question. I think for generations, especially in the United States, especially in the United States, Christians have seen a decline of church membership, of people coming to worship, of people engaged in Christian faith communities, and at the same time, they've seen an increase in diversity. And so for me, the grasping nature of Christians about, no, no, no, you missed about Christ's divinity here, and they'll shake a finger at you, right? You missed this, you missed this. It's almost this symptom of a bigger disease where there's so, Christians have been so worried about people not coming to church or not believing that they've then began judgment instead of openness. Please don't take this away from me. Please don't ask me any questions. I'm grasping onto this because this is all I have. And so boiling down Christianity into this one little segment of doctrine is actually taking away from the 2,000-year breadth of conversation we've had about humanity and divinity. Just because it's written in a creedal sense, the way I read the creeds is a conversation.
It's, do you believe in this? If so, state it. Do you believe in this? If so, state it. It's this give and take, right? There are some parts in my life when, you know, sometimes when I'm leaving a hospital room or when I'm celebrating the life of my grandmother and I'm officiating her funeral, sometimes some of those creedal statements I really have to be in deep conversation with because my living out my Christian faith isn't doctrinal. It's an opportunity for me to experience what God has in store for me. So the redlining of theology, I think, is much less about doctrine and much more about anxiety about people's own understanding of their faith. I'll tell you, when we had our conversation here, there were so many people that came from my church that came up to me and said to me about my comment, a Christian, a Christian telling a Christian, I never thought about that before. And what happened in the course of our time together, Omar, was these two came together and they began to blend and all the theological glass ceilings that were there began to shatter and people began to open themselves up to the possibility, to the possibility of being in conversation about what really matters to them. Whether it's Unitarianism, this monotheistic
faith or questioning their own Trinitarianism. That helps people. It shouldn't be a stop. You shouldn't stop. That should spur you on. I was talking with a friend of yours from Valley Ranch and I love this image. She was describing to me, I was talking about my own meditation life. I've started this meditation practice that I'm gleaning a lot from and started to open up some texts from Islam about meditation and what it means. Did you read Yaqeen's paper on how to be a mindful Muslim? I need to. I've got to send it to you. Okay. It's in my, they're all flagged, I promise. All the Yaqeen Institute from the last three months are flagged. I have not stopped long enough to appreciate what Yaqeen is doing. I wish that other Christians would sign onto this because it's huge. It's huge. I really appreciate that. Being a mindful Muslim in her mindset was, it's the full prostration with the forehead on the floor. Will you remind me what? It's called a sujood. Sujood. Yeah. So the prostration, actually masjid means place of sujood, place of prostration. So it's the core of the prayer. Okay. Falling on your face in prayer. It's powerful. So she was mentioning that in that position, that one teacher mentioned it like it was a wheelbarrow and it's an opportunity for all of those sins and you're asking a forgiveness, just fall out and you reach back and taking that breath in again with God,
it refreshes you now that that's been a weight lifted. I wish in the Christian tradition there was a way for us to have that moment where we determine that we're going to let go of the things that have kept us so stiff and so fearful about being in conversation with another faith and actually open ourselves up, breathe deep in a relationship that can transform their lives. I think you were right in identifying it as an insecurity. If I'm insecure in my own beliefs then I am very hesitant to have them challenged or to have them opened up to a conversation. I would much rather not have holes poked in it and just keep it to myself and not be in conversation with anyone. That can lead to a very standoffish type of behavior. The Quran calls on Muslims to reach out to Christians and to say, come to a common word between us and you that we worship none but God and then build from there. So the Quran actually calls us to call with that commonality first and to start from the commonality. If your beliefs are making you standoffish towards people that don't share your beliefs, that says a lot about your faith and your character. In Islam those are the two main things that make up a person, the Prophet peace be upon him put. He said if someone comes to you with faith and character don't turn that person away. So the character is the manifestation of the faith. One of the Muslim sages described it as a spoon to a plate of food. He said if a spoon tastes good you know that the rest of the food is good. So he said the tongue to the heart is that and most of character is manifested through tongue, through the
way you talk to people. So if we can't talk to people in a loving way, in a beautiful way then that means that we're in shambles on the inside and that there's something on the inside that's wrong and incorrect. I also think that a lot of people view interfaith that way. We made a conscious decision with Faith for a Daoist to call it a multi-faith coalition because we didn't want people to feel like they have to lose some of their faith to come to the table with people of other faiths. You're not going to be asked to pray to someone else's liturgy or to forsake your own creed or to do something that's very uncomfortable. The only discomfort will be in letting go of the apprehension that you have of speaking to someone that doesn't share your faith. Not in compromising your faith itself but in compromising yourself by making yourself vulnerable enough to sit with other people because we need that right now and Muslims and Christians need to do that and we need to build on what we can agree upon about Jesus, peace be upon him, the person of Christ, peace be upon him, what he called to. Just like you sort of mentioned how the first two weeks, birth and life are very similar and then we turned a corner. If we would have started off with the differences we have in crucifixion and resurrection and then come back to his birth and his life, then we would not have been able to have that, I'm talking about as communities, that conversation in the way that we had that conversation. But because it started off with birth and life, then the departing stories at that point, it's not that they could be reconciled but the people could sit with one another and not feel like this person just came in and tried to hijack my story. We could talk and that was the idea is that you've got to start from that. So I think that the person of Christ,
you really hit the nail on the head. We need to focus on the person of Christ as well. That last thing, I want to ask you about a personal experience. You met with Palestinian Muslims and Christians. So you were in Jerusalem with Palestinian Christians and they were telling you about the video or you were showing them the video that we did together. Have you been to Nazareth? Yeah, in January I was in Nazareth. What do you think we can learn from Palestinian Muslims and Christians? Because I know a lot of Palestinian Muslims and Christians and contrary to what people think, they actually get along very well. Absolutely. From the city of Jesus, peace be upon him, what would you learn from the relationship there that you saw? Yeah, part of what it means to have a trip to Palestine is to take a step into a beautiful opportunity for us to see people who are living right at the edge. From my vantage point, I grew up in El Paso, Texas, which is on the border between the US and Mexico. Juarez, Ciudad Juarez is on the one side and El Paso is on the other. So I grew up with this really permeable border. It wasn't until the mid-90s that there were some solidified border crossings and we had some armed guards and it's just increased from there. So I thought I knew what it was like to live in a bordered land. For me, there was this flow and this beauty about it, that people were biliterate, bicultural, that they were able to see and
sense how they lived together and how their common life together was knit because they shared the land. As a Christian, I walked into Palestine thinking, this is the land of Jesus, this is where he was born. Then I began to see and sense how the gift of my upbringing informed this part of the world. You would think that a bordered community like Palestine is, a community that is restricted, that is cut off, that is wholly separate, you'd think that there'd be this level of anxiety. And please hear me say, I'm sure there is a level of fear and anxiety and worry. I'm sure there is. But in that one moment, in that one moment on that Christmas morning, I knew that I was going to be able to see that it was an opportunity for people to come together and to see and sense that no matter how restricted, how bordered, how closed in they were, that there was something more. There was something transcendent that brought them together. For good or for ill, Omar, my deal is, I'm always looking for the person who is most authentic in their experience of faith and their experience of shared life. One more story from the trip. I think I told you this story.
So one of the legs of the trip, I insisted that we go visit Ramallah and we go visit the tomb of Yasser Arafat. So you drive in Ramallah and you're driving along and you pass through security, which was heavy, very heavy, pass through security, you're driving along and there's a little turnabout. In the center of the turnabout, it's Nelson Mandela, a huge statue. I mean, it must have been 30 feet tall, huge statue of Nelson Mandela. A major supporter of Palestine. Major supporter and all of the United Methodist Christian eyelids opened wide and Nelson Mandela. So then I explained to them what that meant. We drove a few in through the neighborhoods. So our tour guide was Syrian Christian. Our bus was from China. You had a bunch of United States, United Methodist Christians and our bus driver was Muslim. Our bus driver always stayed on the bus and always moved folks around. You've done these tourist gigs, they're always moving buses around to make room for other folks and he was great. So he always stayed on the bus. And I'm always the last one off the bus just to make sure that everybody can get down and prepare everybody and follow the tour guide. So I prepared to get off and our bus driver stands up and he walks off the bus. And so I thought, oh, that's interesting. He's walking off the bus. This is, he may need a stretch break.
It's been a difficult ride or security was heavy or whatever else and so I'm thinking it's something, a mental gotta get back in the zone kind of thing. It's a coffee break. So I see him and he begins to speed up his walking past me and we make it to the tomb of Yasser Arafat and he takes off his hat and puts it over his heart and begins to weep. And so I stood by him and I took his arm, just linked arms with him. Just in that moment, it was a pastoral response and he clutched his arm into mine as if to hold me close. And he said, it's been my dream. It's been my dream to visit here and I wanna thank you for bringing me. I don't know about you, but in my life, there are very few sacred moments like that where the recognition of our common humanness, of seeing something that you thought you'd never see, of understanding that it may take a United States, a United Methodist Christian, in all of my faultiness and silliness and all that I have, he may have to lean on
this imperfect person to see a dream come true. For me, Omar, this is a story of faith. This relationship, this may be all we have and this moment is what we have. The viewers of this video, in this very moment, this may be their moment to see and sense what it may look like for them to embrace those around them that seem imperfect or strangers or estranged or distant. Maybe it's a time to reformat and reframe and recollect ourselves, not because of the differences we share in theology, not because of a different language, but because we all want to have meaning in this life and that meaning is made when we can stand arm in arm together and squeeze each other tight while one or another of us is experiencing a dream. Or a nightmare, unfortunately. Or a nightmare, absolutely. Which unfortunately, it's been the nightmares that have driven us together arm in arm more often. Absolutely. And there have been so many of those. Yeah, I don't really know how to end except it's a question in our vulnerability. Do you ever fear the reprimand that you get for being this cozy with a Muslim and close to Islam and Muslims and talking to us? I mean, the questioning that comes from your congregation. Feel free to just say, we don't want to talk about this, but I think it's important.
Do you ever fear that your own congregation will look at you differently? There was a skit, The Christians. Do you remember that skit in the Dallas play? And it was very moving to me, I mean, because it was about a pastor that became distant from his congregation and as imams at times, as rabbis, as pastors, sometimes we're on a certain track, but our congregation isn't quite there yet. And I think that the love that you've shown is very unique. I mean, it's a very unique thing. It's very unique. I mean, it's been transformative to my life, to my community's life here, and clearly to people in Palestine. You know, so, what do you, I mean, that takes a great amount of courage and I want to appreciate that for a moment, the amount of courage that you've had to do that. But what do you, how do you muster that courage up to where when you're questioned by your own being too unifying, what do you say to that? My response to people often is a pastoral one. What about my behavior? What about my behavior strikes fear or anxiety in you? Help me know what these kinds of conversations are opening up for you. Sadly, in this polarized world, Omar, I don't have an opportunity to be in a pastoral conversation with people. I'll tell you that I lost two families from the congregation because we had, we had hosted prayer after the Jesus, the Lenten study during Jesus.
Two families leave the congregation. I've had four families leave because I smile too much. So, what does that say? Either it's a depth of conversation that they haven't had, and I didn't have a chance to bless them on their way out, right? And receive a blessing from them. That's in our faith traditions. It's this coming and going, this blessing. But also, for the families that left after Valley Ranch was here, it also said to me that there is so, they were so closed off to their own understanding of Jesus that they were so comfortable with the institutional nature of it that there's only one way, and that one way is Jesus. Now, here's my take on it. Is if Jesus is the one way, then why wouldn't we be open to being in conversation with other faith traditions that have this understanding and elevation of Jesus? So, let's talk about the four families that left because I smile too much. Yeah, what's up with that? We need more clergy that smile. Well, that's part of it. So, is our work all serious? You've done some amazing work on the border of the United States and Mexico. You've done some amazing work in Syria. You've done some amazing work in putting yourself out there.
You've seen the seriousness with which humans are being treated, how humans are being dehumanized. Yet, you still have an inward joy about the work that you do. Absolutely. Because you've seen the worst of it, Omar, it makes your smile all the more important. It makes your laughter all the more clarion. It makes your hope all the more true because you've seen that part of life. When people leave because they saw too much joy, too much laughter, too much hope, it's an opportunity for me to be reminded that I need to tell the stories about people who are living in very difficult times and why I smile. Because these temporal bodies, these body clothes, this isn't the end of the story. This isn't the end of the story. This we can agree on. This we can agree on. This is not the end of the story. So, how do we, from a Christian perspective, Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer. And one of the phrases is, on earth as it is in heaven. Well, Jesus was actually not talking about some future idea that this is painted somewhere out there. This is on earth right now, that heaven can be created right here. Let's make peace.
Let's build a community based on equanimity and justice. Let's build a culture that responds to love, that responds to peace in such a way that there is no other conversation but this. We can both agree that our job as clergy members, sure, we've got all the clergy opportunities. We visit people. We preach sermons. We read. We help to educate people. But we're building a culture. That's our job. Our job is building a culture. Well, let's talk about building a culture briefly. What are the things that, I want to ask you, when I say building a culture, what are the top three things that you imagine about your own work in building a culture from your faith tradition? Firstly, with the smile, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was described as always smiling, always laughing. So that's sort of, you know, the companion said, never seen him except that he had a smile on his face. And this was a man that underwent all sorts of persecution, that buried six of his seven children, that lost his beloved wife in the most difficult of circumstances under a boycott that had just seen all sorts of horror. Family abandoned him but he still always smiled. And it was very inspiring because I saw that example in my mother. You know, may God have mercy on her soul. Always smiling despite cancer and strokes and very difficult situations. And she led a protest at Bir Zayed in Ramallah. Is that right? When she was young and her dad freaked out and sent her to the States to get her out of there. You know, she had some of her siblings here in Houston. And she met my dad in Houston and the rest is history.
But that idea of, you know, not succumbing to the gloom of the situation. Jesus, peace be upon him, is quoted in the Quran as saying, وَجَعَلَنِي مُبَارَكًا أَيْنَ مَا كُنتُ God made me blessed wherever I may be. And Muhammad, peace be upon him, is described as a mercy to the world. You've been sent as a mercy to the world. Bringing empathy is the best thing that you could do. Presence. I think a culture of presence. You know, families fall apart when one person is not present. Even though they're there, they're not present. And so that idea of presence is what I think demarcates empathy from other qualities. And that's something that I think the prophets had a deep sense of. Many of them because they'd been through circumstances to where they could understand that. But I think what we're called to is that you don't have to go through those circumstances yourself to develop a great sense of empathy and presence. When someone's in grief, they remember that you were there. They don't remember what you said, but they remember that you were there. And I think that as the Muslim community has been through a lot of grief, as other communities have been through a lot of grief here in the United States, I hope they'll remember presence. One of the most, you know, we went to El Paso. I went to Tornillo, Texas. Many First United Methodist pastors as well. I couldn't communicate with those children in Tornillo, Texas. In the tents. I had to have someone translate. But I could tell that it meant something to be there to them. So I'm going to say pray for my mom. It meant something. Presence means something. Absolutely. Your presence has meant a lot to me and to our city and to my community. And so thank you for all your time and for your presence.
Oh my gosh. It's been my honor and privilege to walk alongside you. And I've said this in many ways. It's been a privilege for me to be led by you. I've learned so much from your example, from your intellect, from your wisdom. And I'm so thankful that we share cell phones and we can send those text messages and phone calls with one another when we know that there's some critical times in our lives when we need one another. It's been such a gift to me, to this congregation, to our city, and to the world. You've connected so deeply around. And that I have the privilege of calling you friend is one of the highest honors. Well, there's a saying in Arabic that a beautiful person only sees beauty, so everything you see is a reflection of yourself. Absolutely. I mean, my deal was the Good Friday moment. Right. And we did. We walked through those paces about the end. Leading up to it. Leading up to it. And then to have, because a good, I guess your audience really probably hasn't been to a Good Friday service. No. So a good Good Friday service ends in total and complete darkness. A good Friday service to us is when I finish my sermon on time.
That means I've done well. Because you came to the mosque, you see when I go like a few minutes over and you know. People are kind of moved. Pit stains come out and you just know it's not good at that point. Yeah. You know, I so appreciate, you know, pews, pews are a problem. You know, because people, if I go long, people just fall asleep and it's permission. You have to put them on the floor to keep them uncomfortable. Stay kneeling while I finish my sermon. Oh man. We can do something about this. That is funny. We can take these with us when we leave today. They've only been here a hundred years old. I mean, really. Should be no problem.
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