Interfaith iftars help me see God’s invisible architecture
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf and Shaykh Reza Hemyari speak during an interfaith iftar at Baitul Ilm Academy in Streamwood, IL.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf
One of the great pleasures of being a pastor is engaging with interfaith work, and this past Ramadan was no exception. During the holy month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunup to sundown, I have been privileged to be invited to many iftars, a ritual meal that celebrates the breaking of the fast. Many mosques host interfaith iftars for clergy of other faiths and community leaders, and these are fantastic opportunities for Christian clergy and active and involved lay leaders of churches to get to know Muslims in their community. This year there was an even more delightful coincidence - Ramadan and Lent overlap with one another.
There are plenty of similarities between the two celebrations – both are times where communities and individuals are active in discernment and listening for God’s will. Moreover, both traditionally involve fasting, and, at the very least, Christians who do not fast during Lent will be familiar with the practice of giving something up in the name of drawing nearer to God during the 40 days spent in preparation for Easter.
The readings for Lent traditionally begin with a sort of model for how we ought to think about our lives. In Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus, referred to as the prophet Isa by Muslims, goes into the wilderness and fasts for 40 days and nights. At the end of that time, he is tempted. It is one of the iconic points in the Christian imagination. Jesus is taken up to great heights and promised all the kingdoms of the world if he will bow down to the devil. He is told that if he tests God’s love then he can have anything, and that if he can use his powers to meet his own goals, then he of course can eat and be filled.
In Lent, Christians are invited into this central story, as a time of fasting, reflection, and discernment in order to ready themselves for the holy mysteries of Easter. While Lent might be something that the Christian world is doing all together, how it is lived out is deeply personal. The reflection that takes place is about where we are what God is calling us to. The discernment is about where we are going to put our efforts. The sacrifices that are demanded in order to reach those collaborative goals with God are personal; they are deeply individual.
And yet the temptations are timeless, and they are personal to what Jesus was going through at the time. If you look at them, they are the temptations that we all face, and they all in some way relate back to our bodily and spiritual needs. We all need to eat, to feed our bodies, and yet to feed our bodies in the wrong way or time and place is not good. When we feed ourselves as the expense of others, when we have plenty to eat and there are those who have nothing to eat, it ought at the least make us think about things. That is certainly a lesson that Ramadan teaches as well, that we ought to be in solidarity with those who have nothing to eat.
Both Ramadan and Lent deal in some ways with sacrifice. It is a sacrifice to not place our needs first, and it is a sacrifice to humble ourselves to do the good that may not ever be seen or talked about or apprehended by human audiences.
Both Ramadan and Lent deal in some ways with sacrifice. It is a sacrifice to not place our needs first, and it is a sacrifice to humble ourselves to do the good that may not ever be seen or talked about or apprehended by human audiences. Scripture tells us that if people say how good we are for doing something, then we already have our reward, and that we ought to be covetous not of people’s praise, but of God’s (Matthew 6:1-18).
This requires a fundamental rewiring of our brains, away from short-term reward to the really long-term reward that our Creator made us for. We were created for and yearn for a reality that we never see in this lifetime. This is the whole basis of spirituality: that we are more than our corporeal bodies, more than mere flesh, but spirit that was made for union with God.
When we apprehend this central fact, we begin to see the world as God sees it. And this changes everything. It is of course a sacrifice, but it is one that all the great religions of the world have said time and time again is worth it. Because if we can sacrifice this specific thing, to believe without seeing, to do without apprehending, then we can be invited into that world that was made by God, that house not made with human hands eternal in the heavens and in our hearts. We can walk right in.
And the same is true if we refuse that sacrifice. If we do that, then we can never walk into that world that God creates for us, which is deeper and more pleasant the further that it goes in. We can never see that God has created each being on this earth for life abundant, we can never see that when we give charity or zakat, that we are linking ourselves inexorably in a great chain of being. That invisible architecture that binds us together will remain invisible.
And that existence, of course, is linked indissolubly with other believers. I dare to say that it links Christians and Muslims together. If we might sacrifice our sense of separation from one another, then we might also gain a sense of solidarity and comradery with one another. That we are about God’s business here on this earth: the same business, but perhaps like with individuals, God might intend for us to do some different things. Yet, at the core, God’s will – to feed the hungry, to do the good that is set before us – is the same. It does not differ across language or tradition.
We cannot afford to have God’s world and will remain invisible. We must work tirelessly in our personal lives to make it come into reality. I believe that events like interfaith iftars make that reality more apparent and visible to our eyes, so that we can see that we have so much good to do together. In my experience, there is joy in learning with and from one another so that we can more ably pursue what God has in store for us. More than that, it helps me to see God’s invisible architecture.
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf is senior minister, Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois. He currently serves as the co-associate regional minister with the American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. His book, published in 2023 by T&T Clark, is titled “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically about Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements.” He is also the co-founder of Challenging Islamophobia Together Chicagoland, an initiative that brings together people of all faiths to counter Islamophobia from a religious perspective.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
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