Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf

CHARGE TO REVEREND ROBERT CHASE, TO INTERSECTIONS/COLLEGIATE CHURCH

SUNDAY February 24, 2008

I begin by invoking the name of the one God, the God of Abraham, God of Ishmael and Isaac, God of Jacob and the Children of Israel, God of Moses, The God of Jesus and God of Muhammad. We invoke God's peace and blessings upon all these noble Prophets and Messengers, and greet them with heartfelt greetings of peace. And we invoke God's peace and blessings upon all those present here today.

I am grateful to you, Reverend Robert Chase, and to all who made this event possible, for all of your and their gracious hospitality. I thank you for this forum, and for providing us with the opportunity to emphasize how beneath differences of faith and religious interpretation lie similarities of values, similarities of principles, similarities of eternal values that embody respect for the humanity of all.

For many of us here are people who are not usually in the same room with one another, and all too rarely with an opportunity to talk to each other.

Here today, we are people of faith and perhaps people who question faith. We are from all cultures of the world. We are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists; we are members of the Native American faith tradition and members of other faiths. But we have come here, Rev Chase, on the occasion of your investiture, to confirm the common ground and common values of our faiths, values that constrain us and unite us-and that direct us to act in the highest sense of what it means to be human.

And we are here to affirm the value of this service today both for the shaping of shared convictions and for the action that we can together accomplish with you, with Intersections and the Collegiate Church.

I therefore charge Intersections, and I charge the Collegiate Church:

 

  • To work towards strengthening the belief that effective public engagement around difficult issues can include, and in fact, requires, religious voices.
  • I charge you to affirm our collective experience, that multiple religious voices working and praying together have served, and can serve, the world's deepest common good; and that common religious, moral and policy grounds can be found in a dynamic exchange among these voices.
  • I charge you to go beyond where many public discussions end; to convince those who fear religious voices of the merits of their inclusion in the public debate.
  • I charge you to demonstrate to the skeptics and hardliners within our faith traditions that entering into constructive dialogue and common ground with the "other" is neither wrong nor sinful nor naïve-but necessary for global peace and human prosperity.
  • I charge you to build bridges not only between faith traditions, but also within the extreme viewpoints within each of our faith traditions; for that is an area that is currently is arguably contributing to more global tension than any other.
  • Where once many may not have cared to speak, much less listened, to others, I charge you to urge them and find ways to make them speak and listen to others. Remind all that you have by your side many good people of deep faith, in whom you have found important shared values: justice, compassion, service, faithfulness, and love. To those who are skeptical, I charge you to infect them with hope and with a determination to encourage others to embark on this kind of fruitful exploration.
  • I charge you to take advantage of the unusual breadth of those of us here: and to work with this breadth of individuals, this breadth of religious traditions, this breadth of professions, breadth of social vantage points and breadth of geography. I charge you to bear in mind that the boundaries between domestic and international are dissolving; for in a world where we can travel more quickly from NY to Peking than our grandfathers could from NY to Chicago, global crises have local ramifications and domestic crises have international impact.
  • I charge you to work to help the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized in this country and throughout the world.
  • And because we are all created imago Dei, in the image of God, I charge you to work towards the elimination of all war, to usher in the era predicted by the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: a time when nations "will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. A time when nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4 niv).

 

We pray that the God we all worship in any and all names, and in our various languages and our various liturgies, will bless this gathering, bless our efforts, and bless us as peacemakers, whom Jesus Christ said would be called the children of God.

 

Amen. Thank you.