Let me begin with a bit of history, history out of Africa. Christians and Muslims have been meeting one another from the time of Muhammad onwards and one of the earliest recorded meetings took place in Africa. The early Muslim community was experiencing persecution in Mecca from their pagan neighbours, who were offended by their preaching of faith in one God and their denunciation of idolatry. Muhammad sent a group of them to seek asylum in the Christian country of Ethiopia, just across the Red Sea from Arabia. When the Muslims arrived, the negus, or king, of Ethiopia wanted to know about the faith of these newcomers, so he asked them to tell him of their beliefs. In response, one of the group recited parts of the Qur an, including this verse: The Messiah, Jesus Son of Mary, was God s messenger, his Word, and a spirit from him (al-Nisa 4.171). When they heard this praise of Jesus and Mary from the mouth of the Muslims, the story says, the eyes of the Ethiopians were filled with tears, and the negus took a stick and drew a line in the sand. Between our faith and yours , he told the Muslims, the difference is but the thickness of this line .
Much has happened in both our faiths since that early meeting, but still I think the image the negus used can call us back to the heart of the matter between us. Think of that line in the sand: it says two things to us. One is, that our two faiths are very close to one another as the negus says, just the thickness of a line between us. But the other is, that the line is there in the sand: there is a clear division between us. Over the years, the thickness of the line has grown, to become at times a high brick wall, at other times even a battle zone; but when we go back to the beginning, we still find that line in the sand. I want to say something first about the closeness, and about the separation to talk particularly about our beliefs. And then I want to ask, if those are our beliefs, what should that mean for our attitudes to one another, and the way we live together as people of faith in today s world and in this society. In all this, we will find much to guide us in St John s Gospel.
So: Muslims and Christians both believe that there is a God, that he is all-powerful and unique, creator of all that is, that he has a good purpose for the world that he has made, and for us within that world. We both believe that he communicates that purpose to his world by his eternal Word, sent again and again through the prophets, even though most people turned away from their message. And, as the story of the negus meeting with them shows, Muslims honour Jesus as one through whom that Word of God comes to us. John s Gospel begins with a great cosmic vision of the Word of God, from all eternity with God , creating and recreating the world. The preposition in 1.1 which we translate with God really means turned towards God , and the Gospel is saying that that Word, who is the Son facing towards God in the bosom of the Father, is turned outwards, towards our world and towards us, as life and as light; and in the face of Jesus Christ that light and that life have come into our lives. There is an Islamic tradition that resonates with this: God says, I was a hidden jewel and I wanted to be known , and so God turned himself outwards, to create, and communicate with, the world through his Word. All this we as Christians have in common with our Muslim neighbours and it is much to have in common. Our faiths lie next to each other, separated by the thickness of a line.
But the line is there, and now we come to a real difference between our faiths. John declares that the Word was made flesh (1.14): it is in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that God s message to the world is fully conveyed. We know how body-language can say so much more than words alone. Christians believe that when God wants to express himself as fully as he can, he does so in body-language , not just in words through living out a human life like ours, in a body like ours the body of Jesus our Lord. More than this even, the Gospel says that this Word not only was with God , but also that he was God (1.1): the human being who speaks God s purpose into our world is not just a man sent from God , like John the Baptist (1.6); he is God himself. And from this divine Word there pours out the Spirit (7.38), given to you and me to lead us into all the truth which Jesus teaches (16.13).
This is where a clear line separates us from our Muslim neighbours. They believe that the message which Jesus and all the prophets bring from God finds its completion, not in a human life, but in the written scripture of the Qur an, delivered by God to Muhammad. If the Christian scriptures witness to the divinity of the Word who is Jesus, then (Muslims say) those scriptures are wrong: no human being, not Jesus, not Muhammad himself, can be put on a level with God. And the best of all communities is that of the Muslims, for they are the ones who have received the fullest and last of God s revelations in the Qur an.
Of course, there is far more to say about what we believe as Christians and what Muslims believe, but already you can see both how close we are and how separate. We are separate from one another because we believe that God s Word is spoken and reaches us in quite different ways; but we are close because we both want to be obedient to that Word in our lives. And what I have said about Muslims could in some ways be applied to people of other religions too like us in seeking seriously to follow a spiritual calling, and separate from us in hearing the voice that calls in quite different ways. And if this is the case with our beliefs, then what does that mean for our attitudes to one another? How should we regard our neighbours who are Muslims, or who belong to some other faith? And, going beyond attitudes, how should we act towards them? What should our relationships be like? I think that there at least three things that we should be aiming for: respect; honesty; and unity.
In the first place, we need to respect one another not only as fellow human beings, though of course we need to do that but as humans who are seeking to be bearers of God s word in today s world. Back in Ethiopia, when the negus had heard those early Muslims recite from the Qur an, he offered them asylum, because he understood that they were being persecuted in a pagan society for witnessing to God s name. Later on, when they took power, Muslims themselves offered protection to their Christian and Jewish subjects. Sometimes that protection in turn was experienced as a form of oppression and humiliation, because it was no longer based on a real respect for the other. At other times, the situation was much worse: Christians and Muslims learnt to distrust, to hate, even to fight and kill one another in the name of God. And still in our world today, there are many places where our two communities are at enmity with one another, where one tries to subjugate or rule over the other. That is a terrible and a shocking thing, and I believe that it pains the heart of the God in whose name it is done. But it happens when people are being less truly Christian, or less truly Muslim, than the Word of God calls us to be. For us as Christians, our faith is built on the universal Word who is the light of all people (1.4), who enlightens everyone coming into the world (1.9); and we surely are to honour and respect all who seek to follow that Word in a world like ours of today in a society like ours which conspires to shut out any serious attempt to hear the Word of God, to discern the things of the Spirit. In our secular society, we must respect Muslims, or people of other faiths, who live lives turned towards God. We know that they are like us, trying to live by faith at a time when that is difficult; and that deserves our respect.
We need to respect one another as followers of God, but that does not at all mean that we will agree about everything: we need honesty with one another as well as respect