Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director

Summary:

In this Friday sermon, Alban Fejza explains that we should not judge the believers of the past harshly, because their stories unfolded over long periods of time in which people forget, and that worship rituals are needed to keep remembering God and renewing our love for Him.

Video Transcript:

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God. A lot of times when we read the Quran, and God tells us examples of weak believers of the past or disbelievers, we become very judgmental of them, and some people even openly criticize them because we forget that those events happened over a long period of time. Let me take an example from the Quran to show you what I mean. Let me read verses 2:50 and 51 which talk to the Children of Israel. They say, “Remember how that we parted the sea for you; we saved you and drowned Pharaoh’s people before your eyes. Yet, when we summoned Moses for forty nights, you worshiped the calf in his absence, and turned wicked. Of course, you can take any person from the street today, and put him in that situation, and it is very unlikely that he would do what the Children of Israel did. Imagine, we transported one of us with a “time-machine” into the past and put him in a group together with the Children of Israel, and he saw with his own eyes Moses hit the sea with his staff, and the sea parted, and then the Children of Israel start worshiping the calf. How do you think one of us would react? We can imagine ourselves saying, “Come on guys! How can you do that? You saw Moses split the sea. Of course, the God about which Moses talked about is the real God. It is not possible that the calf is god. Did the splitting of the sea not convince you?”

However, the truth is that most people, including the believers, would commit the same mistake like the Children of Israel. Remember, they were God’s chosen people. So, how is it possible. It becomes possible once we take into consideration the passage of time. Now let me tell the same story, but let me emphasize the passage of time while I tell it. I am artificially imagining it. I am not saying that that is how it happened, but just for the sake of the argument, let me tell the same story while injecting my words to describe the passage of time. “O Children of Israel, Remember, how we parted the sea for you. When Moses hit the sea with the staff in the morning, and you saw Pharaoh and his army miles away approaching you. You were afraid that you would be caught, and then the sea started to become more and more shallow for about a couple of hours, and then some winds picked up, and pushed it even further on both sides, and towards the end of the day, it was completely split into two parts, and just as Pharaoh was about to arrive, you escaped. And then when you went on the other side, several years passed. Many of you had children, and your cattle became multiplied, and you spent several years playing with your children, and raising the cattle, and there are new members in your family with whom you do not discuss the past much, and now you have developed new interests, and you have new problems now, and this new guy who has recently joined us, the Samarian proposed that what happened with Moses belongs to the past, and we can have anew God now. It has been several years since God did not show us a miracle. How long do we have to wait, before we have another success? Maybe each god can show us a miracle. Maybe we should worship this other god. It’s worth trying. We don’t have much to lose. The God of Moses has not shown us a miracle for several years now, and do you want to get old while still in the desert, and live your whole life in the desert, and maybe the splitting of the sea was something which happens like that once in a while anyway.” As you can see, if we can put ourselves into that situation and let a lot of time pass, between our conviction and some other event, it is possible also for us to drift away from the strong convictions. Verse 28:45 says, “But we established many generations, and, because of the length of time, (they deviated)…” So, yes drifting away from belief is possible with the passage of time. And actually, that is one of the reasons why God created time – because he ultimately knows who among the people is a true believer, and who among the people simply has the wrong expectations from God, and eventually with time the disbelievers will lose appreciation for whatever helped them be convinced about God. Actually, the word “disbeliver (kafir) in the Quran, its literal meaning is unappreciative, or someone who denies the value of good. And thank God all of us have seen the truth, and there are facts, and events, and words, logical thinking which have convinced us about our belief. However, it is possible even for us to drift away from belief just like the Children of Israel did. But there is a method to prevent it. And God gave that method to the Children of Israel in the Old Testament. He says to them, “From now on, after you have witnessed the splitting of the sea, you should hold a commemoration event each year to remind yourselves that I was the God who freed you from Pharaoh”, and that festival is still commemorated among the Jews, even to this day. So, in order not to lose our appreciation for the fact that God guided us, we should find some repetitive way to rekindle our memory, and actively remember the fact that God guided us, and this is achieved through rituals. We should not forget the Friday Sermons, every week. We should not forget the prayers every time the proper prayer times comes. Contact Prayers are reminders to remember God.

Actually, it would have been much better if we remembered God directly because of our deep appreciation, but as you can see with the passage of time, it is possible to lose that appreciation, and to prevent that, we must actively remind ourselves, and this can only be achieved through rituals. And I myself used to be and still mostly am a person who does not like to emphasize processes and rituals because they often turn people into pretenders, and I agree with what Christians say that the most important thing is that we love God. But what they say is only possible for a short time. You can not love God your whole life, unless rituals are involved. Eventually with time everyone forgets, and we need rituals to remind us, and rekindle our love for God, and remember that we used not to be guided, and God guided us. We should appreciate that, and actively engage in worship rituals to renew our appreciation for that.