The Christian Century
May 19, 2009
Sikh wisdom
by Miroslav Volf
One of the most recognizable pieces of religious
architecture in the world is the Golden Temple in
Amritsar, India, the most significant place of
worship of the Sikhs. The upper part of this
ornate rectangular marble structure is covered in
gold. I saw the gleaming temple early in the
morning, before sunrise, when it was bathed in
soft artificial light. It stood immovable as a
huge gilded rock, its reflected image dancing
gently on the surface of the surrounding pool.
I was in Amritsar as a Christian consultant for a
meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious
Leaders, organized by my friend Rabbi Alon
Goshen-Gottstein. I had written a position paper
to serve as a basis for discussions that would
include the Dalai Lama and the chief rabbi of
Jerusalem. Six writers of position papers
representing different world religions had
discussed their drafts with one another and with
a larger interfaith group of scholars. It was a
fascinating exercise. As I was writing, I was
aided by wisdom from other faith traditions. What
I presented as genuinely my own was in part received from others.
I grew up solidly Protestant in an overwhelmingly
Catholic and Orthodox environment controlled by
aggressively secular communists. Unlike the
communists, those in our Protestant tribe
nurtured a sense of the holy. But we differed
from the Catholics and the Orthodox in that for
us holiness was not to be located in time and
space. The eternal and omnipresent God was holy;
people could be holy if they made themselves
available for God; times and places were not
holy. We did not follow a liturgical calendar
closely, and we met for worship in remodeled
rooms of an ordinary house on an ordinary street.
As a child of a pastor, I lived in that house;
the neighbor kids and I played soccer in its yard
and marbles on the patch of dirt in front of it.
As examples of sacred architecture, the places
where I experienced God*in restless rebellion and
not just in sweet surrender*were the polar opposites of the Golden Temple.
At the temple I walked barefoot and with covered
head around the holy pool in which people took
ritual baths. I observed the people quietly
streaming to the temple and walking by the place
where Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is kept, the holy
book which ultimately makes the place holy. But I
didn't feel spiritually pulled in. I was a
sympathetic observer, learning, questioning,
puzzling over things, appreciating. I remained an outsider, not a participant.
Yet I took with me something unforgettable, a
nugget of enacted religious wisdom that I cherish
more than I would a piece of that temple's gold.
The next day, as I walked one more time within
the temple complex, I wanted to buy a souvenir
for my two boys. Then it dawned on me: I hadn't
seen a vendor or a shop anywhere on the temple
premises. "Thousands of religious tourists mill
around here every day," I thought. "There must be
a place to buy souvenirs!" But there wasn't.
You had to leave the temple complex and step onto
the profane ground of surrounding streets to
satisfy your tourist appetite. There peddlers
were as busy as anywhere else in the world, and I
found what I was looking for*a small kirpan, a
ritual sword that all baptized Sikh wear. But not
on the holy site*there the only commercial
transaction that took place was the purchase of a
"ticket" to walk across the bridge to the temple
in the middle of the lake. The ticket was a bowl
of porridge, the size of which depended on how
much you paid. You could eat some of it, but you
were expected to put at least a portion of it
into large bowls. When the bowls were filled,
they were carried off to feed the poor.
The contrast between the Golden Temple and other
religious sites I've seen could not be greater.
Everywhere else, greedy people*often religious
leaders with business managers*were trying to
cash in on the devotion of visitors. Here that
devotion was channeled into feeding the hungry. I
was reminded of the story of Jesus' cleansing of
the temple, recorded in all four Gospels. "And he
entered the temple and began to drive out those
who were selling and those who were buying in the
temple. . . . 'Is it not written,' he said, '"My
house shall be called a house of prayer for all
the nations"? But you have made it a den of
robbers.'" The Gospels consistently tie Jesus'
death to the cleansing of the temple. Mark's
account continues, "And when the chief priests
and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him."
I came away from the Golden Temple with a nugget
of wisdom*houses of worship should not be sites
of commercial activity, but places of gift giving
to the needy, just as faith itself is not to be
bought and sold but freely given. That Sikh
wisdom turned out to be buried treasure of my own faith.
Miroslav Volf, a Century editor at large, teaches at Yale Divinity School.
May 19, 2009
Sikh wisdom
by Miroslav Volf
One of the most recognizable pieces of religious
architecture in the world is the Golden Temple in
Amritsar, India, the most significant place of
worship of the Sikhs. The upper part of this
ornate rectangular marble structure is covered in
gold. I saw the gleaming temple early in the
morning, before sunrise, when it was bathed in
soft artificial light. It stood immovable as a
huge gilded rock, its reflected image dancing
gently on the surface of the surrounding pool.
I was in Amritsar as a Christian consultant for a
meeting of the Elijah Board of World Religious
Leaders, organized by my friend Rabbi Alon
Goshen-Gottstein. I had written a position paper
to serve as a basis for discussions that would
include the Dalai Lama and the chief rabbi of
Jerusalem. Six writers of position papers
representing different world religions had
discussed their drafts with one another and with
a larger interfaith group of scholars. It was a
fascinating exercise. As I was writing, I was
aided by wisdom from other faith traditions. What
I presented as genuinely my own was in part received from others.
I grew up solidly Protestant in an overwhelmingly
Catholic and Orthodox environment controlled by
aggressively secular communists. Unlike the
communists, those in our Protestant tribe
nurtured a sense of the holy. But we differed
from the Catholics and the Orthodox in that for
us holiness was not to be located in time and
space. The eternal and omnipresent God was holy;
people could be holy if they made themselves
available for God; times and places were not
holy. We did not follow a liturgical calendar
closely, and we met for worship in remodeled
rooms of an ordinary house on an ordinary street.
As a child of a pastor, I lived in that house;
the neighbor kids and I played soccer in its yard
and marbles on the patch of dirt in front of it.
As examples of sacred architecture, the places
where I experienced God*in restless rebellion and
not just in sweet surrender*were the polar opposites of the Golden Temple.
At the temple I walked barefoot and with covered
head around the holy pool in which people took
ritual baths. I observed the people quietly
streaming to the temple and walking by the place
where Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is kept, the holy
book which ultimately makes the place holy. But I
didn't feel spiritually pulled in. I was a
sympathetic observer, learning, questioning,
puzzling over things, appreciating. I remained an outsider, not a participant.
Yet I took with me something unforgettable, a
nugget of enacted religious wisdom that I cherish
more than I would a piece of that temple's gold.
The next day, as I walked one more time within
the temple complex, I wanted to buy a souvenir
for my two boys. Then it dawned on me: I hadn't
seen a vendor or a shop anywhere on the temple
premises. "Thousands of religious tourists mill
around here every day," I thought. "There must be
a place to buy souvenirs!" But there wasn't.
You had to leave the temple complex and step onto
the profane ground of surrounding streets to
satisfy your tourist appetite. There peddlers
were as busy as anywhere else in the world, and I
found what I was looking for*a small kirpan, a
ritual sword that all baptized Sikh wear. But not
on the holy site*there the only commercial
transaction that took place was the purchase of a
"ticket" to walk across the bridge to the temple
in the middle of the lake. The ticket was a bowl
of porridge, the size of which depended on how
much you paid. You could eat some of it, but you
were expected to put at least a portion of it
into large bowls. When the bowls were filled,
they were carried off to feed the poor.
The contrast between the Golden Temple and other
religious sites I've seen could not be greater.
Everywhere else, greedy people*often religious
leaders with business managers*were trying to
cash in on the devotion of visitors. Here that
devotion was channeled into feeding the hungry. I
was reminded of the story of Jesus' cleansing of
the temple, recorded in all four Gospels. "And he
entered the temple and began to drive out those
who were selling and those who were buying in the
temple. . . . 'Is it not written,' he said, '"My
house shall be called a house of prayer for all
the nations"? But you have made it a den of
robbers.'" The Gospels consistently tie Jesus'
death to the cleansing of the temple. Mark's
account continues, "And when the chief priests
and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him."
I came away from the Golden Temple with a nugget
of wisdom*houses of worship should not be sites
of commercial activity, but places of gift giving
to the needy, just as faith itself is not to be
bought and sold but freely given. That Sikh
wisdom turned out to be buried treasure of my own faith.
Miroslav Volf, a Century editor at large, teaches at Yale Divinity School.
