Becoming Sanctuary. 3/19/2023

In her book, Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans wrote: “Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.”
I think sanctuary—which is defined as a place set apart, a holy place, for protection, for refuge– sanctuary is wherever you are safe to be yourself and to become your self. Your best self: God’s creation, the Beloved

These past three Sundays we have heard stories of individuals who encounter Holy Love, the One we call Jesus. Each one of these folx hears Jesus, sees Jesus, experiences Jesus. And each story ends with the individual waking up to a changed understanding of how to be in the world, a changed understanding of what it means to be in relationship with God.  

Two weeks ago it was Nicodemus: a Pharisee–a member of the religious establishment and authority—who comes to Jesus in the night because the establishment is threatened by Jesus. After all, this wandering prophet, who some think to be the Messiah, is presenting a different God than the One they sell; he’s offering a different way to understand the Torah, the law, that leads to the status quo not having all the power and knowledge, and so the authorities, the status quo, are having none of it. So Nicodemus comes in secret at night and Jesus tells him God can’t really be put into a box, clean and tidy with a bow on top. This God loves the world. All of it. Even the messy, unholy bits, and Nicodemus’ establishment-empowered little mind is blown wide open. God’s love is life-changing.

Last week we heard the encounter between the unnamed Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus.  This woman on the edges of society hears the hope Jesus says can be found in living life as God would have us live it; she sees new possibilities.  And her experience of Love-in-the-flesh compels her to share this story, to share this possible way of living, of loving, with her community. And her witness is so inspiring and irresistible that her neighbors come to check out Jesus for themselves. And they hear Jesus, see Jesus, experience Jesus—and they are captivated—they decide to turn to this new way of living. God’s love is liberating.

And now, today, we have the encounter between Jesus and this blind man by the side of the road. Left to beg because society deemed difference and disability as a moral judgment by God, so folks who fell short of the norms were literally left by the side of the road and thrown the scraps of life on which to survive. Unfortunately, Beloved, I am not so sure that we have traveled very far from this pitiful, sinful way of being as a society. Today, this blind man hears Jesus first. He hears Jesus upending this sinful way of understanding how God works that the disciples are spouting. They ask Jesus if the man is blind because he himself sinned, or perhaps his parents? So, obviously, they think, God punished the man for his or his parents' sins by making him blind. And Jesus says: NO. That is not how God works. You can almost hear Jesus’ deep sigh of disappointment as he pauses to realign his followers, yet again.

And then Jesus goes to this blind man sitting on the ground; Jesus spits onto the dirt–using everyday elements of creation to make some mud–and smears that mud on the blind eyes.  Jesus tells the man to go to the healing pool at Siloam. And the man obeys. This man who has heard Jesus, and now at his healing touch, experienced Jesus; this man obeys. And then he sees.  God’s love is life-changing; God’s love is liberating.

And if these three stories are any indication; God’s love is mysterious. It cannot be fully explained.We can not part and parcel it out to our complete satisfaction. But, oh Beloved, this love can be heard. It can be seen. It can be experienced. And that, my friends, is the work of the church.  We are to host gatherings, opportunities, places and spaces for God’s love to be seen, heard, and experienced. But God is not limited to church buildings, church gatherings, or even, church people.  God’s love is a fire that burns wherever there is oxygen to feed it.

These three stories reveal that the Jesus movement of the first century was a wildfire that spread far and wide—even in the ancient world with no social media or printing press—but it spread not because of an authorized, official religious institution. It spread in spite of it. It spread due to individual encounters and personal stories; it spread neighborly act by neighborly act.

Like Laundry Love this past week, where several individuals were met by loving neighbors from the Beloved Community who provided them the means and the opportunity to wash their clothes. Where human hearts had a chance to encounter one another. Where love was seen, heard, experienced.

Or last week when our littles went off for their learning circles and our youth went to their As One Youth gathering during our Sunday gathering.  Building community–and sanctuary—one gathering at a time. 
And like this gathering—each week we come together for an experiential encounter: with smells, and sounds, and sights, and tastes; we touch Love as we share the Peace, as we hug hello or good-bye, as we take the bread into our hands—making Love a sensory rendezvous right here in this space.

This past week I visited one of our older, wiser parishioners, and she shared some stories of when life had been really tough for, when she had been brought to scary edges and she said to me: Jesus was there. With me. Every time. She didn’t always recognize it in the moment, but as she looked back, she knew she had seen or heard or experienced this One who is Love. Jesus was there. Every time.

Church as sanctuary—a refuge of Love for every wandering and wondering soul who encounters it. Continually each week, sporadically or randomly–our own healing pool of Siloam. Jesus says: Go and wash.

Beloved, in two weeks we begin Holy Week.  A week full of these encounters when we have several opportunities to see, hear and experience Jesus; to see, hear, and experience Love. This Holy week when we immerse ourselves in our story, the love story we are to know by heart, know in our hearts—this story that liberates us, changes our lives, this Love story that models  how to lay down our lives for others. Because each life that saturates itself in this love is a life that re-stitches the unraveling that has been cast upon this world by hate, violence, blindness, ignorance, apathy and despair. Redeeming and repairing Creation by loving the world as God loves.

In her book, How to Live, Judith Valente tells this story: 
“There is a beautiful scene in a film from the 1980s called The Year of Living Dangerously. Actor Mel Gibson plays an Australian journalist named Guy Hamiliton sent to cover the political turmoil in 1960s Indonesia. He is befriended by a sensitive, almost mystical photographer named Billy Kwan, played brilliantly by the actress Linda Hunt. Billy offers to serve as the young journalist’s guide. He takes him one evening on a tour of Jakarta’s slums. Guy has never seen such intense poverty. 
‘Walking through the slums of Moscow, Tolstoy had a similar reaction,’ Billy tells Guy. ‘Tolstoy went  home, collected the money he could find, and returned to give it to the poor.’
    “Yes, but that would be a drop in the ocean,” Guy says.
    “That’s what Tolstoy concluded,” Billy says. “Do you want to know what I think? I say you do what you can about the misery right in front of  you. And by doing so,  add your light to the sum of light.”

Beloved: may we be ones who add our light to the sum of light, and thereby, bit by bit, change the world in which we live. And all God’s people say: Amen