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“When Sanctuary is Lost,” Rev. Melissa St. Clair, 6/19/16

When Sanctuary is Lost

A sermon delivered at Heart of the Rockies Christian Church

Rev. Melissa St. Clair

6/19/16

Many of you know my best friend, Sarah. We met 12 years ago this October when we were assigned to share a room together for an overnight open house at what is now our alma mater – Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. It was my senior year of college, and I was looking at several other schools, including ones much closer to home (and my boyfriend at the time). Sarah was a year or two out of college and discerning if it was the right time for her to go to seminary.

I didn’t really think much about Sarah until the next August rolled around. As I was packing up all my worldly possessions to move them 800 miles across the country, I started to get a little anxious about everything I was leaving behind.

I remembered that I still had Sarah’s email address somewhere. I scrounged it up (from who knows where, because that was before I had a cell phone, let alone a smart phone) and sent her a quick note. “I’m going to Eden! Are you?” Yes, yes she was. And, better yet, she was assigned to live in same building I was!

That first year, we ate pancakes and drank tea together every Sunday morning before heading to worship. Before every class, I’d meet Sarah in her apartment, and we’d walk to the academic building together, where we’d find two seats together in the front row.

It got to the point where we could just shoot a knowing glance at one another when our professor would say something we found silly or challenging or…whatever. And we always knew just what that look meant. (We later learned from one of our professors that he noticed when we’d do this and found it rather intimidating. Oops.)

I could on for days about how I knew Sarah was my best friend. For the sake of our time together this morning, I’ll fast-forward a few years.

Sarah preached at my first installation here at Heart of the Rockies in 2013. I attended her graduation from Southern Methodist University in Dallas with her Ph.D. in theology in 2014. (She’s always been the smart one.) We were in each other’s weddings, in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

For all the things we have in common, there’s one thing that makes us very different: Sarah is fabulous at dancing and I am not.

I knew Sarah went out dancing occasionally when we were seminary. It was one of the few things we didn’t do together. I knew she danced even more when she was in her Ph.D. program. And so I wasn’t surprised when, the weekend she graduated in Dallas, she wanted to go dancing with her beloved and me. I wasn’t convinced that it was such a great idea. I’m sure you’d be surprised to know that the club is really not my natural habit.

There was one bit of comfort in it, though. The club was called “The Church.”

Sarah assured me that I would fit in just fine. You could come casually dressed. Everyone was welcome. Diversity and inclusivity were valued. Everyone would be accepted for who they were.

That sounded like the church I wanted to be a part of.

So I paid my $5 and got my hand stamped and danced the night away alongside people in the suggested 80s garb, along with furries, goths, and I don’t know what else. It didn’t matter how you dressed or whom you loved or what style you wore. It was…the church.

As news broke last Sunday morning about what we now know is the largest mass shooting in modern US history at an Orlando club known for its popularity among the LGBTQ+ community, powerful interpretations of the church began to emerge.

For so many years, the church has not been a safe space for people who are queer. “Queer” being the umbrella term for sexual and gender minorities who do not identify as heterosexual (or “straight”). It also includes people who do not identify as cisgender. (Cisgender means that your self-identity conforms with the gender that corresponds to your biological sex.)

And so, with the church not being a safe space for people who are queer, the places where they are safe and seen for who they truly are become their sanctuary.

What happened in Orlando, then, is a shooting in the sanctuary. It’s a violent violation of a safe space where people were free to be who God created them to be.

A theologian far more articulate and well-known than me, Paul Raushenbush, puts it this way. These are his words, not mine:

I remember dancing most nights when I was at seminary. It was at the downtown nightclubs where I experienced community, transcendence, joy as people of different races, genders and sexualities came together in a pulsing interconnected mass, lifting up our arms, creating sacred space with our feet, our sweat, our lust and our loves.

Nightclubs have always been sacred spaces for queer people, places to gather and glitter, away from the judging glares of society. Where we could love and be loved for who we are and how we want to be.

That’s the definition of sanctuary, isn’t it? A sacred space where we can love and be loved for who we are.

When such a space is violated – as it has been countless times in recent memory – in schools, in houses of faith, in a club – it leaves us reeling. And rightly so. How can such suffering be sanctioned? How do we explain the inexplicable? How do we reason through the utterly irrational?

How do we fill the gaping wound in the heart of our humanity?

So often, even as people of faith, the place we have started is one of assigning responsibility. The shooter, of course, is responsible, and yet we recognize that he cannot be responsible alone; one pair of human shoulders cannot possibly be broad enough to bear the weight of such suffering.

Perhaps it’s the gun lobbies, which insist on keeping such high-powered, dangerous weapons in people’s hands. Or perhaps it’s not the guns, but the very few mentally unstable people who use guns to kill people. Or perhaps it’s the broken mental health care system that doesn’t provide such people with the help they need. Or perhaps it’s these fringe, radical, so-called religious groups whose faith compels them to violence. (Although as many Muslim friends reminded us, the Islamic faith is not a violent one and any practicing Muslim would not kill anyone, let alone during the holy fast of Ramadan.)

Wherever we point the finger – and we do make sure that finger is pointed – someone must take the blame for suffering that defies our understanding. It’s the only way any of it can make sense.

The Israelites who returned from exile in Babylon faced precisely this problem: how can we explain the immense suffering endured by the people of God?

A quick look at the history: Israel went into exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C.E. A year or two later, when the Persians defeated the Babylonians, King Cyrus, the first king of Persia, officially announced that captives were free to return to their homelands.

Great news for the Israelites, except there really wasn’t any sort of “mass return.” And for the small groups who did trickle back home, what they found upon their return was not nearly as glorious as they had imagined. Economic hardship, famine, and in-fighting abounded.

How to account for this continued suffering, even after the promised return to their homeland? Third Isaiah, chapters 56-66, from which we read today, finds a way: it is God’s punishment for the people’s unfaithfulness. God cries, the Israelites turn away. They practice fertility rituals. They eat bacon. I mean, swine. They engage in rituals to contact the dead. Basically, they do everything God says they are not to do. And so God cannot abide the unfaithfulness of God’s own people.

In other words, as our reading from this morning reminds us, the blame rests squarely with God’s people themselves. Not because their nation has removed prayer as a public practice in schools. Not because their family values have been compromised.

Because God’s people, all God’s people, seemed to forgot that they were fully and freely and fearlessly and fiercely loved by God and that they were, above all else, to proclaim nothing less for themselves and for one another.

But the author of Isaiah knew this important truth, a truth that isn’t limited to God’s people in the 6th century BCE. The truth is this: blame does not reduce our suffering, nor does it relieve anxiety, and, in fact, it can limit our very ability to seek the good. Blame does not restore hope. Hope is found not in finger-pointing, but in Isaiah’s vision of the “new heavens and a new earth” that God is about to create.

And so our part comes into focus a bit more clearly:

As Christians, we are called to co-create with God this “new heaven and new earth.” If you think that seems a bit far-fetched, a little too tall of an order, consider the words we pray together every Sunday, words Jesus taught us:

“On earth as it is in heaven.”

That’s why creating sanctuary, true sanctuary, matters.

That’s why explicitly and unapologetically naming and claiming this space – our church – as safe space for our LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ is absolutely imperative.

Because that’s the way it is in heaven.

May it be so on earth.