OPENING WORDS
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free. – Starhawk
Audio:
SERMON
October 14, 2018
Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon
Sanctuary.
The author Terry Hershey tells this story:
In the latter years of her life, in the backyard of her home in northern Florida, my grandmother had a porch swing. She liked to sit and swing and hum old church hymns such as ‘Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.’ I can still see her there, wearing a white scarf over her head, a concession to chemotherapy’s unrelenting march. When as a young adult I visited her, she would always ask me to sit with her on the swing for a spell. She would pat my leg and call me ‘darlin’.’ As long as my grandmother lived — and in spite of her pain — there was always a place for me on the swing. If I were asked to explain grace, I would paint the picture of my grandmother’s swing. There, I never had to deliberate or explain or worry, regardless of the weight I carried. The porch swing — my grandmother’s presence — bestowed grace without conditions. And I am here today because of that porch swing. I am here today because of a sanctuary… ((https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/excerpts/view/27882))
A theme in many of my sermons is going out into the world, beyond our walls, to serve as sanctuary to others – to act up for justice and peace.
But there is also so much to be said about the importance of creating sanctuary within this small community we have here, inside our walls.
If we cannot make this space one of welcome… of caring and peace – how can we create that outside of this space?
We can – and we do!
From the time I arrived at this congregation three years ago, I saw that this was a place of radical welcome.
Welcoming diversity is one of this congregation’s great gifts. I remember in my first months trying to get to know you all by asking around: “Why did you come here? Why have you stayed?”
More than one person told me: “This place saved my life.”
And so many weeks, I see newcomers come up to drop a stone during our ritual of joys and sorrows and say, “Thank you for welcoming me.”
That’s the kind of community you all help create.
This is a place where all can be welcomed and valued, no matter what you look like, what you’re wearing, who you love, what car you drive, what you believe, how you’re feeling that day, …whether your kid’s hair is combed (and God knows my daughter’s rarely is)…!
What a gift, especially in this town, to provide that kind of sanctuary – a sanctuary where differences are honored and celebrated.
We don’t have to pretend we are all alike in order to welcome and love one another.
See: that goes against the traditional understanding of how to provide welcome and care.
Empathy is usually defined as understanding or sympathizing with where someone is coming from: imagining what it’s like to walk in another’s shoes.
But what if we rooted empathy not in finding our similarities but in being curious about and accepting of our differences?
OUR MUTUAL STRANGENESS
I think that’s why this congregation has been so successful at welcoming all different kinds of people: When they enter this sanctuary, you communicate to them: you are welcome here because you are who you are, not because you are like me – and not even because I understand you.
Because I know you have inherent worth and dignity just as you are.
It’s too bad that empathy has been defined as understanding how another is feeling. This has led to a tribalistic world in which we humans often only care well for those with whom we can identify.
My friend the writer Sarah Sentilles says
Identifying sameness in “others” drives many justice movements. The thinking goes something like this: we should stop catching dolphins in our fishing nets because we’ve learned they’re at least as smart as humans, or we should stop torturing the pigs we kill for meat because it turns out that pigs, like humans, have emotions, or we should stop killing elephants for their ivory tusks because elephants, like humans, have the ability to remember. But if it’s only discovered likeness that creates the possibility for ethical behavior, what happens when likeness can’t be found? What will inspire the protection of a bumble bee? Or a forest? Or a terrorist? ((https://lithub.com/were-going-to-need-more-than-empathy/))
There’s a whole field of ethics related to this alternative understanding of empathy. I’m keeping today’s sermon pretty simple – not too heady – so I won’t get into quoting my hero Emmanuel Levinas and his ethics of alterity – but what it boils down to is that curiosity about another’s difference from us leads to better treatment of them than being able to understand them and identify with them.
The Quaker Educator Parker Palmer wrote, “the essence of hospitality…is that we let our differences, our mutual strangeness, be as they are, while still acknowledging the unity that lies beneath them.”
So what does this mean practically in terms of providing sanctuary and shelter for one another?
PROVIDING SANCTUARY THROUGH PRESENCE
Typically the most important thing we can offer one another is not our sympathy, our advice, or our help, but our simple presence.
The people who come through our doors needing sanctuary come for many reasons. Perhaps no one in their family is okay with them being gay, perhaps they’ve just been diagnosed with cancer, perhaps they are immensely lonely, perhaps they’re searching for something, perhaps they’re tired of certain demands in this town to be or think a certain way, perhaps they just had an awful break-up…
When someone is in need of sanctuary, rarely what they want to hear is “I know exactly how you feel” or “That happened to me, too.”
When we think of it just with our heads, we might imagine, even now, that those might be comforting responses.
But think back on a time you were taking the risk to tell someone the raw details of what you were going through, and at the end they said, “I know exactly how you feel. My dad died, too – or that happened to my sister – or my grandson is gay, too.”
Now, those responses aren’t awful, right? They come from a place of wanting to connect
…and they are certainly much better responses than some of the alternatives such as: “Well, at least you’re alive.” Or “there must be a good reason this happened to you” or just that look – you know, the look where someone is putting on a polite face but you know they are thinking: “you probably brought this upon yourself.”
So, saying, “I know how you feel” isn’t awful.
But imagine instead if someone said to you:
“Wow. Tell me more about that.”
And sometimes we don’t need to say anything at all.
Sometimes we only need to gently nod and then not run away – especially if what we’re encountering is foreign to us.
Rachel Naomi Remen says:
Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.
What is it you are bringing here today – what part of you is in need of sanctuary?
There is a vulnerability in seeking sanctuary.
SHOWING UP WITH VULNERABILITY
The psychologist Brene Brown says that vulnerability is “the birthplace of everything we are hungry for.”
For a community to truly be a sanctuary, we have to show up as we are – who we are.
True belonging isn’t about having to change and contort ourselves in order to fit into a community – although a good community will challenge and stretch us. Belonging is about being who we are.
And, yes, sometimes who we are is raw and messy. But it turns out that’s what easiest to connect with as fellow humans – our real, ragged, vulnerable selves. In his song, “Dance Me to the Eve of Love,” Leonard Cohen sings, “raise the tent of shelter although every thread is torn.”
In a community that’s trying to welcome people just as they are, there won’t be perfection – neither in ourselves or in how we receive each other.
We’re trying to let down these fronts of perfection, politeness, and sameness. And so there will be some rawness.
When we’re vulnerable, we’re taking risks, which means mistakes are inevitable. And when we’ve created a community where there’s a lot of diversity, there’s going to be disagreement and friction. Frances Kissling says, “One of the greatest acts of courage is to be vulnerable with someone with whom we disagree.”
Vulnerability can open up connection.
So let us continue to bring our whole selves to this place.
Let us continue to welcome one another into this sanctuary and shelter.
I’ll close with these words by Rev. Charles Grady.
These words provide a description of who we already are as a sanctuary – what a gift! …and what we can continue to strive for – what a vision!
Our churches are clearings in the wilderness of this
time: places of refuge and sanctuary for the bruised
and tired, and also places of healing and renewal.
They are ‘workshops for common endeavor,’
and schools for learning and enlightenment,
transmitters and celebrators of a heritage,
tools for breaking down barriers.
tools for building new bridges.
May it be so.
– Rev. Emily Wright-Magoon