Texts: Psalm 46; 2 Corinthians 4: 7-10

There’s been an unending flow of news, stories, analysis, tears, photos, facebook posts, conversations, ever since the news broke of the shooting in Orlando last Saturday night. So part of me is hesitant to speak of it this morning … hasn’t there been enough already? And part of me feels compelled to speak of it this morning because there is yet more work for us to do, and because when I read this piece by Quinn Caldwell last Tuesday morning, I knew I had come upon something else altogether .. something that, when I read it, I immediately heard myself sharing it with you this morning.

Here’s what he writes …

For me it was The Common Ground in Ithaca, NY, a magnificently seedy roadhouse several miles outside of town. It had a gravel and grass parking lot, a perpetual haze of cigarette smoke, and an all-age cast of regulars you could easily have built a sitcom around. My husband will tell you about The Park in Roanoke, VA, which he and his college friends would drive 45 minutes to get to every weekend, and which they talk about today like it's a homeland from which they’re in unwilling diaspora.


Ask any queer person you know, and chances are they'll have a story to tell you about a place like this. They will tell you about how they found a family there, how they found themselves there, how they felt safe for the first time on the dance floor there, how much they learned there, how they found love there, how they learned to be bold there, how they dressed like themselves for the very first time there, showing off their glitter, or butch haircut, or size 13 high heels without fear. That note you hear in their voice as they tell you about it? That's gratitude, and reverence.

50 dead and more than 50 wounded hits hard any time and anywhere. But for many queer people, what happened at Pulse

hits as hard as shootings in churches hit for Christians, as hard as shootings in black churches hit for black Christians. It's not just the death toll. It's not just that it was a hate crime. It's that it happened in a sanctuary.

Here's a true thing: every sanctuary will be invaded, by madness or death or slow decay, sooner or later. Even the Temple in Jerusalem fell. Even the body of God was penetrated. But here's what Christians believe: that body is still our refuge and our might. That the lord of the dance(hall) wouldn't stay dead. That his pulse wouldn't stop pulsing. That they couldn't take our Sanctuary away.

So as you mourn and grieve and organize today, here's what I hope: that you do not let your sanctuary be taken from you. I hope you remember wherever it was you first found freedom and safety, and that you go back there if you can, if only in memory. I hope you go out dancing.

Prayer
God, you are our refuge and our might. Your sanctuaries are everywhere, and only some of them are in churches. Give us courage to never let them be taken away. Amen. *

It’s the way he puts it so plainly that I find so powerful … how all sanctuaries in time will be invaded by madness, or decay and death. It’s not what we want to believe about sanctuaries … for they are the places that hold such promise. They are the places we count on for safety …that we go to for strength, for peace, for well-being. It’s in those places we breathe more easily, feel more deeply, risk more daringly. We don’t want to believe that any of these cherished places -- whether it’s a gay bar, or a forest glade, or a relationship of deep trust, or a church community -- we don’t want to believe that these all will be invaded somehow, someday by madness or death and decay. And yet if we’re honest we know it’s true … marriage partners die; development invades wild places; bars and churches have known violent intrusion.

It’s not what we want to believe about sanctuaries … but if we’re honest, we know it’s true. “Even the body of God was penetrated,” Quinn reminds us. Which says to me, there are finally no inviolable places. It’s such a potent reality check: even the body of God was invaded.

But Quinn doesn’t leave us there, does he? He takes us right to the heart of our faith with its wild affirmation: “that body is still our refuge and our might … that lord of the dance(hall) wouldn’t stay dead … his pulse wouldn’t stop pulsing. They couldn’t take our Sanctuary away.”

So much of what we have heard since Saturday night is this refusal to be stopped by fear, to be defeated by death. So much of what we’ve witnessed since Saturday night is the power of Love generating gestures of kindness, of generosity, of solidarity. There are all these stories bearing witness to the up-rising of love …

People lining up for blocks, for hours, waiting their turn to give blood at the hospital where many of the wounded were brought.

A young Muslim woman insisting, against her mother’s protective urging, that she too would go out and join that line wearing her hijab. The employees of a restaurant that, for religious reasons, is closed on Sunday, coming in to work to make sandwiches to give to those waiting in the line.

The Orthodox Jewish community in Washington DC who, along with their rabbi, picked up after the celebration of Shavuot and went to a local gay bar to extend their care, share in the grief and buy rounds for every person in the bar that night.

The up-rising of love in the midst of death.

We have a word for that in our language of faith. Resurrection. That’s what we’re hearing in that passage from St Paul …a shout of resurrection defiance** in the face of harsh reality: afflicted, but not crushed . . . perplexed, but not driven to despair . . . persecuted, but not forsaken . . . struck down, but not destroyed. " Down, but not out! The brutal realities that would lay us low, they aren’t the last word, Paul insists. And then he claims even more than that. Not only do they not have the last word. These tribulations that befall us, they can bring the life of Christ that is in us -- the living, pulsing love of Christ -- into fuller view.

That’s what we were seeing on the streets of Orlando, and on city streets around the world … all these demonstrations of solidarity, sounding the notes of resurrection defiance … the uprising of Love that won’t be contained or controlled, squashed, or stifled.

Love is our refuge and our strength. It’s got nothing to do with walls that promise protection. It’s got nothing to do with guarantees of safety. It has much more to do with risk, with exposure, with vulnerability. This is the paradox of the kind of refuge we’re talking about: the more vulnerable we are, the more we open ourselves up to God’s unbounded love, the more we become agents of that love, the more that love spreads outward, the more our neighbourhoods, our cities become sanctuaries … not hiding places but thriving places!

3 Sundays from now is the Pride parade in Victoria. It began, like all the others, as a protest movement … in response to police harassment, in response to gay bashing, in response to discrimination around jobs, housing, parenting.  It was a movement out onto the streets announcing “ENOUGH!  NO MORE! We’re here! We’re queer! We’re not going away.”

I believe something of that will be reclaimed this year through the Pride parade here and everywhere. It’s true … we have come a long way … but we have not come all the way. In many places, here and around the world, queer people live with fear, discrimination, imprisonment, and in some places, even the death penalty.

It’s not the only way, but our participation in the Pride parade this year is a readily available way for us to join a multitude of others in saying “NO MORE!” It’s one of the ways that we can be part of sounding the notes of resurrection defiance.  It’s one of the ways we can share in the uprising of God’s Love.

May we be a people who on that day and everyday are in some way about bringing the living, pulsing love of Christ into fuller view.

* Quinn Caldwell, Sanctuary, posted on June 14, 2016, Still Speaking Daily Devotional, an online ministry of the United Church of Christ

**a phrase I first heard coined by Tony Robinson, Defiance!, posted on May 5, 2016, Still Speaking Daily Devotional, an online ministry of the United Church of Christ

 

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