-- Elie Wiesel
Reading: by the Muslim author and religious scholar Reza Aslan from No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam (p. 3)
In the arid, desolate basin of Mecca, surrounded on all sides by the bare mountains of the Arabian desert, stands a small, nondescript sanctuary that the ancient Arabs refer to as the Ka’ba: the Cube. [No one knows who built the Ka’ba, or how long it has been here …It] is a squat, roofless edifice made of unmortared stones and sunk into a valley of sand. Its four walls [are] so low it is said a young goat can leap over them… At its base, two small doors are chiseled into the gray stone, allowing entry into the inner sanctum. It is here, inside the cramped interior of the sanctuary, that the gods of pre-Islamic Arabia reside: Hubal, the Syrian god of the moon; al-Uzza, the powerful goddess the Egyptians knew as Isis and the Greeks called Aphrodite; al-Kutba, the Nabataean god of writing and divination; Jesus, the incarnate god of the Christians, and his holy mother, Mary.
In all, there are said to be three hundred and sixty idols housed in and around the Ka’ba, representing every god recognized in the Arabian Peninsula…
It is… possible that the original sanctuary held some cosmological significance for the ancient Arabs…. The seven circumambulations of the Ka’ba -…still the primary ritual of the annual Hajj pilgrimage – may have been intended to mimic the motion of heavenly bodies…. The Ka’ba, like the Pyramids in Egypt or the Temple in Jerusalem, may have been constructed as an axis mundi, sometimes called a “naval spot”: a sacred space around which the universe revolves, the link between the earth and the solid dome of heaven. That would explain why there was once a nail driven into the floor of the Ka’ba that the ancient Arabs referred to as “the naval of the world.” …The ancient pilgrims would sometimes enter the sanctuary, [throw themselves on the ground], and place their own navels over the nail, thereby merging with the cosmos.
Reading: by Unitarian Universalist ministers John Buehrens and Rebecca Parker from A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-First Century - A Sanctuary for the Spirit (p. 147)
The people of Le Chambon, a small village in France, harbored hundreds of Jewish children during World War II. Years later, when they were visited by one of the children – now a grown man – who had been sheltered there, he found himself asking why that village had sheltered Jewish children when so many others had not. He found his answer observing their simple worship practices. Le Chambon was a Huguenot, Protestant village. A religious minority, accustomed to struggling to survive, they regularly gathered to sing hymns, to recall the faith of ancestors who had held fast to the spirit of love even in times of trial, to offer thanksgiving, and to pray for one another. When he asked them to explain, they said that they could not imagine responding in any other way. It was simply the shape that their souls had. Their ways of worship had formed them for courage and resistance.
Reading: by the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh from Living Buddha, Living Christ (p. 116)
When you say, “I take refuge in the Dharma,” you are expressing confidence in the Dharma [the teaching]… and you want to orient yourself toward it….
Mindfulness is the key. When you become aware of something, you begin to have enlightenment. When you drink a glass of water and are aware that you are drinking a glass of water deeply with your whole being, enlightenment is there in its initial form. To be enlightened is always to be enlightened about something. I am enlightened about the fact that I am drinking a glass of water. I can obtain joy, peace and happiness just because of that enlightenment. When you look at the blue sky and are aware of it, the sky becomes real, and you become real… This is the way to take refuge in the Buddha… You do not have to abandon this world. You do not have to go to Heaven or wait for the future to have refuge. You can take refuge here and now…
In Search of Sanctuary
A Sermon Delivered on October 19, 2014
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Last Sunday I wasn’t here. I attended a different church. My wife, Elaine, our daughter, Sophia, and I were in St. Louis. We had joined observances in Ferguson the night before, and so on Sunday morning we worshipped at Emerson Chapel, a small UU congregation in a western suburb, that was planning to devote its worship service to the justice themes of the weekend.
The sanctuary in which we gathered for worship was strikingly different from this sanctuary I know so well. The folks at Emerson Chapel don’t have a building of their own, and so they rent space on Sunday mornings in a local high school cafeteria.
Curtains are draped in front of the vending machines. A portable platform is assembled, with a pulpit on it and space for singers. Every Sunday they also set up a sound system, stage lighting, a big projector screen off to the side, and several rows of plastic chairs.
I confess, as I settled into my seat and tried to ignore the noise of the soda coolers behind the curtain to my left, I felt kind of sorry for the members of the congregation. I thought it must be quite a challenge to transform a high school lunchroom into a church sanctuary every Sunday. Maybe a hopeless challenge.
Sitting there before the service began, I longed for the beauty and serenity of this sanctuary. The high ceiling, the solid stone walls, the well-worn wooden pews, the simple stained glass windows, and the fine organ front and center. This is what a sanctuary should look like. A place in which we gather, week after week, to celebrate life’s joys, to grieve life’s losses, to ponder life’s purpose, and to wonder at life’s mysteries. The space itself conveys a spirit of reverence, or maybe even what some might call a sense of the sacred.
Like the ancient idols of all the gods in the Ka’ba, the wall-hangings here symbolize all the world’s great religious traditions we seek honor, along with all their deities, their prophets and their teachers. A sanctuary is a place where we can be reminded that we are one with the cosmos, that we are inseparable from all humanity.
But what really surprised me last Sunday was that once the bell was rung, the announcements read, the first hymns sung; once the opening words and unison affirmation had been spoken and fine music was heard, I was drawn in. I found myself deeply affected by a powerful and moving worship experience. I felt profoundly connected to this community of friends I had only met that morning.
* * *
Sanctuary is a religious idea with a long history, which has taken shape in many different ways around the world. A sanctuary is a sacred place. A temple, a shrine, a place of worship. But above and beyond that, a sanctuary is also a place of safety, a sheltering harbor, a refuge.
This second sense of sanctuary can be traced back to medieval England. According to Catholic teaching, a person fleeing from justice or persecution could find refuge in a consecrated place, a church. The right of sanctuary was based on the inviolability of all things sacred. From the 4th to the 17th century in England, “a fugitive convicted of felony and taking the benefit of sanctuary was afforded protection from thirty to forty days, after which, …he had to "abjure the realm", that is leave the kingdom. Violation of the protection of sanctuary was punishable by excommunication.” (Catholic Encyclopedia)
This second sense of sanctuary today is inspiring what is called a New Sanctuary Movement. The Sanctuary Movement is an interfaith effort aimed, above all, at providing safe haven for immigrants and refugees facing workplace discrimination and deportation. UU congregations across the country are involved in this effort.
A few of you were here last month, when fifty-some church and community members gathered in fellowship hall to hear a speaker from the National Immigrant Justice Center talk about the situation of the rising number of Central American children that have been streaming into the United States - tens of thousands this year - and what we in Urbana-Champaign can do about it.
We learned that the young children from Central America who leave their homes, and embark on a harrowing trek to the United States, are compelled by a perfect storm of factors: an ever-increasing crime rate, and ever-diminishing opportunities to safely pursue an education, or to find a job. Many of the children have been separated for years from parents living in the United States, and have lost faith in legal channels that might allow them to reunite. The parents are desperate to get their children out of harm’s way. In the past five years asylum applications have increased seven-fold.
Boys and girls in their early teens, and younger, are now traveling through the most dangerous migration corridor of the world. They take buses, travel on top of trains, walk for miles through jungles and deserts, and often through areas controlled by organized crime and gangs. Most travel with smugglers who may exploit or abuse them during the trip. According to the U.N. over 60 percent of these children could be qualified as refugees.
Those actively involved, locally, are working to provide shelter and legal support for five children from Central America, who are now living in Urbana-Champaign, helping them avoid detention and deportation, and gain legal residency here. One of the children was present at the meeting last month. And we heard stories of the incredible obstacles he overcame on his journey here.
Our church would like to help. I encourage you to join the meeting of our Immigration Justice Task Force on Thursday evening and learn more about what is going on, and the many small ways we can make a difference.
* * *
This is not the first time our church been actively involved in such efforts. Thirty years ago, back in the 1980s, we also witnessed a surge of refugees from Central America, from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. They were fleeing the violence and destruction of U.S. backed wars ravaging their home countries.
As our own church history describes it:
“These refugees were treated like criminals by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, and were often deported. In response to this injustice, clergy and others formed the Sanctuary Movement to help people cross into the United States and to provide shelter for them in churches and in homes. Some leaders of the movement were arrested and convicted for these acts of civil disobedience.”
Beginning in 1984, we became actively involved – both locally and nationally – with the Sanctuary Movement. We joined CUECOS, the Champaign-Urbana Ecumenical Community of Sanctuary, and helped several refugee families in our community, who eventually moved on to the safety Canada.
* * *
Religious communities are uniquely qualified to embody the dual meanings of sanctuary. This is the lesson Rebecca Parker and John Buehrens draw from people of Le Chambon, who offered a safe haven for hundreds of Jewish children during World War II.
As a religious minority, the villagers had an intimate experience of what it means to be persecuted. They knew that their religious practice and their religious community could be a source of spiritual sustenance and safety, not only for those already members, but for the religious refugees driven from their homes. Given the villagers’ religious heritage and practice, helping out came naturally to them. They couldn’t help but see the people passing through their countryside, and in desperate need of support. And once they noticed their need, they could not imagine responding in any other way.
“Sanctuary,” Elie Wiesel says, “is often something very small. Not a grandiose gesture, but a small gesture toward alleviating human suffering and preventing humiliation. Sanctuary is a human being. Sanctuary is a dream. That is why you are here and that is why I am here; we are here because of one another. We are in truth each other’s shelter.”
Once we open our eyes to others, our hearts will also be opened.
In her book Conscience and Courage, the psychologist Eva Fogelman tells the story of Bella Freund, a forty-year old Jewish mother of eight, was on her way to an appointment in a Jerusalem shopping center one day in 1991 when she heard someone shout “Terrorists! Arab!” Through the crowd she saw a young man pinned to the ground by a guard. Adnan al-Afandi, a twenty-one-year-old Muslim extremist had just stabbed and slightly wounded a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy. Freund heard shots and felt that “something terrible was going to happen.” Before she realized what she was doing, she threw herself on top of the Arab to protect him from harm. The mob was shocked. They spit on her, beat her, called her an “Arab-lover” and a traitor. Still, she remained where she was until the police arrived and took al-Afandi into custody.
Bella Freund’s actions stirred a lot of debate at the time. She was a member of an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. She was supposed to be submissive, and keep out of the public eye. Instead she agreed to a television interview with the mother of the boy who had been stabbed. The mother was furious. “I am very angry at this woman, more than at the terrorist.” Bella was both incredulous and saddened by her experience. She had been taught that human life is sacred, and so she provided sanctuary to the young man in danger. “I simply protected someone because he was a human being,” she said, “and now I have to explain myself?”
That day in Jerusalem, Bella Freund’s eyes were open to the humanity of a young man in desperate need. Because her eyes were open, she couldn’t imagine responding in any other way.
A devout woman, her actions were guided by a deep faith, and a lifetime of religious practice that had shaped her soul. She simply knew that human life is sacred, and acted accordingly.
In a poem Nikki Giovanni captures something of this kind of conviction. She writes:
I would always choose to be the person running
rather than the mob chasing
I would prefer to be the person laughed at
rather than the teenagers laughing
I always admired the men and women who sat down
for their rights
And held in disdain the men and women who spat
on them
Everyone deserves Sanctuary a place to go where you are
Safe…
Each of us can offer sanctuary to others, if only we are willing to open our hearts as well as our eyes.
“Taking refuge,” Thich Nhat Hanh says, “is not based on blind faith or wishful thinking. It is gauged by our real experience.” Mindfulness is the key. Whether drinking a glass of water, whether looking at the sky, whether seeing the people around us. When we become aware of something, when we see and act with our whole being, we begin to have enlightenment. We don’t have to go to Heaven or wait for the future to have refuge. We can find refuge here and now.
“That is why you are here and that is why I am here,” Elie Wiesel says. We are here because of one another. We are in truth each other’s refuge.
The sanctuary each of us offers, and that each of us finds, will be different. We may throw ourselves on the ground, yearning to connect to the whole cosmos. We may throw ourselves on the ground yearning to protect all people, because we know that all creation and all life is sacred. We may worship on wooden pews or plastic chairs. We may practice mindfulness or political engagement. We may sing songs or sit in silence.
Sanctuary can be something very small. But even the smallest gesture matters. The mindfulness with which we drink a glass of water, or the moment we open our eyes to the real world, and the real people around us.
May we have the wisdom and the courage
To create a safe and sacred space
For all people of world,
Beginning right here and now.
In our minds and hearts.
Amen.
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