The message at Sunday’s 9:45 service will be brought by the 40 plus voices of our choirs through “Sanctuary: A Cantata of Hope and Peace.”  One of the many things I like about “Sanctuary” is that it does not hurry us along as we make our way to the empty tomb. We will travel slowly through Holy Week, lingering in the Upper Room, the Garden of Gethsemane, and elsewhere, seeking to find the sanctuary, the refuge, that Jesus and his disciples may have found in the quiet and safe places of those chaotic days.

The cantata avoids a common church trap so aptly, if a bit coarsely, described by Kate Bowler, the Duke Divinity School professor who lives with metastasized colon cancer and whose story I have referenced here and from the pulpit.  Bowler describes the Lenten trap of “Easter-ing the crap out of people’s Lent, where we just want to make it joyful. We imagine that because everything is going to turn out, we can skip the suffering.” (More on that at our 8:30 and 11:30 services.)

Because we can’t skip the suffering, we must stay close to Jesus from the “Hosannas” of Palm Sunday to the “Crucify Him!” of Good Friday.  We must remain in the Upper Room for as long as he will allow, and fight the urge to sleep as he prays in the Garden.  We must keep our swords sheathed as the betrayer does what he will do.

The cantata offers an option for a congregational response just before the postlude. The author suggests an offering for a worthy cause, a ministry of care and compassion within the congregation or community.  With One Great Hour of Sharing – our annual offering for disaster relief around the world – coming just a week later, we decided against the ushers passing the plate one more time. Instead, the ushers will pass a Sanctuary Prayer Card to each worshiper, each card one of four describing places of refuge and sanctuary in our world and community: Hunting Park Christian Academy, Promised Land Ministries in Guatemala, Igreja Presbiteriana no Jardim America in Brazil, and Kibuye Hope Hospital in Burundi, East Africa.

HPCA is a place of refuge and sanctuary for 200 children and their families.  Students often speak of the safety and sense of belonging they have found at HPCA.  Likewise, behind the high walls of Promised Land School, there is a place of refuge and hope for 300 students who learn to read and write and play music – and of a God who loves them. IPJA stand like a beacon at the edge of Favela da Ventosa, its people and ministries providing a place of protection and hope in a sometimes violent world.  Kibuye Hope is a place where the blind are made to see and the Gospel shared in words and deeds of compassion and love. It is a sanctuary in one of the poorest places on the planet.

What a privilege is ours in helping provide such places of refuge and sanctuary.

We must pray, too, that LPC is a sanctuary of hope and peace in our neighborhood and for our people.

How are we doing at not skipping the suffering, but being there during the suffering? We can’t solve every problem, throw money at every situation. We Americans love to solve problems.  Sometimes we need to shelve our solutions, listen well, and speak slowly and carefully both the truth and the love we have met in Jesus Christ.

How are we doing at allowing others to the be the other they are, not asking them to conform to our expectations or the world’s flimsy definitions of happiness and success?

How are we doing at the difficult work of “not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought?”

How are we doing at welcoming the stranger?

How are we doing at being a sanctuary?

We well might make light of the call on every college campus for “safe places.”  Nevertheless, is LPC the safe place, the refuge and sanctuary, it ought to be?

The notion of the Sanctuary City, a rich and good biblical image, has been soiled by our partisan divisiveness.  But as God blesses us with more and more visitors and new members who are immigrants and first generation Americans, are we a sanctuary, a place of refuge, peace, and hope, in a strange and sometimes hostile world?

When you receive a prayer card on Sunday, please use it. Oh, and pray for LPC, as well, that we might be a sanctuary of hope and peace to member and visitor alike.

See you Sunday