Post 6: Protecting our Sanctuaries
The Notes of Rest Fellowship
Highlights:
Sanctuaries can always be violated.
We partner with God in protecting our sanctuaries.
Black music is a response to the violation of what is sacred.
Hi everyone,
The last form of rest addressed in Notes of Rest is sanctuary, the practice of protecting safe space to connect with God. I made this note last for several reasons. First, sanctuary as active protection is integral to understanding all of the notes discussed thus far. Salvation is God’s divine protection of our minds, bodies, and spirits from death. Through Sabbath, God protects our sense of time from the clutches of rapacious productivity. Sleep requires that we protect our rhythm daily of when we are awake and when we are not. Sleep also requires us to rely fully on God to protect us when we are drooling on our pillows. Last, stillness requires protecting our interior life from the ever-present allure of distraction.
But the second reason we address sanctuary is because everything’s sacredness can be violated in this cultural moment. All can be profaned, derided or destroyed. In this neo-liberalist era, where all bows to the dollar, anything and everything can be commodified, from bodies to your very attention. The constant potential for violation is core to restlessness.
Of course, physical sacred space is routinely violated too. This violation is what made the Mother Emanuel 9 shooting in 2015 in Charleston, SC especially horrific. It is also happening repeatedly in the case of immigrants who are violently deported from the refuge they have sought here in the US. And it is also happening to endangered wildlife who are threatened by human practice, such as debates over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Our attention cannot rest, Black folk in church cannot rest, vulnerable migrants cannot rest, and animals cannot rest. On a personal level, systemic level, and species level, our sanctuaries need protecting, or else we will continue to live restlessly. So a driving question for this week’s post is this: Are we invested in protecting our sanctuaries?
God as our refuge - Psalm 16
In the Bible, a sanctuary is a space for rest that we partner with God to protect. Psalm 16 puts it beautifully: “Protect me O God, for in you I take refuge.” God is the ultimate refuge, but we have to protect that relationship. In this case, it was by writing in verse the petition for God to protect the psalmist.
Do you turn to God as protector when you need refuge?
God Providing Sanctuary for the Vulnerable Community - Exodus 15
In addition to God directly being our refuge and sanctuary, God also gives us safe physical space to connect with God. In Exodus 15, after God had liberated Hebrew slaves from Egyptian captivity, the new ex-slaves rejoiced in song about their new home on the other side of the Red Sea:
You brought them (the Israelites) in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession,
the place, O Lord, that you made your abode,
the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established. (v. 17)
The Israelites were singing that God had freed them from slavery and had brought them into a sanctuary. T.he Red Sea protected them from the wiles of Pharaoh. Here in this new home they could connect with God and one another in peace. Their sanctuary flowed from their salvation.