Building Unity in the "Sacred"

Author: Pastor Mike Gutzler

God’s grace and, most of all, peace be with you this day.

For most of you who know me (and as an introduction to those who are new to Holy Trinity) for as long as I have been a pastor, 15 years this summer, I have been a college professor of religion studies. While I have spent the vast majority of time over those year with pastoral duties, I have always considered the college teaching side of my life as a hobby – something I love to do for fun.

While I have had the opportunity to teach a class or two on Christianity, most of my classes are introductions to the world religions either from the East or the West. But the class I have taught the most is the introduction to Religion – meaning the concept of religion. This course and, to be honest, this subject that got me into the field of religions studies in the first place, tries to determine what is at the heart of all the world’s religions. Said in a different way, it is an attempt to find the origins of religion before religion was established and institutionalized – much like we know it today.

This course, and religion as a whole, is first the study of the “sacred.” Without getting too formal in our definition – the “sacred” is the manifestation of the holy or divine in our midst. It is that which everything else in religious practice is manifest. It is when we, or our ancestors, encounter the sacred - religious practice evolves. When we encounter the sacred we are inspired to retell of our experiences, to set aside special space, perform rituals and establish community around the common elements we value together.

Our reading from the book of Mark the very first chapter is a great example of our own tradition’s original encounter with the sacred. For Mark, and Mark’s community, the way they experienced the divine in their midst was not in a manger with a star overhead, but in the waters of the Jordan. For them the sacred experience was when the heavens were torn apart of God said, “you are my son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased.” This is the divine, the holy, the sacred in our midst and is the genesis of our community life. Baptism for us and our community, thus became a sacred ritual. We follow the same steps of the Mark community when we come to this font with a heart of repentance, and are washed clean - reconnecting us to our God. This part of our sacred story also ties in the significance of the event by affirming our God is one who does not live at a distance but is a God who interacts with this world. An incarnated God. This God comes to us and is one of us so that we have as close of a connection as possible with the divine. When we feel and touch this water, we are reconnected with the sacred and divine.

What is so radical about our tradition is that we believe this sacred moment of baptism is a gift – freely given. We believe our God values relationship with us far more than the mistakes of our past. The hurt we may have caused or the pain we have incurred is accepted and appreciated as part of our broken existence. Our God comes back to us with gesturers of love – eternally. What is sometimes hard for us to accept is that this gift of grace and love is not exclusive for us, but is given to all of creation – it’s especially hard to fathom when people who look and act differently than us.

We read the story of Jesus’s baptism in the beginning of our calendar year for a variety of reasons, but mostly so we can feel like we are starting once again with a clean slate, a new opportunity and outlook on the world. In the remembrance of our baptism and the dipping our fingers in the water, we are made clean once again and offered hope for a new year. A new opportunity as individuals and community to respond to such an incredible gift. Given now what we know about religion, the sacred, and the how we as Lutheran Christians appreciate the sacred, we must pause and take a moment to reflect about how the sacred – and the stories we share about the sacred – shape our identities.

Here is an example: My religion 101 class at Northern Virginia Community College is always filled with a very diverse group of students who come from a variety of religious traditions. While this is an incredible gift for our conversations and sharing about how the sacred is an element of each tradition – it is hard for us to speaking with collective experience and knowledge about one religion for the purpose of examples and explanations. The way we get around this obstacle is to find a common ground for all the students outside of religion, but in a setting that does have an element of the sacred – so we use our collective American experience. Now when we talk about America we do not talk about it as a religion, but we talk about it as a collective that has elements of sacredness that shapes our identity and gives us meaning. These stories are more familiar than we may even know.

By simply taking a moment and thinking about our “history” or the stories we tell of our history we find our narrative to be filled with examples of liberty seekers, trail blazers, entrepreneurs and freedom fighters who value and celebrate independence. Think of our collective stories like the “American dream” or the hero’s journey where the small good guy always defeats the big bad guy.

It is important to note here that it can be very easy for us to retell the stories we want to hear, and skip over that others that we want to forget. And let me be clear, we need to tell all of our stories, the good and the bad, as a way to appreciate our fullest identity and fullest expression of ourselves – both as a country and as individuals. In the church we call this confession and forgiveness.

Returning to the class conversations, we use the sacred elements of our America experience to emphasize the ways we reaffirm the sacred’s existence. We talk about sacred rituals like the great Turkey slaughter in November to commemorate the first meal that was shared by the “settlers” and native peoples in North America. We talk about the celebratory attire and festival of lights that happens in the first week of July to acknowledge the sacred day of independence over our foreign oppressors. I am sure you can come up with more examples. But after speaking of our collective American sacred rituals and sacred time, I ask the students if they can share with me their thoughts on American sacred spaces. I remind them, sacred spaces are those places where your behavior and actions change when you enter it.

Much like our sanctuary here at Holy Trinity what we do in this room of the building, and even more specifically around the altar is much different than what we do or say in other part of the building. The space is set aside for our sacred rituals and practices. The students come up with great answers like Arlington cemetery – a sacred space set aside for those who died to help preserve our way of life and country, or national parks where collectively we honor and celebrate the natural beauty of the land, or even a monument that commemorates the “saints” of our past. When I push them a bit more and ask them what they believe to be as the most sacred space in our country, invoking the example from Judaism of the Holy Temple and the very few who were allowed to go into the holy of holies, they usually come up to two places – the Oval Office and the Capital Building. And they are right. These are probably the most sacred spaces we have as Americans.

This is important for us to know as we try to understand why the event from this past Wednesday, January 6th the day of Epiphany – a day set aside to emphasize the importance of God’s light and hope in the world. What we witnessed inside the Capital Building just miles down the road was the transition of sacred space into common space. Not only was the space treated as common and ordinary, but it was also desecrated. The definition of desecrate is to treat (a sacred place or thing) with violent disrespect; to violate. Setting aside the challenges for us to describe the concept of desecration to children, for us as adults – we are familiar with this term and experience. Anyone who has been robbed, violated, or abused can articulate the feeling of how something that is sacred changes in a moment. I share all of this, and my experience with you, as an attempt to help you understand and articulate the feeling you may be having – especially after seeing the images and video over and over again.

By my role here as pastor is somewhat different. As a pastor, and as the preacher of the sermon – I/we are encouraged to use this pulpit to proclaim the sacred message of the Gospel. We are to invoke the law – noting our inability to live up to God’s expectations, but also the Gospel of love and forgiveness. The sermon is supposed to culminate in one of three ways, with of voice or care and compassion, a voice of challenge – my personal favorite, and a voice of prophecy – maybe the most challenging. Today, and the event of this week, call for a voice of prophesy – a proclamation of what is to come. A prophet’s voice takes account of the present and points to the direction God’s people are called forward into the future. So here we go…

Over a year now during the course of the pandemic we have seen our lives and culture experience unbelievable changes. We have been for the most part locked in our homes, we have seen major cultural movements, we have participated in an election, and witnessed violence. We have changed the way we relate, communicate, shop, eat and so much more. In short, in the course of a year the world has changed forever. Elements and aspects of our collective American and Christian past, that we deemed sacred has changed forever. Some of the sacred elements of our past will no longer hold true, and we will have to find new ways to tell the stories of the sacred for our future together. There will need to be a time when the desecrated parts of our space and culture will need to be made holy again. Even more specially for us as church, it is our calling to take the moments of this week and the acknowledgement that our world has changed, as a missional moment. This is our opportunity to reoffer to the world what Jesus has offered to us – and that is the gift of God’s presence in relationship.

The evidence of our sacred stories and God’s presence in relationship is already being made manifest in our community. Just this past Tuesday during our weekly check-ins and conversation there were stories of how this pandemic, and the need to be in our homes with the same people for an extended period of time, has changed our relationships for the better. Just like Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there. The examples of rival siblings becoming friends, spouses finding renewed depths of their relationships and love, and parents finding new bonds with children show that time together grows love and trust. It is no wonder, like we will hear over the next couple of weeks, that Jesus calls his disciples into a yearlong relationship of training and togetherness. He lived with his disciples, ate with them, did ministry with them. Jesus emphasized the point that when we know someone, spend time with someone, we can understand them in a deeper and more intimate way. Trust is built and vulnerability is possible – even to the point of being hung on a cross.

Our prophetic call, as Christians coming into a very different world is to be on the front lines of relationship building, especially with those who are different from us. The only way we will heal from the desecration that takes place with a polarity of view is to be the Christian bridge of love, understanding and healing between two camps. Our God, in the first steps of ministry and in the waters of baptism, is a God of reconciliation between the broken world and the holy, sacred and divine.

This is our charge, and this is our calling. May God given us the strength to make these difficult steps both on our own and as a community. Amen.