February 18, 2017

SANCTUARY  EARTH 

Centuries ago it was churches, places where someone

could run to,  for safety and to cry aloud, “Sanctuary!”

Next it was cities - some large cities where people

who were illegal - strangers - WOPS - “without papers” -

knew they could be safe - be with family and neighbors.

Oh, they were described by some as robbers and

rapists, but construction and landscape companies,
farmers, meat packing plants, restaurants and stores,  
they know who the workers are and how the economy goes.

Now there is a cry for colleges to be sanctuary

universe-cities - where kids brought here at 2 or 4

can be safe till they finish college - protected

by the Dream Act or DACA - and not be dragged

away immediately by I.C.E. into the cold dark night.

Question…. Prophetic challenge…. Gospel call….

When will we know this earth belongs to all of us?
It’s a sanctuary. It’s a holy place - to be open to all -

without walls - without borders -  without barriers.

Those are constructed with map lines, fences, walls,

words, languages, religions, cultures and colors.

Hello! Christ comes through walls and says, "Peace!"

Take off your shoes. Look down. You're on holy ground. 
Wash feet. Invite everyone to have a seat at the table.

And let the millionaires, billionaires and governments

learn that life is all about serving, not being served.

Sanctuary Earth! Isn’t that a great solution?

Sanctuary Earth! Isn’t that a great dream? 

Or do we need to keep on creating labels

as a way of creating strangers - to get self votes -

and a way to think we’re better than someone else?

When will we learn the real way on how  to be great?

Here's how: Christians stand there with a sign or a mirror
that says, “Matthew 25: 31-46” - but make sure

you have first made those words flesh in yourself and
then - who cares about you - make others great.

© Andy Costello, Reflections  2017

Footnotes:

This is a first draft document. It's choppy and clumsy, but I'll continue to sculpt it.

In the meanwhile, for starters,  one needs to know the history of the idea of sanctuary.

It's a holy place.  It's a safe place.  It's a place of protection.

In our story, it's our mother's womb - where we had a sanctuary for 9 months.

In a family it's the home. It's the kitchen table. It's the couch.  It's our mother and father's arms.

In a church it’s where the altar is - a place marked out by altar rails at times - or a place where a saint is buried - or where there are relics in the altar - making this a “holy place”. 

Every human being - [how about every animal?] - needs a safe place - where we are safe from the claws and fangs of horror stories.

Everyone needs safe havens.

Pause before entering.

In time people who needed safety headed for a sanctuary - in order to scream, "This is God's Holy Place - a sanctuary! Leave me alone. Let me be safe with God in this holy - wholesome place."

Next one ought to know the Biblical prophets and how they saw people and how all people need to be treated.

"Sow integrity for yourselves, reap a harvest of kindness...." -  Hosea 10:12

Listen to Isaiah 10: 1 - 4:, "Woe to legislators of infamous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees, who refuse justice to the unfortunate and cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan. What will you do on the day of punishment, when, from far off, destruction comes?  To whom will you run for help?  Where will you leave your riches? Nothing for it but to crouch with the captives and to fall with the slain. Yet his anger is not spent, still his hand is raised to strike."

Read Isaiah 61: 1-3, as Jesus read it,    "The spirit of the Lord Yahweh has been give to me, for Yahweh has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year of favor from Yahweh, a day of vengeance for our God, to comfort all those who mourn and to give them for ashes a garland; for mourning robe the oil of gladness, for despondency, praise. They are to be called 'terebinths of integrity, planted by Yahweh to glorify him."[Cf.  Luke  4:18-19.]

Jeremiah 7:4-11 proclaims,  "Don't put your trust in illusions and say, 'The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord are these [buildings].' No, if you really mend your ways and your actions; if you execute justice between one another; if you do not oppress the stranger, the orphan, and the widow; if you do not shed the blood of the innocent in this place; if you do not follow other gods, to your own hurt - then only will I let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers for all time. See, you are relying on illusions that are of no avail. Will you steal and murder and commit adultery and swear falsely, and sacrifice to Baal, and follow other gods whom you have not experienced, and then come and stand before Me in this House which bears my name and say, 'We are safe'? [Safe] to do all these abhorrent things! Do you consider this House, which bears My name, to be a den of thieves?  As for Me, I have been watching - declares the Lord."

So one must know the prophets  who challenge us to treat others right and just and fair. 

So anyone who glories in the title, "Evangelical" - or "Christian" or "minister" or "priest" or "Catholic" or "Biblical" - anyone who builds their life on the prophets and on Jesus - please know and live what's between the covers of the Bible.

So anyone who puts their hand on a Bible better know what they are touching. The Book is filled with fire and justice and warning. Shouts of “Shame, shame, on you!” come screaming out of the Book towards anyone who touches it while being sworn in - if they are not swearing they are going to go by the Book and protect the inalienable rights of all people.

Remember walls fall. Read Psalm 18: 29-30 ".... with my God I can scale a wall...."  

Read Robert Frost's poem, Mending Wall. Remember how it begins, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, / And spills the upper boulders in the sun; / And makes gaps even two can pass abreast."  I hope more than 2  can fit through - whatever language they are speaking! And I also know what  the last line of Robert Frost's  poem is, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Which line is you: opening or closing?

Let's make the words - the 1883 sonnet  of  Emma Lazarus [1849-1887] on the foundation stone of the Statue of Liberty become flesh - and not just be bronze.

THE NEW COLOSSUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed  to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Let's continue to make the United States a sanctuary ... or to quote John Winthrop the Puritan, Ronald Reagan the President and Jesus the Prophet - that we be a city of light on a hill for all to see - and all to discover.

For the sake of transparency my parents were not born in the United States - but on Planet Earth. What are your roots? 

Let's work to make the world a sanctuary - the title of this piece - for all people.

Go to your local sanctuary and pray to make this a Better World.

For the sake of transparency I am a member of the Better World Movement.

For the sake of transparency I like to read Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream Speech" - on a regular basis.

The title of this piece is Sanctuary Earth.

Then there are bird sanctuaries - protected places for saving precious animals.  

In English law and tradition a sanctuary was a place of safety and asylum from the 4^th to the 17^th century.

In the United States 440 cities were declared sanctuary cities from 1980 to 2000 for people caught in the Central America Civil Wars.

As to the United States - people have to know we are a nation of immigrants. 

I want to here cite a note about WOP - which I mention above.  There are various anecdotes about it's meaning.  It is said to have been based on the Southern Italian word "guappo" meaning pimp or thug. That is supposed to have come from the Spanish word "guapo" meaning handsome. That is said to have derived from a word for pimp and on and on an on. Some said it stands for "Without Passport" or "Without papers" or "working on pavement".

I would like it to stand for, "Work On Peace!"

There is a need to continue to talk together in a sacred place - about all this. And walls don't help when it comes to talking - but then again - it was behind walls and in a locked upper room, where Pentecost burst Christianity on its feet.