Whose sanctuary is this, anyway?

LOUISVILLE — Whose sanctuary is this, anyway?

That was the provocative question the Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, president and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund, explored Sunday during a sermon based on Amos 7:7-17, a lectionary passage, at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Watch Wilson’s captivating sermon here. He begins reading from Amos at 31:52.

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“I’m glad those are not my words!” Wilson said after relating the words of Amos’ prophecy of doom for King Jeroboam II and his people. “This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.”

“This conversation and conflict comes up between one who is a priest, Amaziah, and one whom we have deemed a prophet, Amos,” he noted. “Here at Bethel there is a dialogue about whose sanctuary this is.”

In this context, sanctuary “is an open-air space, spaces in nature where those who gather might have direct contact with God,” he said. “God’s open space in nature had been … sanctified and set apart by those who engage in priestly ritual to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, that this is holy ground.”

Just before this text, Amaziah engages in conversation with the king “about Amos before he talks to Amos,” Wilson noted.

“Where I’m from, [Wilson served congregations in Missouri and Texas before beginning his work with the Children’s Defense Fund] we are a little bit careful about people who talk about you to the authorities before they talk to you. We’re careful about people who would rather talk to the police than talk to their neighbors. … We have a short word for that: we call them ‘snitches.’”

“Some feel more comfortable with proximity to power,” Wilson said, “than they do with [proximity to] God’s people.”

Go back to your own neighborhood, Amaziah tells Amos. “Don’t speak this way here,” is how Wilson put it, “because this is the king’s sanctuary.”

“Amaziah’s declaration may sound far-fetched. We can hardly imagine someone coming here into the hallowed grounds of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church and saying, ‘this is the president’s sanctuary.’ We would never say, ‘this is [Mayor] Muriel Bowser’s sanctuary.’ But I want to suggest there are many of us who do so each and every day.”

Amaziah “is not only claiming property rights for a building, he is also gentrifying ground, claiming a portion of Creation that God made for God’s self. Who does he think he is?” Wilson asked.

The question can also be asked, “whose sanctuary are you, anyway?”

“The challenge of dual citizenship in this world and in the kingdom of God is presented in the context of this text,” Wilson said. “The question of allegiance to the things of God or the things of the kingdom, the empire, the nations of this world, is a realistic question we must answer as we begin to shape our beings as God’s people.”

Amaziah “calls Amos a prophet and Amos says, ‘nah, bruh,’” Wilson said. “If you let others define your identity, your community, your call, you’ll be left to pick up the broken pieces of the narrative they construct for you.”

Amos’ answer to Amaziah has lessons for us today, he said.

First, “prophecy is not a profession but a commitment to principles.”

Amos is saying, “I don’t have papers for this. I’m not a member of the guild … I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees. Amaziah has done what many of us have done when it comes to ministry: he has delegated the ministry of God’s Word to a select group of people who hang together in the sanctuary, tarry around the church” and wear garb like the stole Wilson wore on Sunday.

“Your call,” Wilson said, “is to live out the reality of what the red doors of your sanctuary really mean.” Church doors that are red historically signal there’s refuge and safety from violence inside. “In a world where people are knocked out and grabbed up for being different, what does it mean to live a witness that among us, they are fully and completely safe to be their whole selves?”

“It’s not a professionalized ministry that is somebody else’s responsibility,” he said, “but rather is the call of the entire congregation.”

The second lesson is that “elevation in ministry is connected to proximity of marginality.” In simpler terms, it’s the idea that “if you want to get up with God, you have to be with the people who are on the outside,” he said.

In the west, we see leading “as being out front. Here, the prophet says, “I was following.’ How do you follow from the front?” Wilson asked.

The third lesson we learn is that “God gets to choose who God wants to use,” he said. “To grow the church into a megachurch, God chose a dude known for cutting people’s ears off named Peter,” he said. “To carry the cross when Jesus got weak, God chose someone named Simon of Cyrene.”

“I know he’s the enemy of the story, but Pontius Pilate was used to carry out the sentence that God needed for the moment,” he said. Jesus himself argued with God in the Garden of Gethsemane “because he didn’t want to be the sacrifice that he was called to be, but the Christ had to yield to the Creator and say, ‘let this cup pass from me, but not my will but, thy will be done,’ because Jesus didn’t get the option.”

“In this day, my argument is that God has chosen you, people in America with dual citizenship,” he said. “You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, holy people called to this moment. The question is, whose sanctuary will you be, anyway?”