Are There No Sanctuaries Anymore?

First published in The Daily Sentinel, Friday, Dec. 14, 2007

I took my kids to see the latest Disney animated film several years ago. After decades of fairy tales and talking animals, Disney was taking on serious literature: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Of course, “Hunchback” had some characteristically Disney characters, most notably the animated, singing gargoyles from the top of the cathedral who were Quasimodo’s only friends. But that film also had some of the most intensive scenes yet in a Disney animated movie.

One dramatic scene is when Quasimodo swooped down to save Esmerelda from the power-hungry cleric, Frollo. Standing at the doorstep to Notre Dame Cathedral, Quasi screamed “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Frollo’s soldiers dared not enter the Cathedral with arms to capture the beautiful gypsy girl. As long as Esmerelda stayed inside the church, she was safe from Frollo.

That was then. This is now. A gunman targets a church in Colorado Springs, killing and wounding several people in the parking lot. He throws smoke bombs into the main entrance of the church so that more people will crowd out of the smaller back entrance. But he’s there waiting for them with an assault rifle, two handguns and more than 1000 rounds of ammunition, according to the news reports I’ve read. If not for an armed security guard, I suspect that dozens of people would have been killed before police arrived.

We call the places in which we worship God “sanctuaries” because they are supposed to be special rooms where we can cast aside our cares and concentrate on our Creator. Every week, around 100 people come to my church’s sanctuary without considering their lives were at risk. Until now.

Clearly, there is no longer any sacred space in this world. For years, we heard about mosque bombings in Iraq, but they don’t upset us because they’re half a world away. Somehow though, Colorado is a whole lot closer – much more REAL to us. Suddenly, gong to church on Sunday takes on a different level of risk. But I think the connection between mosque bombings and church shooters is much more direct than most of us realize.

Whenever violence is directed towards a religious center, shrine or place of worship – no matter what religion is represented – all religions are damaged. Bombs in a Jewish synagogue and arson in a Hindu temple are also attacks against Christianity. The shooter in Colorado Springs “hated Christians,” but that hatred extended to people of all faiths.

I am not one of the “all roads lead to heaven, but just by different directions” people. Comparative religion studies show that the end goal of Christianity is not shared as an end goal of Buddhism, for example. But a common underpinning between Christianity and Buddhism is respect for others. Each faith has a form of Jesus’ golden rule found in Luke 6:31: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” (The Buddhist version, by the way: “Hurt not others in ways that you would find hurtful.”)

Killing people in a house of worship is a grotesque violation of this common rule. Actually, I will go further than that: it is blasphemous! It is not just an attack on God’s creations, but an attack directly against God. Nothing can justify it. Not religious disagreements, not power struggles between warring factions, not encroachment designed to drive others out, not even grudges against a missionary group that deemed a person unsuitable for missionary work.

Evidently that was Matthew Murray’s motive. He had been rejected by Youth With a Mission, a Christian missionary training and deploying ministry several years earlier. I haven’t seen reports to detail why he was rejected; but after these actions, I wonder of “prone to violent outbursts” was written somewhere in his files.

Matthew Murray lost perspective and destroyed sanctuary. We can all agree to that. But what about closer to home? What about here in our own communities? Are we destroying sanctuary by skipping worship so that we can get to the malls? Are we blasphemous in the church when we keep looking at our watches to see what time it is? (After all, we gotta get to Bob Evans before the crowds) Are we attacking God by verbally disrespecting those with different faith systems than our own?

Yes, I acknowledge that there’s a big gap between church shootings and Sunday mall shopping. But both take away the sacred places that God intends for us to have. We are coming to one of the most sacred times of the Christian faith – celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Why not make one of your Christmas gifts be renewing the concept of sanctuary in your own life? In what ways can you become a more faithful adherent of the Golden Rule?