Our Sanctuary is Christ Himself
This passage from Exodus became very clear to me at a very special moment and place in our lives. In 2008, we were completing a new sanctuary at St. Mary’s in Belleview, up near Ocala. St. Mary’s had always had a red door on the front of the old church and we had talked about a red door on the new one.
There was just one problem. We had also bought huge, beautiful mahogany doors. So it came to pass one Friday afternoon that I stood with our building committee chairperson, our contractor’s site manager and our painter talking about our doors. Well, really they were patiently waiting for me to understand that you don’t paint mahogany. They may have even implied that it was actually the 11th commandment. “We can’t paint it?” No. “We can’t stain it?” No.
I stood there thinking and stewing about it, when the painter offered an idea. “What if we painted the framework around it red? Mahogany is a red wood anyway and the red framing would bring that out.” We all liked the idea and agreed to it.
I heard one major objection. Our building chairman’s wife had said rather pointedly to a friend, “He has ruined it. He has gone and put lipstick on our beautiful church!”
But I wasn’t done. Why do churches, and especially Episcopal churches, tend to have red doors? I called a trusted and brilliant colleague. He didn’t know. We decided to research it and we both came to the same understanding.
The red signifies sanctuary. And it isn’t because of some old medieval tradition about church being base. It is red because we find sanctuary through the blood of Christ. His blood gives us sanctuary because of his great sacrifice on Good Friday.
The night before he died, when Jesus gathered with his disciples for the Last Supper, they were celebrating the Feast of the Passover, which of course ties back to this passage from Exodus. “They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it” (Exodus 12:7) and “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:13)
There we had it. Not only did we learn why churches have red doors, it was theologically sound to paint around the doors.
As it turned out, the next Sunday, September 7, 2008 was our last in the old church. We would begin in the new one the very next week. Do you want to guess what the Old Testament reading was that day? You guessed it, Exodus 12:1-14. My sermon wrote itself that week.
I share it with you tonight to underscore that issue of sanctuary in the blood of Christ. When I pray with or for people in need of healing, I almost always pray for God to intercede by the name and blood of Jesus Christ. When I pray for protection for someone, I pray for the blood of Christ as a hedge against any evil.
When I pray in or by the blood of Christ, I’m not thinking about physical blood. I’m praying for sanctuary in the blood he shed so long ago. That would make a solid Good Friday sermon. We aren’t there just yet. We are with him the night before he died for us.
We find Jesus very clearly instructing his disciples, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” That means that they – and we – must be as willing to receive ministry as to give it, and to give and receive ministry with the humblest of hearts.
And it also means they – and we – must receive Jesus to serve him. Later that evening he took the cup and said, “This is my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”
Do you see what he did? The blood of the lamb was a sign of obedience and faithfulness that caused the angel of death to pass over them. Thus it became a mark of sanctuary in God’s care that they would remember ever since. The Jewish Passover was last night. Jesus fulfilled God’s promise to Israel and the world by becoming, himself, the lamb whose blood would save God’s people.
The night before he died, he proclaimed that sanctuary would not be on the outside of God’s people, but that we would take him in sacramentally through the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Thus, our sanctuary is within, by the very presence of the living Word of God in His Son, Our Savior, Jesus Christ.
We cannot gather as we would love to here in our beautiful sanctuary. Ultimately, Christ is our sanctuary. He resides inside each of us. Wherever you are, He is with you, and we are bound together in Him.
AMEN