My Light and My Salvation

“There is no greater cowardice than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of Scripture.”  This was from a statement made by NAACP President Cornell Brooks.  

Predictable as always, the country is now engaged in a debate over what kind of hate crime the attacks were on Wednesday in Charleston.  Were they motivated by race or religion?  Why does it matter?  

On Wednesday evening a young man entered Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, shot and killed the pastor and 8 other people who were engaged in a bible study and prayer meeting, human beings who had come seeking the shelter of the Lord, “and to inquire in his temple,” as the Psalmist says.  

Our psalm for today is a bit more hopeful than last week’s psalm 69, this is a psalm written during a time of crisis, but it is not a crisis of faith or a cry to a God who may or may not even be listening, it is a psalm of trust.

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” he says.  And so he comes into the Temple, the house of the Lord, to find God.  The place of meeting in a church is called a sanctuary for a very specific reason.  It is a place of refuge, it is a place to come and find rest, to gain strength for the journey of life.  It is a place to meet God, a place to worship and celebrate our faith, and to welcome all who seek newness of life.  

It has also become a target.  Personally, I believe that Wednesday’s shooting was not about either race or religion...it was about both.  What more of an unsuspecting, naively trusting group of people are you going to find than in a church sanctuary during a Bible study or a church service?  

I don’t say that to scare anyone, but the truth is often frightening.  I say this, actually for a different reason?  Where do we go to find God?  Is God really in this building?  Of course He is, but this is not the only place to find him.  

Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret (Mt. 6:6).”  Now Jesus wasn’t encouraging anyone to skip church, but in the Jewish religion, God’s house was the tabernacle, later the Temple.  He literally resided in the place where the ark of the covenant was kept, and only the priest could open the curtain and enter into that Most Holy Place.  Only the priest could actually enter into the very presence of the living God.  

And so as King David wrote this psalm, that is where he was going, whether physically or, more likely, in his mind, he was entering the Temple, he was going into the very House of God, a little piece of heaven on earth.  The temple was like an embassy for heaven.  When a government sets up an embassy in a foreign country, they actually purchase the ground that it sits on, so if were to visit the U.S. Embassy in another country, we would actually be on U.S. soil.

That was what the temple was to the Jews.  That was where David was looking to for his place of refuge.  And the enemies of Israel, they were terrified of it.  The Old Testament histories recall the Israelites actually carrying the ark of the covenant into battle with them, and Israel’s enemies shook with fear, because they knew that the Lord of Israel himself was leading those men into battle against them.  

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”  said David, and in another psalm (118:6) it says, “the Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

David knew full well what man can do to us.  He spent a good chunk of his life running for his life, yet he writes, with hopefulness and trust, “though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.”  

A Christian new commentator wrote about the shooting on Wednesday, and pointed out that whenever God is at work, Satan is at work too.  Between 2003 and 2010, terrorist attacks against Christians escalated by 309%!!  In the past fifteen years, more Muslims have converted to Christianity than in the past fifteen centuries, and look at what Satan is doing with groups like ISIS and al Qaeda.  

In China, much of the church has been forced underground, to meet in secret, because the government is shutting down and destroying churches all over, yet the Christian movement in China is growing more rapidly and gaining more strength than their government can handle.  

And when Jesus finally gained national attention and fame, what did Satan do but turn his own disciple, Judas, against him.  

Rabbi Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling council, said to his colleagues, “leave them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail;  but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them (Acts 5:38b-39)!”  

In the world of King David, the people needed symbols, they needed arks and tabernacles and temples in order to assure them of the presence of the Lord in their midst, but when David wrote these words, “He will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent (or tabernacle),” he didn’t mean that he was going to hide out inside the temple as the disciples did after Jesus was resurrected from the dead, cowering in fear behind locked doors, waiting for their enemies to come and find them.  

No, where does David go to find his refuge and shelter?  Where do we go to seek sanctuary and rest?  We go to the Lord.  

The congregation of Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston have experienced persecution before.  In 1822 that church was burned to the ground, and the people were forced to worship in secret until after the Civil War.  Today the church is without its pastor, but they will continue to enter the sanctuary of the Lord, because our sanctuary is not a place that can be taken from us by a man with a gun.  Amen.