Metal Detectors at the Gates of Heaven: Holy Emotion in the Kingdom of God

Thursday Morning Eucharist, Harvard Divinity School

Luke 17:20-25

Sam Melton, MDiv ‘19

This past week, like many churches across the nation, I have spent time reviewing and discussing the active shooter policies and safety procedures of our church. --- Where are the exit doors, do we have a relationship with the local police department, have we been trained and educated in case of an emergency? While yes, these are very practical questions that need to be asked and fall under the very large umbrella that we call ministry, we also recognize that the root of these questions lies in what seems to be a revolving door of anxiety and fear. Perhaps you are feeling the same or maybe quite different in light of mass shootings, natural disasters, and more. Are you feeling anger, sadness, exhaustion, indifference, confusion, complacency among anxiety and fear, to name a few. Can we name these emotions and bring them to our reading from Luke today?

In Luke, we hear Jesus say that the “Kingdom of God is among you,” declaring again a reminder that God acts, lives, and breathes, between us, here with us. I must admit that as much as I love this ideal, after the past few months, I'm having a hard time with this imagery of a very alive God living among her people. Everytime I turn the news on or take a scroll through my Facebook feed, I have a hard time believing this to be true, or at least I'm not seeing it.

My supervisor starts every meeting by asking, Where do you find the spirit moving? And the past few weeks I find myself answering that I feel like the spirit is absent. Things feel heavier, I feel everyone around me taking deeper breathes and bigger sighs as if we are collectively asking, where is God in all of this and why do I have to look so damn hard to find her?

As Christian leaders, after the mass shooting in a Texas church a week and a half ago, we are spending our time sitting in council meetings where we are suggesting shutting our doors to people if they are more than ten minutes late --- on clergy facebook pages and blogs, congregations are in the process of hiring armed guards to stand at the doors of their sanctuaries with AK47’s, and I can’t help but ask, how is this God’s Kingdom, where is God in all of this? Because I never imagined passing through a set of armed guards and metal detectors as I make my way through the gates of heaven. If the Kingdom of Heaven is here, I find myself asking, then where? And then yet I turn to Luke again and am reminded that “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed;” and I must turn to asking instead why am I not seeing the spirit, but instead where am i failing to look? What are we missing in the midst of this cloud of anxiety and fear? Is God still here as her people continue to act in direct opposition of the Gospel by leaving people outside?

In the midst of these antithetical conversations, I've found our conversations turning to the theme of holy emotion, what it means and how exactly we are supposed to use it. Usually we only see emotions played out through actions, so what do holy emotions mean in the context of these modern day concerns of church safety plans and active shooter trainings? With a thousand different social justice and human rights issues pulling us every which way, where do we dedicate these strong feelings and emotions to, can we justify spending time chewing on these emotions in the midst of such urgent issues?

Yet, using anger as an example, perhaps we can have a sense of how holy anger acts as a form of resistance. Of how taking time to chew through these very human emotions, can lead us to react in a Gospel-informed way. I’m speaking of the type of holy anger we often see exhibited in civil rights leaders, like MLK and Malcom X. Holy anger acts as a force that pushes us to love fiercely and act fiercely on behalf of our neighbors. Father Clooney wrote similarly this week reminding us that Jesus too, was an angry man. He reminds us that, “Jesus spoke fiercely and in anger, and blasted those who were hurting and not helping God’s people.” Though we are by no means Jesus himself, we learn from Jesus that emotion is holy, it is useful, and it can propel us. Anger is just as much a part of the Kingdom of heaven as kindness is. Jesus reminds us through Luke that the Kingdom of Heaven is here and we are playing an active role in that kingdom. We are holy. Our bodies are holy. And our emotions are holy. You are holy.

I extend a challenge to you today, a challenge I gave to my congregation this past Sunday. I ask us, myself included, as a community to name our emotions, name the feelings that we so often don’t show to other people and then remind ourselves that as holy beings, we are a part of a kingdom that is big enough to hold these emotions. We are in a community that is big enough to hold your emotions, your anxiety and anger, in light of such mass tragedies, as we wrestle with our very real and very humanness, this community is here for you to bring all of yourself, all of your anger, all of your anxiety, and even all of your complacency and we will be here to remind each other that we worship a God that is big enough for all of you and that God among us, here, with us. As the body of Christ, when we feel the spirit is absent, we push each other to look in the hard to reach places, this is the job of the kingdom

As we end today, I ask us all to take a deep breath, breathe in deeply and as you release that air into the this sanctuary remember that you are all a part of the living and breathing body of Christ on this earth. You breathe the air of heaven and together your breath creates the gusts of this holy community, now and forever. Amen.