Becoming Sanctuary

I remember my first arrival in Sydney nearly a decade ago. Australia, to me then, lived in postcards—The Crocodile Hunter on my TV, and the dusty pages of Bill Bryson’s Down Under. I didn’t know what to expect, but wonder found me quickly. Within an hour of landing, crossing the Harbour Bridge, my face pressed to the glass of the taxi as the Opera House rose into view. No postcard had prepared me for that moment. And yet, it’s not why I continue to be drawn back to this city.

Days later, walking the Bondi to Bronte coastal path with the sea unfolding endlessly beside me, I kept walking just beyond Coogee when I noticed a small sign I nearly missed: McIver’s Ladies Baths. Curious, I followed a narrow staircase down to a weathered woman seated at a kiosk—sun-bleached hair, salt in her skin, and a voice heavy with lived years. When I asked what this place was, she smiled knowingly and began to tell a story I could tell she had told more than a thousand times.

Over 150 years ago, she said, this pool was born of sexism and segregation, but it had been sustained ever since as sanctuary. A place where women could float on waves, rest on rocks, and simply be. She spoke of Muslim women who come here often—some for whom this is the only semi-public place where layers can fall away and sunlight can kiss their skin. Then she leaned closer and told me something older still: long before colonization, Indigenous women gathered on these rocks for ceremony and birth. Listening to the sea. Honouring life. A place where they, too, could just be.

For two dollars to enter, the story alone was worth it.

As I stepped into what seemed to be the same open air I had just been standing in, I felt as though I had crossed into a completely different world. Women of every age, body, and culture shared the water—serious swimmers cutting laps, gentle floaters bobbing with the tide. Some lay sprawled on warm rocks, topless and unbothered, while others carefully unwrapped their hijabs, letting their hair fall free. I spread my towel on the stone and felt, perhaps for the first time, the quiet, intoxicating power of a women’s-only space.

It’s not that I had never been in one before. I’m an avid user of public toilets—especially these days. But this space was different. There was a legacy here, etched into stone and salt, shaped by years upon years of bodies being protected rather than policed. Something the First Peoples of this land were onto long before fences or gates existed—something etched into creation itself. A sacredness that listened. That allowed bodies to rest and breathe and be.

And even just beyond this small space carved out for women’s bodies, for many people this is what the coastline itself represents. It’s why people travel to Bondi from all over the world, and why it became refuge for our Jewish neighbours fleeing persecution nearly a hundred years ago. And it’s a sacredness that came immediately to mind when reading our story today, even before the events that unfolded last week.

A sacredness that is not accidental or invented. Because from the very beginning, sanctuary was etched into creation. Before there were walls or temples or laws, there was water and land and breath. There was a God who hovered over the deep—not rushing, not conquering, but making space for life to emerge. God needed this space too, resting and just being on the seventh day.

Sanctuary, in other words, was the constant and first posture of God toward the world. And it’s where sanctuary was also etched into us—the heartbeat of what we are and what we are called to become. And why, when we turn to the Gospel, we are not given stories of spectacles of power, but stories, time and time again, of sanctuary. And so, it’s fitting that even before Christ was born, sanctuary was the first instinct of his mother.

Our scripture takes place in a time when violence was the very air that was breathed. And into this world, we are given the scandal of Mary. And she is a scandal. Even in our own day, to be an unmarried pregnant teenager can invite scrutiny and judgement. In Mary’s time, the consequences could have been dire. Community exclusion and shame would have been the least of her worries. It is not unreasonable to imagine she feared for her life. And yet, when Gabriel invites her into a future that defies the stronghold of patriarchy at great risk, Mary says yes.

What happens next, the text is silent on. Does Mary leave in haste because her community has turned against her and she fears for her life? Does she simply want to be with her relative who is experiencing a similar miracle in her own body? Or was she following something deep in her womb—the subtle and persistent prompting of the Holy Spirit? My hunch? All of the above.

Away from judgement, fear, and punishment, Mary steps into the unhurried and unheard-of women’s-only space of safety and sanctuary. A sanctuary made possible because, just before our story begins, the loudest voices fall silent. Zechariah—Elizabeth’s husband and the voice of institutional certainty, explanation, and the one who defines and divides what is holy and what is not—is made mute. And Joseph, a man positioned within lineage, legacy, and rightful order, is given no words at all.

And into this quiet, something else is allowed to emerge. A space shaped not by power or productivity, but by presence. A space where layers can fall away. A space where bodies are trusted and Spirit is heard. The blessing of Ruach—the Hebrew word for the breath of God that hovers rather than conquers. The voice of Sophia, who does not shout from thrones but calls from crossroads, kitchens, and kicking wombs.

Here, Elizabeth feels the child leap within her like a sudden wave against rock. Here, prophetic words rise in her—not forced or rehearsed, but breathed into being by the Holy Spirit. And here, Mary lays herself down on the warm stone of this sanctuary and sings, debatably, the most powerful song ever sung. A song that sings truth to a soured system that uplifted pride, worshipped the powerful on thrones, and kept the rich full of good things.

She sings not because everything is safe, but because she is held. She sings not because her world has changed, but because she has space to tell the truth. This is not a place of fast answers or problem-solving. It is a place that reveals the power of watching and waiting, of her body learning to let go into a salvation free from the violence that enveloped her world and her life.

For three months, Mary and Elizabeth eat together, sing together, and watch each other grow. Nothing is produced. Nothing is proven. And yet everything is happening in this unhurried meeting between two women. For it is here where God chooses to make God’s way through bodies watching and waiting with one another—where God chooses to slowly, steadily, and scandalously weave salvation into being.

And this is the power of sanctuary. Because places hold stories, bodies, and grief. They hold what we cannot carry alone. This is what the Judean hill country was for Elizabeth and Mary—a place where sacred space did something quietly revolutionary. It suspended the punitive patriarchal culture long enough for tenderness to take root. And in that place, two women in impossible situations did not simply survive; they gestated salvation together.

And the Bondi coastline—once holding stories of wonder, healing, birth, and sanctuary for Indigenous folk, for women who could finally be, and for Jews who could finally survive—now holds our groans too deep for knowing as flowers are laid, candles are lit, and tears are mixed with saltwater. Our windowsills where we have lit candles, and the church railing where we have tied ribbons, now hold our lament and our desire for healing and peace.

And this tragedy—if we let it—has the power to shake us awake to a truth we are prone to forget in the ordinary, day-to-day rhythm of our lives: that we cannot live without sanctuary. Because without places where we can be held, where the cry of the Holy Spirit can pour out of us, where our bodies can finally unclench, where we can stop performing and simply be—we fracture. We lose our capacity to grieve, to listen, to sing truth.

And when this happens, fear controls us. Our nervous systems become overrun. We numb. We harden. We react. We divide. We pick sides. We demonize. We politicize. Worst of all, we refuse hope.

But when we give ourselves permission to be unhurried, to breathe, to weep, to tremble, to pray, and to let the possibility of the Holy Spirit enter the impossible of our situations, something shifts. We return to the sanctuary already etched in us—the heartbeat of what we are and what we are called to become.

But this is where we so often get stuck. Because when violence erupts, our instinct is to do. To react. To respond. To repair. To prove—to ourselves and to one another—that we are not indifferent. But violence does not only break laws or systems. It shakes us to our core, lodging itself in bodies, memories, and communities. And though actions are important, those wounds cannot be reached by action alone.

I felt that tension myself this week—sending emails to synagogues I’ve never been in relationship with, posting prayers on social media to people I somewhat know, and lighting candles on my windowsill I would promptly forget about. None of this was wrong. In fact, there was much good that came from these actions and the communities of solidarity formed through them. But I began to notice how easily doing kept me from the deeper work of sitting with what the violence had shaken my body awake to.

What I sensed was a call to return to the sermon Spirit was prompting me to write before the shootings took place—to return to the saving power of becoming sanctuary. For this is the way healing actually begins. Not just for the world, but for us. Where our bodies soften. Where fear loosens its grip. Where Spirit can breathe again through places that have clenched shut.

This is the slow, unsexy, unshowy, overlooked work of the gospel. Creating spaces—like this one here at church—where truth can be spoken, grief can be held, and hope can be sung into being. A sanctuary that gives rise to what’s needed more than candles and flowers: the sanctuary of unhurried time and space to show up as our true selves, in our tears, our fears, and our deepest desires.

It is here we might forge true friendships like the one between Elizabeth and Mary. Where salvation is gestated in these small communities of faith, yes—but more than this, where salvation can be gestated with all creation: with Jews, with Muslims, with coastlines, with people who don’t look like us, believe like us, or act like us. A sanctuary of unreactive and unhurried time where we can eat together, sing together, and watch each other grow.

And so, as we continue to sit in the aftershock of last week, what has your body been shaken awake to? What are the sanctuaries in your own life God is calling you to return to in haste? And how might God be inviting you to become a sanctuary for the life of the world?

Because when we say yes to the way of the Gospel, the way of Gabriel, and the way of God that challenges our world, our need to react, and our need to do, we become the place where healing can begin, where the impossible can be sung into being, and where the slow, steady, scandalous work of salvation can be born at last.

And so we are invited now to pray and to light candles for what has been shaken awake in us this week—our deepest griefs and our deepest longings—so that we might witness in one another the cry of the Holy Spirit breathing and speaking through us in this sanctuary of time and space. You are invited to come forward and simply light a candle without words. Or, as you light a candle, you may pray your heart’s cry out loud.