Made to Be Holy

“Made to be Holy”

February 1, 2026 Cobleskill United Methodist Church, Pastor Anna Blinn Cole

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

⁶ “With what shall I come before the Lord    and bow myself before God on high?Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,    with calves a year old?⁷ Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”⁸ He has told you, O mortal, what is good,    and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice and to love kindness    and to walk humbly with your God?

Matthew 5:1-12

5 When Jesus^[a] saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. ² And he began to speak and taught them, saying:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

⁵ “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

⁶ “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

⁷ “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

⁸ “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

⁹ “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

¹⁰ “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  ¹¹ “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely^[b] on my account. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

We call this room the sanctuary.  Sanctuary means a place set apart.

Set apart for a different thing than the rest of our spaces throughout our week.  Set apart for special use.  It certainly looks different from other spaces where we spend our days.  The windows are stunningly multi-colored with images of flowers and skies and symbolism built right into the glass.  The seats focus us and put us side by side with others.  The wood is beautifully finished and the furniture all has a specific purpose.  A table for sharing God’s meal.  A pulpit for preaching God’s word.  An altar for offering to God our gifts.  Because this space is different from other spaces we spend our time, we also may feel feelings here that are there own.  Refuge. Connection. Worship. Sorrow. Joy.  In this space there is permission to feel and be vulnerable.  There is solidarity alongside others who are feeling the same things, or maybe different things.  There is focus on the Light and Love that is beyond us and within us all at the same time.  This is no ordinary space.  This is sanctuary.  A place set apart.

The root of the word sanctuary is sanctus, a Latin word for holy or set apart.  Consecrated, used with divine blessing for a special purpose.  Arium the root word at the end of Sanctuary refers to a place or a space.   We use the word sanctuary to describe places and spaces that are set apart for a special purpose.  A purpose, perhaps in contrast to other purposes. For example, pieces of land that are set apart for the refuge of wildlife are called sanctuaries because otherwise, that wildlife might be endangered from human development, hunting, and other infrastructure.  We also use the word sanctuary to describe a place of legal immunity for people who might otherwise be in danger because of their documentation status.  

I start here today because I believe Sanctuary is a concept you can feel right now in your bones.  Safety and refuge sitting in this set-apart space.  We intentionally come here week after week because the feeling of this space and the closeness to God that comes with it calls to us.

I also wanted to start here with this concept because as we finish up our series on our Methodist roots there’s an important connection.  John Wesley used the metaphor of a house to describe our life with God.  The front porch is the place where God waits for us with gracious patience, looking out for us even before we have yet acknowledged God.  It’s that universal grace that beckons to everyone like you do when you sit on your porch and wave to each passing person.  Eventually when we make the effort to meet God and say yes to God’s love, we are invited over the threshold.  It’s a moment in our lives when we feel like we are ready to belong to God and to step out in a new direction with a changed heart.  Sometimes this happens when we as adults are baptized as adults or make a reaffirmation of our faith, a new commitment to God.  Sometimes it happens at our confirmation when we say yes to God for the first time.  Other times it happens in a moment of realization that God is calling you in a new way to a new thing.  

I remember being a camp counselor in my late twenties at Sky Lake at a camp for adults with special needs.  I remember the distinct moment of standing in the glistening lake alongside Sharon who was peacefully floating in an inner tube.  That lake, that freedom she had in her inner tube, the safety of a camp environment.  It was a sanctuary moment.  An opportunity so different from the rest of her life, set apart, holy.  I know it sounds strange, but in that moment I felt a call toward ministry with and among people, journeying alongside them as we found times and spaces for sacred sanctuary.  It was a threshold moment for me.  A step from one chapter into the next.  

Maybe you’ve had a threshold moment in your life, or maybe one is coming on your horizon.  Wesley had one, too, that moment when his heart was strangely warmed and he realized that he, too, was loved by God even and despite what he did with his life.  

But here’s the part of this house metaphor you can probably see coming.  The porch leads to the threshold and the threshold itself isn’t the end.  It can’t be.  That’s not what thresholds are.  In the Methodist church we believe that our salvation and our commitment to a new relationship with Christ is just the beginning.  It’s not a ticket we get stamped so that we can sit back and wait to go to heaven.  When we cross that threshold, we enter the house, which for Wesley represented the whole rest of our lives lived in relationship with God.  The grace we find in this house, Wesley preached, is God’s sanctifying grace.  

Sanctifying.  Do you hear it?  It shares a root word with sanctuary.  And instead of an ending that means place, it has the ending from the root word “facio” – to make.  Sanctify: To be made holy.  To be made set apart.  God’s grace makes our lives holy; whole, complete, set apart.  Our existence in this world, our very bodies and minds and actions, a sanctuary – a place of holiness, made whole by God’s love. 

What on earth does this mean?  Our very beings sanctified?  It probably doesn’t mean that we physically become a sanctuary, you know, swapping out our eye glasses for stained glass glasses or dressing up in especially formal clothes…taking our pew-sitting posture with us into the world and only listening to organ music in our free time.  No, that’s not what it means to be sanctified.

It means to live our lives as though they are set apart for God’s purposes.  It means that we choose to make decisions with our lives that may be in contrast to the norm around us.  Like that wildlife sanctuary that stands in contrast to the hunting grounds outside its borders.  When we are sanctified, our very lives create refuge, peace, connection, vulnerability, focus. 

And if you want really clear instructions on how we sanctify our lives in God, there is no better set of instructions than we find in today’s pairing of scripture readings. It’s an all-star week in the lectionary for salient, beautiful and yet provoking scripture readings.  These two passages, Micah chapter 6 and the Beatitudes from Jesus’ sermon on the mount are not just central messages to our entire life of faith, they are pretty easy-to-remember words for living life. 

Micah asks us the question, in your life of faith: what does the Lord require of you?  Three things: To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our Lord. 

In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, he makes a pronouncement of blessing.  And in making these pronouncements, he indicates to us the kind of people we should be.  

Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Blessed are the merciful,  Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  

What I notice when I read that is that these ways of being—poor in spirit, meek, mourning, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking and persecuted for the sake of righteousness—these are qualities that stand in stark contrast to the norm.  In a world where we’re told, sometimes even in Christian language, that “might makes right” and “just obey and submit to authority”… when that’s the world we see and hear out there, it makes a person who actually resembles Jesus’s teachings seem, well, set-apart.  As though to live life as merciful and vulnerable enough to mourn, and striving to be pure in heart and always seeking peace instead of coercion…it makes a person who does those things seem like a living and breathing sanctuary for God.  A contrasted, set apart and holy life out in the world bearing witness to a God who is not nationalist or power-hungry or coercive.  A God who is just and merciful and humble.  

I’ve been really moved by the movement of peaceful witnessing that is happening in Minnesota right now, especially when the people gather in the streets to sing.  It’s almost like they are sanctifying the streets, making the streets and the sidewalks and the public squares a place of sanctuary.  It’s a reminder for all of us of how we are called to take God’s Light and Love from inside these holy and beautiful walls and out into the world where it is so desperately needed.  A reminder of how our very beings, how our very lives, become the sanctuary, the place where God lives.  Our relationship with Christ isn’t just a moment, it’s a movement.