Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

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

Beloved in Christ,

In Matthew Lopez’ play Somewhere, a Puerto Rican family in 1950s New York dreams of dancing on Broadway. From childhood into their adulthood, with their mother’s Puerto Rican/Ethel Merman/stage-mother direction, they turn their tiny apartment into a studio—acting, dancing, arguing, imagining a future larger than the walls that hold them. Captured by the promise and the ground-breaking popularity of West Side Story, they believe there really is a place for them. The song from the show comes and goes in the background as a ribbon wrapping up the production.

There’s a place for us,

Somewhere a place for us.

Peace and quiet and open air

Wait for us, somewhere.

 

There’s a time for us,

Some day a time for us,

Time together with time to spare,

Time to learn, time to care.

 

Some day,

Somewhere,

We’ll find a new way of living,

We’ll find a way of forgiving.

Somewhere a place for us.[1]

Then the eviction notice comes. Their building is being torn down to make way for Lincoln Center. The mother willfully refuses to believe it. She calls the apartment “our sanctuary, our incubator of dreams.” Act One ends with the police pounding on the door, the sound of demolition beginning, the building shaking, the electricity cut. It felt violent. They are forced to leave behind the things that held their world. Forced to leave “the place for them.”

It was one of those moments in the theater when something you already know intellectually suddenly breaks open your heart. The well of sadness, anger, and loss that has flowed like a river under our Cities, just beneath the surface every day, that can hardly be understood unless you live here, see what we see happening and what we see coming.

What is occurring in our neighborhoods is not simply the removal of people from apartments, schools, or workplaces. It takes away that somewhere, a home. The place where dreams are nurtured. The place where the future can be imagined. The place where safety and happiness are believed to be possible.

It is not about legal process.

It is not about paperwork.

It is about who we count as fully human.

It is about whether everyone’s somewhere is allowed to exist.

In the play, the apartment is more than a physical space, and it was more than an idealistic Broadway musical production. I won’t give away any of the plot in Act II. But we discover that life in the apartment is where the truth is danced into being. It is both sanctuary and incubator. “There’s a place for us.” Somewhere isn’t an idea floating in the distance. Somewhere is here. It is not next; it is already.

Thousands of ICE agents in masks and armed on the streets of the Cities is a symbolic message that has nothing to do with immigration. It has to do with supremacy, whiteness, and power. It is a symptom of a cancer long present in our history, now taking over the body. Make no mistake. It ends with death: holocaust, genocide, or for many, living while already dead inside.

What does it mean to rip people from their place? It says that this dream—this American dream—is not for you. The promises of America do not include someone like you. This fragile, courageous belief that “all [people] are created equal; that all are free with inalienable rights, this somewhere, where safety can be trusted, where prosperity and a tomorrow can be imagined, is not for you. We can destroy your sanctuary. We can unplug your incubator of dreams.

In that context we open Scripture to where Jesus preaches his first sermon. Before he speaks, he sits down, as if to say, “I want you to sit down. I want you to hear something that frames everything.” Gazing out at them, taking them in. He knows what they are living with. He knows what’s facing them; what’s coming for them; what will attempt to kill and diminish them. He knows it will be hard not to take in the the violence of it all, have it destroy you from the inside, or  hard it is to believe there is a kingdom of God. a place for us. Before we start, hear this: It is not about what is next it is about your now.

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 righteousness’ sake.

The Beatitudes are not a list of virtues to achieve; they are a revelation of where God shows up when the world is most cruel.

We are still in the Epiphany season but are now halfway to spring. We are literally adding minutes of light to the day each day. We can literally see more and more. The season of revealing—of light breaking through places the world prefers to keep in shadow. A star appears, not over a palace, not over the center of empire, but over a house, an apartment, a home. Over vulnerability. Over a child at risk from political violence.

The Magi see that light and understand it rightly. They cross borders. They ignore the false promises of a fearful ruler. They refuse to cooperate with a system that protects power by destroying life. They go home by another road.

The prophet Micah says it this way: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Justice means refusing to call cruelty necessary. Justice is making things right.

Kindness means seeing people not as threats, but as beloved.

Humility means recognizing that our comfort may depend on a system that harms others—and letting that truth change us.

For those of us with privilege—citizenship, stability, choice, wealth—the Beatitudes are an invitation to take in this revelation. To see who is being pushed out so that others can feel secure. To notice when law drifts away from justice. To stand closer to those whose homes, dreams, and futures are under threat.

Jesus does not begin his ministry by saying, “Blessed are those who win.” He says, “Blessed are those who love in ways that cost them something.” That’s the gospel message of Jesus Christ. It may sound like foolishness to many, but it is our guiding star.

And the church—if it is faithful—is somewhere to be. A sanctuary not just in name, but in practice. An incubator of dreams stubborn enough to believe that God’s reign is larger than any border, any wall, any knock on the door, or any other challenge we’re facing right now.

At the end of the play, the line that I can still here the mother saying: “You loved us so much, it changed our world.”

That is the Beatitudes. That is Micah 6:8.

Not power that crushes but love that transforms.

Not fear that evicts but mercy that makes room.

Not a promise whispered somewhere else—but love made real,

right here, changing the world one sanctuary, one home, one corner, one neighbor, one life at a time.

Thanks be to God.

[1] There’s a Place for Us,” West Side Story, Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.