Pine Valley Christian Church
March 2, 2014
Matthew 17: 1-13
Rev. Dr. David Hansen
There has been a lot of talk in the past few weeks about the need to create a safe space, let’s call it a sacred space, for religious freedom. I have decided that I will send a letter to the editor of the Wichita Eagle and also post a message on my friend’s blog, livingnonviolence. I’ll share this letter at the end of the sermon but before I get to that I want to invite us to think about creating a safe space. It is something we all want and value. Creating a safe space is healthy for children and people of all ages and for all living things. We need an environment that is conducive to good health. Adequate nutrition and clothing and shelter and so forth are essential for physical well-being, but we also need a spiritual setting that is safe for us to be who we are; a place where we don’t have to explain ourselves or justify ourselves, but just be ourselves. It’s like the television program Cheers reminded us every week, it’s nice to be someplace where everybody knows your name.
I think that is what the story of the transfiguration is about. The three disciples were on the mountaintop with Jesus and they had a vision of life as it could be; life as we would all like it to be. They experienced a degree of union that was beyond separation, and that did not require explanation. It was a safe place, and they said to one another, “Let’s stay here.” Let us warm ourselves by the fire and relax in its glow and savor this time that we have to be with one another. I hope we have all had the experience of coming into a safe space and when you know that it is safe place, you can let your guard down and laugh and embrace and rejoice in the goodness of being.
Because we know the value of having a safe space, maybe we can understand the desire of people who want to create what they define as a safe space for themselves; a space where they can be free to live out their religious beliefs and values without being bothered by others who don’t share their views and values.
In our house church groups we are reading a paper by Joseph Matthews on “Common Worship and the Life of the Church.” I cherish this sentence in which Matthews says that “The Word of God in Christ is that just as we are, in our anxiety and guiltiness, as creature and sinner, we are infinitely and groundlessly love, received, valued and accepted.” We gather as a community to hear this good news and to declare it to each other. I think I have told you of a friend of mine who is a foster parent and she tells the youth who come to her home that they must begin and end every day by standing in front of the mirror, looking at themselves, and saying “I am a good person.” That is a powerful self-affirmation. I applaud her for making this part of the ritual of her home. But I know that she not only has the youth say this morning and night to themselves, she also gives them this message. It is healing word that comes to us as light in the darkness and hope in times of despair. So the church is a gathered community that comes together around this Word of life, and together we celebrate this Word of life every week when we come to the table where there is bread for us to eat and a cup we share.
The good news of the gospel is that God is active in our lives and in this world working to create a safe space for everyone. But that is not the end of the story. I think we don’t really get the message of the transfiguration until we read on into the next verse which tells us that when they came down the mountain they came to a crowd and “a man approached Jesus and knelt before him [and said], “Lord have mercy on my son” (Matthew 17:14). He tells Jesus that his son is suffering greatly and he falls into the fire and into the water, and he brought his son to the disciples for healing, but they could not heal him.
We say that the church is a gathered and scattered community. We create safe spaces so that we can stand with those who do not have safe spaces; who are in danger and who tormented by demons. There are only moments of safe spaces for people who are engaged in the struggle for justice—no permanent booths on mountains. This means that the vocation of the church is not simply to create safe spaces, but to go and stand with others who are in danger.
Creating a safe space can be empowering, but it can also be limiting because it can draw us away from people who are different from us, or separate us people whose problems challenge us. I think that is what has happened to people supporting the religious freedom bill. They are trying to build booths that they will believe will make them safe and give them freedom, but in reality it will make them and others hostage to their fears. Rather than being a safe space that empowers them to engage in the world, they seem to want to create a safe space that will isolate them from the world. What we need is to learn how to create a society that is safe for everyone. The radical love does not promote a desire for perfection and purity apart from the world. Radical love calls us to go down the mountain and enter into the world knowing that we will be greeted by failure and frustration as well as joy and celebration.
Let me conclude this sermon with my letter to the editor of the Wichita Eagle, which I will sign as the interim pastor of Pine Valley Christian Church. The letter is not directly a meditation on the lectionary reading for today, but you can make the connection with safe spaces.
The current debate about the need to protect “religious freedom” reminds me in some ways of another debate that took place in this country in 1883, the year that the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which provided that “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land and water, theaters, and other places of public amusement. . . .” was unconstitutional. In explaining its decision the majority of the Court found that private acts of discrimination were simply private acts that the federal government was powerless to correct.
In the wake of the 1883 decision “indignation meetings” were held across the country in protest of the Court’s ruling; a ruling that paved the way for almost a century of racial segregation. The 1883 decision was not overturned by Congress until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The religious liberty act, so-called, professes to protect acts of discrimination because they are private acts of conscience that the government is powerless to correct. Let us assume for a moment that state legislatures and the courts want to return to 1883, and reverse the Civil Rights Act of 1964. One of the basic principles of a good law is that it can be enforced. How will we protect the religious freedom of those who want to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bi-sexual and transgender persons? Obviously since the color of the offenders skin will not serve as an identity badge, we will need something else. We will have to enact legislation that will allow us to identify the people we want to discriminate against; perhaps we should require them to wear a pink triangle?
I submit that this is a road we do not want to travel. It is time to call this type of legislation what it is: discrimination masking as freedom.