A Sermon preached by the Rev. Deana Frances Dudley

at Holy Fellowship Metropolitan Community Church, London, Ontario

and Christos Metropolitan Community Church, Toronto, Ontario

25 May 2003 – Easter VI (Year B)

About noon the next day,... Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." The voice said to him again, a second time, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." Acts 10:9-15

Way back in my misspent youth, when I was a young lawyer, I went to work for this law firm in Washington, and my first year there, it was the firm’s 10^th anniversary, so they had this really fancy firm Christmas party, at an exclusive country club. Those of you who know me, may have noticed that I’m not real big on dressing up. I’m not real big on dresses. And as the firm Christmas party approached, I really had nothing to wear. And I wasn’t keen on going out and buying an expensive dress I wasn’t going to get a lot of use out of. I finally bought this fancy cocktail dress that was reasonably priced and reasonably comfortable, and off I went.

It was really quite a party. Nice band, open bar, big buffet supper. So I was grazing on the buffet, surviving until I could decently leave, when in walked one of my colleagues with his wife, Sheila, and wouldn’t you know it – Sheila was wearing my dress. After an awkward giggle, we spent retired to opposite sides of the ballroom for the rest of the evening.

Fast forward a year. The firm Christmas party is coming, and once again, I’m faced with the dilemma of what to wear. So I figured.... Sheila was so annoyed with the situation last year.... I’ll bet she never wears that dress again. So! I can save myself some money, and wear last year’s dress one more time. Never let it be said that I’m a slave to fashion.

You’ve probably figured out where this is heading. Sure enough, Sheila and I showed up in the same dress, AGAIN! Two years running. The third year, she had her husband ask me before the party what I was wearing and by that time we both had new, and different, dresses. One of the things that I was happy about when I switched careers was that I could get rid of most of my lawyer drag, including that old blue cocktail dress.

One of the things I love about being up here in Canada is that it really is a much more intentionally multicultural society than where I’m from. In many ways, as a society, Canada is more inclusive, and more tolerant of diversity than that place where I’m from. And it’s one of the things I love about MCC, too. We draw on folks from such a wide variety of backgrounds, and somehow we all manage to worship God together. Yet we still witness a strange phenomenon. While it’s a matter of some embarrassment to be caught wearing the same clothes as someone else at a party, in other ways we’re still more comfortable with sameness.

God, however, appears to be quite comfortable with great diversity. You only have to look around creation to see that. You only have to look at the feast God set before Peter to know that God really likes diversity.

Peter, unfortunately, was probably like us. More comfortable with sameness. With the foods he’d always eaten. With the people he’d always worshipped with. With people like himself.... not THOSE people. And while this passage that was read from the book of Acts is, in part, about the coming to faith in Christ of one of "those" people – Cornelius, who was a Gentile – it’s really more about Peter’s coming to a new, and more inclusive, understanding of his faith. It’s not about the conversion of Cornelius; it’s about the conversion of Peter.

Since Peter’s time, however, there’s been a little backsliding by the church of Jesus Christ. For about the past seventeen hundred years, many Christians have tried to come up with one unique and eternal "truth" that everyone in the world could and should believe in. We should know, though, that this wasn’t always the case. For the first couple hundred years after Christ’s death, those who called themselves Christians were about as diverse as the number of Christian communities in the world.

But in the year 320, the Emperor Constantine thought it would be a good thing to develop a unified statement of what it meant to call oneself a Christian. He convened a group of religious leaders to Nicaea to try to resolve some doctrinal disputes, and the result was the Nicene Creed, which was and is still designed to express the essence of Christian belief for millions of Christians around the world. To refresh your recollection, the Nicene Creed is the one that begins: "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible …" I’ll bet all you former Catholics can say it from memory. Maybe even in Latin. I used to be able to sing it in Latin.

Now, once they had this doctrinal statement, and continuing in some churches today, anyone who didn’t subscribe to the Nicene Creed could be kicked out of church, or worse. The traditional punishment for those who didn’t share the same Christian belief system as those in power was burning at the stake.

And before you think I’m picking on the Catholics, I have to tell you, with some regret, that this understanding that there can be only one truth about God survived the Reformation. Y’all have heard of John Calvin, right? Well, in the early 1500s, Calvin left the Catholic Church and was threatened with the usual punishment: burning at the stake. You might think this experience would have made him more tolerant of other points of view. But nooooo. Calvin set up his own little theocracy, and declared that his belief system was the only true one. Anyone in his jurisdiction who deviated from Calvinism could be, what? You guessed it: burnt at the stake. And I’m not picking on Calvin, either. It’s just that, in his defense, the idea of tolerating differing Christian beliefs was simply unknown in the sixteenth century.

Fast forward a hundred years or so. A bunch of Pilgrims heading off to North America in search of, among other things, religious freedom. And when they set sail in the Mayflower, their home church sent them off with prayers, and a report of one of those prayers has come down to us, one by Pastor John Robinson. The hymn we’re going to sing in a few minutes was written by a Baptist minister named George Rawson, and it paraphrases Robinson’s parting words.

Pastor Robinson denied that god’s truth was already fully revealed and static. A contemporary report of his prayer said that "He charged us before God, and the blessed angels, if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of God’s, to be as ready to receive it as any truth by his ministry; for he was very confident that God had more light and truth yet to break forth out of God’s holy word." He told them to expect more of God’s truth and light to break forth upon them – perhaps in the new world they were going to, perhaps among themselves, even in new and surprising ways. I love the metaphor of breaking forth – it invites us to envision the light and truth of god as a gate crasher at an exclusive party.

Now, unfortunately, I have to admit that the same Pilgrims who witnessed Pastor Robinson’s words were later on responsible for – you guessed it-- burning supposed witches at the stake for their unorthodox ideas. Maybe they thought his admonitions didn’t apply to witches, or the spirit of his words got lost overboard on the trip across the ocean. But when we take those words seriously – and when we take God’s words to Peter seriously – we begin to understand that our own ideas may not necessarily be the whole of God’s word.

I’m fond of saying that when I’M Queen of the World, one of the first things I’m going to do is remove the phrase "Those People" from every human language. And I’m going to have to start in my own heart, of course. And then I’m going to work first on all the churches.

Now, some – but by no means all -- Christians do affirm that other religions have value and are worth celebrating in their own right. I think this is especially important these days. Interestingly, most other world religions don’t take the view that their religion is the only one worth having. For instance, the Koran explicitly recognizes the value of all spiritual traditions, noting: "Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in the most kindly manner – unless it be such of them as are set on evil doing – and say: ‘We believe in that which has been bestowed upon us, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you: for our God and your God is one and the same, and it is unto God that we all surrender ourselves.’"

It’s amazing where you find tolerance and diversity. I like to think that our congregation honours, and tries not to put down other faith traditions. Celebrating diversity recognizes that all human institutions, all churches, all communities, are richer when they have a variety of points of view at the table. More for the smorgasbord.

Many of us have come to believe that we can respect our Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Bahai neighbours and that we all benefit from the rich variety of experience, strength and hope in our community. Others in our church and elsewhere feel that this approach is heretical. So let’s look a little closer to home.

Although many of us are open to receiving truth from other religions such as Buddhism and Bahai, it’s a paradox that we sometimes feel less open to other Christian denominations. And I’m as guilty of this as the next parson. My feelings about the Baptist churches that nurtured me are well known. I try not to refer to them as "those people," but it’s a constant struggle for me. I need to remember that while there is much that is wrong in many other churches, it really is the same the whole world over, and in the long run, the Baptist Sunday schools I grew up in were a darn good preparation for ministry and discipleship. And by dismissing other denominations and beliefs so readily, am I not erecting fences and walls against the truth those churches might have to offer? God’s truth comes in strange and diverse ways, doesn’t it? And like Peter, I need to learn not to call anyone profane or unclean.

Sometimes, I suspect that the problems we have with "those people" is a fear of being outsiders.  As L/G/B/T people, we're especially vulnerable on this point.  Sometimes it's just jealousy. We may view other churches as competition. We ask, why don’t folks come to MCC instead of the Anglicans or the United Church or even, heaven help us, the Baptist church? What do they have that we don’t have? Is there something we could do to get them to come here instead?

And what I need to remember is that I’m not in competition with anyone. And GOD’S not in competition with anyone. So what does Christ have to tell us about celebrating diversity? We can look both at what Christ said, and at how Christ interacted with others in his own community. It’s not a particular set of beliefs, use of a particular liturgy, or family background that separates us; it’s how we act -- or don’t act -- in the world with justice, generosity, and hospitality to all. We can try and try to pin God down; we can try to nail God to a cross; we can try to lock God’s word in a closet; but God acts in the world both with us and in spite of us. There is no "us" and "them" with God.  God knows nothing of "those people." 

Jesus’ own behaviour in the world was consistent with this approach, and it got him in plenty of trouble. But I think Jesus understood, celebrated and encouraged the value of diversity in the community he experienced.

So, for me, the Christ-like thing to do is to celebrate our differences, encourage the growth of ALL of us in the spirit, and trust that God’s spirit will be poured out on ALL of us – MCC, United, Catholic, Pentecostal, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist – as it was Peter and Cornelius and all who heard the word back then.

In this passage, Peter gives Cornelius a summary of the gospel. To add weight to what he says, he tells Cornelius (in verses 39 and 40) that "We are witnesses to all that Christ did.... We were chosen by God as witnesses who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead." In this Easter season, we might ask, "Who ELSE has been chosen by God to be a witness to Christ’s resurrection?" Well, it’s not just Peter. Do we not also eat and drink with Christ? We’ve ALL been invited to the feast. We too, then – ALL of us -- can testify that the arms of the risen Christ are stretched wide to receive ALL people.

        We Limit Not the Truth of God

        We limit not the truth of God, to our poor reach of mind,

        to notions of our day and place, crude partial and confined.

        No, let a new and better hope, within our hearts be stirred.

        O God, grant yet more light and truth to break forth from your word!

        Who dares to bind to one’s own sense, the oracles of heaven,

        for all the nations tongues and climes, and all the ages given?

        That universe, how much unknown!  That ocean unexplored!

        O God, grant yet more light and truth to break forth from your word!

        Eternal God, Incarnate Word, Spirit flame and dove:

        enlarge, expand all living souls to comprehend your love!

        And help us all to seek your will, with wiser powers conferred:

        O God, grant yet more light and truth to break forth from your word!

Resources gratefully acknowledged:  Karen Armstrong, A History of God ,  Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography,  "We Limit Not the Truth of God" a meditation by Deb Ross, Nov. 24, 2002.; The New Century Hymnal; Narrative of Pastor Robinson’s Address to the Pilgrim Fathers [1620]