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In the name of God who makes all things new; God who blesses and loves. Amen.
I’m sort of surprised I’ve been here about two months, and I haven’t had a sermon yet that made me think of an episode from my all-time favorite television show, The West Wing. But that streak stops now. To be honest, I haven’t really watched the show in a while. In our current political climate, there’s enough drama. I can’t quite stomach adding unnecessary political drama to my diet, beyond the news that I read and watch. But fortunately for y’all, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve watched The West Wing, and I can basically quote the whole series on command. So, even without watching it, our sermons together shouldn’t suffer.
There was a particular episode in the fifth season when Ellie, President Bartlet’s middle daughter, got swept up in a political witch hunt. She was the quiet one – she didn’t really like the spotlight. She was a medical doctor, like her mother, but she was focused more on research than on clinical practice.
The particular research she was working on was about studying the spread of HPV among sex workers in Puerto Rico. The virus has been linked to certain diseases, specifically cervical cancer, and the study was attempting to provide background data that could help reduce its spread.
Like a lot of scientific research in this country, up until just recently, the study portrayed in the show was being supported by federal funding through the National Institutes of Health.
A member of Congress – from the President’s opposing party – held a press conference questioning the use of federal funds for research she considered to be supportive of immoral behavior. She specifically pointed to an AIDS research grant and called it “a $2 million slush fund for the president’s daughter.”
Reflecting on this wild misrepresentation of the facts, one of the President’s senior advisors says, “I don’t get it. How can the Traditional Values Alliance link AIDS money to what Ellie does? Aren’t AIDS and HPV different areas of research?” Another advisor responds, “They’re both below the waist.”
It’s a story we’re hearing all the time in the news right now – the morals police; the “traditional values” folks – they’re always attacking people through that same logic. Issues and people who aren’t even remotely related get painted with the same wide brush just because the accusers are so deeply afraid of some outdated cultural taboos. And those things “below the waist” are some of the easiest targets.
So, when I read the first reading today – the one from Acts – I was struck by remembering: religious leaders fearing all that stuff "below the waist" is nothing new. And you have to ask - what is that fixation?!
The Apostle Peter was just going along, minding his own business, spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ, when the religious insiders stop him and ask, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
It’s just so fascinating to me that this question (the kind of question that really lands more like an accusation) that it’s framed that way. Of course, as readers, we know what they’re getting at just as much as Peter did. Circumcision is a rite of passage for Jewish boys shortly after they’re born. So, the question was really about Peter spending his time with people outside the fold – people who didn’t share that mark of worthiness and belonging. But framing it that way – defining these men as they were defined – it just feels so overly personal. It’s not just that they rode with the wrong crew. It’s not just that they didn’t worship the right God at the right place and the right time. It was an attack on the very most intimate parts of their bodies – publicly and vocally calling them – and their bodies – insufficient.
But Peter would have none of it. He says, none of those social taboos that we cling to, none of those culturally manipulative arguments that are so easily made, none of them make sense anymore. None of them are even valid anymore. By seeing the world through the clarity of God’s love, all the rules have changed. He took their personal attack and answered it with an assurance of God’s grace.
He goes on to tell them of this vision he had, where God presented him with all kinds of things that good Jewish boys shouldn’t associate with, and God says, go for it. Peter resists, pointing out that those things are no-nos. But the vision says to him, “What God has made clean you must not call profane.”
And then, just to be sure, that same vision happens again and again – three times! This revelation of God’s grace is no misunderstanding. God didn’t misspeak, Peter didn’t hear it wrong – it’s not a mistake. It came to Peter three times, the same number of times that Peter betrayed Jesus, the same number of times that Jesus asked Peter to proclaim his love – three times – so there’s no denying it: God means it.
“What God has made clean you must not call profane.”
Traditions, rules, expectations, norms – those things couldn’t matter less when filtered through God’s love.
So, Peter applies that vision of the wideness of God’s embrace into his own life. He sees that these people had embraced the teachings of Jesus and that they had been gifted with the Holy Spirit. He says, that same Holy Spirit fell on them just as it did on us – the insiders. And seeing that, he remembered the teachings of Jesus and he concluded, “If God gave them the same gift we received…, WHO WAS I THAT I COULD HINDER GOD?”
Peter says, “The Spirit told me to go with them [these outsiders] and to make no distinction between them and us.” And when he did – when he dropped the distinctions he’d learned, when he saw them as real and equal people, he could only conclude: God has blessed them, and who am I that I can hinder God?
Who am I to hinder God? Who are we to hinder God?
You know, I’m not a pounding-on-the-pulpit kind of preacher, but this makes me want to pound on the pulpit. Who are we to hinder God? Who are we to say who and what God can bless?
Even that grody stuff “below the waist”? Who are we to hinder God?
Remember this the next time you hear from members of the “traditional values” kinds of folks. Remember that when they start coming at us to beat us down with Bibles and laws. This right here is a biblical argument that says, none of that stuff that you fixate on so much matters a hill of beans to God. Tell them: You want to say what’s blessed and what’s sinful? You want to dictate for everyone that everything about you is good and everything that’s not about you is evil? Well, who are you to hinder God?
Let me be clearer, still. The ways that women choose to use their bodies; the ways that they make medical decisions about their bodies; the ways that queer people identify themselves and discover love; the ways that trans and non-binary people find to see and share the truth of their own experience – why would anyone fixate so much of their lives and their anger on that? Who are they and who is anyone to try to hinder God in someone else’s life?
God has shown love. Who am I to look at that love and call for hate?
God has called these beloved people worthy. Who am I to look at that worthiness and call for exclusion, or God-forbid, even extinction?
God has called us to make no distinction between “them” and “us”. Who are we to dig our heels in and build our walls?
“What God has made clean YOU MUST NOT PROFANE.”
These days, in Eastertide, we tend to do a lot of reading from the final book of the Bible, the Revelation to John. And I know that’s one that often makes people nervous, because it’s so often been used in some religious communities as a tool for stoking fear; for beating people into submission. But if we try to take those blinders off for a little bit and just listen, we’ll hear some good news. The vision reveals to John:
Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more. Those first things – those things that were standing in the way of our relationships with God; those things that weren’t revealing good news – now they are passing away. Those mindsets of taking God’s holy creation and calling it profane? Passing away. Those excuses for division and those declarations of unworthiness? Passing away.
Through the grace of our God who is still creating with and through us; through the love of Christ and the example of Jesus; through the guiding wisdom of the Holy Spirit – all of that old stuff is passing away.
I am making all things new, God says. It is done. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. I am making all things clean, so you must not profane them.
This isn’t scary. This is good news. This is the promise of a God who loves us. A God who loves us through our differences. A God who loves us in spite of all the ways that we’ve tried to hinder God. This is a God who says I will destroy the walls you’ve built. I will tear down the gates. I am calling you into freedom. I am calling you into love. I am calling you into my care. This is the way. It gets better. From here on out, along this way, it gets better.
James Baldwin had this wonderful quote from his book The Fire Next Time. He said, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
And all those efforts at hindering God? They just come from fear. I know, that’s not much comfort to any of us when the Bibles and the laws are being misused and when they come bludgeoning toward us. But it is helpful now and then to remember their source – fear. The best way to grow more fear is to just keep pouring it out into the world, hoping it will drown out the truth of love. And the best antivenom against fear is love.
God is loving the world into purity; into hope; into blessedness. We just have to keep remembering and we have to keep reminding – what God has made clean, we must not profane. Who are we to hinder God?
You probably won’t succeed at using this to win over the hearts of those who come attacking. But really, that’s not the measure of success. The better measure of success is how quickly you can learn to spot God’s love. The better measure of success is how willingly you allow yourself to accept God’s love. The better measure of success is the degree to which those masks you know you can’t live within start peeling away.
That’s how we fight the fear that seeks to claim us: by finding, seeing, proclaiming, sharing, owning love. God is loving us into the promised future. And who are we to hinder God? Amen.
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