Carolyn L Roberts
Acts 11.1-18                                               
6 May 2007

            There have been multiple opportunities to see the movie starring Pierce Brosnan called The Thomas Crown Affair. It was an airline movie staple, and has moved to similar status for movies shown on TV. Essentially, it’s a remake of an earlier movie by the same title deals with a self-made billionaire/art thief (Brosnan) who falls in love with and is tracked by an insurance investigator. The singular memorable scene is where Brosnan agrees to return a stolen Monet. Employing numerous doubles, all dressed in grey flannel suits and bowler hats – a nod to René Magritte’s 1964 surrealist painting, “The Son of Man.” The painting features a man dressed in a grey flannel suit and bowler hat–but his face is obscured by a green apple.

            With the precision of a drill team, doubles (minus the green apples) enter the New York Museum of Art They all carry briefcases, they all march forward to some predetermined location. When enough of the doubles have mixed with the rest of the museum crowd, Brosnan–also dressed in a grey flannel suit and bowler hat–replaces the Monet, and steps out of surveillance camera range to dispose of the costume. Of course Brosnan gets away with the caper–it’s Hollywood. And he gets away with it because security can’t tell the difference between Brosnan and all the doubles in grey flannel suits and bowler hats. From the perspective of a surveillance camera, they all look the same. It could have been an ad for Xerox. One white man in a grey flannel suit looks pretty much like the next one.

            When the apostle Peter has this vision of all these foods that he’s invited to eat, his response is the same. “I can’t eat something different; I can’t eat something not kosher; I can’t let go of my culturally-conditioned reactions to non-kosher options. I can’t I can’t I can’t. I’m a good Jew...I only eat kosher.” But God calls the apostle Peter to expand his vision. In the vision, Peter hears God saying: What God has made clean, you must not call profane. The issue of course is whether Gentiles have to become Jews before they can be welcomed as disciples of Jesus. Do they have to follow kosher? Do they have to observe the dietary rules? Do they have to use only certain cooking utensils? These Gentiles had been baptized with the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that Peter and the other apostles had received. So how could they refuse God?

            Look at what Peter identifies as the core issue: have these non-Jewish people–a man and his entire household–received the gift of the Spirit? Not, have these admittedly non-Jewish people walked no more than X number of steps on the sabbath. Not, have these admittedly non-Jewish people ever eaten pork. Nothing, nothing to do with their religious observances; nothing to do with whether they wear grey flannel suits and bowler hats, and sport matching briefcases. The issue is whether these certifiably non-Jewish people are receptive to the spirit of God.

            Sojourner Truth argued at the Women’s Convention in 1851 in Akron, Ohio, for the women’s right to vote. It took nearly 70 years before that right was granted. And now more than 80 years after that, we wonder what all the fuss was about. She’d figured out that those who were not welcome at the voting table were denied that privilege for the same spurious reasons they would be denied certain seats on the bus or in the theatre. She’d figured out that the prejudice against blacks and against women was exactly that: a preconceived opinion that had no basis in reason or experience. Sojourner Truth was baptized by the Spirit...but those who wore grey flannel suits and bowler hats did not welcome her to the same table of privileges they accorded themselves.

            In 1972, it wasn’t clear whether Bill Johnson would be welcome at that table. No question that he’d been claimed by that same Spirit. Since the age of 17, when he was president of the youth fellowship at First Evangelical and Reformed Church in Houston, Bill had wanted to be a minister. I first met Bill in 1971 when he was in his third year of seminary at Pacific School of Religion. He looked like a charter member of the grey flannel suit and bowler hat set. He was funny, articulate, gifted, blond, blue-eyed, and seriously good-looking. When we met, he was also the youth minister at the church where my brother and sister-in-law now are members. And he’d just come out. The seminary, that local congregation, Church and Ministry Committee, the Golden Gate Association, Northern California-Nevada Conference–all of those bodies wrestled with whether Bill was welcome at the table of ordination. Some folks weren’t even sure he was welcome at the communion table. They felt as though somehow he’d betrayed his Christian upbringing. But it became very, very clear that Bill was just as much made in the image of God as every one of the people who made up those various groups. It became very, very clear that denying ordination to Bill would be based solely on his sexual orientation, and that if we did that, we would join the apostle Peter in judging one of God’s creatures as profane and unclean. And who were we to hinder God?

            I am proud to count myself among the hundreds that crammed into that UCC church for Bill’s ordination. Proud to belong to a denomination that works hard to remain open to the visions given by our still-speaking God; proud to belong to a denomination that actively and conscientiously removes barriers to the welcome table. But barriers are still present. “Surviving partners from legally married victims of 9/11 [received] at least $1.6 million. The surviving partners of gay and lesbian persons, no less grief stricken, [were] lucky to [receive] $10,000.”[1] The rights of children of same-gender couples, universal health care, immigration reform...each of these barriers keep some of God’s children from the table. We gather around the table today, to remember, to be fed, to be nurtured. May we remember that God’s children, made in God’s image, are neither profane nor unclean. May Peter’s vision speak to our hearts.

[1] ucc.org, 2002 article by Evan Golder about Bill Johnson