"Peter Principle"

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter   24 April 2016

The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector-Designate

What God has called clean, you must not call profane.    Acts 11:9b

My hunch is, it’s a question few ─ if any ─ of us have ever thought about. But it’s the kind of question that bugs the heck out of rogue economist Steven Leavitt.

So, what do you think? Given the choices ─ a gun … or a swimming pool, which is more dangerous?

Well, let’s see. Take the parents of eight-year-old Molly, Leavitt suggests. Her two best friends ─ Amy and Imani ─ each live nearby. Molly’s parents know that Amy’s parents keep a gun in their house. So they forbid Molly to play there.

They do let Molly spend a lot of time at Imani’s house. It has a swimming pool in the backyard.

The parents think, in terms of protecting Molly, it’s a smart choice: guns … swimming pool. The gun is more dangerous. It’s a no-brainer … until you run the numbers. According to the data, the parents’ choice isn’t smart at all.

That’s because, in a given year, there’s one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. In a country with 6 million pools, this means that ─ tragically ─ roughly 550 children under the age of 10 drown each year.

What about guns? What’s the data on that score? In a country with an estimated 300 million guns, every year one child is killed by a gun for every million-plus guns. And, of course, that’s tragic, too.

Now, I’m a proponent of gun control ─ and this isn’t a homily about gun control ─ but the point for Molly’s parents here is that the likelihood of death by a swimming pool (1 in 11,000) vs. death by gun (1in a million-plus) isn’t even close. Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s.

As risk consultant Peter Sandman says, “The basic reality is that the risks that scare people, and the risks that kill people are very different.”

To make good choices, then, the challenge is getting the right information.

And that’s Leavitt’s argument. According to the conventional wisdom, because the world is riddled with obfuscation, complications, and downright deceit, it’s pretty impossible to get to the bottom of anything.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong, according to Leavitt. The world isn’t impenetrable and unknowable at all … if, as Leavitt suggests, you ask the right questions … if you learn a new way of looking … if you learn to see through all the clutter.

And this is certainly Peter’s experience.

When we first encounter Peter in our reading from Acts, what does Peter think the question is? He thinks it’s: “How are you going to keep the Church pure?”

That’s because, before his vision ─ the one about the massive sheet coming down from heaven bursting-at-the-seams with all sorts of non-Kosher goodies for the guilt-free taking ─ Peter, like the rest of the leaders of the fledgling Church, thinks that the Church is an exclusive club. Only Jewish people who choose to follow Jesus need apply.

But that intensely-narrow focus hits a speed bump when non-Jews ─ Gentiles ─ start getting the mind-boggling idea that Jesus got the whole God-humanity, humanity-God, love-love-love thing right. Following their own instincts, they choose to follow Jesus, too.

This triggers migraines, because the Jewish Christians ask, “Is a Gentile Christian even a thing?” If so, the Jewish Christians get bumped off their “God made us Number One” pedestal. And there goes the conventional wisdom.

So, their take is: How are you going to keep the Church pure? Answer: Some people are better than others. That’s just the way it is. Keep out those profane Gentiles!

Peter agrees … until God whacks him up one side of the head with that vision. The vision demolishes the conventional wisdom with God’s message: “What God has made clean, you must not call profane!”

That’s God’s progressive starting point for “church” … for everything.

Score? Purists: 0   Progressives: 1

And then God whacks Peter up the other side of the head … when Peter sees with his own eyes that the very same Spirit that has filled the Jewish discoverers of Jesus now fills the Gentile seekers as well.

Read: “If it quacks like a duck, chances are!”

Purists: 0   Progressives: 2

This is revolutionary. As revolutionary ─ in its day ─ as ordaining people of color … and then women … and then gay people … and then transgender persons as priests.

As revolutionary ─ in its day ─ as marrying (in church!) a mixed-race couple … a same-sex couple.

Meaning: As Peter learned, the question “How are you going to keep the Church pure ─ or society pure ─ or the country pure?” It’s the wrong question … because reality always intrudes. And, as New York Times blogger Timothy Egan puts it, “Reality is always a problem for purists.”

In other words, the right question is: “Calling neighbors different from us second-class citizens, unclean, less-than? … when God ─ who created us, each and all ─ has called them first-class, clean, equal-to? Who do we think we are?” Because God, obviously, isn’t a purist.

As 19c theologian and hymn-writer Frederick William Faber suggested:

We make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify God’s strictness
with a zeal God will not own.

So, that’s why I’m gobsmacked that data-deficient demagogues of a purist stripe dare ask, “How are you going to keep the restrooms ─ the locker rooms ─ the showers of our communities ─ pure?”

Their answer? “Keep transgender people out. Keep out persons who identify with a gender other than the gender they were assigned at birth.”

Now, just about any follower of Jesus worth their salt would be conditioned by now to ask, “Is anyone being hurt by allowing transgender persons to use the facilities of their choice, by allowing them to be comfortable in their own skin?” I mean, that’s what the “love-your-neighbor-as-yourself” stuff is all about. Meaning, does the proposal under discussion hurt my neighbor ─ especially my less-powerful neighbor, such as children?

To arrive at the right answer, Steven Leavitt would suggest: Get the right information. Run the numbers. And I’d add, “Use the mind God gave you!” ... because factoid: Not one scrap of credible data says that transgender persons’ tinkle-venue choices have harmed even one child. And there have been no rapes. No assaults.

Now, the lengthening rap sheet of rapes, assaults, and murders of our transgender neighbors at the hands of fatally-insecure people? That’s another story. Haven’t seen the politically-opportunistic potty purists talk about that much. Haven’t seen them do what Jesus would do: bring bills before their legislatures to protect those victims, real victims.

Are those transgender people too second-class, perhaps … too unclean … too less-than for the “We the People” crowd, who ─ hat-tip to journalist Frank Bruni here ─ broadcast three goals in this manufactured kerfuffle: scare people … pit neighbor against neighbor … make us believe that some of us are better than others.

So, I’ve got to tell you, as a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts … well, I go to a lot of events. We ─ in this diocese ─ are flush with transgender persons, flush with transgender priests. And we share a lot of common spaces, if you get my drift. Do I look traumatized to you?

Bottomline: I don’t think bathrooms are on God’s mind. But I’d put money on it: people being unjustly targeted, discriminated against, beaten up, and much, much worse … are. They are on God’s mind. God made them. God made them ─ all of us! ─ clean.

Who are we to call them ─ who are we to treat them ─ anything less than “neighbor”?

Amen.