Acts 10:9-28
Peter’s Dream
I called this sermon “Peter’s Dream.” Maybe a better title would be “The Day Peter Got Woke.”
When he fell asleep on the roof of the house in Joppa, he dreamed of a kosher world. It wasn’t just a kosher diet–I’ve never eaten anything unclean–it was a kosher world. His world was divided between clean and unclean, pure and impure, chosen and unchosen. God and goodness were on his side of the divide, everything and everyone else was on the other side. But his ordered world was turned inside out in the dream. When he became woke, he remembered the voice that asked: “Who are you to call anything that God has created unclean?” “Who are you to pass judgment on God’s creation?” And immediately he went downstairs where two men from Cornelius’ detail were waiting for him, and he went to the home of Cornelius–an officer in the Roman Army, who was also a sympathizer with the Christians. When Cornelius bows before him, Peter says: “Get up. I am a human being just like you are. Let’s relate to each other like the human beings we are. God has shown me that God has no favorites.”
God has no favorites. I think this is perhaps the most radical sentence in the New Testament. What I want to do this morning is examine the meaning of this sentence and its application. I am doing this not as someone who has all, or even any, of the answers. But I want to offer this mediation as a person who, like you, is seriously looking for some answers to the issues we face. All I can do in the time we have is introduce some ideas. I am open to learning. I want to know what you think. How can we apply this radical statement, “God has no favorites,” to life today. How would the world be different if we began with this assumption? How would we be different? What would change?
Dr. King titled his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. He talked about the “fierce urgency of now.” He told us that “progress does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.” Change takes hard work by dedicated people of goodwill. Some days I am hopeful that it is not too late and we can still choose community–but other days, well a few weeks I said that the hands on the clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists show 90 seconds to midnight. These are perilous times. By almost any meaningful measure that I can think of, the system is either broken or breaking down. We cannot continue to think and act the way we have been, and expect things to change.
What does it mean to say, God has no favorites? How does this change anything? I’ll give you an example. Recently we sold our house and moved into a rental. We are no longer homeowners, we are renters. In this society that is a seismic shift. As a homeowner we enjoyed certain benefits. We could deduct our property tax and interest on mortgage payments from our income tax. When we sold our house, we lost those benefits. But what if we believed God has no favorites. Justice Together is a faith-based community organization advocating for change in Wichita. Housing and homelessness is one of the issues they plan to address at the May 9 Nehemiah Assembly as Century Two. At the assembly Justice Together will present city officials with their plan for how to address the housing situation in our fair city.
I don’t know what their proposal will be, but I have thought about what I would propose. I have proposals to address the issue of homelessness and the housing shortage–if we really believe God has no favorites. First, we might tell renters that instead of paying first and last months’ rent, they only need to put down ten percent of the first month. That would make a lot of housing a lot more affordable to a lot of people. And it would show that home-buyers do not get favored treatment. Then, we could change the law so renters could deduct part of their monthly rental payments from their income tax. Just like homeowners get tax breaks for housing, so would renters. We could pass an ordinance that developers would be required to make 12 to 15 percent of any development low-income affordable housing. Then, because God has no favorites, tenants would be empowered to sue landlords if the housing was in violation of housing codes. If found guilty, landlords would have to pay the freight. Those are just my ideas. I’ll be interested to see what Justice Together proposes.
I want to shift focus and look at a couple of other issues. What difference would it make, how would things change, if we became woke and said that the starting point of all our conversations would be: “God has no favorites.” I want to talk about racism and Christian nationalism for a few minutes. I call these two children of the church who grew up together. If we believe God has no favorites, if Dr. King is right and the choice now is between chaos or community, we need to be able to talk about racism and Christian nationalism in polite company. There’s a lot of history here. I’m offering a very condensed version of a very complex history..
In The Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says that the first time racism, religion, and nationalism came together was during the Spanish Inquisition, which began in the late 1400’s, and went for three centuries. The King and Queen of Spain were Christians were in a power struggle with the papacy. They wanted to maintain their kingdom as Christian kingdom under their control. So, they made a whole lot of laws. Only Christians could hold public office. Only Christians could hold rank in the military, or attend certain schools, or own property, and so on. They affirmed religious freedom, but not all religions were equal. When Muslims and Jews saw what was happening, many of them fell in line and became Christian. This raised the question: How do you know who is a real Christian? How do we separate the sheep and the goats? To solve this problem, the Inquisitors hit upon the idea of blood quantum. Dunbar-Ortiz says that this is the first time in history that race was used as the base of public policy. The authorities drew a line between “Old Christians’ and “New Christians.” Old Christians could prove that their parents and grandparents were Christians. People who had Muslim ancestors or Jewish ancestors were “New Christians.” Their blood was tainted. They were unpure and unclean. They were not “Old Christians.” Race and religion became a dividing line.
Now, jump from the Spanish Inquisition to our history. Early on we developed two systems for immigrants. In the 1600s and later, we welcomed White Europeans as indentured servants. People in the United States would pay to bring these Europeans to the US as indentured servants. These immigrants had to work to repay their debt over a certain period of time. Once the debt was paid, they were free. White Europeans came in as indentured servants. Black Africans came in as enslaved people–they were property. They were not even recognized by the law as people. If there was any question about whether or not a person was Black, White people relied on blood quantum. If a person had any hint of African ancestry, they were Black. Because enslaved people represented wealth for the slave owner, any “Black ancestry” made a person a slave. Blood quantum was the defining feature. This is the history of anti-Black White racism, and that history is still with us. We don’t like to talk about racism in polite company, but it is part of us. In 1968, Dr. King proposed an economic bill of rights. He said if we would guarantee a basic living income, if we would end poverty, if we would say “God has no favorites,” we could end many of the problems we have with housing, education, and healthcare. God has no favorites. It is one of the most radical statements in the Bible.
We have an opportunity to be advocates for racial equality, peace and justice on June 22, the Saturday before the Gay Pride Parade. I was at a meeting last Friday at City Hall. The mayor and police chief and other city leaders were there as were a number of others. The meeting was called by the Greater Wichita Ministerial League. The League is asking Christians and all people of good will to come together on June 22 in a public display for peace. There will be a parade, and bands, and hotdogs. Some people will walk in the parade and others will stay in the park. Details will be coming soon. The theme is “Unity in Community.” God has no favorites. So let’s show up on the 22nd for the Unity in Community march and then on June 29th for the Gay Pride parade.
I want to just touch on one more issue related to this business of racism and blood quantum. I want to say a word about anti-Indianism to complete the picture of how racism works in our society. It’s a complex issue. Racism does not work the same way all the time.
In a slave economy, Blacks represented wealth, so it was to the advantage of White slave-owners to have as many slaves as possible, and blood quantum was an easy way to identify people racially. The smallest amount of Black ancestry meant you were Black.
With Native Americans it worked just the opposite. Native Americans had the land. Our White ancestors had to get rid of Native Americans so we could take the land. Waging war against the Indians was expensive and morally offensive. It was cheaper and cleaner to eliminate Indians by using blood quantum. To take an extreme example. If the government decides that anyone with less than 25 percent “Indian blood” does not qualify to be an Indian, the government has significantly reduced the “Indian problem.” By definition there are fewer Indians because fewer people meet the criteria.
The long-term government policy has been to assimilate Native Americans into White culture by simply defining them out of existence using blood quantum. For their part, Native Americans have made two responses. First, they rightfully say that it is up to the Indian nations to decide who is a member. Non-Indians do not have the right to decide who qualifies as an Indian. Second, the Landback movement is a national movement to return Native land and artifacts to the rightful owners. This has direct meaning for Kansas.
More than 100 years ago, The sacred Red Rock of the Kaw Nation was moved from Council Grove to Lawrence. In 2023, with the help of the University of Kansas and a $5,000,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, and the cooperation of many others, the Kaw Nation moved this sacred stone back to Council Grove. The Red Rock is a spiritual center for the Kaw people. The Kaw people are reclaiming their traditions and re-asserting their identity.
If we begin to face our problems, here or in the Middle East, with an understanding that God has no favorites, we can create new ways to solve old problems and grievances. This is our challenge and our opportunity as woke followers of the way of Jesus.