Sermon: The Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. Please be seated.
Thank you very much, Reverend Hamlin. And to our presider, Canon Duncan. To the Dean of the Chapel, The Dean of the Cathedral, I should say, Dean Hollerith. To all of the clergy and those who lead us in worship through song. Sisters and Brothers, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity. The church is packed this morning. I think it is a good time for all of us to be in church. Aren’t you glad to be in God’s House? Aren’t you glad to be in God’s house? I know the Episcopalian tradition, they’re a little bit more staid, but there’s a Baptist preacher in the pulpit. You can clap while I’m here, <laugh>. Come on. Give God some praise in that house. Praise your Lord. They call y’all the Frozen Chosen, but I’m, I’m always glad to be here in the Cathedral.
I wanna read if, if I might take the privilege of reading yet another passage of scripture. It’s also a good time to read the Bible. And I wanna center my remarks in the Book of Acts, the 10th chapter. And I want to encourage you to read the entire chapter. I won’t read all of it this morning, but I will read several verses. And I want to encourage you in your time of prayer, it’s a good time to pray, in your time of devotion, to read the entire passage. But let me just put the story for the most part in front of you. In Caesarea, there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian court as it was called. He was a devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. One afternoon at about three o’clock, he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, ‘Cornelius!’. And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it Lord?” He answered, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter. He is lodging with Simon, a tanner whose house is by the seaside.” When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him. And after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa.
About noon the next day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, 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. Here’s what he saw. 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”. This happened three times and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. Way down to verse 34. Then Peter began to speak to them. “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him”. I truly understand that God shows no partiality.
I wanna talk for just a little while about God’s Executive Order. God’s Executive Order. So you may have heard that since January 20th, we have witnessed the signing and swift enactment of a flurry of Executive Orders that would foist upon us a very narrow vision and view, It seems to me, of what it means to be an American, or what it means to be human. Would move us back towards some romanticized view of the past and reshape the character of the country and the character of government in some fundamental ways. More than 50 Executive Orders, some of which as the courts are demonstrating are unconstitutional, some of which are illegal. Everything from birthright citizenship to the dismissal of much of the federal workforce and places like CDC in Atlanta, Centers for Control of Disease Prevention. The NIH, I’m praying for our federal workers, the bans on transgender people serving in the military, the tariffs, to the abrupt stoppages on practically all foreign aid. We compromised our global health programs in places where outbreaks of Ebola, avian flu and pox are happening right now, putting all of us at risk. Dr. King was right, not just theologically and ethically, but he was right biologically. We are tied in a single garment of destiny, caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. If Ebola is over there in a global village, I might be in peril, it can land over here. And yet among these executive orders has been a wholesale unabashed assault on anything and everything that looks like diversity, equity, and inclusion. For those who have made diversity and equity and inclusion, toxic political terms I wanna ask, if you don’t want diversity, what’s the opposite of diversity? What’s the opposite of equity? If you don’t want inclusion, what do you want the world to look like? All out assault on these concepts, black people, other people of color, women, members of the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A community, veterans, the disabled, the undocumented, and all those who are members of families where some are undocumented. There is a DEI watch list as if fighting for a diverse and equitable and inclusive world is a crime.
And that’s why this morning I want to take a point of personal privilege and thank Bishop Mariann Budde. I wanna thank her for her powerful and prophetic voice as she speaks truth to power and addresses the fear and the anxiety that so many are feeling right now. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t get through the airport without folks pulling on me saying, what in the world are we going to do? There’s a lot of fear and anxiety. And in the midst of the dark clouds, she had the courage to stand in the best of our tradition and speak the truth. And I submit to you that she need not apologize to anybody. When the prophet, when the prophet speaks, the prophet doesn’t apologize. Those who here are called to repent. And so let’s stand together in the best of the biblical tradition. Folks who have no vision, traffic in division. They don’t know how to lead us. And so they seek to divide us and God, God help us to catch up to God’s vision, God’s dream for the world. I heard an amen. There’s some Baptist out there somewhere. <laugh> The gospel teaches us that in God’s economy, in God’s dream for the world, in God’s vision, there is diversity.
Right at the beginning of Acts, Jesus said, “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. But you can’t stop there also in Judea, but you can’t stop there. You gotta go to Samaria, but you can’t stop there. You gotta take this gospel of love and justice to the ends of the earth.” The Jesus Movement is a diverse movement. It was a diversity movement from the start. And in this our text, God is pushing this little movement to become more by embracing all. We become more when we embrace all. In our diversity is our strength. And in this text, God is speaking to Cornelius. Go back and read Acts chapter 10. God speaks to Cornelius and at the same time, the God who is speaking to Cornelius over here is speaking to Peter over there. He is speaking to Peter over there and he’s speaking to Cornelius over here at the same time. And they could not be more different. Cornelius is a Gentile. Peter is a Jew. Not only is Cornelius a Gentile, but he is a Roman soldier, high ranking officer in the Roman army.
Peter is a member of a colonized and conquered people. God speaks to the colonizer and the colonized at the same time. Only God can get us together like that. They could not be more different. Yet Peter cannot be all that he ought to be until Cornelius can be all that he ought to be. And Cornelius cannot be all that he ought to be until Peter becomes all that he ought to be. And that’s why God told Cornelius to send a posse of brothers to Peter’s house. That’s how we said it in my neighborhood. Long before I went to the Senate, I grew up in Kayton Homes Housing Projects on the west side of Savannah, Georgia. He said, “Send your boys now to Joppa. You are a Gentile and Peter is a Jew, but y’all need each other”. And about noon the next day, as the men were on their way to Joppa, the God who spoke to Cornelius, spoke to Peter on the rooftop where he went to pray. He was hungry, he needed nourishment, he needed something to eat. And while the food was being prepared, he fell into a trance and the heavens open and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. And in it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. In other words, it was filled with animals that Peter as a devout Jew was forbidden to eat. Forbidden by the old laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Yet God says, “Kill and eat everything that was coming down”. Most of it offended Peter’s sensibilities. And that’s why God has to tell him three times, it’s all right to partake, to participate, kill and eat. They’re in. They’re staring him in the face, is that which flies in the face of what he was raised to believe. And so I dropped by the National Cathedral in this moral moment in America to say to you that diversity is sometimes offensive. It makes you uncomfortable. Why? Because when you are accustomed to privilege, diversity might feel like oppression, pushes you outta your comfort zone. And there are moments when all of us are made to feel uncomfortable, when we are pushed to be in places that mitigate against our sensibilities.
And yet I feel God in this moment stretching us because there’s no growth without discomfort. If you are uncomfortable, good! God is doing something! Think about your own life. You didn’t experience those moments of growth when you were comfortable. You experienced the greatest moments in your personal growth when you were made to be uncomfortable. And that’s what God does. God shows up to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted. Peter is offended based on the old ways. And so, churches, we deal with the discomfort we all feel from time to time around issues of race and ethnicity, around sexism and misogyny, around our assumptions about the nature of human sexuality. As members of the L-G-B-T-Q community push all of us. We wrestle with notions of who’s clean and who’s unclean. I want you to think about this. Peter is offended by the things he sees coming down in that sheet, all of those animals. Meanwhile, he is literally lodging in the house of Simon the Tanner. Listen, Simon Peter, who had all kinds of prohibitions about the handling of the carcasses of dead animals was already lodging with a new gentile convert whose profession was tanning that is making leather products from the carcasses of dead animals.
In other words, he was already living in a house supported by the gifts of those whose practices he despised. It sounds like church to me, <laugh>. To be in this house is often to live and to be blessed by the gifts of those whose practices we despise. It certainly sounds like the Black church when you witness the glory and the beauty of the Black church and its worship, especially its music, is to live in a house supported by the gifts of those who we refuse to see. It is true in the Church House. It is also true in the White House. Don’t tell me you reject DEI when you live in a white house built by black hands. Lemme shout it this morning from the White House. The White House is a DEI house built by slaves who work without the benefit of compensation. Simon Peter is living in the house of the tanner and God is pushing him to a new place. God’s vision for the world, there is, there is diversity. Come next in, see that in God’s vision for the world, there is equity.
When Peter arrives at the house of Cornelius, Cornelius falls down at his feet and worships him. And Peter says, “Stand up. I am only immortal. I’m only a human being. I am a man”. No matter who we are, no matter the color of our skin. Doesn’t matter our zip code, I’m only a man. I’m only a woman. I’m only a human being. And that’s what oppressed people have to do all the time. Do you remember those signs of those workers whom Dr. King came by to see in Memphis, Tennessee as they were fighting for their basic human humanity and dignity? Remember those signs and what they said? It simply said, I am a man. That’s how you know you’re an oppressed person. Oppressed people have to make signs, have to have campaigns and movements to assert that about which they, about which ought to be obvious. We have to have a campaign to assert our own human dignity. I’m a man. Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? A few years ago, Black Lives Matter and some folk got mad. How dare you say, black Lives matter.
And so why do we need a Black History Month? Why these HBCUs, these historically black colleges and universities? Because they didn’t let us in other spaces. Somehow we translated our pain into power, our marginalization into music. And here we’re on this grand Sunday morning, red, yellow, brown, black and white, speaking with one voice in this moral moment saying, God shows no partiality. The God of the heavens and the God of the earth is a God of diversity and equity. And there are no big ‘I’s in little ‘u’s’. All of us are children of the living God. And then finally, the text teaches us something else. In God’s vision for the world, there is diversity, there is equity. In God’s vision for the world, there is inclusion. I’m, I’m, I’m almost done. I know, I know where I am. I’m in an Episcopal church. <laugh>,
It takes a Baptist preacher at 10 minutes to clear his throat. You know, <laugh>. But finally, nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says, finally, finally <laugh> in God’s vision, there is inclusion. Cornelius said to Peter, “I sent for you and you have been kind enough to come”. And So now all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that The Lord has commanded you to say. The text says that as Peter preached, the Holy Spirit showed up and saved Cornelius and everybody in the house, Jews and Gentiles. God believes in DEI. Matter of fact, DEI, and by the way, I’m not. I’m not, wedded to the term. You can call it whatever you wanna call it. I just want some justice in the world. I’m not wed to the term I’m wed to results. But while we figure out what to call it, lemme just say to you that DEI or ‘dei’ is the Latin word for God. We were created in the Imago Dei, in the image of God. And the only way for us to see the image of God on earth as it is in heaven, is for all of us to get together. You only see the image of God when there is diversity, when all of us are here together. And so I don’t care what your race is, red, yellow, brown, black or white. If you work for God, you are a DEI hire. I work for God.
And so in closing, <Preach it>. Don’t encourage me. A few weeks ago in the wake of the tragic mid-air collision, not far from here, involving a Black Hawk helicopter, and a commercial jet, a man with a big microphone stood up, without any evidence, blamed the whole thing on DEI. Think about that. While dozens of bodies were still beneath the chilly waters of the Potomac, he was busy playing a sad and awful game. And how sad and ironic because families were still being notified, people were dealing with their grief. And ironically, aviation is one of the least diverse sectors of our economy. Over 92% of the commercial pilots in the United States are white. Less than 4% of black, 4.6% are women. It is one of the least diverse sectors in our economy. Meanwhile, listen, we have a shortage of pilots. Pilots are aging out. We don’t have enough. And a little while ago on an official Senate visit, I was down in Georgia and I met a young black man named Ezekiel. And his vision was to be a pilot. He wanted to fly and he had, he has the intellectual aptitude. But 10 years later, he was having a hard time making it into the industry. Why? Because it’s expensive to get the necessary flight hours. And he was so committed that he spent all of his money, had spent $100,000 of his own money working here, and then going back to school, and then going back to work, and then going back to school. Why? Because he wanted to fly. And as I looked into his eyes, he had that thing in his eye that you love to see in the eyes of every young person. He had found that thing he wanted to do.
Howard Thurman said, “Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. ’cause what the world needs is people who have come alive”. And he had come alive wanting that thing. But he was from the wrong zip code. We’ve created barriers that have made it too hard for young boys like Ezekiel, for girls, to fly. Meanwhile, we need pilots. And so I got busy writing a bill to make sure we are tapping into the genius and talent of all of our children because a child’s outcome ought not be based on their parents’ income. I know a God who creates talent and genius and brilliance all over the town, on all sides of the track, in every area code, in every zip code. And so all I wanna say to you, National Cathedral, is that it takes all of us to fly. And if we won’t rely on all of us, we’ll find that we’re stuck on the ground. I don’t know about you, but I, I wanna fly high. I want all that God has imagined for America, all that God has imagined for all of God’s children.
We sing in the black church, “I’m pressing on The upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day, still praying as I’m onward bound, Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.” When we pray together, when we stay together, when we work together, when we love each other and pray for each other, rather than preying on each other, we can take off. We can capture God’s vision and God’s dream for the world.