AT THE FIRST Open Table community in Liverpool this month, Revd John Bell, a Patron of the Open Table Network, offered this reflection on the reading from the book of Acts 10: 1-16, in which the apsotle Peter hears God say: ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean’.

Now every boy and every girl
that's born into this world alive
is either a little liberal
or else a little conservative

These verses don't come from Holy Scripture but from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, and they constitute what might be called a double binary:

• boy or girl

• liberal or conservative.

Binary correctness 

The world seems to be shot through with an obsession for binary correctness, especially in the USA.

I once had a conversation with three Lutheran priests from Minnesota who, when asked what they would deeply wish for their churches, gave the reply,

'It would be great if we had a conversation which enabled us to talk about the Common Good'

In explaining this they indicated how at a parish council meeting, every decision was binary. If someone proposed that the gents toilet (men's restroom) should be painted green, someone else would propose that it be painted pink, and an argument would ensure which had nothing to do with colour, but simply that the proposer was a democrat and the opposed a republican and the difference was shot through every conversation.

God’s design

But that's not the way God made the world. In the Almighty's palette there is yellow and there is red, but between there's a colour called orange.

Stand the thoroughbred races of the world from end to end. You might have an Icelander at one end and an Ethiopian at the other, but in between are a range of skin tones which don't make it impossible to know where white ends and black begins.

In the world of music between tones comes a half tone. It's not doh ray, it's doh de ray; and if you indulge in the music of some Eastern cultures you discover that there are notes which we cannot easily discern even between doh and de.

World of faith

And even in the world of faith, neat binary categories do not - in terms of gender or sexual orientation always pertain.

David may have been a robust heterosexual who fathered innumerable children from a variety of mothers, but his love for Jonathan surpassed that of his love for women.

The first adult baptism in the book of Acts is indeterminative in terms of gender for he/she/they is a eunuch.

And it was the intriguing nature of angels which compelled the men of Sodom to desire sexual engagement with them. Their anatomical identity was later confirmed by Jesus who indicated that in heaven we would be like the angels - neither male nor female.

God’s self-revelation

Perhaps even more significant is the fact that when God allows for self-description, God forbids any notion of the divine image to be categorised purely in male or female terms.

God - in the metaphorical language of the Hebrew Scriptures, especially the Psalms - is:

• a male eagle and a female hen

• a male guardian and a female servant

• the man who fathers the nation, and the woman who conceives the nation

God is also:

• the midwife - male or female, who brings the people to birth;

• the host – male or female – who prepares a table for us.

There is an almost impish delight in God who waits until people have the image of their Maker right, and then God changes the image.

Of course, that creates problems for us who, in the romantic languages of Europe have a compulsion to use he or she for any animate being.

While the Jews and  many Asian language groups would deem the Holy Spirit to be female... (Jesus referred to the Spirit in the feminine) …once the Bible is translated into English, the Spirit has a sex change and becomes he.

How better it would be if we all spoke the tribal language of a friend of mine who comes from Uganda. For when I asked him whether in his native tongue the Spirit was male or female, he said it wasn't a question he could answer. Because there is only one pronoun used for animate beings. There is no he, no she, no they. It's a common pronoun for all.

The pain of English

Oh, wouldn't it be lovely if English were as simple. But it's not... and it is therefore encumbent on those of us who are conditioned to be binary to live with the imperfection of our language and feel the pain of it as much as those whose gender identity does not fall into a neat category. Being human requires us to forfeit the ease of black and white and embrace the possibility of shades of grey.

 This - in some respects - lies at the heart of the story we heard from Acts chapter 10. It involves two people who God has thrown into confusion, two people who had the world divided into neat categories.

Cornelius and Peter

Cornelius the centurion is a godly man who is encouraged by God to make a connection with the apostle Peter.  Cornelius is not a Jew, but nor is he a Christian. He is just a believer. But in a dream he is told to connect with a man called Peter who might well suspect him.

Peter is a thoroughbred Jew who has the world divided into believers and heathens. Non binary Roman military employees are beyond his comprehension. They are, to some extent, the enemy of believers.

Peter doesn't have a dream, he has a vision.... this odd vision of a sheet coming down from heaven on which there are all manner of animals who have already been categorised as clean or unclean.  When in the vision God calls him to kill and eat without reservation, Peter makes his own reservation. He will not eat anything which is unclean. Then God upsets his conventional securities by denying Peter that neat categorisation. Peter must learn not to call unclean what God has deigned to be clean.

 The purpose of the dream becomes evident when a few hours later a messenger comes requesting that Peter should go to visit a man who is neither a Christian nor a Jew, but a third species of potential believer, not an enemy to be suspected but a friend yet to be met.

Jesus and the non-binary

Peter should have known by the way Jesus lived and spoke that binary was not always an option.

When confronted with both his own disciples and accusatory Pharisees claiming that a man's blindness must have been either the sin or his parents or his own sin, Jesus denies the efficacy of  that perspective. His blindness has nothing to do with sin. Indeed if sin can be attributed to anyone, it should be to the Pharisees who denigrate both the man and his parents (John chapter 9).

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, common sense would dictate the father had only two options as to how to deal with his wastrel of a son. Either discipline or disown him for the distress he had caused. But it is a hitherto unidentified option which Jesus favours, namely that of forgoing retribution and taking the costlier path of unconditional forgiveness.

 And when, in another parable, the logical mind recognises two options in disbursing pay to people who have been hired for different lengths of time - namely give them wages according to hours worked, or do the underhand thing of paying them less than the going rate, Jesus proposes a third preposterous alternative.  Give everyone the same wage - whether they have worked twelve hours or one.

God does not call to endorse conventional categorisations.

For in the economy of heaven,

• what we call unclean, God may call clean,

• what we call unusual God may call normal,

• what we call awkward, God may call easy,

• what we call different, God may call intended.

And it is grace alone which is needed to enable us embrace the unusual.

 But perhaps a caveat.

 Inclusion does not mean the endorsement of everyone's opinion, or equal weight always given to every sensitivity. Maturity requires us to be prepared sometimes not be be explicitly included:

• as when at a 'family' service, a single person might feel slightly discomfited.

• or when in prayers it seems as if all the world's troubled places have been named except the one closest to our heart

• or when it is suggested that we should all join a zoom call with no option for those who don't have that facility.

Grace is also needed to enable us to deal with being occasionally left out without letting that feeling develop into cynicism and obstructiveness.

God did not make a perfect world, but a good world,
not a static world, but a dynamic world,
not flawless speech but fallible speakers,
not a rigidly defined human race,
but a kaleidoscope of human potential

Blessed be God forever.