| Scriptures: | I John 4:7-16 Acts 8:26-40 |
The compilers of the lectionary texts sometimes seem to have a wry, even ironic sense of humor. How else explain that on the second Sunday of May, traditionally set aside to honor families and especially mothers, our story from the book of Acts is about a eunuch! (If any of you don’t know how one becomes a eunuch, turn to your neighbor and ask; I’m not going to go into detail here.) And not only that – this is an Ethiopian eunuch -- about as much of an outsider as you could possibly be: a Gentile, a mutilated (and therefore unclean) man, a foreigner. Maybe for the sake of all those who were coming here today expecting to hear a nice warm fuzzy sermon about the virtues of motherhood and the values of family we should just concentrate on the scripture from I John, which is all about love, and let this other one go.
But, of course, we’re not going to do that (and you already knew that before I said it). This nameless Ethiopian eunuch and his encounter with Philip form one of the more fascinating stories in the book of Acts, especially with his question that has all kinds of resonance for us: “’What is to prevent me from being baptized?’” What indeed? And what happens when we apply this question to ourselves?
But before we get to that perhaps a little background is important to set the context. Here’s some information about this part of the world from Bill O’Brien, codirector of BelMitra Associates:
“Tradition relates that Ethiopia was founded by the great-grandson of Noah. It has been identified by various names: Abyssinia, Kush and Axum. The empire of Axum lasted from the first through the late 13th century AD. Israel’s religion and influence were already felt across this vast area.
“Much earlier, the queen of Sheba had visited the wise King Solomon in order to ‘test him with hard questions’ and to tell him ‘all that was on her mind’ (I Kings 10:2)….. A long history binds Israel and this region together.
“The eunuch described by Luke was the treasurer for the queen of Ethiopia. He may have been a proselyte to Judaism or a God-fearer wanting to know more. He went to Jerusalem for the purpose of worship but was unaware of what had been happening there.” (The Christian Century, May 5, 2009, p. 22)
What had been happening was that the number of Christian disciples had been growing by leaps and bounds, and so naturally a reaction set in leading to persecution. Our text and story closely follows the account of the stoning of Stephen – the first martyr of the new church. In this atmosphere Philip felt called by God to walk the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.
Now let’s turn our attention for a moment to Philip. When we do we learn that Philip was also an outsider. William Brosend describes him rather colloquially in these words:
“Dealing with outsiders was not a problem for Philip. He was an outsider. Not to be confused with Philip of Bethsaida (one of the Twelve), this Philip was a Greek in Jerusalem, one of the Seven appointed to run the food pantry, clinic and hospice program there, so the Twelve did not need to tend to such petty concerns as food and drink. After Stephen was martyred, the Jerusalem community scattered.
“Philip [then] moved from waiting on tables in Jerusalem to serving in Samaria as evangelistic front man for Peter and John, proclaiming the Messiah, performing signs, amazing the people and cutting into Simon the Magician's business. When the two apostles arrived, Philip's work was done. So the angel of the Lord sent him on the road to Gaza, as rough a road then as now, for an adventure in evangelism that is without precedent in the New Testament.”
So, here we have two consummate outsiders who, if this were a movie scenario, we could almost say “meet cute”. Think Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones”, or, if your movie memory doesn’t go quite that far back, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in “Stir Crazy”. (Actually, both of those movies that feature an odd and almost outlandish black and white pairing have something to tell us about our scripture: Philip and the eunuch’s story is about salvation, and “The Defiant Ones” is certainly about that: both the saving of the Poitier character quite literally and the saving of the Curtis’s character’s soul. The easy camaraderie of Wilder and Pryor in “Stir Crazy” parallels the ease with which Philip and the eunuch enjoy one another’s company when they first meet. But I digress.)
Philip has been told by an angel of the Lord to “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” Now, our 21st century scientific worldview tends to dismiss this kind of direct message from a heavenly being, but for Philip this was a serious matter. He knew that there was a purpose here for him, if only he could discern it. Just so, don’t we often feel those “nudges”, and then in our heart-of-hearts we say to ourselves, “Maybe I should pay attention to what God may be calling me to do. Maybe there’s a reason I’m being pointed in this particular direction.” Of course, in order to pay attention to that kind of nudge from God we need to be willing to forego some of our other agendas. As Bill O’Brien says of Philip, “His to-do list for each day was not so rigid and demanding that it precluded his feeling the breath of God nudging him.” Oh, he may have felt that it was important for him to remain in Samaria where new converts where being made every day and thus where the action really was, but the angel of the Lord had told him to go south on a desert road, and so he went.
And what he encountered while he was on that road was this strange, important-looking man (he was the queen’s treasurer, after all) reading a book. This is quite a set-up for a really comedic scene, isn’t it? – I’d kinda like to see Wilder and Pryor re-enacting this (if Richard were still with us). The eunuch is reading from Isaiah and having a tough time understanding it. Somehow he senses in Philip a kindred spirit who could be a helpful guide for him, and so with a gentle ease he invites Philip into his chariot to join him in his reading and meditation on this passage. What it is is the passage from Isaiah 53 we talked about last week that begins, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity (53:3),” and concludes, as the eunuch notes, “In his humiliation justice was denied him.” The rejected one. The humiliated one. A man who, like the eunuch, was outside the mainstream.
Perhaps because the Ethiopian was a eunuch, whether by birth, injury, or abuse, he likely would have been the brunt of jokes by other men. And so perhaps this was why he was so curious about the story of the suffering servant in Isaiah. He may have personally known what unjust humiliation meant. However the good news was that this man did not choose the way of bitterness and condemnation of the world, but rather developed an openness to what others may offer. He has an unexpected life-giving humility. Philip resonates with that humility and begins to speak to him the good news about Jesus. This encounter was a marriage of need and opportunity – the pre-conditions for evangelism. The author of Acts (presumably, Luke) goes into such detail with this story precisely because it shows us what it can mean to witness to the good news that is Jesus the Christ.
Where I’m going with this story is that you and I can be like both Philip and the eunuch. In terms of Philip, look at what he brought to this encounter. He didn’t have a canned script; he started with the eunuch’s question, and helped him understand how Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 53 through his own death. As we said last week, this suffering servant passage was probably originally meant to apply to Israel, but the early church quickly saw how it came to be embodied in Jesus. Likewise, God enables us to begin with whatever spiritual need the person next to us has (guilt; loneliness; meaninglessness; whatever) -- and explain how God meets that need through Jesus.
Maybe more importantly, as Gary DeLashmutt puts it, “Philip knew how to apply the gospel to himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been willing to speak to this man. As a religious Jew, he would have been disgusted by this black eunuch. As a member of the working-class, he would have been intimidated by this politically powerful person. But because Philip was centered in the gospel, he was free from both of these barriers [and was able] to help. He understood that his standing with God was based not on his ethnic identity, moral record, or religious heritage, but through Jesus’ death alone. He understood that he was no better than anyone else -- including this sexually altered black man from a pagan country. He understood that Jesus loved this eunuch and was able to give him new life just as he did Philip. This made him both humble... and confident ….. This humble confidence in the gospel is one of the most important keys to being an effective witness for Jesus.”
We can reflect the same humble confidence as does Philip. But we are also like the eunuch in our seeking and our questioning. Once Philip witnesses to him and they continue down the road they come to some water (coincidence? God’s providence? a set-up in this movie scenario?) And that leads the eunuch to the question with which we started: “’What is to prevent me from being baptized?’”
You may think that this is not your question; after all, I strongly suspect that each one of us in this room has already been baptized. But as Andrea La Sonde Anastos notes:
“…baptism is not a magical event that happens once and forever and thereafter requires nothing more from us. Baptism is a continuously unfolding way of being with God right now, this very minute, in the midst of the decision I am making, the conversation I am having, the prayer I am offering.
“Baptism is not something that has been done to us over which we have no control and for which we have no responsibility. Instead, it is a visible and ritual reminder that God’s grace is pouring into creation every day in an unending stream. Baptism provides the guiding principles by which we make the choice each and every day whether to stand in God’s abundant flow of holiness...or not.”
So the question of what is preventing us from being baptized is a legitimate one when fear or pride or discomfort keeps us from acting on the promises inherent in our baptism. Andrea La Sonde Anastos again:
“Our faith story tells us that God is always at work, calling not only the people I recognize as holy, but those who are the Ethiopian eunuchs in my world. By many strange and mysterious paths, our journeys cross by the edge of a river and sometimes, in a moment of sheer grace, we discover that there is nothing to prevent us from being baptized...again.”
Couple of things to note about the end of this story: both Philip and the eunuch went into the water – Philip recognized, as do we, that water as a symbol of regeneration was important for him as well – important for experiencing God’s grace as ever-present in his own life and ever-ready to lead him to more encounters and thus opportunities for evangelism with people like this Ethiopian eunuch. Second, there is this strange description (again, this really is like a movie script, although here it is more science-fiction-y): “the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away…..” Their brief encounter was over. Nevertheless, even though “the eunuch saw him no more,” “[he] went on his way rejoicing.”
Two outsiders have just become insiders. But that is always the way of the beloved community – the community that is the people of God. Rejoicing is our response to God’s grace, just as it was for the eunuch. Moreover, we know from history that the eunuch did more than rejoice; he carried the Good News to his country, and it quickly spread such that the Ethiopians are among some of the oldest Christians on the planet. And if you ask them how they heard the good news, they will tell you this very story and rejoice.
The writer of the letter of I John tells us what it means to be insiders who are acting on the promises of our baptism and who are rejoicing in two of the most beautiful verses in the Bible: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Our passage concludes: “So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.” That’s what happened to the Ethiopian eunuch who came to know and believe that love through his baptism. That’s also what happened to Philip as he renewed his baptism and thus “he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.” That’s what happens to us as we experience the love of God in community.
And now we finally come to the tie-in with Mother’s Day and the multitude of different kinds of families that make up this congregation. The love that we experience in our differing families enables us and empowers us to be insiders – not from privilege or special status but because the love of God has brought us all inside that beloved community. May God, who is love, help you to re-experience your baptism in each encounter, and to share that love throughout the families that have been given to us.
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
May 10, 2009