May only truth be spoken, and truth heard. Amen.
The
Books of Acts is a book carefully structured by Luke to do many things, not the
least of which is to paint a broad canvas of the Spirit’s work in growing the
church from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. But the book of Acts is
misleadingly titled. Its traditional name, "Acts of the Apostles," is
true enough – except the apostles are not the ones driving the action. We know
the apostles are busy organizing a reform movement and new institutions based
in Jerusalem. But the Book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit continually calling
into action the people who make up the second generation of this new assembly,
blowing the breath of God into new and distant places and bringing new,
boundary-pushing people into fellowship with Jesus. The Spirit, not bound by
human constraints, not bound by any law that claims who’s in and who’s out, is
continually pushing the limits of who God welcomes and where this good news is
to be proclaimed. In the chapters leading up to today’s reading, the disciples
have been concentrating their work within Jerusalem, but as this new generation
of Christ followers begin their evangelizing, they are starting to widen their circles,
moving outwards from Jerusalem.
Philip
is one of those evangelizers, a deacon sent out towards Samaria, following
whatever path the Holy Spirit sends him down. Today’s story begins with Philip
answering a call to go south on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. And while he’s
travelling down this road, he comes across a man in a chariot. But this isn’t
just any man. He is a eunuch from Ethiopia. We don’t have a name, of course, but
we are told that he was from the court of the Queen of Candace. We are also
told that he “had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home.” In
light of Jewish law, this man, being a eunuch, would have been turned away at
the temple doors, rejected by his religious community. Being described as Ethiopian
indicates the dark skin color of his people, but it also could have resonated
with other Greco-Roman literature that speaks of “Ethiopians” as people who
lived on the fringes of the inhabited world.
So
here is a man with a royal job in a worldly court, who would have gotten the
impression from reading the bible that he was unwelcomed in God’s court. Deuteronomy
23:1 says that no one who is sexually mutilated “shall be admitted to the assembly
of the Lord.” This man is not Jewish, he’s a foreigner, from the “ends of the earth”,
and a sexual and gender outsider. This court eunuch is the embodiment of
intersectionality, queering the boundaries and binaries of male and female, free
and enslaved, whole and mutilated, pure and impure, potent and impotent, native
and foreigner. By all accounts, the man would be rejected by the very religion
that he puts all his faith into. And yet here he is, riding in his chariot,
reading the bible, meditating on the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
Then
along comes Philip. Having heard the Ethiopian reading aloud, Philip runs up to
the chariot asking, “do you understand what you are reading?” When Philip heard
what the eunuch was reading, he seized upon the common ground between them by
viewing it as a good opportunity to begin a discussion about the connection
between that passage of scripture and his own mission of proclaiming salvation
through Christ.
When
was the last time you talked to someone about your faith? Would you walk up to
a stranger who was reading a bible and say, “I want to talk to you about Jesus
Christ”?
Well,
that’s exactly what Philip did, and the Ethiopian, despite being of a wealthier
class than him, welcomed Philip to sit beside him for a conversation. Barbara
Brown Taylor provides a modern parallel, “imagine a diplomat in Washington, DC
inviting a street preacher to join him in his late model Lexus for a little
Bible study.”
The
inclusion into conversation has gone both ways – the rich man is sitting with
the poor man and the religious man is sitting with the impure person of African
descent. But this is the way Christianity was in the beginning – full of diversity
through race, gender, sexuality. The goal of the people within the Book of Acts
was simply to reach as far as they could and to anyone they could with their message
of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ.
When
Philip joins the Ethiopian in conversation, he doesn’t talk theology, or at
least that’s not what’s written. It only says that he told the eunuch about the
good news of Jesus Christ. And not only does Philip not talk theology, but he
also doesn’t talk about rules or behaviour. He doesn’t tell the Ethiopian that
they aren’t allowed to follow Christ because of their gender. He doesn’t tell
the eunuch that to follow Christ they need to change their behaviour. We have
no idea what Philip actually said, but after only a short conversation, the
Ethiopian has decided that he believes in Jesus Christ and wants to be baptized.
There
are so many reasons Philip could have denied this baptism. This man belonged to
the wrong nation, held the wrong job, and was considered an impure gender. “What
is to prevent me from being baptized?” Oh, let’s see… They were in the middle
of nowhere, the eunuch was not welcome in the temple, he had just heard about
Jesus 20 minutes ago, he was from another country, and, oh yeah, he was a
eunuch. Philip had every reason to walk away, but he didn’t.
“What
is to prevent me from being baptized?” Nothing. That’s the point. Race, gender,
sexuality…nothing prevents a person from deciding to become a follower of
Christ and being baptized as a declaration of that faith. The Ethiopian simply believed
in Jesus and chooses to be baptized. As Shannon Kearns says, “It’s a rewriting
of the boundaries of who is in and who is out. It’s a radical reordering of the
rules.” Whatever Philip tells him about Jesus, the court official discerns on
his own the fitting outcome for him – inclusion, participation, belonging.
As
the gospel moves into the world, it gathers under the protective wings of God
more and more of those who have been lost, pushed away, or forgotten. One
message that we can receive from the story of Philip and the Ethiopian is a
message of hope – hope that there is room for us all in the kingdom of God. We
don’t have to change who we are to be worthy. We don’t have to change our
behaviour, or our sexuality, or our skin colour to be worthy of God’s love. We
are all already worthy, simply by wanting to be included.
This
story encourages us to accept people who are biologically and sexually
different from dominant sociocultural norms. As well, the baptism of the
Ethiopian eunuch puts the church on notice that identity, be it race, gender,
sexuality, or any other identity, is not a legitimate basis for deciding who
should or should not be included in the community called into being by the Holy
Spirit. We, like Isaiah, Jesus, Philip, and the eunuch, are affirmed in the
call to share the good news of God revealed in Jesus without partiality or
prejudice.
So,
what’s to prevent you from being baptized? Absolutely nothing.
Amen.
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