(click on the links above for the full complement of readings for today. The Acts text below is the primary preaching text, read first in the worship service during the season of Easter.)
Acts 8:26-40
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his offspring? For his life was taken away from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
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For those who need to be warned, there is some graphic language ahead:
A reading from the Law of God, as recorded in Deuteronomy chapter 23: No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.
So, there was this guy who served the queen of Ethiopia. For context, it is an 83 hour drive from Jerusalem to the capital city of Ethiopia, south through Egypt and Sudan on the north eastern coast of Africa. But that’s an 83 hour drive in a car, not in a carriage drawn by horses. This must have been a big deal for the main treasury official to travel all that distance on behalf of his queen. So it’s a good thing for them all that he was made safe before he set out. And I don’t mean he was heavily protected, I mean the queen could trust him not to get into trouble because he had been made docile. Rendered impotent. Probably he could still hit those high notes when he sang. For all of our obsessions with sex in this country, it still makes a lot of people queasy to talk about castration, which is why I warned you before I read that Deuteronomy passage. Yet we are strangely fascinated with those forbidden body parts, comparing and ranking sexual prowess, asking inappropriate questions of transgender people, you know the ones, about surgery. Bruce Jenner isn’t the first person to come to mind, but for some reason we define people by what’s in their pants and what they do, or don’t do, with it. And that was how this Ethiopian was defined. He had been set aside for a very important role in the service of queen Candace, and in order to be deemed trustworthy with her secrets and her treasury and with the other women… need I say more?
And he traveled by carriage some 4 thousand kilometers to a city that would not allow him to worship in the temple. Not even to enter it.
But, you know, when I opened my Bible to find that verse in Deuteronomy, I saw, just across the page, at the end of chapter 21, another law: “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
So the Ethiopian and Jesus are both right there together, in the Law, as condemned persons. Outside of the assembly. Thrown far away from the people and cut off from the fruitfulness of the land.
And that’s really the good news we celebrate today. Everything which would stand between us and God’s eternal love for us has been stripped of its power by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has gone to every far-off corner of creation, by the Spirit that walks through closed doors and warms hard hearts, to gather every lost sheep into his fold, as we have been celebrating this Easter season. What I think happened in that carriage on that road there, when the Ethiopian eunuch was reading the words of the Prophet Isaiah, is that he identified with that story. When the prophet writes:
“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his offspring? For his life was taken away from the earth.”
Wouldn’t someone who had been sterilized find something familiar in these words? And to have Philip there to explain to him that the prophet was talking about the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, who was the head of this new Jewish movement that welcomed all sorts of people? No wonder he was so excited to be baptized!
By the time Philip has told him the Jesus story they’ve come upon some water. Might have been a stream, might have been a puddle. The eunuch sees this opportunity to be part of something and points it out to Philip: See! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?
I wonder how tense that moment was for either of them. We’ve just gone through the reason he shouldn’t be baptized, he’s just been denied entrance into the worshiping community because of his status, and Philip knows the rules even better than the eunuch does. What is to prevent me from being baptized?
What is to prevent anyone from being baptized, then? If Baptism means being grafted into God’s family and the mission of Jesus Christ, if it means hearing the words that God has claimed you as God’s own, what can get in the way of that? I’m sorry, your grades weren’t good enough this term? I’m sorry, you didn’t make enough money this year? I’m sorry, you don’t speak good English? I’m sorry, you abused your power? I’m sorry, you rioted in the streets? I’m sorry, you got addicted to heroin? I’m sorry, you didn’t take the proper Baptismal instruction course? No! None of this! What is to prevent anyone from being Baptized? What can get between us and God’s love for us?
Not a thing. Not a singe thing can cut us off from God’s love. No matter how we label each other, how we fear each other, how we envy and slander and expect the worst of each other, God has brought us all together into one vine, one source, one life-giving tree, that we may abide in perfect freedom and love. Jesus has claimed us as his own that we may know that love which secures our place in heaven and casts out all fear. The Spirit has given us gifts to bear good fruit in the world, fruits of justice and grace and forgiveness and hope, as is our new nature in Christ. We do not love because we have to, we do not give because we know the bills keep coming in, we do not welcome the stranger because it is in our mission statement to seek and serve the ever changing needs of our community - we do these things, rather, because we are connected to the vine and so it is now in our nature to share the life which flows through us. There is no longer any place for shame or fear. Even the Ethiopian eunuch now has a rich legacy to impart, a heritage, and descendants in the faith of Jesus who has embraced him when all other laws have rendered him impotent. Because God can make a way out of no way. God can make life spring from places of death. God can sit with us through the night of grief all night long and bring joy in the morning. God can, and God has. God has already done this in Jesus, and God continues to do this in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.
What is to keep me from being baptized? From being welcomed? From being loved? Nothing. Not any more. Thanks be to God.
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