May 5, 2024

If there is one major disconnect between our experience of church and that first Christian community, it would be how we view food and meals. We see how as a menu of choices, we select what we want based on availability, taste, allergies, affordability. Then, the church was focused on dietary laws, what they were allowed to eat, what was forbidden. Further, now we eat either to supply our bodies with nutrition and energy, possibly a taste we crave or to mark an event, like Thanksgiving, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Easter. Then, meals were a demonstration of continuity, an expression of gratitude for blessedness, a formal recognition of standing. Those who were at the table had been selected with consideration, their place at the table signified their status.

So it is not surprising that the early church, recorded in the Book of Acts, reveals tensions around food and meal times. And the 21st century church looks at these texts with confusion at best, indifference at worst. But beneath the surface of these stories of conflict lay the seeds of who the church was meant to be, the mission those early converts sought to embody. And as we work to reclaim a vision of church no longer the social network of the status quo, such a mission and outlook may help us better understand ourselves and our future.

Let’s look at this story given to us by those who organize the lectionary, on this 6th Sunday of Easter. Cornelius, a spiritual, but not religious Gentile living in Caesarea of some importance in the Roman legion had a vision. It was a clear vision, to send for an apostle of Jesus named Peter. Peter, a devout and faithful Jew and an ardent follower of Jesus, had a vision, too. His was not so clear. In fact, it was downright bizarre. Peter was in Joppa, praying on the roof of his friend's house, and he was hungry. While food was being prepared, he fell into a trance and saw a sheet being lowered down from the heavens, filled with the foods good Jews were not allowed to touch, much less eat. There was a voice, "Get up Peter, kill and eat." Peter's response, "By no means Lord! You know I can't eat what is profane and unclean!" There was a counter-response, "What God has made, you must not call profane."

The Holy Spirit said "Go!" so Peter went. Arriving at the Gentile house, he realized Cornelius was having a genuine experience of God, so he started preaching, to explain about this God who was giving Cornelius visions. Before Peter could finish his sermon, the Holy Spirit short-circuited the usual order of things and poured through the room. And now reading from the 10th chapter of Acts: While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even to the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 'Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?' So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

Matthew's gospel tells us that Jesus thought so much of Peter that, in fact, the Church would be founded upon him. In the book of Acts, we see early evidence of Peter stepping up to the challenge of leadership in the Church. It was Peter who quickly became the voice for the eleven remaining apostles (Acts 1:16). It was Peter who recognized the presence of the Holy Spirit in the chaos of Pentecost (2:14). Peter was the one who began to believe enough in the "greater things that would be done in Christ's name" that he was able to heal, cure, and even raise someone from the dead!

In our story today people are already filled with the Holy Spirit and then are baptized. They are completely outside the community and in fact are considered sinners because of their lifestyle. Cornelius the Centurion is a story of how the community of Jesus followers opened themselves up to receiving people different from themselves.

The Book of Acts is often referred to as the story of the Gentile mission. Most of its 28 chapters tell the story of how "The Way" of Jesus (Acts 24:14) expanded from its origins in and around Jerusalem to gain followers all around the Mediterranean. This was no easy feat. To adapt from Jewish into non-Jewish cultures required excruciating growing pains. Did new followers have to be circumcised, as adults? Did they have to follow Jewish dietary customs? None of these questions brought unanimity. I love remembering that good church folks have been fighting with each other since the beginning, it makes today's church fights seem less threatening. People of faith have always disagreed about the path of integrity.

None of us knows exactly what Peter meant when he blurted out, "God shows no partiality!" He didn't include a 10-point list of the folks who should be included in faith communities. He didn't make a Biblical case for his bald assertion, he never says "those dietary laws in our Scriptures are moot." He skips over the Biblical argument. His only defense seems to be "the Spirit made me do it." What Peter did changed the course of Christianity forever. He opened it to the whole world, to you and me, who would never have been welcome if this vision of God's impartiality had not worked its way through Peter's, and Cornelius, active imaginations.

When Peter declared, "God shows no partiality," he opened the possibility that anyone -- everyone -- is welcome in the family of faith. He also put us on warning: the rules were changed for you, so that you could come in -- who are you, then, to prevent God from blessing the whole human family? Who are you to stand in the way of God's love? The Spirit is still here. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everyone.

In reflecting on the common good of human communities, Scottish-American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre asks, “what difference to moral philosophy would it make, if we were to treat the facts of vulnerability and affliction and the related facts of dependence as central to the human condition?” To extend the scope of MacIntyre’s question, I further add, what difference would it make to our conceptions of and attempts to secure the church’s common good if the church community was to treat vulnerability, poverty, and affliction in this way?

There are many ways the church of the 21st century can and should interpret this story from the early church. When I began my journey as an ordained minister, I heard so many people refer to “little clicks”. The emphasis then was to offer the Gospel as inclusive of all peoples, not just a few. Expressions like hoity-toity and mucky mucks were common for those who were seen to the included, while others we left out. Over time this changed, and the issue of inclusion and diversity referred more specifically to persons who identified in ways not common to the existing church demographics. So when it came to church leadership, it became important to name persons who were younger, women, persons of colour. And later, this also came to include gays and lesbians, then also bisexuals, and now a more all-encompassing term, Queer or LGBTQIA2S+. The United Church in particular, has taken great efforts to bring clergy and lay leaders into an awareness of this missionary effort.

I am proud of these efforts, albeit coming later and less effective than any follower of Jesus should expect from the church. We have a LONG way to go. Still, I find other ways our church needs to improve its reach and hospitality, and one I see played out so often is our middle-class biases and assumptions. Language, music, liturgy, programming, are often presented by faith communities to new arrivals as if everyone in the church is a university educated professional (in the case of the United Church, someone who works for a government, school, hospital, or university). There are a variety of ways we leave people out.

I have discovered the best way to offer testimonies and teaching of the Christian faith is to have regular conversation with a variety of people, new to the church, familiar with the church, from other churches. Listening to them, sharing stories and information with them, brings to light what language is most effective at clear communication. And giving voice to these persons, allows them to express what God is doing in our communities.

Then Peter said, 'Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?' So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

How can any of us withhold what God is doing in our midst? Being baptized is another way of saying, to welcome into our communities of faith. Note the ending of this section, Then they invited him to stay for several days. The invitation to stay, is a sign the Spirit is alive and well in the church. If you are wondering if the Spirit is moving in the church, look to see if those who are new are asking those who are familiar to “stay” and share their stories.

I am always delighted to receive, hear, your stories of faith. They inform my sermons, faith studies, indeed, my own story of faith. “Preaching to the converted” is not a recipe for growth in any way, shape, or form. Listening to each other, celebrating, and praying for and with one another, is the church at its best, as it was intended to be. Amen.

April 28, 2024

Here’s a question to ask ourselves as we move deeper into the season of Easter: what difference does the resurrection make in the way we live and practice our faith?  Is the world of the empty tomb substantially different from the world that came before it, or is Easter a mountaintop experience we briefly enjoy but then leave behind to return to “real” life in the valley? For this fifth Sunday of Easter, the lectionary gives us the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. As young adult, adult, and early in my ministry, I experienced this story from Acts as a one-way teaching moment, that is, as the story of one person (Philip) sharing with another person (the eunuch), Good News. What I took from hearing and writing those sermons was this, faith was a compelling argument, a means to bring another “along”.

What I cherish about it now is the two-way learning it depicts. In my view, Philip is also a student, and what he learns from the eunuch has a great deal to tell us about the life of faith, post-Easter. In his Spirit-led encounter with the Ethiopian official, Philip learns that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. Everything he knows about insiders and outsiders. The eunuch isn’t the only person in the story who undergoes a conversion; the Spirit leads Philip to experience a conversion as well.

The story begins with “the angel of the Lord” directing Philip to a certain "wilderness road" that leads away from Jerusalem. There, on the geographical margins, Philip finds the Ethiopian eunuch, a man who occupies many margins. He is a man interested enough in Israel’s God to make a pilgrimage from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, but according to Hebrew law, he is not free to practice his faith in the Temple (Deuteronomy 23:1). It’s possible that he is a Jew, but in Philip’s eyes, he is a foreigner, a Black man from Africa. He is a man of rank and privilege, a royal official in charge of his queen’s treasury, but he is also a powerless outsider — a man who doesn’t fit into the social and sexual paradigms of his time and place. He is wealthy enough to possess a scroll of Isaiah, and literate enough to read it, but he lacks the knowledge, context, and experience to understand what he’s reading.

In other words, the unnamed eunuch occupies an in-between space, a space of reversal and surprise that stubbornly resists our tidy categories of belonging and non-belonging. What kind of person, after all, earnestly seeks after a God whose laws prohibit his bodily presence in the Temple? What kind of wealthy, high-ranking official humbly asks a stranger on the road for help with his spiritual life? What kind of long-rejected religious outcast sees a body of water and stops in his tracks because he recognizes first — before Philip, the supposed Christian “expert” — that God is issuing him a gorgeous, unconditional, and irresistible invitation?

The Ethiopian eunuch hears the good news of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and decides to become a follower of Christ. That is true and it is wonderful. But consider for a moment the amazing question he asks Philip in return: “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Sit with this for a while as a real question — as a zinger of a question. Ponder it as a dilemma Philip must grapple with as strenuously and as seriously as the eunuch grapples with the life-altering implications of the Gospel.

“What is to prevent me?” What is to prevent me from belonging to the family of God?  What is to prevent me from being welcomed as Christ’s own? What is to prevent me from full participation in the risen life and community of Jesus? What is to prevent me from breaking down the entrenched barriers, fences, walls, and obstacles that have kept me at an agonizing arm’s length from the God I yearn for? What is to prevent me from becoming, not merely a hearer of the Good News, but an integral part of the Good News of resurrection?

I listened carefully on two successive Wednesday nights here at Bethany to Tamsin’s story. Kathleen, their mom, talked about how socially awkward her child was, yet how at home they were in the Lutheran church on Sunday morning. Later, when Tamsin began to explore their identity, church once again began to feel like home. But would the church be open to this relationship? Often, when God calls those who may be unfamiliar to our tidy categories, we hesitate to offer the welcome we are called to extend. It is usually the one who is identified as “other” who needs to take the initiative, ask, “what is to prevent me…?”

Notice in this Bible story that it is the eunuch who commands the chariot to stop so that he and Philip can make their way to the water. Philip doesn't say a word; he merely obeys the prompting of the man who knows without a doubt that he belongs, that the God he has worshipped from a distance for so long is now doing a new and earth-shattering thing. 

In his beautiful commentary on the book of Acts, theologian Willie James Jennings describes the story of the eunuch this way: “Faith found the water. Faith will always find the water.” The question is not about the wideness of God’s embrace. The question is not about God’s capacity or readiness to lead his beloved ones to baptism.  As this story makes abundantly clear, the Spirit will do what the Spirit will do. The only question that remains is whether we’ll participate in the joyful post-resurrection work of God or not. Look, here is water! What is to prevent us from stepping in?

The author tells us not once but five times that the Ethiopian was a eunuch. So what exactly is a eunuch? According to the most current scholarship, in the first century a eunuch is one of two things. A eunuch could have been a man who had been castrated. This particular Ethiopian could have been a castrated male, or he could have been a male who wasn’t like most males. According to the scholars, men who showed a preference for other men or displayed little or no interest in women, or who were in anyway effeminate, in the first century these men were called eunuchs.

At this particular time in history, eunuchs had three major roles in society. Because it was either physically impossible for them to father children, or because of their preferences highly unlikely that they would father children, eunuchs were often employed as military officers, domestic servants, or treasury officers. Without children of their own to worry about eunuchs were also free to be domestic servants and because of their lack of interest eunuchs would be safe to employ around women. As they were unlikely to father children, rulers could trust that eunuchs wouldn’t seek hereditary power so they were often entrusted with positions in the treasury because they wouldn’t need to amass wealth to pass on to their children.

Eunuchs we’re popular employees with queens, who didn’t want anybody casting aspersions on any of their offspring.  Now, while rulers entrusted eunuchs with certain key positions, they were pretty much shunned by the rest of society. They were outcasts. According to our story, this Ethiopian eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home. Now the Bible is very clear on the subject of eunuchs and worship. According to the Book of Deuteronomy, which contains the law as it was laid out by Moses, eunuchs were forbidden to worship in the house of God.

The passage the Ethiopian eunuch was reading was about the Suffering Servant of God, who was “cut off” from the people of God. It was no accident he was reading this. Surely, he was trying to figure out why he himself was being cut off from the people of God because if he was reading this passage, he likely also read the neighboring passages where God promised to bless all those who had been excluded and cut off because they were different. In Isaiah 56:2-6 God declares: “eunuchs who keep the Sabbath and follow the covenant will have an everlasting name and blessing, better even than sons and daughters, an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” Philip shared the Good News of Jesus with the Ethiopian eunuch. This Suffering Servant the eunuch was reading about was someone he could identify with. This was a Messiah who had been cut off, just like him.

Jesus was much like the Ethiopian eunuch, someone who did not, does not, fit easily into any of our tidy categories. He appears in the Gospels, in the most unlikely places, like the wilderness road. But he also appears, in resurrection stories, on the Emmaus Road. He appears as a stranger, as the other, with the other. We, especially the church, look for Jesus to look like us, be like us. But God’s love, God’s house, has “many rooms”, space for all. And what is so amazing to me is this, those whom we have “cut off” still seem keen to “come in”. “What is to prevent me?” Nothing.

“Faith found the water. Faith will always find the water.” Amen.