One of the most brilliant and riveting expositions of the Bible that I’ve ever heard was given at the Chautauqua Institution two summers ago by The Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundblad, a Lutheran professor at Union Theological Seminary, and a renowned preacher. In what I say today I’m depending on what she said then, though I can guarantee neither the brilliance nor the riveting.
It was our first reading today, Acts 8:26-40, that caught her attention. She observed that with each repetition of the word “eunuch”, the men in the audience could be seen crossing their legs, uncrossing their legs, crossing them again.
The other detail repeated by Luke in his story is how this eunuch is an Ethiopian, which to a resident of the Middle East at that time was just as exotic as could be. Both details are useful to Luke, who means to intrigue his hearers. That the occupant of this chariot is Ethiopian suggests how far-reaching Judaism was in the first century, and as a result how international and cosmopolitan.
That he was a eunuch described his paradoxical station in life: to oversee the handmaids of Candace, the Queen of the Ethiopians, he was qualified by having been castrated, having been made something other than an ordinary man. Most likely in the eyes of his male contemporaries, something less than a man. “A dry tree,” they may have called him, behind his back. But he had so excelled as an overseer that the Queen had put him in charge of her entire treasury. What was biologically central to his manhood had been taken away from him surgically, but he was powerful, wealthy, and traveled in style, in his very own chariot—then, as now, a sign of prestige.
As intriguing as this fellow is, Luke’s central character is, actually, the deacon Philip. As a deacon, he wasn’t supposed to be jaunting around the countryside preaching and teaching—he was expected to be taking care of the orphans and widows. But, according to Luke, Philip listened to the angels for his marching orders, and they sent him into the desert, along a wilderness road. There he is, hiking along in the breakdown lane, when there comes whizzing up to him this first-century SUV, whose driver we have already met.
If it was the angels who sent him, it’s now the Spirit of God that directs him, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” We’re then invited to let our imaginations picture Deacon Philip, running alongside to catch up.
Do you recall what the Ethiopian eunuch is doing? Yes, he’s committing the first-century equivalent of texting while driving. And his text is the prophet Isaiah.
“Do you understand what you’re reading?” asks Philip.
The eunuch, fresh from the revival of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, admits that he’s trying to make sense of the scroll he had acquired there in the capital—that he had spent a bundle on—and he had to admit that he would welcome some help unpacking its meaning. A convert to Judaism, he readily admitted that he was very much a learner and needed a guide.
Before this, he must have heard conflicting messages about how welcome he was in the eyes of God. Surely someone—maybe many—had cited to him Deuteronomy 23:1. Now there’s a verse of scripture you didn’t learn in Sunday School. Are you ready to hear it? “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.”
What a text for Mothers’ Day! What a text for a baptism!
But don’t you think this Ethiopian had heard this scripture used against him? On the basis of that text, how could this man ever have imagined taking his place in the assembly of Israel?
Just ahead in that scroll of Isaiah, just three chapters later than the portion he is reading today, the Ethiopian will hear what he is longing to hear. At chapter 56:3-6 we read, “Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say, ‘The LORD will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast to my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”
The Holiness Code in Deuteronomy speaks in categories not of human choosing, and so: No eunuchs allowed. The prophet Isaiah speaks of human choice: The eunuch who holds fast to God’s covenant love is precious to God. It isn’t by categories that we are saved or distanced—it is one by one, as each of us chooses how to respond to the grace of God.
That day at Chautauqua, Barbara Lundblad urged us to see how the responsible use of the Bible rests not in citing texts that prohibit, but in allowing conversation between the covenant love of God and the present. She invited us to consider how the Church, in its ongoing struggle with the present, is tempted to limit its use of the Bible to proscriptive prohibitive texts, and fail to welcome the conversation that just a little imagination prescribes--in centuries past justifying slavery, racism, the exclusion of women from full human status, and, in our own time, excluding queer people from full human status, all by staying on the surface of the Bible and not opening ourselves to the deeper conversation the Spirit wants to have with us on the subject of choosing, holding fast to, the covenant love of God.
Let’s make sure we don’t miss what’s happening in that chariot. The passage in Isaiah that the eunuch is reading is this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” This is just a portion of the marvelous description of God’s suffering servant who will accomplish a new dimension of faithfulness on earth.
“About whom, may I ask, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”
Oh, we know! We know who it is we see in this text: We hear it in Holy Week. We use it to describe the passion of Christ, his self-offering on the cross. We know whom Isaiah means… And, sure enough, Philip introduces the Ethiopian to the Christ “starting with this scripture,” proclaiming to him the good news of Jesus.
But, said Barbara Lundblad that day, you can read the whole of the prophet Isaiah and you won’t find Jesus mentioned once. It’s possible that the prophet was speaking about himself, or some other prophet, when he described this suffering servant. The Jewish people have understood this suffering servant to represent the nation of Israel, the people of God. Without a doubt, the first Christians heard this passage and found it a perfect description of Jesus whom they called Messiah. In doing that, they entered a conversation with the Spirit of God. Without a witness beyond the text itself, Philip could not have seen Jesus in that text.
The eunuch, who has stood before the shearers and has tasted humiliation, is having his own conversation with the text as he asks, “About whom does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” He is daring to wonder, does the prophet speak this about him, a dry tree, a eunuch from Ethiopia?
By asking, this man opens the door of his chariot to God in Christ. In his little course on the good news, Philip must have gotten to the matter of baptism as a sign of uniting one’s old life to the new life that is in Jesus Christ.
“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” asks the Ethiopian. How many times have I heard this moment in this story without imagining what Barbara Lundblad showed us, that day: that this is a desert road, where one does not expect there to be water.
Without the abundant provident love of God, none of us can expect full inclusion in the assembly, our own place at the table, in the heart, of God.
This eunuch, in conversation with the Spirit bearing witness in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, will soon be splashing in the waters of new birth and gaining that everlasting name foretold in the 56th chapter of Isaiah and made available to him this day on that wilderness road by God in the present moment. God, who runs alongside us in the breakdown lane, in unlikely characters like Deacon Philip, and asks to be invited into deep conversation about staying true to the covenant love in which God chooses us.
Today, Oliver will feel the waters of new birth and be marked as Christ’s own forever. It is for each of us who stand with him today—Sloane, Gerry, Celia, Susan, Maggie, and each one of us—to be the deacon who helps God ensure that Oliver is drawn into deep conversation about choosing, and staying true to, the covenant love in which God and Ollie will delight in each other.
