I Want It

Easter 5B, 5/3/15
Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-12

God of love, you created the whole world and made all people in your image. Help us to see you in one another. Help us to love each other and the world that you made. Help us to spread the Gospel to all nations, in your name. Amen.

A church I used to work at had the most beautiful silver Communion set.

When it was my turn to celebrate Communion, I always got distracted when I held up the chalice, because I could see my reflection in it – sort of like you can see your reflection in a spoon – kind of distorted.

But this chalice was gorgeous, it was very large, it caught the light, and it was certainly the center of attention during the celebration of Communion…  
as the blood of Christ should be.

One particular time that I celebrated Communion, there was a high-energy young boy in the second row – not the first row, because then he would be able to run around wherever he wanted – but in the second row, so he could see what was going on but was confined by the seats in front of him and his parents sitting about 15 feet apart from each other, giving him space to squirm.

The boy was about 3 years old.

         And he wasn’t squirming just then.

As I was holding up the chalice for the congregation to see, while I said the Words of Institution, a little voice piped up from the second row.

I want it!

How simple.

And how profound.

This little boy knew that there had to be something special in that big, beautiful silver cup, and he knew that whatever it was, he wanted in on it.

That kid preached a better sermon that Sunday than any of the pastors could have hoped to do.

Something similar happens in the first reading today.

In the book of Acts, there’s an Ethiopian official reading the Scriptures, and when Philip comes along to explain what they mean, the Ethiopian asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

He knows there’s something special about this community of believers, and whatever it is, he wants in on it.

What it to prevent him from being baptized?

Everything.

There are a number of reasons why this Ethiopian official is not a good candidate for baptism.

For starters, he’s not a Jew.

In these earliest days after the Resurrection, followers of Jesus haven’t really spread too far outside of the Jewish community that they stemmed from in the first place.

God made promises to the Hebrew people – they were the chosen ones, they were the ones who needed the promised Messiah, who had just turned out to be Jesus.

People outside of that covenant were seen as less important in the grand scheme of things. From everything that Philip knew up to this point in his life, the Ethiopian was probably even less important to God than he was. So why should he, one of the apostles, offer baptism, the sacred act of initiation into the Christian community, to this heathen foreigner?

There was no good reason for him to do so, based on ancient Jewish ways of thinking.

Why shouldn’t Philip baptize this man?

Why should he?

As the story clearly states, the Ethiopian is uninformed. He doesn’t understand the Scriptures, so how can he understand the meaning of baptism?

Ignorance is another barrier that this guy is facing. He isn’t one of the chosen people, and he also isn’t educated about Judaism.

This, of course, begs the question of why he had gone to Jerusalem to worship in the first place. This is one of the great mysteries of this story, and we’ll never know what had drawn him to the God of the Hebrew people.

Somehow this guy had encountered the Hebrew Scriptures and found them interesting, and for some reason he had chosen to worship in Jerusalem.

He doesn’t seem to have any good explanation as to why, and he can’t understand the prophetic passages in Isaiah that he’s reading as Philip stumbles upon him, so he asks Philip to help him understand.

Maybe this point actually works both for and against the case for the Ethiopian to be baptized.

Why shouldn’t he? Because he’s uninformed and doesn’t know anything about the God of Israel, which means he’s probably unprepared for this initiation rite.

But why should he be baptized? It appears that the Holy Spirit is working on him somehow, leading him to Jerusalem and to the Scriptures.

Still, though, he doesn’t exactly fit the ideal description of a new member of a new religious movement.

What is to prevent me from being baptized?

You know, it’s odd, we don’t know much about this Ethiopian official – we don’t even get his name – but we do know some very personal information about him.

He’s a eunuch.

This was commonplace in many societies – if high-ranking servants were castrated, they posed no threat to the women in the ruling classes – at least, no threat that those women’s husbands and fathers were worried about.

Also, since eunuchs were unable to father children of their own, they posed no threat to the leadership of the ruling family. They had no reason to participate in a coup, because they could have no sons to succeed them on the throne.

The fact that this Ethiopian official was a eunuch gives us two other reasons why he shouldn’t be baptized.

First, he is physically disabled.

In ancient Judaism, anyone with physical blemishes or deformities would have been prohibited from entering the Temple.

We know this already – we’ve heard stories before about lepers having to stay outside the city walls so that their condition doesn’t rub off on others.

Well, it turns out this was the case with a lot of physical ailments or deformities. Temple worship in Jesus’ day was pretty exclusive – all women were excluded from entering the Temple, and the men had to meet very particular criteria.

A eunuch would fail that test.

Why had this man even gone to Jerusalem to worship? He traveled all the way from Ethiopia, to worship in Jerusalem, and he wouldn’t have even been able to participate in worship at the Temple.

If he couldn’t be accepted into the religion that Jesus practiced, why should Philip baptize this man as a follower of Jesus now?

The fact that this man was a eunuch also tells us something very important about him. He was privileged.

Now, it might not sound like that, to those of us who consider castration to be a pretty serious decrease in one’s quality of life.

But in a society that was run by slaves, the ones who were important enough to be made into eunuchs were the ones who were entrusted with the most power.

This man may not have been able to have his own children, but he could have provided wonderfully for his ageing parents.

Only the most trusted servants were eunuchs.

Today’s story specifically tells us that this man was in charge of the queen’s entire treasury. He held a position of great power in Ethiopia.

         Now think about what Philip had just experienced.

His mentor and leader, Jesus, had been put to death by the ruling authorities. And suddenly, here is a ruling official from someone else’s government, asking to be baptized. What is to prevent him?

If Philip baptizes this man, he is putting himself and the other followers of Jesus at risk from a new set of authorities. How does he know that this man and all the power that he represents can be trusted with the Gospel? Maybe he just wants to be baptized so that he can infiltrate their ranks and see them all be put to death.

If the Ethiopian gets baptized, he puts his position in the queen’s court at risk.

He is risking everything that defines him for the sake of some new religious sect he has just learned about, and whose leader was recently executed. Why would he choose to follow a troublemaker like Jesus? It’s hard to believe that a man entrusted with the queen’s treasury would make such a life-changing decision on a whim, as he seems to do today.  

What is to prevent the Ethiopian official from being baptized?

         Everything.

There is really no good reason for him to join this powerless group of people who follow the teachings of Jesus.

And there really is no good reason for them to let him join them.

Except that the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Spirit spoke to this Ethiopian traveler, and told him that there was something special about these Scriptures and this fledgling religion.

And in the simplest, most profound words, the Ethiopian responded – I want it.

This powerful servant was baptized, and returned home rejoicing.

He is credited with bringing Christianity to Ethiopia.

And while that can’t be proven exactly, we do know that Ethiopia adopted Christianity as the official religion in the 300s – not long after Rome adopted it as the religion of the Empire.

Today, nearly two-thirds of Ethiopians are Christian, mostly members of the Coptic Church, one of the oldest churches in the world.

And, if tradition is to be believed, none of this would have happened if Philip or the Ethiopian eunuch had listened to conventional wisdom.

Thankfully, these men instead listened to the whispers of the Holy Spirit.

Philip broke the rules of inclusion and exclusion that he had lived by his whole life. The Ethiopian put his privilege at risk by worshipping in Jerusalem and joining this emerging religion.  

They ignored the distinctions between insiders and outsiders, powerful and powerless, educated and ignorant, wealthy and poor, and every other barrier that society had burdened them with.

They cast their divisions aside and listened to a message of grace from the Holy Spirit.

And that is what we can learn from this story, as well.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

God is love.

God gets rid of the dividers between people.

Since God loves us so much, we should also love one another.

Welcome other people.

Give them the benefit of the doubt.

Offer your friendship.

Give assistance when it’s needed.

Give compassion at all times. 

Beloved, let us love one another.

When someone is reaching out, asking for grace in the form of baptismal waters or Communion wine or a handshake or a handout or anything else that it is within your power to give – meet them halfway, as Philip does in today’s story.

And welcome the other person with open arms, as God welcomes you.

Amen.