Call: The Holy Inevitability of Hope

Isaiah 6:1-8 (9-13)

Trinity Sunday Year B

May 31, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Of all the theological concepts and constructs the church has managed to devise over the last two thousand years, none is as confusing, confounding, or down right difficult to understand than the doctrine of the Trinity.

            Since the early 18^th century work of German theologian Johan August Urlsburger, Trinitarian theology has focused on the distinction between an immanent trinity and the economic trinity.  The immanent trinity seeks to understand the relationship of the triune God and the world; how does God encounter creation as Father, Son, and Spirit; how does God relate in the here and now?

            The economic trinity seeks to understand how the persons of the trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit, relate to one another.

            As if the concept of a God who is three in one, three persons of one being, Urlsburger and those who followed him did what theologians often do; they unnecessarily complicated something that was not exactly easy in the first place. 

            The problems with the immanent and economic trinity are too numerous and, frankly, too boring to name this morning. 

            Almost twenty-five years ago, a book was published that sought to address what is arguably the most troublesome of those pesky theological problems.  By speaking about the trinity in either immanent or economic terms, in other words by speaking about how God relates to the world OR to Godself, our theology begins to separate the nature of God into halves. 

            Catholic theologian Catherine Mowry Lacugna argued that far from two technical ways of speaking about God, the immanent and the economic, the language of the trinity is in fact the language of the radical holiness of our present and active God.  Trinitarian language is the cornerstone, she argued, of any systematic theology.

             Trinity Sunday invites us to attend to this mystical reality of the God who is present and active in our lives and in our world. 

Part of that mystic reality is God’s radical holiness.

That is the focus of Isaiah’s vision we head this morning.

In his vision, Isaiah encounters the great I AM, the Lord of Hosts, the Divine Other, the Lord of all.  In that moment, the distant otherness of God was right there.  This was no still small voice like Elijah encountered, this was the Triune God in full glory complete with seraphs covering their faces as they sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts…the whole earth is full of God’s glory.”

With the possible exception of those parts we hear around Christmastime, the first eight verses of chapter six are probably the best known of all of Isaiah’s writing. 

Summoned to the throne of God, Isaiah is struck by his own unworthiness.  He does not belong there and he knows it. 

Yet there he is.

Standing before the throne of God hearing the divine voice calling him to this prophetic ministry.

At its heart, this IS a call story.

            Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  And I said, “Here am I; send me.”

            If the movement of Isaiah’s vision sounds familiar, it may be because there is a roadmap of it in your hand this morning.  Our order of worship is similar to Isaiah’s vision.  We come into God’s presence to give praise and, like the Seraphs, we sing our “Holy, holy, holies” to God. 

            We acknowledge our sinfulness.

            We seek God’s forgiveness.

            We ask that God would give us ears to hear and hearts to understand God’s word so that we too can respond in faith. 

            All of the elements of our worship- gathering, praising, confessing, praying, hearing, and responding- are appropriate responses to the holy Triune God who claims us.[i]  It was precisely this sort of encounter that Catherine Lacugna had in mind when she said that the doctrine of the Trinity is the cornerstone of any theology of our calling God. 

            Call is what happens every time God breaks down the walls that divide the creator and the creation; every time God speaks in the life of one of God’s children; every time God flips a light switch and reveals something new and unexpected.

            I have to admit that my own sense of call was less of a light switch being flipped the way it was for Isaiah and more like a dimmer switch being turned up very, very slowly. 

Whether it happens with the clarion call of Isaiah’s vision or sneaks up on you when you least expect it, at its heart there is a deep mystery at work whenever God calls and whether it is loud as a siren or silent as a lamb, God’s call always brings with it a profound upsetting of our equilibrium.  We tend to read this text like Isaiah is recalling a placid encounter with the holy, but I imagine that hearing it first hand from the prophet there would have been a dose of trembling wonder in his voice…

            “In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the LORD…sitting on a throne…high and lofty and the hem of his robe FILLED the temple!...”

            Divine call is a bit frightening.

            Or at least it should be.

            Far too often we leave the power of divine call the same way we leave worship on Sunday mornings…we cut it off at the comfortable points.

            This text we have today from Isaiah is a case in point.  Churches around the world who use the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary are reading this passage from Isaiah 6; these familiar and appealing and sentimental words of the prophet ending with that familiar phrase of holy surrender… ”Here am I; send me.”

            On the one hand it is a beautiful place to end the reading.  But on another it is actually quite dangerous.  It is dangerous because leaving it there leaves the impression that the heat of divine calling is this romantic notion of sweet surrender.

            Now, don’t get me wrong.  I would be fine with it if the end of the matter was a moment of sweet surrender to God; if the whole of the Christian life was dewy garden paths and sweet chariots coming to take us home.  I would be fine if ministry was what so many pastors start out thinking it is- just a life of loving people and being their friend just like a lot of us are lulled into thinking that the Christian life happens between 11am and noon once a week. 

            Here am I, Lord.  Let’s leave it at that. 

            That would be nice.  I wouldn’t mind it if the whole of Christian call ended with our reading today.

            The problem, of course, is that life does not end at verse 8 and neither does God.

            There is more to this whole call thing than a moment of holy surrender, there is also the matter of the rest of the text; the part that comes after the moment of sweet surrender; the part that comes after the benediction in church on Sunday morning. 

            After the moment of sweet surrender, comes the hard part; the part when God says…

 “Go and say to this people:

Listen intently, but don’t understand;
    look carefully, but don’t comprehend.
¹⁰ Make the minds of this people dull.
    Make their ears deaf and their eyes blind,
    so they can’t see with their eyes
    or hear with their ears,
    or understand with their minds,
    and turn, and be healed.”

¹¹ I said, “How long, Lord?”

And God said, “Until cities lie ruined with no one living in them, until there are houses without people and the land is left devastated.” ¹² The Lord will send the people far away, and the land will be completely abandoned. ¹³ Even if one-tenth remain there, they will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, which when it is cut down leaves a stump. Its stump is a holy seed.

            While the lectionary text ends with verse 8, it is what follows that gets Isaiah, and us, into trouble.  Rather than a call to a settled ministry- a call to a settled life nestled comfortably in the familiar surroundings of your usual pew on Sunday mornings- God calls Isaiah and us to prophetic engagement in a world that is profoundly deaf to our words. 

            To be sure there is a hint of hyperbole in these latter verses of Isaiah 6.  The picture of Israel that is painted sounds like a desolate landscape devoid of life or hope like the scenery of Cormac McCarthy’s novel the Road.  Things were bad in Israel but they weren’t nearly THAT bad. 

Still, it isn’t any surprise that the compilers of the lectionary and the preachers who follow it would rather leave things with “Here am I; send me.”  That sun kissed dewy garden path is a lot more appealing than the grey skied post-apocalyptic wasteland of “until cities lie ruined with no one living in them.”

Just watch the news or read the paper or pay the slightest attention to the world around us and it won’t take long before you start crying with Isaiah’s other words, “How long, LORD?”

How long until we get beyond the petty jealousies of political rivalry?

How long until we get past the cancer of racial and ethnic hatred?

How long until we put sexism, racism, ageism, xenophobia, homophobia, religious intolerance, and economic disparity behind us?

How long will the world remain deaf to the word proclaimed and blind to the word revealed?

How long, LORD, how long?!

If verses 1-8 recounts the awe inspiring wonder of being called by this holy Triune God, 9-13 reveals the perils of saying yes to God.  Because whether it is destructiveness of a culture of consumption that threatens to consume us or idolatries that threaten to drive the church to distraction or destruction, there is plenty in the world to persuade even the most faithful of prophets to move quickly from “Here am I” to “How long, LORD?” in less time than a TV preacher can ask for a donation.

The inevitability of the reality of the world make prophetic calling seem anything but appealing.  

The opening words of T. S. Eliot’s epic poem the Waste Land have an eerie echo of this harsh truth.  He writes,

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with the spring rain.

Like the prophetic call that begins with sentimental surrender and ends with a desolate landscape, year after year spring offers up new life only to remind us that it is merely temporary- fleeting. 

The call to proclaim the gospel in a world that is deaf to our words is like admiring the beauty of lilacs that will only be swallowed up by the earth again.  The church speaks, the world does not hear, the church speaks, the world does not hear.  It is an endless cycle of inevitability.

Even the heartiest, the prophet says, will die- they will be cut down to the stump.  By the end nothing remains.

Nothing, that is, except a holy remnant; the stump, Isaiah says, is a holy seed. 

That is the true inevitability; hope.

The hope that remains even in the most desolate of places.

The hope that dwells even in the most barren of lands.

The hope that cannot be defeated, denied, or destroyed.

The holy disruption that is the call of our triune God in the life of each and every one of us is the holy disruption of hope.

“Whom shall I send?”

“Here am I; send me.”

“How long, LORD, how long?”

“Soon and very soon.”

Alleluia.  Alleluia.  Amen. 

---

[i] Kristine Emery Saldine, Feasting on the Word Year B.

Custodians of the Promise

Acts 1:1-11

Ascension of the Lord

Year B

May 17, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Today is actually two days- this is the seventh Sunday of Easter, the day we bring our prolonged season of Alleluia to a close and it is also the day we observe Ascension Sunday, the day when Christ was taken up into heaven.

            Today two of the great moments in the history of the church come together; the Resurrection of Christ from the dead and the return of Christ to sit at the right hand of God the Father almighty, as the creed says. 

            This moment in the history of the faith is so important that Luke actually tells it twice.  One instance of his telling is in our reading today from the book of Acts.  A second is found in his gospel, in Luke 24.  The stories are remarkably similar, which makes sense since we believe the same author wrote both.  In both the central actions are the same; Jesus takes one last chance to teach the disciples and God takes him from their presence into God’s.

            The gospel account has the disciples standing there in silence listening and watching, but Acts includes a question from them.  It doesn’t tell us who asked the question, but let’s face it, it was probably Peter.  Whoever it is, the question is one that has been persisting since the beginning of Jesus’ ministry; it is the question of timing.

            When are these things going to happen?

            When are all these promises going to come to pass?

            There is a sense that they have begun to trust that the promises WILL be kept, but the timing still eludes them. 

            So, as Jesus is teaching them this one last time, one of the twelve asks him, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”

            It has taken a while, but their question has changed in at least one important way.  They don’t question IF the kingdom will be restored but WHEN. 

            If we press down lightly on this text, we can see in their question a little progress at least.

            Jesus seems unimpressed with their progress though because he replies, “It isn’t for you to know the times and the seasons the Father has set by his own authority.” 

In other words, you are STILL asking the wrong question.

            It is a NEW wrong question, but it too misses the point.

            What Jesus hears in the disciples’ question is an assumption; that restoration of the kingdom is God’s work and God’s work alone.

            Jesus, in one last effort, tries to get them to understand that when it comes to the kingdom of God, the timing is up to God but the ushering in, well, that is all hands on deck. 

            St. Augustine put it this way, “Without God I can’t; without me God won’t.”

            Or as Desmund Tutu frequently paraphrases, “by himself, God won’t; by ourselves, we can’t; but together, with God, we can.”

            When it comes to the ushering in of the kingdom of God, we are not spectators of God’s work in the world; we are partners in God’s work in the world.

            At its heart, Ascension Sunday is about one part of that that partnership.  Just before he is taken by God to heaven, Jesus entrusts the disciples- entrusts us- one last time with the promises of God and the witness of the Spirit.  When you peel back all the layers of history and tradition, all the pomp and circumstance, all the keepsakes and souvenirs of generations of institutionalized religion, what is the church but a community entrusted with a witness; a story; a good word to share with the world?

            Last week I spent five days with a couple of thousand other preachers at an event that probably sounds like the seventh circle of hell to most people.  It is called the Festival of Homiletics and over the course of four days and evenings, I heard eight sermons and attended six lectures on preaching. 

            It was incredible.

            Yes, it was also an extraordinary display of church nerd-dom as two thousand grown men and women treated a bunch of preachers and professors like they were rock stars.

            And, yes, on the surface a preaching conference is about as dull as it sounds.

            But one thing sets this event apart. 

            As someone who is entrusted week after week to handle the word of God and hopefully share some tiny corner of a window through which we might all peek into it, being with that many others who feel equally ill-equipped and overwhelmed by the privilege and burden of this work is like water on a dry garden- it restores what is nearly wilted to death.  It is life giving to be with other preachers.

            As providence would have it, on Monday morning the Pew Research Center released its latest round of research on religion in America.  The Religious Landscape Survey is the most comprehensive ongoing picture of religion in America and, well, the news was not good.

            Over the last decade, Christian churches across the spectrum- from Catholic and Orthodox to evangelical and mainline Protestant- have either continued to decline in membership or failed to grow with the broader population.  In fact, as the nation’s population has grown, the fastest growing religious identification is “none.”

            Outpacing every Christian category and every non-Christian religious group, the “nones” have grown from 16.1% to 22.8% of the population over the last seven years.

            As you can imagine, that was not welcome news to a convention center full of preachers.

            The day was dominated by conversations about the state of the church, the challenge of church growth, the persistent problem posed by the “nones,” and the generally disheartening state of ministry in a world that, simply put, doesn’t really seem to want what we are selling.

            By Monday night, there were, among those preachers, a lot of long faces and frustration.  I confess, mine was one of them.

            Now, I don’t mean to overplay the scene.  No one was thinking about laying down their cards and giving up the holy game of ministry or anything.  But there was a pall over the proceedings.

            If we are supposed to be partners with God in ushering in the kingdom of God, it looks awfully like we are losing ground.

            I have been here long enough and you know me well enough to know that I do not throw around the name of the Holy Spirit a lot.  I know that for some people the movement of the Spirit is as easy to feel as the breeze in the spring.  As for me, I seem to suffer from an overdose of spiritual Novocain because the Spirit usually has to smack me in the head to get my attention.

            Tuesday morning I got a smack.

            As I sat in the pew at Trinity United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado listening to Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church preach, I was lisening to him and taking notes and getting ideas but my mind was not completely there.  A part of me was still ruminating on that damn Pew report and the frustration I and so many clergy feel about the “nones.”  Then there was a line that jumped from that pulpit and hit me square in the face. 

            Bishop Curry said, “we (meaning preachers) are custodians of the oracles of God.”  What he was talking about was the trust that you put in us week after week to preach God’s word and it is a trust, I for one, cherish.  In that moment, though, I didn’t hear him talking to me as a preacher but me as a member of the body of Christ.  The “we” I heard is this “we” the body of Christ.  “We” are entrusted with the oracles of God.  “We” are the custodians of God’s word.

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            When Jesus was with his disciples in those last moments on those last days, they were worried about when God’s work was going to get done, but Jesus was trying to get them to understand that in the meantime he was trusting them with the Good News OF God’s work. 

            They were to be the custodians of the promise; proclaimers of the promise; partners in the unfolding promise of God.

            And what is the promise of God other than the word of hope that is the risen Christ?

            It was as though a key turned in a lock.

            Jesus told the disciples you are worrying about the wrong thing when you get all caught up in the timing of the coming of the kingdom of God.  Don’t worry about WHEN it will happen.  Your job is to share the Good News THAT it will happen.

            The disciples were worrying about the wrong thing.

            And so was I.

            So are we.

            And at that moment at that Ecumenical conference in that pretty Methodist Church listening to that dynamic Episcopal Bishop, this Presbyterian preacher whispered to himself, “to hell with the Pew report.”

            We are worrying about the wrong thing. 

            We need to stop keeping score about WHEN the world comes to know the truth of God in the risen Christ and start getting about the business of proclaiming THAT the truth of God is the risen Christ.

            We need to stop worrying keeping the church and get about the work of proclaiming the kingdom.

            We are custodians of the promises of God.

            Christ has entrusted us with the very prayers of hope and love he has for this world and we had better get about the business of proclaiming them because if not we, then who will give voice to our savior's ongoing prayer for the world?

            From the moment of the ascension to this one, the church of Jesus Christ has been entrusted, not with the power of granting salvation, but the profound responsibility to proclaim it with out ceasing.

As long as there is breath in our bodies, we are called by Christ who rose to proclaim Christ who is risen.

And when we grow weary with our holy task; when we see Pew research data that makes us doubt our holy work; when we retreat into the tortoise shell of our cultural insecurities and silence our prayers, hope loses its voice in the world.

Because make no mistake about it, friends, the hope of all creation is the risen Christ and the voice of that hope is the people of God.

So let's take a breath, screw our courage to the post, and once more into the breach of this broken and sinful world let's make our voices heard as we sing the hope of God in the prayer of Christ that proclaims the salvation of ALL God's children.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia,  Alleluia! 

Amen.

Sometimes It Is What You DON’T Say

Acts8:26-40

May 3, 2015

First and Harmony Presbyterian Churches

The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

                 

Before we get into this text from Acts, I have to make one observation.

                  Sometimes the bible doesn’t make sense.

                  I don’t mean the confusion that plagues our modern minds when we read about demons and angels or the challenge to our scientific logic when we read about miracles or even the persistently puzzling narrative of the resurrection. 

                  Those are theological and textual issues and they train you in seminary to work with those.

                  What I am talking about is the little stuff.  Those little moments when an important plot element just makes no sense whatsoever. 

                  Like this text today.

                  It makes perfect sense that a eunuch would be the treasurer to the Queen.  Eunuchs were court officials and were presumed to be more trustworthy since they were free from other distractions.

                  It makes sense that he was on the road back to Ethiopia because there was thriving trade between the empires and the only way to easily get from the heart of Rome to Ethiopia was to travel around the edge of the Mediterranean and Jerusalem was a major stopover on the route. 

                  It even makes sense that Phillip would speak to the man since this was at the height of the early church movement and the spread of the gospel.

                  What doesn’t make sense is the essential plot element that gives Phillip the reason to go and speak to the man in the first place.

                  Where did he get a copy of Isaiah??

                  It isn’t like he went by the used Torah store and picked up a copy of the Holy Scriptures.  It was extremely rare for a scroll to be outside of a synagogue, and even rarer still for it to be in the hands of a non-Jew. 

                  John Calvin explains away this little plot issue by chalking it up to divine providence.  God needed this story to happen in a certain way and so it did.  And I suppose that there is something to that.  My Presbyterian ears are pretty sympathetic to “it was providence” being the answer to a question like this. 

                  Then again, maybe it was a coincidence.  Maybe Phillip just got lucky and happened upon the one person whose conversion would be a story for generations.  Who knows?  The bottom line is that this Ethiopian fellow was by the side of the road reading Isaiah when along came Phillip; it happened.  However it happened to happen, that is what happened. 

                  So, here we are finally out of Jerusalem where the last few weeks have kept us as we began this journey with the apostles into the days, weeks, and months after Jesus leaves them with the charge to build the community of faith. 

                  Although the book of Acts is not an historical account like a history textbook, it does help give us a sense of the general direction of the early church both theologically and geographically.  You see, the writer of Acts is the same person who wrote the gospel of Luke.  In fact, Acts is in many ways a sequel to Luke picking up the story where the gospel left off. 

                  Taken together Luke and Acts paint a vivid theological picture of the history of the church.  In Luke, the action in the story generally moves in one direction geographically- toward Jerusalem.  It also moves theologically toward the narrative of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  In fact, Jerusalem and the events of the resurrection are at the heart of the Luke-Acts story. 

                  Acts, picking up where Luke leaves off, takes the story from its geographic and theological location in Jerusalem out into the world.  The gospel is too big to contain in one geographic place or even one community.   As we see throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus is the Jewish messiah but he is the savior of all human kind- Jew and Gentile alike.  And the story of Acts reflects that.  If Luke brings the story to a concentrated focus in the Jewish holy city, Acts takes it out again demonstrating the vast reach of the gospel and the sweeping up of the entire world in the promises of God.

                  Perhaps nothing demonstrates that far-reaching nature of the gospel than the encounter with this Ethiopian eunuch.  In terms of being a foreigner from far off lands, he was the first century equivalent of the man on the moon.  That the gospel could reach him was a profound miracle and demonstrates just how powerful the message of resurrection is and how far we are called to share it.

                  When Phillip encounters the man, the eunuch is reading from Isaiah.  And not just any part of Isaiah, but the passage that speaks of the messiah and his suffering. 

Talk about coincidence!  (Err, I mean providence.)

Phillip meets the man, explains the Isaiah passage to him, travels with him for a while, and, when the man sees a pool of water, baptizes him. 

The short prose of the story gives the whole thing a sense of urgency and action.  The great preacher Frederick Beuchner said that the Ethiopian’s excitement sounds like the babbling of a brook over pebbles.  I think it sounds more like the water crashing over Niagra Falls!  This man has been transformed and he knows it; he feels it; he cannot hold the joy back and even though words escape him, the joy of the moment sounds like a thunder clap echoing around them. 

It is no wonder this is one of the most cherished stories of the New Testament outside of the gospel narratives.  It is short but, wow, is it ever powerful!

I remember growing up and being taught in Sunday school that this story is important because it reminds us that we are called to share the gospel with everyone we meet and when we do we might just help them find their way to the Christian path and the life of the people of God. 

That was true in second grade and I still think it is true today.  We are in fact called to share the gospel in word and deed with the whole world.

Now, do you remember what I asked you to keep in mind about this story? 

At the heart of this story of testimony and conversion is a very unlikely meeting; and apostle of Jesus and a foreign eunuch.

As a devout Jew, Phillip would have known, and as a man who was able to read and chose to read the Hebrew scriptures, the eunuch likely would have known, the passage from Deuteronomy 23 that makes clear that no one whose “testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off may enter the assembly of the Lord.” 

In other words, anyone who has had these irreversible things done, can never-ever- stand righteous before the Lord because they are ritually and irreversibly unclean. 

You can recover from a lot of things;

a Gentile can follow the law;

a sinner can repent;

an unclean person can become ritually clean again;

but a eunuch is irreversibly unclean. 

He is beyond the limits of redemption according to the law.

Whatever sympathy anyone might have felt for the man, there was nothing anyone could do.

That is who Phillip stops to speak with, read with, teach, and, finally, baptize.

He is a man from the ends of the earth AND a man so distinctively separated from righteousness before God that only the name of Jesus Christ can redeem him.  Whether because it was happenstance that Phillip found that man that day or the providence of God that their paths crossed in that moment, the fact remains that in this story we have a demonstration of the reach of the gospel in the world and in our lives.   It is providence working overtime to be sure!

Phillip stops to speak with, read with, teach, and, finally, baptize an Ethiopian Eunuch into the household of Jesus Christ.  There is real power there and true witness to the power of the work of the Holy Spirit in those discrete moments in our lives.

I think that is not the only place where we see the hand of providence- the guiding of the hand of the holy spirit- in this story.  Yes, the fact that he is Ethiopian helps the narrative along geographically by showing the gospel being proclaimed to a man who comes from the ends of the earth and, yes, it helps it along theologically by showing that even someone who is irredeemable under the law is still redeemed by the resurrection of Jesus, those are vital parts of the story and we mustn’t forget them.

 But perhaps the most important lesson to us here today, the other deeper less evident thing providence is urging us toward in this unlikely encounter, is found not in the power of Phillip’s words or the visible acts of the Spirit in the Ethiopian’s soul, but instead in what doesn’t happen. 

Phillip, recognizing what the man was, knowing what that meant, and being fully aware of the man’s status as unclean, proceeds to not say a single word about it.

He does not say one word about the man’s physical appearance or ritual uncleanliness.

Never does Phillip point out to the man that he is unclean.

Never does Phillip say that the man is bad or wrong or sinful or anything else.  He starts by telling the man the good news of Jesus Christ.

Never does he make the ludicrous theological claim that it is possible to hate the sin but love the sinner.  If sin is transgression of the law, the sin is part of this sinner’s very presence in the world.  To hate what makes him sinful is to hate him and Phillip knows the gospel well enough to know that the best way to silence good news on your lips is to harbor hate or prejudice in your heart. 

He knows what he sees when he sees the man.  He sees someone that society, the religious community, and perhaps even some of his fellow Christians would call unclean, unworthy, and beyond redemption.  If God hates anyone it is this guy right here.

He knows that is who is sitting in the cart reading from Isaiah, but rather than walk up and snatch away the holy text from the hands of a sinner, Phillip walks up and takes a seat next to a potential brother in Christ and begins to talk about the Good News. 

How often do we look at the world outside of the walls of our carefully constructed theological homes and see not sinners in need of chastising or converting but children of God deserving of the good news?  How often do we really see through the eyes of Phillip? 

Or put another way, who are the Ethiopian eunuchs of our world? 

Who are the people that social convention and theological inertia and our own judgmentalism have convinced us are simply too far gone to be saved or too unclean to be associated with? 

Who are the people who just don’t deserve to hear the message of the gospel?

Whose story is so frightening; so nontraditional; so downright sinful that it would be better to steer clear of them to avoid being seen as guilty by association?

Perhaps those are the very people providence is trying to get us to notice.

Perhaps, just perhaps, those are the very people the Spirit is urging us to seek out not to demonstrate their distance from the holiness of God but to proclaim to them the overwhelming closeness of the love of God to all of God’s children. 

Our generous traditional reading of this text has Phillip eagerly walking up to that Ethiopian and sharing the gospel, but I have to admit I imagine that there was at least a little internal hesitation; a moment when he hesitated, looked up to the heavens, and said, “seriously?  You can give me a sign to stop anytime now.”

Of course no sign came because this is exactly where God wanted him to be in that moment and exactly who God wanted him to encounter.

However he got there, the point is that by the middle of the story he is sitting next to this hideously unclean person and by the end he is welcoming him as a brother in Christ. 

The text doesn’t say it, but I think that there might have been two conversions on the road that day.  To be sure, the text is clear that the Ethiopian embraces the gospel and is baptized and filled with joy.  But I would wager to say that Phillip, when he was swept up by the Spirit of the Lord and whisked away to his next destination, was never the same again! 

                  And if we can muster the courage of Phillip to take providence’s queue and share the Good News with whomever God puts in our paths, neither, I think, will we. 

                  Amen.