The Contagious Life of Jesus--April 29, 2024

The Contagious Life of Jesus--April 29, 2024

"Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, 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'.” [Acts 8:26-29]

The circle is widening. That seems to be a major motion of the book of Acts in particular, and of the whole New Testament in general—the rippling out of the Good News and the widening circle of the people claimed by this News.  In a sense, the story of the whole book of Acts is watching how Jesus' risen life spreads like a contagion, reaching out further in every direction, bringing people previously regarded as "outsiders" to belong as "insiders."  And it's the story of Jesus' followers get caught up in that motion, even when it pushes them beyond their comfort zones.

Geographically, the news and community of Jesus is spreading out from ground-zero in Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and out "to the ends of the earth." At the same time, that means the church was becoming more diverse ethnically, too—from a handful of Palestinian Jews to the gathered Jewish crowds from all over the world at Pentecost to the growing community of Samaritans who come to faith in Jesus, and now to an Ethiopian eunuch. Maybe it doesn't sink in at first just how radical it is that God is taking the initiative to widen the circle to include this person, but let's take a time out to consider it here.

First of all, let's be clear that God is the instigator here. It is alwyas a bigger step, a bigger risk, to be the one to act rather than the one to give silent, implicit approval of someone else's action. And now it is God--or, in truth, maybe it has been God all along--who clearly takes the "risk" of reaching out to this outsider. And just to be clear, also, the Torah was unequivocal that eunuchs are not allowed into the assembly of God's people. For a moment, let's just bracket out the fact that he is visibly of a different racial group (Ethiopia, even if not quite the same territory of the country we know by that name today, is clearly a place of Black African population, rather than the more Mediterranean population of northern African places like Egypt). That would be a hard enough pill for us to swallow today, we who still live in a society that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, has Sunday mornings as the most segregated hour of the week. 

But just the fact that this man is a eunuch "should" disqualify him from eligibility in the people of God, if the prohibitions of the Torah were to stand. The ruling in the book of Deuteronomy was that no one with variations, alterations, or injuries to their sexual organs, whether from birth or done surgically later in life, was to be permitted to belong in the assembly of God's people (see, for example, Deuteronomy 23:1). Being a eunuch, mind you, is something you are, not something you can "repent of," or "try not to be," any more than you can will your body to grow a third kidney.  That meant that the Ethiopian court official didn't fit neatly into tidy boxes of gender expectations. And to some that would have made the matter crystal clear: "This unnamed eunuch should not be allowed access to the news and community of God," they would have said. 

And then the Scriptures do a funny thing—they open up what seemed permanently closed—the prophetic voice in Isaiah 56 announces after the exile that eunuchs who keep God's commandments and covenant will in fact belong in the assembly of God after all.  God, it would seem, reserves the right to bend--or even break--the rules first attributed to God, for the sake of bringing other people more fully to life. 

And now here in Acts, God puts his money where Isaiah 56's mouth had been, and God up and tells Philip to initiate conversation with this outsider. The lines that had seemed clearly black-and-white, in-and-out, us-and-them, have now been blurred. And God is the One who has blurred those lines. God is the One who has widened the circle. God is the One who makes Jesus' Easter community spread like a virus of life. That means we can't blame Philip for being a soft-hearted "liberal" for going out on his own, as though he doesn't care what the Torah had said--God is the one who has instructed Philip to join this eunuch! God resists being labeled in our categories as "liberal" or "conservative," and God instead surprises us left and right with welcome for the stranger alongside a relentless call for justice and mercy and holiness. But let's make no mistake about it—God has taken the initiative to widen the circle in this story.

This one might take a while to sit and simmer for us. What does it mean that God's earlier commands set clear boundaries, and then God does something new that rearrange those boundaries? How can we believe in a constant God who seems to change the rules on us? That's hard stuff to contemplate. But note, too, that God has a way of doing this throughout the Bible. We keep seeing a God who reserves the right to surprise us, to include the "other," and to bless those deemed by some as unblessable because they do not fit into someone else's tidy little boxes. Perhaps it is enough for us today to invite God to lead us to let go of our assumptions and to let God surprise us again today, or in other words, to let God be...God.  Maybe that's how the contagious life of Jesus will break out among us today.

Good Lord, help us to see how you are widening the circle beyond our expectations, and yet how we can be truly your people following your ways, and not just our inventions and theories. Let us hear your voice, however it may surprise us.