Off the Beaten Path - May 2, 2021
Off the Beaten Path
John 15:1-8; Acts 8:26-40
John 15:1-8
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
Acts 8:26-40
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. 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.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was 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.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Prayer - Outreaching, barrier-breaking, Spirit of the living, resurrected God, Shake us up and move us out from the cozy confines of this congregation so that we might enjoy being part of your gospel. Bring to our minds awareness of all those who may, because of our timidity and reserve, think that the message of Jesus Christ is not a message addressed to them. Then, help us to become engaged with you in your mission even off the beaten paths so that your kingdom comes and your will is done in heaven and to the ends of the earth. Amen.
Much like the early church who were convinced that gentiles could only become Christians if they changed into being Jews first including circumcision, and that was the only way they were included. Much like our first century brothers and sisters there is a fairly large segment of the “church” who thinks if we extend the roof of the tent to include people who are different – that is, people who are gay or lesbian; people who may speak differently than the majority of the church; people who may have been Baptist or Episcopal or Catholic or Pentecostal or Evangelical; people who may be Democrat or Republican – people who are so different than ‘us’ then the whole church may come crashing down around us. The early church, much as the modern church, thought it must ‘evangelize’ them, that is, change them into us before they will fit. Or else the roof won’t hold. Meanwhile there was the other side of the church which is all about inclusion – we must extend the church to include all who are off the beaten path, no matter what.
But then we have the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch – a text which I have always interpreted and believed was about evangelism. Frequently referred to in commentaries as ‘the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch, I was led to believe that the message of this text was that we should tell everyone we meet about Jesus because doing so we might ‘save’ them – which is a whole other sermon. We might ‘convert them. We might change them into being us.
But today, I’m not so sure. Because if the Eunuch was reading Isaiah as he returned from Jerusalem having gone there to worship – if he was reading Isaiah, then I’m pretty certain he was also familiar with Deuteronomy that speaks of the exclusion of those who most closely resembled a Eunuch, then I imagine he didn’t get too far into the Temple, and I’m pretty certain he wasn’t allowed to worship with anyone who was Jewish, whether they were Christian Jews or not.
The Deuteronomic law forbid a Eunuch from entering an assembly of the Lord. Their transgression of gender binaries and the inability to fit into proper categories made them profane by nature. They do not fit into the tent. But the Eunuch went to Jerusalem to worship despite the fact that in all likelihood he would be turned away by the religious establishment. The Eunuch sought God anyway.
When the Spirit guided Phillip off the beaten path I like to think she guided him to perhaps his own conversion. As he approached the chariot he may have been thinking, ‘OK . . . I will just beat him with the scripture stick until he becomes what I am comfortable with. But when Phillip joined this person who sought to worship God despite his exclusion from the tent, maybe it was Phillip who was converted to be as inclusive as God. Or perhaps it was a mutual conversion. Maybe they simply asked each other questions in the desert. The only imperatives came from the Holy Spirit. Phillip and the Eunuch only asked each other questions. The only commands came from God and the command was go and join. Go and join the other – didn’t matter if the other looked different, had been previously excluded, didn’t have all the parts, or spoke a foreign language. What we don’t know is if the Spirit also gave the Eunuch the command to invite – invite this nice Jewish boy – representative of all that clings to the law and rejects you from God’s house. Invite him to sit with you and grow in faith. Perhaps Phillip in his encounter with this gender transgressive foreigner learned what seeking the Lord looks like – even from someone who was considered untouchable, forbidden, off the beaten path.
In SC, I pastored a small Presbyterian church that was incredibly inclusive – all were welcome. There was a young couple that showed up and started attending – like us, the church there was mostly wise and experienced folks attending. But this young couple liked the fact of the church’s inclusivity, its social justice activities, its informal nature. I sat down with them after a few weeks and asked if they might be interested in joining the church and the wife immediately said yes. Her husband was a little less enthusiastic and I asked him his concerns. “Well, I’m an atheist,” he said, “I come because it is important to her,” pointing at his wife. “SO, do you think your non-belief means you can’t be accepted and welcomed as a full member?” I asked him. “Well, I sort of assumed so.” “What would it look like to break that assumption,” I asked him. “Don’t I have to believe in order to be a member?” “What makes you think we all believe the same thing – you have been around enough to know, folks here are all over the beaten path of faith – some with more questions, some with more certainty, some with lots of doubts, some with a perfectly comfortable faith – we all are seekers of life and faith in some way, shape or form. The bottom line is you are welcome as a member or not, and I hope you will join because we will welcome and care for you just like everyone else who comes through our doors.” “Can we talk about it” he asked – “absolutely.” He turned out to be one of the best members at that church, even in his dis-belief.
One of my lessons from Kevin and Andrea was that it helped me learn what it means to follow Christ from someone who may believe differently, who has previously faced obstacles to inclusion. That’s why I am always in awe of those churches who welcome those off the beaten path who have once believed or have heard again and again ‘there is no love for you here unless you let us change you into who we feel comfortable with you being.’ Not just those who may not believe the way I or we do; also those who have a weird personality, or the wrong economic status or the wrong gender or the wrong immigration status or the wrong politics to fit under the tent.
I have to admit that I have come to believe that we can’t actually know what this whole Jesus following thing is about unless we too have the stranger off the beaten path show us. This is far more than inclusion – inclusion isn’t the right word at all because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing them to join us – like we are judging another group of people to be worthy to be part of this thing we call ‘church.’ ‘Inclusion’ seems like a small thing – a charity, a mercy.
But the truth is that we need the equivalent of the Ethiopian Eunuch to show us the faith. We continually need to hear from the stranger, the foreigner, the other, the one off the beaten path to show us water in the desert. We need to hear ‘here is the water in the desert, so what is to keep me the eunuch from being baptized’ or me the illiterate, the hungry, the neurotic, the over-educated, the founder of Focus on the Family. Until we face the difficulty of that question and come up as Phillip did with no answer . . . until then we just look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and either think it’s our job to change people so they fit or it’s our job to extend the roof so they fit. Either way, it’s misguided because it’s not our tent – it’s God’s tent. The wideness of the tent of the Lord should concern us only in so far as it points to the gracious nature of a loving God who became flesh and entered into our humanity. The wideness of the tent should only concern us in so far as it points to the great mercy and love of a God who welcomes us all as friends and beloved.
The bigness of God’s tent is why I hope for an open communion table.When we come to the table we all come as Christ’s guests to his feast.And as much as we’d like to be – we are not makers of that guest list.We come to this table with those who accept us and those who reject us.We come to this table with those we love and those we distrust.We come to this table whether or not we feel worthy.Because it is God who has made us worthy in the invitation.It is God who has torn the curtain of the temple so that there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female, gay or straight, liberal or conservative.So maybe here in this story of the conversion of Phillip and the Eunuch is some hope for the church.That under God’s really big tent we might ask questions, invite those who represent the establishment to come and sit by us, to stay in the scriptures, to be converted anew by the strange and the stranger, to see where there is water in the desert, to enter fully into the waters of God’s mercy and forgiveness, with the those who travel off the beaten path.And perhaps then to go on our way rejoicing having been transformed with one another to this beautiful, welcoming, dangerous, off the beaten path life of faith – thanks be to God – amen.