{"id":1007,"date":"2017-09-03T15:58:58","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T15:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/03\/is-there-anything-to-stop-me-based-on-acts\/"},"modified":"2020-02-15T18:56:01","modified_gmt":"2020-02-15T18:56:01","slug":"is-there-anything-to-stop-me-based-on-acts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/03\/is-there-anything-to-stop-me-based-on-acts\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIs There Anything To Stop Me?\u201d based on Acts 8:26-39"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

If you pay attention to very early church history (and I mean, who doesn’t???) you may know that Paul was the great advocate of sharing the good news of Jesus with \u201cthe Gentiles\u201d, aka people who weren’t Jewish. Much of the book of Acts reflects the tension between the apostles, whose focus remained in Jerusalem and with the Jews, and Paul who took the message \u201cto the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n

This has been the story I’ve been taught, the one I’ve then taught in return. Acts 8 argues with it, and I never noticed. In Acts 8, Phillip crosses most of the boundaries that anyone thought existed. He spends the chapter with a Samaritan magician and then an Ethiopian eunuch. This feels consistent with Jesus who kept on talking to Samaritans, Roman Senators, and anyone who wanted to talk to him, but the early church was already struggling with the questions of who was \u201cin\u201d and who was \u201cout.\u201d The people Phillip was with were supposed to be \u201cout,\u201d excluded from the community.<\/p>\n

When it all started, Phillip was supposed to be in the 2nd<\/sup> team of leadership, he was one of the ones chosen to deal with the trivial matters that the apostles couldn’t be bothered with. Yet somehow, the message of grace keeps coming from him to unexpected people. And all of this happens BEFORE the conversion of Paul. Perhaps God, through the Spirit, was already shaking things up, well before Paul’s participation.<\/p>\n

Today’s text centers on the interaction between Phillip and the unnamed Ethiopian eunuch. (Noticeably unnamed much like many of the women in the Bible and unlike most of them men.) We have rather a lot of details about the Ethiopian, for not having a name. However, we don’t have clarity on this person’s gender identity. The Bible uses male pronouns, but let’s be honest \u2013 the Bible uses male pronouns as a default position. The most defining characteristic of this person was their status as a eunuch. Peterson Toscano, who self describes as a Quaker and obsessive gardener, lives in Sunbury, PA with his husband, the writer, Glen Retief as well as a gay Biblical Scholar, wrote an excellent blog on this passage. In it, he seriously considers the experience of eunuchs in the Bible:<\/p>\n

Then there are the eunuchs of the Bible\u2013so many eunuchs. We must remember that in ancient times, eunuchs stood out. They typically had their testicles removed before puberty, sometimes with their consent, but usually not. As a result, they did not develop secondary sex characteristics that come during puberty. They retained high voices. They did not develop the body hair or the facial hair like men of their time. They looked and sounded different from the men and women around them.<\/p>\n

Eunuchs could not produce offspring. While some did partner, most did not. They were often single and childless unless they adopted. In a world where everyone seemed to be part of a family unit of some sort, they stood out as loners.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Some scholars have said, \u201cIn order to earn and to maintain identification as a man, a free adult male citizen or native had to be perceived as one who dominated unmen\u2014women, foreigners, slaves, and children.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a>Traditional gender identity didn’t entirely fit for this one.<\/p>\n

I’m going to use \u201cthey\/them\/their\u201d pronouns, and ask forgiveness to the one whose story is told if their preference would have been otherwise.<\/p>\n

We do know a lot about this unnamed person, whose gender isn’t binary though! They were from Ethiopia, which would have seems really far away for those from Galilee and Judea, almost like the ends of the earth. Most likely, they also looked different than the Galileans and Judeans did, with darker skin and a different sort of dress. They were the queen’s treasurer, which means they were probably very wealthy. The first set of Jesus’s followers were predominantly poor, and someone with that much wealth was quite different in that way too. They were almost certainly not Jewish, although they are a worshipper of YHWH. They were literate, which most people and most disciples were not. And they were employed by a foreign government, which would have aroused some suspicion about priorities within the early church. Those are some big differences.<\/p>\n

We’re told that they have just come from worship in Jerusalem. That would not have been an emotionally easy experience, perhaps particularly for this person. Being outside of the gender binary at that time, and in that place, meant a loss of power. For worshipers at the ancient Temple, only Jewish men with unharmed genitalia were permitted to enter the internal (and thereby more sacred) \u201cIsraelite Courtyard.\u201d Women, Gentiles, and those with nontypical male genitalia were confined to the outer court. This individual was used to having significant power and influence, and might have particularly not enjoyed being treated as \u201csecond class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, for the sake of the queen, the eunuch’s status was imperative. In their society, it gave them access to their role. At the same time, as Peterson Toscano says:<\/p>\n

Likely as a child this one was taken from home and parents. This one was physically held down, likely without giving consent, and was operated on. Through a painful procedure with the real risk of infection and more pain, testicles were removed.<\/p>\n

This one grew up but never went through puberty. As boys matured and changed, this one did not change in the same ways. This one was assigned a position in a royal court. This one could not start a family. This one was both respected and mocked, sometimes at the same time because of an elevated status in the palace and what was seen as a social deformity. This one may well have felt isolated, rejected, and even experienced physical challenges and disabilities because of the lack of testosterone in the system.<\/p>\n

So, this person, with so very many identities that differed from the majority of Jesus followers, was reading a passage from Isaiah that might have had some resonance with his own life. They have questions about the passage’s meaning, which is particularly valid to have when one is reading scripture! In the midst of this, Phillip appears and asks if they know the meaning. My friend Michael Airgood wrote a paper on this passage. In it, Michael chooses to use the pronounces xe\/xyr\/xem for the eunuch. He says, \u201cWhen Philip asks xym if xe understands what xe is reading, xyr response indicates strongly that xe has felt the exclusionary forces of religious bigotry. You can almost hear the rejection in xyr voice, ‘How can I understand unless someone guides me.’\u201d3<\/sup><\/a> Being excluded had included being excluded from religious education. Once Phillip shares what he knows, the Ethiopian-eunuch-officer-worshiper is convinced that the Jesus movement is something they wanted to be a part of. So, they ask, \u201cLook, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?\u201d<\/p>\n

We know the answers to this! Much of this person’s identity could have been used as a barrier to inclusion in the Body of Christ. They were already excluded from full participation in the Jewish Temple as well as from from family life. This person knew exclusion, and the early Christian community was more more self-similar than it is now. This person was different in a lot of ways, and it might have been thought, too many ways. Phillip could have told them that they needed to do more studying and that they should come back in a few years, or that they needed to work with mentor, or that only people with standard order genitalia were welcome, or that they had to pass some sort of purity test, or simply lied and said that the water they were nearby \u201cwasn’t good enough.\u201d I’ve heard of modern-day church folk coming up with many of those excuses, and more.<\/p>\n

This is an intensely vulnerable question. The one who asked it knew that there were plenty of things that could have been seen as reasons to prevent them from being baptized. The one who asked it was JUST excluded. The one who asked it had been excluded in innumerable ways throughout their life. Yet, the one who asked it, asked directly, despite expecting a long list of reasons for exclusion, again.<\/p>\n

That is, I don’t think the one who asked, \u201cWhat is to prevent me from being baptized?\u201d expected to be welcomed into the Body of Christ, much less without an argument. I also think that the apostles in Jerusalem had a conniption over this when they heard, but that may just be related to my experience of the institutional church \ud83d\ude09 Many commentators have wondered with me if Phillip and the Ethiopian-eunuch-officer-worshiper continued to read the scroll of Isaiah as they discussed things together. I hope they did. If they kept reading, three more chapters, they would have gotten to this passage:<\/p>\n

\u201c Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
\u00a0 \u2018The Lord will surely separate me from his people\u2019;
and do not let the eunuch say,
\u00a0 \u2018I am just a dry tree.\u2019
\u00a0For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
\u00a0 who choose the things that please me
\u00a0 and hold fast my covenant,
\u00a0I will give, in my house and within my walls,
\u00a0 a monument and a name
\u00a0 better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
\u00a0 that shall not be cut off.\u201d (Isaiah 56:3-5, NRSV)<\/p>\n

There was also, Judaism that was already ancient in the eunuch’s time, an awareness that God doesn’t hold to human boundaries. In many ways this story feels like the this Isaiah passage brought to life. Did you notice that the eunuchs don’t stop being eunuchs, they’re accepted as they are and within the faith tradition given all the things that would otherwise be denied to them? The commentator in the New Interpreter’s Bible on this Acts passage intends to speak of Phillip, but also seems to speak of Isaiah when he says, \u201cThe essential task of the prophet, then, is to clarify membership requirements of those belonging to God, sometimes in ways that redraw Israel’s boundaries to include the exclude ones.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

One of the oldest Christian communities in the world is the Ethiopian church. Their tradition says that faith was brought to them by this eunuch, and has been maintained ever since. It gives me chills to think that it is only because of the bravery of that one to ask that vulnerable question, that a church could exist.<\/p>\n

So much of the world, and counter to the message of God and Jesus, so much of the church teaches people that they are not enough! According to those broken theories, there are standards to be met, barriers to overcome, behaviors that must be amended, and even people who can’t ever measure up. The message of God and Jesus is that we are already enough. This person, this eunuch, even without a name, trusted God enough to ask if they were welcome. Phillip, moved by the Spirit of Grace, knew enough to welcome in those who wanted to be part of the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n

This is a story that has happened many times: human beings worry that they’re not enough and wonder if the people claiming to speak for God (the church) will welcome them. This is also a story that hasn’t happened enough: that the people who claim to speak for God (the church) welcome in God’s beloveds (any and all people). This is also a story that hasn’t happened often enough: that the people of God remember that God is enough, that we are enough, and that no one is fundamentally lacking. May we be people of this story, people who trust in God’s enough, in people’s enough, and in God’s unending and unbreakable grace. Amen<\/p>\n

1<\/a>Peterson Toscano, \u201cIntersecting Identities \u2013 Queer Identity and the Ethiopian Eunuch\u201d found athttps:\/\/petersontoscano.com\/ethiopianeunuch\/<\/a> on August 29, 2017.<\/p>\n

2<\/a> Ken Stone and Teresa J. Hornsby, Bible Trouble: Queer Reading at the Boundaries of Biblical Scholarship. <\/i>In \u201cAtlanta; Society of Biblical Literature\u201d (ebook, 2011), <\/i>177.<\/p>\n

3<\/a> Michael Airgood, \u201cWHAT IS TO PREVENT ME FROM BEING BAPTIZED?\u201d THE GOSPEL\u2019S QUEER JOURNEY TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Turned in for seminary credit 8\/18\/2017.<\/p>\n

4<\/a>Robert W. Wall \u201cActs of the Apostles\u201d in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. X, edited by Leander Krik et al, (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2002), 142<\/p>\n

– <\/p>\n

Rev. Sara E. Baron<\/p>\n

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady<\/p>\n

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305<\/p>\n

Pronouns: she\/her\/hers<\/p>\n

http:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FUMCSchenectady<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you pay attention to very early church history (and I mean, who doesn’t???) you may know that Paul was … Continue reading \u201cIs There Anything To Stop Me?\u201d based on Acts 8:26-39<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[34,38,28,39,33,537,557,554,556,56,553,555],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons","tag-fumc-schenectady","tag-progressive-christianity","tag-rev-sara-e-baron","tag-thinking-church","tag-umc","tag-enough","tag-grace","tag-labor-day-weekend","tag-pronoun-questions","tag-schenectady","tag-subversive-eunuchs-of-the-bible","tag-thank-you-phillip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1216,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fumcschenectady.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}