The Bible becomes real...

NOTE:  My worship notes for Sunday, May 6, 2012 as we move from Easter towards Pentecost.

Introduction
The late, great preacher and pastor, William Sloan Coffin of Riverside Church in NYC, once said to his people:  “I THINK therefore I am?  Not for a Christian – no, I LOVE therefore I am!”

St. Paul was clear:  faith, hope and love – in the midst of all the changes in the world – these three abide and the greatest of them is… what?  Love.

The psalm we heard this morning, Psalm 22, is a heart-broken lament and love song by one who aches for the assurance of God’s love again:  My God, my love why hast thou forsaken me?

And dear St. John asks us to remember that as God’s beloved friends:  we must continue to love each other since love comes from God.  Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God… Remember, no one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

Love is the theme that nourishes all of our readings today.  So much so that we should probably say that the Apostle John wants us to know that the mark of a faithful community is not what we think or even believe, but rather how we love. (Gail O’Day, John, the New Interpreter’s Bible)  But Christian love is more than a feeling as the classic rock group, Boston, used to say – much more than a feeling – it is a way of living and resting and trusting in God’s grace.  Today’s gospel puts it like this: 

Jesus tells his beloved that to love by faith is to ABIDE IN ME – that is, to LIVE in Jesus – to make your home in Christ. To rest and trust in the one who was crucified but risen – to let him fill and nourish us from the inside out by grace – to stay connected to the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength just as a grape stays connected to the vine until the fruit is ripe… THIS is what it means to abide.

“And just as we need the air to breathe,” writes Kate Huey (ucc.org) “and we need food and nourishment to live… we need shelter and community; we need a home…. to thrive. The early Christians, who had in a very real sense lost their spiritual homes and perhaps, along with them, their family ties and their physical homes…” ached for a way to stay connected to God’s grace.  They yearned to ABIDE in Christ Jesus because they no longer had a home.

Remember:  that after Pentecost the early church was scattered all over the world; for a short time after Easter they were waiting together for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  But then, after Pentecost, they were scattered to the four corners of the earth… They became strangers in a variety of strange lands.  So the Spirit of Christ came to them – wherever they were – and trained them in the practice of two spiritual truths that might have some importance for us in the 21^st century.

Specifically the Spirit taught them the practice of abiding or living in Christ and building communities of encouragement. Consider the Risen Christ in John's Gospel who warns his followers in every age and setting not to "go it alone, trusting in their own strength. On their own they would be cut off from their life source. They would bear no fruit." (Nancy Blakely) 

And I think one of the most fascinating examples of this in the New Testament is the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch:  it holds some valuable insights for us about what abiding means and what building authentic Christian community really looks like – and why it matters.

So, I’d like you to pray with me – and then take a little time to discern what the Spirit wants us to know about resting and living in Jesus while we build a community of faith – because it could be good news to somebody here today – and is certainly good news for being the church in this town at this moment in time.  So, first, let us pray…

Insights
A word of background before we talk about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, ok because some people have asked me why I spend so much time talking about the stories of the Bible in worship. On more than a few occasions, some old timers in the church and some new guests too have said: What do these old books in the Bible have to say about how we live today?  Isn’t it just tradition that may not be relevant any longer that causes us to keep reading the Bible?

And I think these are important questions – they are not ignorant or disrespectful – they are thoughtful and real:  why do we turn to the Bible to guide and shape our faith?  What do you think?  Before I offer my response, what do you think about the importance of still using the Bible after all these years?

In our tradition there are at least three solid reasons for looking to the Bible for wisdom, insight, encouragement and correction.  As we say in the United Church of Christ:  we celebrate a still speaking God – a God who is still active in creation and history – so first of all we look to the Bible to see how God has spoken to us in the past.  You see, sometimes we can only understand what God is saying by looking backwards – after the fact – in the past.

In the Bible, God was first known through covenants with people and nations, through prophets and teachers, through conflicts and commandments, in visions and songs and through the followers of Jesus and the church.  God acted profoundly in the life and ministry, even in the death, of Christ.  On Easter, God declared in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, "I'll never, never stop speaking. Alleluia!"  So through the stories of the past we see how God has been speaking in our history, in moments of compassion, justice and peace, in worship, sacraments, prayer, seeking, action and silence:  all of this helps us see how God first spoke to the people. (We Listen for a Still Speaking God, ucc.org)

For example do you know what the first story in the Bible was?  It actually isn’t the first one that is printed – the first story in the Bible as we know it today isn’t about God creating everything good – although that’s an important story.  No the first story in the Bible talks about God coming to a group of Jewish slaves in Egypt and inspiring them to freedom.  It is the Exodus story – the call to liberation – and the commitment to fight injustice and suffering as part of the very heart of God.

The rest of the Bible – and I mean the whole enchilada – rests on THIS story:  the story of God coming to people in their suffering to set them free. So first we look to the Bible to learn how God has spoken in the past. 

The second reason we look to the Bible has to do with learning about human nature.  Huston Smith once said that the Bible is the collected repository of our wisdom traditions.  That is, the Bible tells us clearly how people act – not in a sentimental or sanitized way – that would be a phony spirituality – but in a way that is grounded in the truth.   This means that fundamentally the Bible is descriptive not prescriptive.

Think about the story of Cain and Abel – two brothers – who do what?  One murders the other in jealousy – not a sentimental picture of God’s people always doing good – but an honest depiction of something that happens every day:  people are apt to kill one another because of jealousy or greed or fear, right?

And that’s an important story to know – a sacred reminder that we are all capable of sin – for how does Paul put it?  We are ALL sinners who have fallen short of the grace of God – all of us – every one of us – and we can get into a whole world of trouble if we don’t know this to be true.

I think many families do something similar to what we find in the Bible when they pass on wisdom from one generation to another.  Do you ever tell stories in your family about your crazy relatives?  Do you ever talk about how they came to America – or what life was like for them back in the old days – or how they loved and sometimes hurt one another?  Those stories can be helpful – often they are humbling – and everyone likes to tell them because if we are listening – listening carefully – we can learn something for our own times.

My Grandma Nick – a hard living, hard loving Irish Protestant from Rhode Island – was the matriarch of our family.  She was the BEST baker in the world, she had an incredible earthy and vibrant sense of humor, an infectious laugh and… she was a stone cold racist as many of the Irish in America were.   She lived and worked with African Americans – loved and played with them, too – but she taught her children and her grandchildren that people of color were morally and ethically inferior to whites because that is how the Lord made them. 

The Civil Rights movement of the 60s didn’t matter – and to hell with the Equal Opportunities Act: God made blacks inferior because the Bible told her so… I can’t tell you how many times I fought with her over that prejudice… and after she died we told the story of Grandma Nick’s over and over again in my family because we wanted to remember her complicated and real humanity – how she was both a sinner and a saint at the same time – and to make it clear to our children that hatred and fear can sometimes cause people to use God’s holy words to support our unholy habits.  

So we look to the Bible to know how real people really act. 

And third we look to the Bible to see what God can do with our broken humanity.  If God can change Paul’s heart – if God can use a servant like Moses to set the people free – if God can bring the sacred to birth through a poor Palestinian peasant girl like Mary… well, then, there’s hope for you and me.  As they sometimes say in the Pentecostal church:  God can make a way when there IS no way.

God can bring a light into the darkness.  God can bring hope into fear and forgiveness into shame. God can raise the dead.  And when people ask how do you know God can do this – how do you know God‘s grace is real – we can say:  look at the story in the Bible!  Time and again God takes a nobody like me, and by grace turns me into somebody whose only job is to tell everybody that anybody can be touched and set free by love and grace… because that is just who God is, ok?

Those are the three fundamental reasons we look to the Bible on Sundays and others days, too:  the Bible speaks to us about how God has spoken in the past, it tells us the truth about real human nature and sin; and the Bible points us to a love that is bigger than our humanity and our hurts that can heal us and nourish us from the inside out.  And that, of course, is what the book of Acts is trying to tell us:  God’s love keeps moving and changing and heading into territory that we never imagine.

Cut to the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch – a story ALL about God’s grace going into places and people beyond traditional imagination – and setting everyone free.  Man, this story just blows my mind – and to get how wild and beautiful this story is for us in our own 21^st century world, let’s be clear about a few detail, ok?

First of all, who is Philip?  He is one of the Lord’s first disciples – in fact he tells others that the Messiah of Israel has been discovered in Nazareth (a backwoods town) – and that they should come and see. Other stories tell us that he regularly questioned Jesus about the practicality of Christ’s ministry:  how are you going to feed the 5000 – or – are you sure you are the way to the Father?  So he was a practical guy who wanted some evidence – not unlike a lot of us here.

He was also one of the original deacons of the church in Jerusalem – those who were appointed to feed the hungry – because he was now learning to abide and live in Christ rather than just asking for proof.  After the murder of Stephen, however, it seems that Philip fled from Jerusalem and was wandering around Samaria where today’s story begins.  He wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do next so rather than do busy work he waited – always good advice – and when the time was right the Spirit came to him.  And by now he had learned that when the Spirit says MOVE – you better move.  Today the Spirit tells him:

“At noon today I want you to walk over to that desolate road that goes from Jerusalem down to Gaza." So he got up and went.  He met an Ethiopian eunuch coming down the road. The eunuch had been on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was returning to Ethiopia, where he was minister in charge of all the finances of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He was riding in a chariot and reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit told Philip, "Climb into the chariot." Running up alongside, Philip heard the eunuch reading Isaiah and asked, "Do you understand what you're reading?"

Please notice that he didn’t argue with the Spirit, right?  Go to that desolate road and wait to see what happens?  Ok, Lord, I’m on my way. There’s a whole 60 minute sermon right there!  I’m not going to give it to you, but think about that: most of the time we’re not asked to go off to some desolate road and wait, right?  What does the Lord ask US to do – most of the time – but wait?  Abide?  Trust?  Love one another as I have loved you?

But Brother Philip is asked to go out to the desolate road and wait for further instructions – so he does what the Spirit requests.  And dig this:  what happens once he gets out on this lonely road heading into Gaza?  He meets a wealthy Ethiopian eunuch who is riding along in a chariot reading the prophet Isaiah!  (This is almost psychedelic it is so wild!)  So let me unpack a few things that are just below the surface here to help give this story some context:

This man works for the Queen of Ethiopia.  He is one influential cat who has a top job in the administration of Candace.  He has wealth and power and he’s interested in holy things, too. What’s more he’s Ethiopian – not a Jew, not a Gentile, nor a proselyte or Samaritan – a black African man – the first African who was baptized as we learn later – and he was eager to learn more from the People of the Word. 

Right here we’re being told something about God’s invitation to practice radical inclusivity. It is a call to repent from our prejudice and fear and be set free.  You see, the Ethiopian symbolizes people who are not only radically physically different from the world of Jerusalem but geographically and culturally foreign, too.

And just so that there can be no ambiguity about the point of this story we are told that this wealthy, Black African governmental official is a eunuch:   now, I don’t know much about eunuchs – and I don’t really want to know too much about them either – but the story asks me to get up to speed and get over my discomfort.  So, I did some reading and throughout history it seems that eunuchs were often valued servants in those countries that practiced polygamy.  Kings needed their eunuchs to guard and keep their harems in order so…

Outside of Judaism, eunuchs were highly valued and appreciated, but not so within Israel. Deuteronomy 23:1 says: “No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”  It would seem tradition and law kept eunuchs in general – and this eunuch in particular – outside the community of the Lord. One pastor put it like this:  “Their transgression of gender… and the inability to fit into proper categories made them profane by nature. They do not fit. “(Nadia Bolz-Weber)

And still… despite all these differences – faith, race, gender, culture, class and history – the Ethiopian Eunuch wants to be in communion with God’s love.  Now I don’t know about you, but this is almost too much to take:  facing likely rejection the outsider yearns to be a part of the community.  He has made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem – he is reading from the words of the prophet Isaiah – he is open to the Sprit.  So pay careful attention here because what happens next is sacred:  sensing the love of God – and aching for it more deeply – the outsider that welcomes Philip.  “Please, get into my chariot.”  Join me – let me share some comfort with you – incredible: the discarded welcomes the disciple.

He reaches out in love to embrace the servant of Jesus – who most likely has fled Jerusalem with just the shirt on his back and has been wandering the back roads of Samaria – and doesn’t look like much.  But still he offers hospitality to the disciple of Christ… 

What we have here is a picture of a rich man welcoming a poor man – one of the countless reversals in the upside down kingdom of God – and a wandering Jewish Christian embracing the opportunity to get over himself – to be converted by love again – because together their hunger for the love of God is stronger than culture, tradition, gender, race, class, fear or expectation.

And when they own that hunger they begin abide in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Are you still with me?  Do you see how the Spirit makes barriers out of bridges and how many potential divisions were overcome by the love of God?

Conclusion
It is clear to me that this story speaks to us about our need for one another:  in the 21^st century just as in the 1^st we can’t abide in Jesus - live faithfully in Christ - all by ourselves. We need others – we need to stay connected to the vine – to learn and practice resting in God’s grace.  Sharing Christ’s love.  Trusting that God is God and that is enough. 

It also seems clear to me that this ancient story is telling us that our church needs others – maybe especially others who are very, very different from us – people like Philip and the Ethiopian who were willing to ask one another hard questions in the desert and trust that together God would reveal the answers. 

Abiding and building community takes us beyond our comfort zones – beyond our clear answers – beyond even our questions.  The ancient word of the Bible tells us that Philip, “in his encounter with this gender transgressive foreigner learned something of what seeking the Lord looks like,” (Nadia Bolz-Weber) and everyone grew in love on that day.

We are grounded in the grace of a still speaking God:  so let those who have ears to hear, hear.