5th Sunday of Easter                

Acts 8:26-40

Then an angel of God 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.

Bodies

A few years ago, my brother invited me to go with him to visit a church he had been going to. He was really excited about it because they had a band and they had really good childcare. He liked the system they had in place to sign the kids in and out, to make sure the kids wouldn’t be taken by the wrong people. I was intrigued, because he wasn’t really a church person, so I wanted to see what this church was like.

It was really modern looking, a big beautiful building, it didn’t really even look like a church at all. When we entered, it felt more like a hotel lobby than a church. The sanctuary wasn’t huge, but it had stadium seating; I think there was maybe three hundred, or so, people there. And, just like he said, the band was pretty good.

But then, the sermon came. The lead pastor wasn’t preaching that day. Instead, his son, a young man in his twenties, delivered the sermon. It started off fine, I think; I don’t really remember to be honest, but what I do remember was being completely appalled and angry by the time he came to the end of his message. What he basically said was that all the suffering in the world, the thing that leads people to sin, was that people were not satisfied with their lives. He said that if people could only just accept their lot in life, everyone would be happier, and the world would be a better place. I remember looking around the room. It wasn’t well-lit, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any black people in there. There may have been some other Asian people, maybe a few Latinos, but it was for the most part a white congregation.

I could barely contain myself through the rest of the service because I was so upset by what he had said. His sermon was about preserving the status quo. It was the language of the oppressor, telling the oppressed minority that the only reason they were unhappy with their lives was because they were simply unable to be content with what they had. With what little they were given. It removed all responsibility for historic acts of oppression and ongoing systemic issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, name your -ism. It made me really worry about what kind of message that congregation was receiving on a weekly basis.

To be fair, I don’t know if that was the message he intended. We could give him the benefit of a doubt and say that it was merely thoughtless, an irresponsible reading of the text. But even then, it points to the issues we have as a society with the lack of education regarding racism, homelessness, sexuality, and those who are differently abled.

Our reading from Acts focuses on just such a person, the Ethiopian eunuch. In the original Greek, this person is first described as a man, but our New Revised Standard Version omits this. He is then described as Ethiopian, in other words, a foreigner, and then as a eunuch, someone who has been castrated, or surgically altered so that they no longer have sexual urges and can no longer have children. Such people were created so that they could guard a harem with no worry of impropriety. Throughout the rest of the text, he is only referred to as “the eunuch,” which makes sense given the social norms of the day. A eunuch would not have been considered a man, at least, not a whole one. He would not have been considered normal, would have been looked down upon, even though as “a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury,” he would have enjoyed an elevated economic and political status compared to most of the people around him.

Phillip finds him reading the prophet Isaiah, and Phillip asks him if he understands what he’s reading. The passage that he was reading is, “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 asks Phillip to explain this, and Phillip tells him about Jesus. We don’t know what Phillip said to him, there aren’t any instructions on how to live a righteous life, no list of requirements written down. And, when they come across some water, the eunuch asks what’s to stop him from being baptized. So, Phillip baptizes him.

At some point in history, at least one scribe decided that they didn’t like the ambiguity of this story, so they inserted a line here that can still be found in the King James Version. When the eunuch asks what’s to stop him from being baptized, Phillip says if he believes with all his heart, then he can. In this altered version of the story, the eunuch says, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And then, Phillip baptizes him. Because, we just can’t accept that anyone can be baptized, we have to create rules around it. Even when it seems like there aren’t supposed to be any.

It doesn’t matter that the eunuch is a foreigner. It doesn’t matter that his skin is a different color. It doesn’t matter that he’s a eunuch. He doesn’t just accept the fact that he lives on the edges of society, always on the outside looking in. He knows that he is a child of God, and he claims it! So, Phillip baptizes him.

So much of what we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis has to do with our bodies. When we get sick, it’s because there’s a disease that’s affecting our bodies. Black people are constantly under attack because of the color of their bodies. Women have to deal with sexism because of their bodies, those in the queer community are continually targeted because of their bodies or because of the bodies of the people they love. It’s all about bodies.

And, we haven’t even mentioned the mental health crisis affecting our nation right now. We don’t often think about the physical aspects of mental health; we tend to think in terms of “talk” therapy. But, the brain is an organ, emotions are linked to chemicals, and sometimes organs don’t work the way they’re supposed to, and chemicals can become imbalanced. It’s all about bodies.

People should not be punished for the things about their bodies that they have no control over. We don’t get to choose our race or ethnicity, the color of our skin, eyes, or hair. We don’t get to choose how tall, smart, or able we are. We don’t get to choose our sexuality or gender. So, why do we punish each other for these things? Why are some people’s lives harder because of these things? We are our bodies.

Jesus cared about bodies. He really cared about bodies. He was always feeding people. He healed as many people as he could, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. And, when it came time for him to die, he knew what was coming. He was scared, be begged God to not let it happen, he was scared for his body, but in the end, he sacrificed it to save the world, to show us that the world was so corrupt, that it would destroy someone like him, a healer, a teacher, a miracle worker, in order to preserve its own corruption. Jesus cared about bodies.

The comedian Margaret Cho said something in one of her stand-up routines that has stayed with me ever since I heard it. Cho is a Korean American, and she talks a lot about social justice issues in her stand-up. She said, “Sexuality and race are the essential parts of ourselves we cannot remove or destroy, they are the you of you, the me of me.” We have to accept our bodies, and accept the bodies of the people around us. We have to care for those bodies, celebrate those bodies, protect those bodies. Fight for the rights of those bodies.

We are not just spirit; we are flesh. Jesus taught us that. With his life, he taught us that. Our bodies are important to God, so they should be important to us. God created us in God’s image, in all of the varied and wonderfully different shapes and forms and colors that human beings can be found, we are created in God’s image. So, live in the joy and the freedom your body. Live in the beauty and the cosmic drama of your body. Live in the love and the peace of your spirit, and do everything that you can to make sure that those around you are able to do the same. Amen.

~  Rev. Charles Wei