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| Rembrandt "Baptism of the Eunuch" 1626 |
Sometimes God puts the right people in the
right place at the right time. I guess it’s been well over thirty years now
since my buddy Jack and I took it into our heads to go hiking in the San
Gabriel mountains of southern California on the day after Christmas. Like all
dumb things we do, it seemed like a good idea at the time—in spite of the fact neither
of us had any experience driving in heavy snow.
The mountains that winter were particularly
lovely in their pristine, white quilt. Unfortunately, the mountain highways
were also well frosted, and drifts the height of polar bears were encroaching
menacingly over the roads of the upper elevation. Approaching one particularly
ferocious-looking drift, I foolishly concluded that the powdery snow would
easily give way beneath the wheels of my mighty ’84 Ford Escort.
I was incorrect in this assumption.
I got the car hung up on a boulder of ice and
stranded the two of us in the middle of a mountain road in late afternoon in
weather that was in the twenties and getting colder by the second.
A local lad was willing to rent us shovels to
dig the Ford out. This proved a Sisyphean task as every shovel full of snow we
managed to extricate from beneath the vehicle was matched by the wind-swept
encroachment of the diabolical drift. But—praise be to our Lord who looks after
idiots like me—a young couple happened by in an enormous pickup truck. “Looks
like your hung up,” the young man said. “Yup,” I replied.
With the courtesy of any Good Samaritan, the
fellow easily cruised the truck over the drift and backed it up in front of my
stranded economy car. He deftly wrapped a chain around my bumper and attached
it to his hitch. I put the Escort in neutral and it, I, and my now-exasperated
pal were liberated and on our way.
An angel of the Lord sends a disciple named
Philip[i] down
a wilderness road at just the right time to give a word of grace to a stranger
in the First Lesson for Easter 5, Year B (Acts 8:26-40). Philip has been
preaching in Samaria, which indicates how very open-minded the early Christians
were. Jews and Samaritans weren’t exactly kissing cousins, but the radical love
of Jesus has broken down all kinds of barriers.
Philip’s experience with the oft-reviled
Samaritans must’ve made him the ideal candidate for the guy he meets on the
road to Gaza. This is an Ethiopian eunuch. It’s possible Philip’s never met a
Black guy before. He’s as different from Philip as he can get—he’s Black, he’s
rich (which Philip probably wasn’t), he’s a foreigner, and he’s sexually very
different from most of the men Philip would likely encounter.
You have to wonder what a high-ranking
Ethiopian is doing riding his chariot in Israel. The Bible tells us he’d come
to Jerusalem to worship, so he must’ve had some yearning to learn more about
the God of the Jews. Unfortunately, being a non-Jew, a foreigner, and a eunuch,
he’s got three strikes on him. No Gentile was permitted beyond the Beautiful
Gate of the Temple of Jerusalem and no eunuch was allowed to worship with pious
Jews.[ii]
Any man who was missing his man parts was looked down on as unclean. It didn’t
matter that this fellow was Secretary of the Treasury of a wealthy nation.
Under Deuteronomic law, nobody was supposed to have anything to do with him. He
must’ve felt very unwelcome around the “holy” people of Jerusalem, and so he’s
on his way back to Africa, content just to read about the Jew’s God.
Unfortunately, even the reading was giving him some difficulty.
But, as I’ve said, sometimes God puts the right
person in the right path at the right moment. The eunuch was reading Isaiah 53[iii].
This is the same passage we read on Good Friday. I’ll bet this guy really resonated
with verse 3:
“He was despised and
rejected by others; a man of suffering acquainted with infamy; and as one from
whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.”
But Philip was able to share with this man
going home in disappointment and rejection that the one of whom the prophet wrote
loved ALL people and made no distinctions. Jesus, by his death and
resurrection, had banished the ancient, restrictive, exclusionary law and
taught forbearance, love, and welcome. The eunuch was so overjoyed by this Good
News he was ready to jump in the nearest puddle and be baptized into the faith.
Has anyone ever come along at just the right
moment for you? Have you ever come along at just the right moment to be God’s
witness to another? In the Gospel lesson (John 14:8-14) Jesus, who is giving us
his farewell address, tells the disciples and us that he is the vine, but we
are the branches. This is the last of his I AM statements which crop up in John’s
Gospel. John really likes to use I AM, the name of God in Exodus 3:14, to
remind us of Jesus’ divinity, but this is the only I AM statement that’s
followed by a YOU ARE statement. Jesus didn’t say, “You could be,” or “You will
be.” He says YOU ARE. We are branches of God right here, right now.
As you know, a branch can’t live if it’s cut
off from the vine, but the vine needs the branches to bear the grapes. How else
can God love the world if not through us? 90% of caregiving, comforting, and
consoling is just showing up. This might be your time and your
place to bring the blessings and love of God to someone who could really use
them.
You are God’s branch. Get used to the idea, and
thanks again for reading this week. Don’t be shy about leaving me a message if
you like or don’t like the posts. I’d love to hear from you.
[i] We
don’t think this Philip is the same as the apostle of that name in who appears
in John’s Gospel. He’s probably one of the deacons referenced in Acts 6:3-6.
[ii]
See Deuteronomy 23:1. And it wasn’t just eunuchs—Deut. 23 lists a whole lot of
folks the Hebrew people didn’t want to hang with.
[iii]
It wasn’t Isaiah 53 back then, of course. The Bible didn’t get numbered
with chapters and verses until centuries later.
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