Getting to know the Ethiopian eunuch

Rev. Mieke Vandersall

Riverdale Presbyterian Church

May 10, 2009

Acts 8:26-40



When I was a seminary intern at Second Presbyterian Church I learned an important lesson when I was given the charge to preach on what was considered “Thanksgiving Sunday.” I didn’t even mention Thanksgiving and let me tell you did I hear about it. You see, I didn’t realize that Thanksgiving was a liturgical holiday, but after that Sunday I understood what people’s expectations are for such days.

The thing is holidays like Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving, Fathers Day too, in some places July 4th as well are a big old trap for preachers. There is pressure to preach touchy-feely, Hallmark sermons these days when yet they aren’t liturgical holidays. Mother’s Day can be especially tough because it is such a complicated day for so many. This is all to say that I am aware of expectations many of us bring to this day and while this sermon might not be a “typical” Mother’s Day sermon it is one that I believe is an authentic exploration of who God is, how God is revealed to us in the text and the intimacy with and acceptance of God which we all crave from people as close to us as our mothers.

This week I was talking to my best friend, who is a mother, about an Oprah show she saw—maybe some of you have seen it too. On this particular show were two mothers who had recently lost their children to suicide. Their young boys killed themselves because of the homophobic taunts that they had been hearing at school. They were sweet boys, sensitive, and had been called those names that I don’t dare repeat here in this pulpit but you know all of them. Some of you might have been called those names before or even used them in lives past.

The boys weren’t necessarily gay, I think they were so young that they didn’t even have the language to understand the difference between sexual orientation and expression of gender, which you know are two very different yet connected things. It didn’t matter if they were gay or not, because the words, the schoolyard taunts, the words that indeed hurt more than sticks and stones, they made it clear than any deviation from norms of masculinity are an offense worthy of punishment by self-loathing to the point of suicide.

To prevent a mother’s nightmare, one of the mothers of one of these young boys went to the school authorities and asked them to intervene when the taunts began. She could see where this road was leading and the mama bear she is, she went to ask them to please do anything to make it better. There is so much that can be done to prevent this, you know.

I thought of the Ethiopian eunuch as Stefanie and I were talking about these young boys and her fear, as a mother, for her own child, my godchild. He is a delightfully well-mannered, sensitive little boy who loves learning and has an active and engaged imagination. The world is his oyster, all to explore and to enjoy and to experience. What can we do to allow him to grow into his best self, into the gift of a human being that God has given us? This became the question we batted around.

First, I guess we should talk about what a eunuch actually is. Eunuchs are males whose testicles have been removed. In biblical times, in this particular community, eunuchs were considered sexual minorities because of a prohibition in Deuteronomy that keeps them from the worshipping community of Israel. And so that is that and the eunuch finds himself on the margins of mainstream Israel.

Eunuchs are a third gender—an expression not stereotypically masculine or feminine but something else, who, in the time of the writer of Acts was castrated and was distinguished by certain patterns of dress, speech, physiology and overall affect. While they were tremendously marginalized in some ways, not even being allowed to worship, not permitted into the community that they had been born into, they were also revered. One commentator believes that eunuchs make a “perfect servant,” perfect because they had no allegiance to family and could not jeopardize the dynastic lineage by their own offspring. Indeed they were able to move across gender and social boundaries and were often considered holy men because of their ability to access spiritual realms. (West, Mona, “Acts of the Apostles” in Queer Bible Commentary, SCM Press, London, 2006:pg 573)

The eunuch in our story today was a pretty important fellow. He was a court official of the queen of the Ethiopians, Ethiopia being the place that was thought at the time to have the most beautiful people in the world (Anna Carter Florence, http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/florence_4802.htm). He was the queen’s court official and not only that but this person’s job was to care for her entire treasury. He dealt with wealth and privilege day in and day out.

And yet, yet…he might be close to the top of society but not quite. An important character he is, perfect for service, service with clearly defined rules and boundaries that the individual has no control over setting. Important, rich maybe, a servant but out of the realm of receiving service, out of the realm of receiving grace or mercy or understanding or friendship or love, all because of his sexuality or the removal of it, and his expression of gender.

So here was this one, full of privilege on one hand and completely stripped of his humanity, of his heart and soul on the other, who was coming from worship in Jerusalem, from a long religious pilgrimage. It is curious, isn’t it. Because of the Deuteronomic clause, he wasn’t allowed to worship. Was he disobeying the rules? What was it that convinced him that he should try anyway, that he could access God even though the world had told him “no” over and over and over again?

This individual might have been what was known in the book of Acts as a “God-fearer,” someone who believes in the ethical principles of the Torah and who reveres the God of the Jews, but does not follow the law in its entirety, nor submit to circumcision” (West, pg. 572). But here he was, one who journeyed far, very far geographically, he was on a long pilgrimage to go and worship, which is a “mark of his profound religious devotion, since the farther one journeys the more devotion one exhibits” (Wall, Robert W. “The Acts of the Apostles” in The New Interpreter’s Bible”: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume X, Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN: pg. 143).

Here was someone that because of his very nature, because of something about his body, he could not help or do anything about the fact that he was outcast, was only marginally welcome, and yet perhaps a God-fearer, perhaps one who still found himself in the Scriptures of his ancestors, the traditions of his people, the rituals of his understanding.

And so this individual follower we have, powerful, rich, connected, a “perfect” servant, maybe even especially connected to God, he had it all, and yet a eunuch he still was, no doubt the source of whispers and pointed fingers and nasty words on the playground. He was one that no one was allowed to touch or have a meal with or share a home with or…you get the picture.

This treatment would break a mother’s heart.

We have someone different, with a ton of privilege and yet at least officially void of companionship, friendship, and understanding. We know little about the beauty of the soul of this person for the rules that is stacked up from the generations that keep us and everyone else from knowing him, really knowing him.

So even though very few people actually know this man, because they would not talk to him or seek his companionship but only his service, the gospel-writer gives us a glimpse into his devotion and his curious heart and his active mind. We meet him this morning in his glorious chariot, coming home from worship, from where he is officially not permitted and he is reading Isaiah. Listen to Isaiah:

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.

Does he find himself here? This is what I want to know in this passage. Does he feel like a sheep led to the slaughter? Does he feel like a lamb silenced before his death? How can he not see himself here, as Philip, the evangelist on assignment by an angel climbs up in the chariot and sits next to the this person who only serves and is never served. He sits next to him and maybe puts his hand on his knee and talks to the man about the scriptures, maybe he told him that yes, he could find himself in the Scriptures, yes, the promise was for him too.



You see Isaiah continues



In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.



He had to have known that this was written for him and for me and for you, for times when justice is denied, when the systems and structures and traditions built up for so many years fail us, for when we feel like our lives have been taken away.

I also read this in context of the recent decision of the Presbyterian Church, our denomination, to continue maintaining what is known as the homophobic and heterosexist “fidelity and chastity clause” of our constitution. Last June it was recommended by the highest body of the church to the presbyteries, or lower governing bodies to remove this clause which most effectively and directly negatively effects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and it was up to the presbyteries to ratify this decision by 50%. I have been through five previous attempts to change our constitution and this year we have come closer than we ever have in the past to reaching the 50% goal, but not close enough. And so the clause stays and we continue to lose tremendously gifted GLBT individuals called to ministry, because of it. This week alone I have counseled three gay and lesbian people who just can’t wait any longer to serve and are moving their membership to the United Church of Christ. Through these kinds of actions we continue to give the message to our children who feel like they are different in any way that God doesn’t approve of difference, that God approves of schoolyard taunts.

This breaks my heart. It breaks my heart for those of us who are GLBT and suffer in the church in so many ways—and yet stay because this is our home and this is where our God has called us. It breaks my heart, yet on this Mother’s Day when we think of the children who are raised knowing, even in welcoming congregations like this one, that to be queer, to be different, is not acceptable to so many others who claim the name of Christian. The actions of homophobia and heterosexism in the church are nothing more than an abomination, a scandal to the gospel. And that is why we work together to witness to people like the Ethiopian eunuch, and all of the parts of him that are in us.

I am not concerned about our church and all churches changing. I am not concerned because I have seen churches changing over the years, slow, steady change. Change is on the way and change is here. And we have come so much further this year than in years past. However, my concern is for those who are in the midst of the pain the church causes right now and right here. It must stop and we must stand up to stop it, we must like Philip get up in the chariot and open the Scriptures and realize that we are all there, that salvation is for every single one of us, that freedom is free and available and it is not up to us to monitor it.

Philip sat with this person, not a eunuch or a man or a high-falutant servant or an outcast but a person and began to speak, telling him the story of the scriptures, telling him the story about Jesus, telling him that in Christ there is no east or west, no slave nor free, in Christ we are all valued, we are all given a common playing field where we can shine in the particular gifts that God has given us.

It is a pretty amazing thing, that promise. All the walls we erect, all the names we are called that sometimes kill, they aren’t permitted in the kingdom of God. They are the ones outcast, not the people they are targeted against. And this person in his chariot, and Philip they are riding along and they came to some water and he was so excited about this gift, this promise, this belief in his very own goodness enough that he needed to stop, acknowledge it, ritualize it, participate in the cleansing act of water and get baptized.



“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” And so he commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.



And here we have it, one who had been on a long and hard pilgrimage, who was tired and worn out, who had been told “no” over and over again in his life and he frees the shackles from his heart and asks: what is to prevent me?

What is to prevent us? What is to prevent us from believing and acting upon that belief that there is enough room in the kingdom of God for the eunuch and for Philip and for you and for me, for religious conservatives and hippies, for politicians and tax-collectors, for artists and for musicians, for GLBT folk and for straight folk, for those we can’t stand and for our best friends. Indeed, here on this Mother’s Day of all days, can we not acknowledge and celebrate all children?

What is to prevent us?