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| "The Risen Lord" by He Qi |
Scripture can be found here...
Best laid plans.
Sometimes the news of the week
kind of picks up the pastor’s idea of what she wanted to preach, and throws it
into a blender with all sorts of other realities. What comes out doesn’t really
look like the original concept. “Outcast and Stranger,” was my title. I was
focusing on the unnamed Ethiopian eunuch, and I wanted to talk about the ways,
despite his high status in the royal court, he was “othered,” cast out. Someone
who either through a fluke of nature or the flick of a knife had become unable
to father children… That is the delicate way I am going to say what I am trying
to say. Which meant, according to the Law of Israel, that he was unwelcome in
the Temple. Leviticus was clear:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 17Speak
to Aaron and say: No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has
a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no one who has a
blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated
face or a limb too long, 19or one who has a broken foot or a broken
hand, 20or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his
eyes or an itching disease or scabs or… ~ Leviticus 21:16-20
And then there is a description
of something, some accident that might befall a male. And that male could never
approach God almighty to offer a gift of food in the Temple.
The passage is Leviticus
21:16-20. You can look it up.
I was going to talk about how the
prophets responded to this law, talking back, as it were, to this understanding
of God—the reading Kevin shared with us from Isaiah—
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and
do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” 4For thus says
the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose
the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, 5I will give,
in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and
daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. ~ Isaiah 56:3-5
And then I was going to talk
about how, through that Isaiah passage, and through this encounter with Philip,
good news came to the eunuch, one who had formerly been outcast, a stranger.
Welcome had been proclaimed. That’s what I was going to talk about. That was
pretty much my sermon, until Friday, the day of the lock-down in the cities and
towns around Boston and Cambridge and Watertown, MA. And then I started to
think about Philip.
Philip embodied the welcome
Isaiah proclaimed. Philip, who was a runner, someone pointed out this week. Our
translation says he “ran up to” the chariot; in the Greek is “is running”
alongside it. He was a runner. And once I knew that, well. This started turning
into a different sermon.
This week’s bombings at the
Boston Marathon had the effect of stirring me with memories of the time I lived
in that city and the surrounding area, twelve years altogether. For two of
those years I lived just a few blocks from the Boylston Street location of the
explosions and the carnage. The most dangerous thing that ever happened to me
on Boylston Street, right in that same block, was accidentally ingesting Midori
liqueur in a chilled melon soup when I was five months pregnant. I took ballet
lessons at a pared down studio in Watertown, taught by a wonderful friend who’d
been to Russia and was steeped in Russian classical ballet technique.
By which I mean to say, for the
past twenty three years, since I left that wonderful city behind for life in a
different, and differently wonderful place, I’ve had a particular way of
remembering the landmarks and the parks, the restaurants and the theaters, all
the things that made up my Boston. Cut over to Boylston for a quick shortcut to
Symphony Hall, or the Boston Shakespeare Company? Yes. Explosions and death on
Boylston? Please. No.
You may recall that Philip, in
addition to being a runner, was one of those disciples chosen to be deacons in
last week’s reading. An ‘angel of the Lord’ drew him to this particular spot on
a wilderness road. He ran, and then caught up, and then climbed into the chariot
with the Ethiopian official, and they read Isaiah together. Here’s our bible’s
translation of the Isaiah passage:
Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before
its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8By a
perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living…
~ Isaiah 53:7b-8a
Who is the prophet talking about,
the Ethiopian official asked Philip. Is he talking about himself, or someone
else? It is hard for me, this morning, to read about lambs led to slaughter
without thinking about people cheering on their friends and family at the
finish line… a Chinese grad student who had come to Boston University for a
fresh start and a degree in statistics; a 29-year-old catering manager from
Somerville, described by friends as someone who was always there for them; an
8-year-old boy who was waiting to hug a runner who happened to be his dad.
Do you notice that Philip’s
answer is not given in detail? Starting with scripture, we are told, Philip
proclaimed the good news about Jesus. I love that detail of the story, because
it reports faithful biblical interpretation within the context of real life.
When the prophet known as Isaiah first preached or wrote those words, the
people of Israel, God’s people, understood this passage to be about them,
collectively. Together, they were, Israel was, God’s suffering servant. Later,
Christians read those words and recognized in them truth about Jesus. And
through the centuries the people of God have continued to recognize themselves
in these words. Christians under siege by the Roman Empire. Jews during the
Inquisition and the Holocaust. This is the part of the power of the living,
breathing Word of God: we continue to see ourselves and the world around us reflected
here in these words, in and out of time.
The Ethiopian official’s response
to Philip’s traveling bible study was swift: He, too, saw himself in the story.
They were on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, a part of the world in which
improvised explosive devices are all too familiar. If you look at a map of this
terrain, any body of water must have been tiny… a puddle, a rivulet. But it was
enough. “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” he exclaims.
The answer is, of course,
nothing. Nothing will be able to separate the Ethiopian eunuch, nothing will be
able to separate you, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord. And that good news, the welcome of Jesus, is extended
to this once-outcast child of God. The good news continues on its travels ‘to
the ends of the earth.’
Those of you who just can’t stop
reading a good story might have continued on past our stopping point of verse
39. If you did, you would have encountered that description of Saul, “breathing
threats and murder” against the Jesus-followers. Acts is like that. The life of
the early church was like that. Life today is like that. A story of inclusion and welcome side-by-side
with one of murder and mayhem. And within a few verses, the murderous Saul is
on his knees and being searched and known and loved by Jesus, the One who admonishes us
to pray for our enemies.
And so this week, the lectionary
gives us Philip, running to catch up with a chariot so that he can follow where
the Spirit has led him. And it gives us the Ethiopian eunuch, who might well
have seen himself in Isaiah, a kind of suffering servant, despite his position
and status. And if our curiosity, or our hope for a word from God in these dark
days, or simply the name “Saul” causes us to read on, we are met by someone who
is murderous at the outset, but afterwards, a fervent messenger for the gospel
he formerly tried to eliminate.
What are we to take away? How
does this story make sense for us this week? Where is the good news?
The good news is that Jesus’ love
continues to be carried to the ends of the earth by people like Philip,
snatched from the Meals on Wheels rotation by an angel and sent to bring the
outcast into the fold.
The good news is that Jesus’ love
is carried forward by people like the Ethiopian court official, who, after his
baptism, goes on his way rejoicing.
The good news is that Jesus’ love
is even carried by people like Saul, later Paul, who begins by breathing
threats and murder, and ends by promising that the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts
and our minds in Christ Jesus.
The good news is that, even in a
week like this, a week so filled with fear, and anger, and calls for
retribution, the love of God in a suffering servant finds expression in an
eight-year-old boy, in Martin Richard, whose enduring image is a photograph in
which he is holding a handmade sign in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in Newtown, CT. The sign reads: “No more hurting people.
Peace.”
In fact, that’s really all I
wanted to say today. Let Martin preach the sermon. Take his message home. It’s
the one we need.
No more hurting people. Peace.
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