St. Andrew’s Pictou, May 14^th 2006 Mother’s Day

 

Embracing the Exile

 

Acts 8:26-40

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

 

Pretend for a moment that the national church has had discussions about problems in propagating the faith and decided that maybe the Bible needs to be re-written; parts of it need to be left out because they are long or boring or maybe they just don’t fit our modern thinking of the Christian paradigm. A committee of General Assembly is struck and with their red marker they are going through the Bible striking out the parts that we don’t need.

 

They come to this passage in Acts: a record of one of the early converts to the Christian faith and they look at this story of amazing contrasts and disturbing contradictions.

 

What are they to do?

 

On one had, we have a story of a man of wealth, character, power and position being converted to faith in Jesus Christ. He is in charge of the treasury of the Queen of Ethiopia, so he is both trusted and rich. Not everyone could afford to buy a copy of a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and we read that he had traveled to Jerusalem to worship. So he must have been a Jew and we see that even at this early time, Jews had been forced to move to far away places, like Ethiopia which is in the heart of Africa..

 

There are three highly positive aspects to this story:

 

This story of early church history has three references to its miraculous nature:

-“Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’” God set the whole conversion up, according to the scripture text.

-vs. 29 has “the Spirit” telling Philip to go and talk to the man when he sees him.

-at the end of the story, we read that “When they came up out of the water, (after the baptism) the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away;” he literally disappeared and “found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing though that region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”

 

Secondly, this text has a direct OT quote and Biblical explanation of Jesus as being foretold by the Isaiah reading that was under discussion. It is a marvelous thing to have a record of one of Jesus’ disciples actually interpreting a particular scripture passage.

 

Thirdly, it is such a good story and has great tension and interest:

-the conversion happens on a dangerous road,

-we have the royal connection with the Queen of Ethiopia,

-the man invites Philip to sit with him and look at the text,

-the man requests baptism, and

-the story ends with him going “on his way rejoicing.”

 

Anyone might say that this was a great story of conversion and a splendid example of how it is all to happen, but do you think that our “ghost committee” might have a problem with one single uncomfortable detail: the man was a eunuch!

 

In plain English, he had been castrated when he was young for the same purposes that we spay or neuter pets today: to keep him under control. It was easier to keep everything under control at the palace if you had all the male servants castrated; no fooling around with the royal princesses or the harem once that was done! You could trust a eunuch, but not a regular kind of guy.

 

This Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, the Queen of Ethiopia, rich, powerful, well-educated and respected had been exiled from the human community by having his sexual nature obliterated and turned into a human kind of robot for court convenience.

 

But the text, our Bible says that he was embraced by the disciple Philip and baptized “with water in the name of the father, son and holy spirit,” making him a card carrying Christian!

 

So our “ghost committee” might be of two minds:

-remove the story and sidestep the problem that “an exile” (a man who could not and would not ever be married with children) could be a bona fide Christian, or

-leave the story in, as it is, and say that the Good News of Jesus Christ is for all people, regardless or whether some people in society call them exiles, rejects, substandard, different, not conforming to the norm, or whatever designation they might be given.

 

Since we have the story as you hear it today, I guess all of the scholars and all of the committees over the last 2,000 years have decided to leave the story in the Bible.

 

We are left with the theological truth that God in Jesus embraces all those we might want to exile in our land, in our communities, and in all of our families.

 

Philip brought this man to the Lord, but would you invite this eunuch home for dinner?

Would the session a “the Kirk” vote to have him baptized?

Would you want him as a friend?

 

If you have a hard time getting your mind around those questions, you have to think of the people you, yourself would exile from your table, your home, this church, or your lives.

 

God in Christ calls us to embrace the exile.

 

If you think that you are the exile, you need to know that God embraces you!

 

The reading from 1 John is beautiful passage of scripture and expresses love in such a powerful and poetic way:

“Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

 

Since most people seem to affirm that they believe in love. Of that consequence they must believe in God, for those last three words are, “God is love.”

 

When the children gather at the front of the church we love them:

-they are so beautiful and honest, so trusting,

-they are so interesting, so free, so unspoiled, so spiritual.

 

They remind us of how we all start out: unspoiled, unashamed, natural, and so it is impossible for us not to love them, as they are us.

 

But the rigors of life leave us with our scars. The disappointments, the rejections, the losses, sickness, shaming, and alienation, exile many of us to the fringes of life and society, even to the fringes of our families… even outside our families.

 

Since the word love is so over-used and abused, to hear what John is telling us about love, I think we need to insert the word, “radical.”

 

Loving the unlovable, and forgiving the unforgivable, requires a radical love.

 

When Philip encountered the eunuch, he demonstrated a radical love.

 

“Beloved, let us radically love one another, because radical love is from God; everyone who loves radically is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love radically, does not know God, for God is a radical kind of love.”

 

God is the radical love and that can love the exile in you and in me.

 

Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

 

Is this message about “the word of God” a “pruning” for you? Did you say, “ouch” when you considered having someone for dinner that felt uncomfortable?

 

Are there attitudes and assumptions that are bearing no fruit in your lives? Can you feel the “ouch” when you prune those attitudes?

 

There is no doubt that in the experiences of life, prunings are often hurtful: the vine wants to grow bigger and bigger but the pruner cuts it off to grow more fruit, for a better harvest.

 

Always remember this, my friends: according to the text, the object is more fruit. The fruit is love. While the pruning may hurt, the ample harvest of abundant love is worth the price.

 

AMEN   Rev. Alan Stewart