The Eunuch

He could watch worship but he would never be allowed to join. The Eunuch had a place in the cheap seats, sure, but he couldn’t get close.

It wasn’t because he was from out of town. Or even that his skin was black. Everyone came in shades of brown in Jerusalem. And being so close to Africa, one from Ethiopia wasn’t that rare. His sun-kissed skin was a point of pride. He had to look a certain way, being in service to the royal court in Ethiopia. He was the treasurer of Queen Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians. He was a big deal. He dressed in the best clothes. He looked striking. He had to. It was part of the job.

You would think one which such a pedigree, one with such a job as his, one with the financial backing of his would be welcomed with wide open arms, but that wasn’t the case in the Temple. They had laws.[1] They had tradition. They had a problem with him and who he was. And it had nothing to do with the amount of melanin in his skin.

It was the fact he was a Eunuch. There were laws about this. He was a threatening social deviant. He was not whole. Neither male nor female. He was something other. Something undefined. Something that spanned the difference, something that was trans-sexual. Whatever he was, there wasn’t a place for him. He was unholy. Wrong. An outcast.

He thought maybe this was changing. He heard of a radical rabbi who was preaching that even the eunuch would be allowed into the assembly of God. This Jesus from Nazareth who said something about people being self-made eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.[2] It was a startling statement. Was it a metaphor for discipline of celibacy, or a statement of opting out of marriage, or was it something more? People didn’t know. It’s why the word had reached him even way down in Ethiopia, and he decided to head north and see for himself.

When he arrived in the city, that rabbi Jesus had died. The religious leaders conspired with the Roman leaders and had killed him. There were unbelievable stories of a resurrection and how his followers were now preaching everywhere. They must have been further inside the Temple, he had never met any.

But no, he wasn’t welcome when he got there. He had to keep outside of the doors. It was shameful. Nothing really changed. They wouldn’t allow him to worship. He could have all the money and status in the world, but they would always view him as less-than-human. A sinner. An outcast. One unworthy of their love and of God’s love. But they took his money as he purchased the scroll.

Not just any scroll. THE scroll. The one with the vision of a time where even his kind would be welcome in the assembly of God. The one where he could worship and take leadership in the events of the religious community. A place where he could hear that God loved and could work in and through even one such as he. The scroll of Isaiah. The prophet. The one who in Chapter 56 verses 3-8 states:

Let no foreigner who is bound to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely exclude me from his people.”
And let no eunuch complain,
“I am only a dry tree.”

For this is what the Lord says:

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant—
to them I will give within my temple and its walls
a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that will endure forever.
And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord
to minister to him,
to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold fast to my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”
The Sovereign Lord declares—
he who gathers the exiles of Israel:
“I will gather still others to them
besides those already gathered.”

A house of prayer for all nations! Could it be true? He would be able to hold fast to the covenant in the way he knew he was called. He’d always been curious, always fascinated by this single God of everything that the Jews followed.

But he could never fully join. Maybe later when the time Isaiah envisioned but not now. Well, he could have. He could have lied. Could have said he wasn’t who he was. Kept himself in the closet. But his soul would shrivel. And what if they found out? And they would find out. To get into the community, they could demand that he be circumcised. It was the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham.

No. He was who he was. He was accepted in his community back home, so he decided to head home to Ethiopia. He would just have to survive if he stayed in the north where they didn’t accept him. Instead, he chose to thrive and return home.

He hated life on the road, but it wasn’t so bad. He was rich. He rode in comfort in his chariot, surrounded by his whole retinue. He could take comfort in that. He took comfort that the road wasn’t dusty as it had just rained. The day was bright. And he had the scroll. He went right to the vision where he would be included. But he wanted to know more. So he started at the beginning. It was a long trip, he could get through this scroll a few times before he was back at court.

He had been reading a particularly confusing passage and was so absorbed he didn’t even notice Philip. He just seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

“Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip had asked. There was a part of him that wanted to bluff, to say, “yes, of course, I understand it perfectly.” But the experience of not being able to worship in Jerusalem had left him feeling too embarrassed? to pass off a white lie, even if it meant letting his tender ego be fully exposed. He answered the question with a question of his own: “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And then, he surprised himself even more than he surprised his driver: he ordered the chariot to stop and invited the man to join him.

The conversation that followed was exhilarating. The eunuch asked what he thought was a simple question, a point of clarification, but Philip’s response cracked open the mysteries of the scriptures, the mysteries of the world itself. He told a story so moving, so beautiful, so true, the eunuch was overwhelmed. It was as if he was being given a precious gift. It was as if he were being invited to a wonderful place. It was as if he was being told he was loved no matter what.

Then Philip talked about Jesus. The Good News. Finally! The one he had gone north to see. The one he risked the road for.

“Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

 The question had tumbled out of his mouth so quickly, he hadn’t even had time to really think about what he was saying. He had an irrational, fleeting thought that he could just take it back, that he could take a big deep breath and inhale the words back into his mouth and swallow them. Because he knew.

He knew the chapter and verse that prevented him from being baptized. He knew the words. He read commentary, heard the sermons calling him unclean and outside the bounds of what is acceptable in religion. Philip was more knowledgeable than him. He explained things in such a way to the Eunuch that his heart burned within his chest and stoked the fires of the Eunuch’s dream to belong. The hopes and fears of all the years were met in this moment.

No doubt Philip will fall back on exclusion, the Eunuch thought. No doubt Philip will say hurtful things that the Eunuch had heard all his life. Those stereotypes and slanderous statements about how he was unnatural and outside of God’s love. But Philip didn’t blink. He looked the Eunuch in the eye. Looked over to the water… It wasn’t really a pond, really. More like a big mud puddle that only forms after a good rain.

And it was there Philip radically welcomed the Eunuch. The one who never thought he’d be welcomed. The one who was rejected time and time again. Philip didn’t blink.

Philip baptized and blessed. The Eunuch was so overcome and was rejoicing and crying and carrying on, he didn’t even remember Philip leaving. It was like the Spirit snatched him away.

Philip did this. He had the power that Jesus gave the church.  Jesus breathed on the disciples and told them to go from Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth and Ethiopia was the end of the earth. And to baptize all nations. Jesus never put a stipulation on it. “But not these people.” Eunuchs are in the new covenant, too. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, as Isaiah is Jesus’ favorite book of the bible.

Philip baptizes a gender non-conforming black man in a mud puddle on the side of the road.

Years later, the Eunuch would look back. After the Queen converted to Christianity. After Ethiopia became the first Christian nation. After the people started carving churches out of solid stone. After the Eunuch was recognized for all that he did in teaching and leading worship and service projects and how he mentored and helped others on their walk of faith. That question he blurted out would come back to him.

What is to prevent me from being baptized?

It felt like an eternity, but of course it was only a moment. A split second, really. For even as the eunuch was drowning in his own long list of reasons, the Holy Spirit was whispering a different answer.

What is to prevent me from being baptized?

Absolutely nothing. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Bibliography

Special thanks to the Rev. Katherine Willis Pershey for the inspiration on taking the Eunuch’s point of view and for her writing which I have marked in red in the print copy those sections which are hers and I could not improve upon. Her sermon can be found here in it’s entirety, unsullied by my writing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgGUK6uo0x36Zgp0lARLJDWvnvsqqR3XqGNDATXnLS8/edit?fbclid=IwAR3KyMxVWgUdtItwF0ptuIRubSL8zS2947hJZPMWTm-z7xE4PnCuJxlumV0

 

Stephanie Spellers, our author for our study Radical Welcome, had a great two-part reflection on this story, found here: https://faithlead.luthersem.edu/philip-ethiopian-eunuch-you-and-me-part-one/

 

For Anchor Bible and Eerdman’s Bible Dictionaries for providing historical background.

Works Cited

[1] Deuteronomy 23:1 and Leviticus 22:24,

[2] Matthew 19:12

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