When I was 22, I attended a women’s cabaret in Minneapolis, where I was then living. One of the performers mentioned Camp Sister Spirit, a feminist retreat center in rural Mississippi that was in need of help – not just funds, but volunteers to help in the work of renovating the former hog farm and to simply be on the land and serve a protective function as a ministry of witness, as some of the camp’s neighbors had gotten wind of its doings and had expressed their disapproval by firing shots at women on the land and even draping a dead female puppy over the camp’s mailbox.
Something about this information really pulled at me, so within a short while I had quit my job, packed a duffle bag, and boarded a Greyhound to Laurel, Mississippi. The women who lived on the land – Wanda and Brenda Henson and Brenda’s daughter Andie – were off visiting relatives that first week of January, and the lone woman left to keep watch hadn’t been let know exactly when I was coming. When I got off the bus in Laurel and tried to call the camp, I got that loud beeping sound that indicates that you’ve called a fax machine. Finally, I walked into a local business and asked the women working there if I could send a fax. They let me do so, and within about a half-hour Carol had come to pick me up and brought me to the camp.
She was overjoyed to see me. It had been scary being alone on the land. And once Wanda and Brenda and Andie got back, they put me to work, sanding and staining baseboards, painting the fence, and other assorted tasks to get the center up and running.
The camp appears to no longer be in existence – the Facebook page hasn’t been updated in ten years, and they don’t seem to have a website. But my hope is that in a tiny way I was able to help create a safe space for lesbian and bisexual-identified women in rural south Mississippi, even for a short while.
In our Second Testament lesson for today, the apostle Philip also receives a strange call to go forth to a seemingly deserted part of the world. The book of Acts tells at that an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south, to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza,” and the narrator informs us that this is a “wilderness road.” Important enough as a route that a road had been built, but perhaps not the most highly traveled or busy roads in first-century Palestine. A somewhat out of the way place. Kind of like south Mississippi.
Well, Philip doesn’t seem to have been on this lonely road long when he spies a chariot, on its way south from Jerusalem, that contains a person identified as an Ethiopian eunuch, and the secretary of the treasury, as it were, for Queen Candace of that land. This person, the narrator tells us, is reading from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit of the Lord gives Philip further instructions: “Go over to the chariot and join it.”
It should be noted at this point that the practice of reading silently to oneself is a fairly new invention. In Philip’s day, and even on up into the Middle Ages, “reading” meant either reading aloud to a group of people or reading aloud – if quietly subvocalizing – to oneself. Silent reading, for whatever reason, wasn’t really a thing.
Our text goes on to tell us, then, that when Philip got close enough to the chariot, he could hear what the Ethiopian was reading. It was the second half of verse 7 of Isaiah 53 and all of verse 8:
Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.
Although the Ethiopian would not have known that it was Isaiah 53:7-8, because the Bible wasn’t divided into chapters until the early 13th century, and not into verses until the mid-16th. No matter. What the Ethiopian was reading was a portion of the last of the four Suffering Servant texts in the book of the prophet Isaiah – and biblical scholarship has now helped us to understand that chapters 40 – 55 of the book of Isaiah were written during the time of the Babylonian Exile.
Philip asks the Ethiopian a wonderful question to get himself invited into the chariot: “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the Ethiopian confesses that he does not, asking, “How can I, unless I have someone to guide me?” And then he invites Philip to join him in the chariot.
This is quite possibly one of the most successful conversion stories in scripture. The Ethiopian asks Philip of whom the prophet is speaking – himself or someone else? And Philip takes this natural opening to share with the Ethiopian about Jesus. The next thing that happens is the chariot passes a body of water, and the Ethiopian says, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” And the answer, apparently, is nothing, because the next thing that happens is the Ethiopian commands the chariot to stop, he and Philip get out, and Philip baptizes the man.
I love this story because of its wonderful simplicity. Philip doesn’t tell the Ethiopian that he needs to attend a six-week new membership class, or make a profession of faith. The Ethiopian’s desire to be baptized once he has heard about Jesus Christ is enough. And then Philip is whisked away, and the Ethiopian goes on his way rejoicing.
Sometimes, bringing new disciples to Christ is just that easy. When I was pastoring the Whitestone Church of the Brethren in Okanogan County, Washington, our organist and I went out one day and invited the three families who lived adjacent to the church, which was not in town but on the road between the towns of Tonasket and Loomis. I printed up little flyers of invitation in case people weren’t home or wanted something to remind them of when we worshipped, and at least as important, had our monthly potluck, and we knocked on the doors of the two households across the road and the one next door.
One family was not home, so we simply left the flyer between the screen and inner doors. At the next house, there was a woman home, who expressed interest but also mentioned that she and her husband often worked on Sundays. At the third house, the one next door to the church, a man accepted our flyer and said he would share it with his wife, but he seemed in a hurry and so we basically left it at that.
The next Sunday, this man, his wife, and their two teenage children all came to church. And they came faithfully ever after. The church grew by 25% in one day. Kristi, the mom, became part of our foot care ministry, and Jimmy, the son and younger child, asked to be baptized the next summer. About as easy and low-resistance as Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian.
But the process of conversion and baptism may not have seemed quite so easy and simple to the Ethiopian himself. Let’s look at him a little more closely. We are not given a great deal of information about him – not even his name – but we’re told that he’s an Ethiopian, a eunuch, and the court treasurer for Queen Candace and that he had come to Jerusalem to worship.
Here’s where things get less simple. A eunuch, in case you didn’t know, is a man who has undergone genital mutilation. Castration, at least, if not more dramatic mutilation, probably as a child. In a number of cultures of the past, this was done to individuals who would serve certain functions: harem guard, for instance, or royal retainer of some kind, or religious functionary – people for whom removing the temptation or even possibility of sexual misconduct made a certain amount of sense, albeit achieved by brutal and gruesome means. (I wonder what the US Congress might look like right now if this were a requirement for holding office.)
And this person had gone to Jerusalem to worship, at the Temple. As an Ethiopian, he was not of Jewish ancestry, and thus a Gentile, and so would have been considered a “God-fearer” – one of the Gentiles of first-century Palestine who participated in Jewish worship but had not chosen to, or were for some reason unable to, make a full conversion to Judaism. It was among the “God-fearers” that the Christian movement achieved its earliest successes.
However, among the many rules for observing ritual cleanness in order to worship at the Temple is one found in Deuteronomy 23:1, that no male who has undergone genital mutilation is allowed to be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. So the Ethiopian eunuch traveled as much as 1500 miles – a journey that would have easily taken over a week in a chariot – only to be turned away because of an operation that was performed on him when he was small.
Shines a little more light on the story, doesn’t it? Here is a person, equivalent to the US Secretary of the Treasury, a person with a great deal of power, authority, and status in his own land, who has become interested in the Jewish faith and traveled by chariot all the way to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. Ten days on the road just to go to church, probably sleeping in a tent where there were no inns. And then discovering that because of a physical condition he could not help or change, he wasn’t welcome.
I imagine that the line from the Suffering Servant song, “In his humiliation, justice was denied him,” was hitting home for the Ethiopian at about this point. He’s got another long hard ten days to travel back home without ever having glimpsed any of the Temple apart from perhaps the outermost courtyard, if that, let alone worshipped there. He, a man of status and rank back home, humiliated and rejected.
And as he travels home, he reads these words that seem to capture his pain, humiliation, and disappointment, words that speak to his heart. But the Suffering Servant songs don’t ever identify their subject – biblical scholars believe that in the time of Isaiah, they were a symbolic personification of the nation of Judah as a whole, suffering in exile and slavery in Babylon. And from the time of the gospel writers forward, these poems have been understood to refer also to Jesus.
So Philip tells the Ethiopian about Jesus. About God taking on human flesh – living, teaching, and ministering amongst the people of Roman-occupied Palestine. Awakening them to the vision of God’s shalom and the possibility of living as free, dignified people in communities of mutual
providence and care, even while under the yoke of Rome. And that those who wanted to be part of this movement, this community, need only be baptized to be admitted.
And the Ethiopian’s first thought was: I want that. But he phrases his question to Philip very carefully, wanting to make sure there isn’t any fine print. Is his physical condition, his Gentile status, his Ethiopian ethnicity, or his position in Queen Candace’s court – could any of that be a reason why he could not join the Jesus movement?
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
Those are the last words of the conversation reported in the book of Acts. And Philip’s answer must have been nothing – not a physical condition, not rank or status, not ethnicity. The chariot is ordered to stop. Philip and the man get out, and Philip baptizes him.
And ever since then, in various heartbreaking and infuriating ways, the worldwide church or its local branches, has acted as though this story doesn’t exist. How many people have been told, you are welcome to join, but you have to renounce your homosexuality or undergo conversion therapy. You can join, but we won’t speak your native language or sing songs or share food from your culture. You can join, but since you’re a woman, you won’t be allowed to preach or even to teach children over the age of ten. You can join, but… but… but…
But nothing. Excluding anyone from the body of believers, for any reason, is a sin. A slap in the face to the inclusive message of Jesus.
The “buts” have maybe gotten subtler over the centuries, in some places, but they are still being spoken. Even in our denomination. “You can join, but we’re still going to hold our district conference this year in a former sundown town where there are still residents flying Confederate flags.” “You’re welcome to be here, and even to run for office, but the leadership team is still going to be all white and 80% men.” “You can join but we won’t recognize your marriage or celebrate it.”
That, my friends, is NOT the church that Jesus called forth.
I worry about our denomination sometimes. I don’t worry about the Christian faith or the church in more general terms – I believe wholeheartedly that as long as there are human beings on the earth, there will be some kind of community that can be described as “church,” although it may look very different from what we’re used to now. But the trouble with homogeneity is lack of perspective, of not knowing what you don’t know, and of running the risk of resenting it when somebody brings it up. For how many years was it impossible for women with small children to serve as Annual Conference delegates because there was no childcare available? For how many decades was it not possible for a woman to be called to set-apart ministry?
I fear that we are making those same kinds of mistakes in our welcome to brothers and sisters of color and especially, LGBTQIA persons, as a denomination, and sometimes in our local congregation. How do we fix this?
The English word “hospitality” comes from the Latin hospes. The Latin word means both “host” and “guest,” and that flexibility of translation points to an important reality: people only feel truly welcome when their hosts are willing to shift some things to make them feel more comfortable. Fried chicken and Texas potatoes are delicious, but maybe some of our neighbors would really appreciate rice and beans, or macaroni and cheese, or greens and grits – with some hot sauce, please! The old hymns are nice, but maybe we need to learn some that are new to us but will have that well-loved familiarity to new participants. And yes, the light-skinned, blue-eyed Jesus at the front of the sanctuary is a spiritually comforting sight, but he doesn’t really look like a lot of our neighbors, does he?
These past two days, I’ve been in retreat sessions with the other members of the denomination’s Womaen’s Caucus steering committee, to plan out our efforts together for the rest of the calendar year. And we are in complete agreement about a couple of things: the Church of the Brethren must either become truly intercultural, egalitarian, equitable, and inclusive – or it will die, and the Spirit will use the compost to create church anew. And growing and changing and being truly welcoming and inclusive is often uncomfortable. Are we willing to embrace that discomfort and do that work, to shift enough that our style of worship and community can feel like home to people who are unlike us?
Don’t say yes right away. Pray on that. Spend some time envisioning change and giving yourself a chance to spiritually and emotionally adjust to it. I think if we are willing to be open, humble, and flexible, we can do it. I for one am more than willing to try. I hope, ultimately, that each one of you is, too.
The Ethiopian eunuch has a name, by the way. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church knows him as Simon or Simeon Bachos, and they consider him a founding father. You never know how important it might be to be willing to be uncomfortable, take that wilderness road, introduce yourself to a genderqueer person or person of color, and get yourself invited into their chariot. Their chariot. To ultimately travel together – peacefully and simply – unto life everlasting. Amen.
Bobbi Dykema is currently serving as pastor at First Church of the Brethren in Springfield, Illinois. She is also on the pastoral team of the Living Stream online Church of the Brethren and serves on the steering committee of the Womaen’s Caucus. Bobbi is passionate about racial and gender justice, beauty and the arts, and reading scripture as a living document.
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