Witness to the Resurrection Community: The Ethiopian given 5/3/15

            Most of you know me. I am Treasurer to our Queen Mother. All of my adult life, I have served our queen in one capacity or another. At last I rose to this honiored position of trust. But, as gratifying as all my accomplishments were, there was something else that haunted me. It was a nagging feeling of emptiness and meaningless that soured the pleasures of accomplishment and achievement.

            All of my adult life I have been something else, too-- emasculated-- a eunuch. Servants of the Queen Mother are always such. You all know that. Here in our land, we are a fact of life. We have a recognized, sometimes even an honored place in society.

            That does not make the ever-present sense of exclusion and apartness any easier to bear. That doesn't make the loneliness any easier. That doesn’t make it easy to bear when many will not befriend you because you are so different. That doesn't make it any easier to see others enjoying the simple joys of home and family.  That doesn't make it any easier to know that you can never share those joys, never know intimacy, never truly be part of a family circle, never fully share love and trust.  

            Eventually though, you learn to accept it.  You are who you are.  By birth or by circumstance, your body is what it is.  You cannot change who you are.

            The lack of family commitments can give rise to empty hours. You search for ways to fill them. Serving at court, you are an educated person, of course. So, in your sense of separation from the rest of life, you turn to the life of the mind. You turn to the life of the spirit. Or at least, I did.

            I became a philosopher, a seeker of truth and beauty. I read widely- -all of the great minds. I sought--it seemed at times--all of the knowledge in the world. I wanted to know the true nature of this earth on which we stand. What are those lights in the sky that we call the moon and the stars? I wanted to know how we human beings came to be here in this place. Who made this world? Where do we come from before birth and where do we go after death?

            At first these were purely intellectual pursuits-- cool and detached inquiries. As the years passed, these questions became more personal. What was the real purpose of my life? Why had I ended up on this earth the way that I was-- deformed some said-- an object of scorn or loathing, or at best pity to others? Where could I find a meaning for my life-- a guiding center?

            The deeper I delved, the more important it became for me to find some answers. Of course, eventually my reading of philosophy and natural history, ethics and aesthetics and all the other sciences led me to the queen of the sciences--religion. I began to study the beliefs of many peoples. But none of these fed the growing hunger in my heart and my mind. Whatever answers I was looking for, I realized, must also show ordinary men and women some guidance for the leading of an upright and moral life.

            Some of these sacred texts were written in languages I could understand. Others were written in tongues I must master, or else read in translation. But none of them made any sense without someone to interpret and explain.

They all were, I realized, written in the language of faith.

            Though the believers of many faiths claim otherwise, I never in all my reading and study, encountered a holy book that could on its own lead me to understanding, much less acceptance. All of them needed someone to explain and edify the writings. I began to seek out my answers through teachers.  Soon I had wrung dry the mind of every priest, every scholar in our land. Whatever it was that I was seeking, I realized I would never find it in Ethiopia.

            The Queen Mother was generous and understanding. I could, she said, take a brief leave of absence in order to indulge my hunger for truth with a pilgrimage. I would sit at the feet of the learned and holy, and I would seek illumination as I sought to fill the gaping emptiness inside of me. But where should I go in this pilgrimage I was proposing? Persia? Alexandria? Athens? Rome? I had no idea.

            Then one day, while still turning all of this over in my mind, I was making some purchases from a traveling merchant.  He casually mentioned the odd beliefs of many of the natives in the Roman Province of Judea. They make no stone or marble idols of the gods, he told me. In fact, they worship not many gods--but one. And their God is never depicted, never even directly mentioned or addressed by name.

            Their God is a God of all creation, they told me Their God calls everyday men and women to acts of compassion and a life of integrity. They worship a single God-- neither male nor female-- a God of sun and rain, moon and stars, countryside and city, day and night. A Creator, a First Cause, such as many of the Greek philosophers have speculated about. Yet they believe the Creator cares about and is still active in creation. Their God is far above us and yet within the heart.

            His words sparked a yearning, a fire within my breast. This might well be where I needed to go. Judea! Yes--what was their capital-- Jerusalem, that was it! Jerusalem! The very name seemed to echo in my mind. Jerusalem!

            Frankly, the anticipation was far more satisfying than the reality. It was nothing really any more than just another city.  The main temple of their religion was impressive enough on the outside, as temples went. But I never got to see the interior.

            I was banned from their o-so-holy temple! I was a foreigner, unclean, unfit to even enter its precincts! I spoke the wrong tongue, wore the wrong skin color, looked the wrong way, even ate the wrong foods! And when they realized that I was a eunuch! You never saw such wagging of beards and wringing of hands! It was in their holy book, they said.

            "No eunuch shall become a member of the assembly of God", read their law. Just as the animals they sacrificed in their Temple had to be perfect in body, so did those who came to worship there had to be perfect in body as well. It was bad enough that because of my birth and race those superstitious bigots would have the gall to exclude me from their precious temple. But that they should do so because of my very body, my very identity! It made me angry. It made me feel very lonely. It made me want to weep. Why should I care what they thought? But I found that I did.

            "God-fearers" they called us. I could stand on the steps of their temple with the other foreigners and peer through the open doors. They would sell me a Greek text of their Scriptures to read. Despite my anger at their narrow minds, I had come this far. So I peered in, craning my neck over the crowd. Frankly, it didn't seem to be anything special.

            I was riding home in my chariot when it happened. I had been reading aloud to myself from one of the prophets in their holy book.

            As a sheep led to slaughter,

            or a lamb before its shearers is voiceless

            God's servant said not a word.

            He was humiliated.

            Justice was denied him.

            Who will be able to speak of his descendants?

            For his life on earth has been cut off.

            Reading those words was like a blow to my heart. Never had mere words struck me so deeply. It seemed that all of my life I had been humiliated and cut off, because of my body, because of who and what I was!   

            Who was it that was so cut off? As I was so cut off?         I stopped the chariot. There in the desert I wondered. Cut off. Was there ever anyone who knew the meaning of those words as powerfully as did I? Cut off.

            Wrapped in contemplation, I hadn't notice him come up and enter the chariot. Suddenly I looked up and there was a face before me.  It was a peasant's face, red with exertion, sweat pouring down in the afternoon heat. He had been running to catch up with me. It was a Jewish face, like those of the priests in the temple I had just left. He spoke to me though, in Greek as good as mine.

            "Do you understand what you are reading?" he asked.

            "How can I understand it, without someone to explain it to me?" I was astonished at the matter-of-fact way in which our conversation began.

            "Who is this servant of God referred to here?  I asked. The author? Or someone else? If you can interpret it, please do so."

            And as we resumed the journey, this man-- Philip his name was--began to teach me. Who was the servant of God referred to? Philip said that it had been a teacher named Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ.

            This man Jesus, Philip told me, had preached that all men and women were children of the One God. He had come from God. And Jesus had healed the sick and wounded, fed the hungry and taught the love of God and of neighbor. He had built up a new kind of community of love with His followers.

            This Jesus was the One who had been as gentle as a sheep and as innocent as a lamb. This Jesus was the one who had been unjustly humiliated and slaughtered. And just as in the text, He hadn't made so much as a sound to save himself. 

            Philip claimed that from now on this Jesus would belong to every people of every generation, because His life no longer bound him to this earth. Jesus had defeated death, risen from the grave! And now His life-- and new life in Him was everywhere.

            A totally new kind of community had been birthed—a  new way of living and being together in the world. It was a new life in Jesus, and in God. And anyone could be a part of that life. And anyone could allow that life to live in them as easily as fish swam in the waters of the stream we rode alongside, as easily as the water flowed around the fish.

            Then Philip took the book of the prophet that I had been reading from my fingers and turned ahead a few pages. "Read this, brother!" he said. I read.

            ....and the eunuch must not say

            "I am nothing but a barren tree."

            For these are the words of our God.

            "The eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

            who choose to do my will, and hold fast to my covenants,

            shall receive from me something better than sons and daughters.

            I will give to them an inheritance, a memorial, and a name within       

            my own house, within my own walls.

            I will give them an everlasting name.

            a name imperishable for all time.

            So too, with the foreigners who pledge their hearts to me."

            says our God,

            "who serve me and love my name.

            Their offerings and sacrifices shall be acceptable at my altar;

            for my house shall be called

            a house of prayer for all nations."

            My throat was constricted. My eyes were blurred. My heart was pounding within my chest. I could read no further.

            "‘A house of prayer for all nations’  Philip told me that was what Jesus had called out when He turned over the tables of the money-changers and drove the pigeon sellers from the Court of the Gentiles in front of the Temple.

            "There is water here." I croaked. "What is there to prevent your baptizing me into this new life?"

            "Nothing at all, brother" said Philip. And so we stopped and entered the water. And Philip poured the water over my head. My ears burned, my spine tingled, my eyes filled with tears of joy. And I felt.. literally felt the Spirit of this Jesus enter into my heart. And I knew that my hunger for meaning and understanding was at last filled. I still did not have all the answers. But now I had something better. At last my life had a purpose.  At last I felt direction. At last I knew love.

            In Philip's act of  taking the time to teach and explain to me, I felt a total acceptance of who and what I was. Not because of my position or wealth. No, this man Philip had really cared about me. All his life long, he had been taught to hate and fear the stranger. Though he did not know me, though our tongues and color and look and even smells were different, though my sexual identity was strange and no doubt frightening to him, Philip and I became one in Christ Jesus. We truly became, as he kept calling us, brothers.

            Now I've returned, here to my homeland. Now I've told you the story. I've invited you all here into my household. Some of you know me. Others are strangers to me. You are men, women, eunuchs, young, old, rich, poor, slave and free. There's so much more that my brother Philip told me about Jesus that I want to share with you. But there will be other times for that. Now, I simply want to invite you to join me in the community that Jesus of Nazareth formed.

            I don't know exactly what that will look like, or feel like, or what we'll call ourselves. But I do know this. We'll accept one another. We'll learn together to love one another. We'll pray together. We'll sing and play together. We'll grow together. We'll become a new kind of family—children of the One God— brothers and sisters.

            And it'll be much better than living apart. It'll be much better than living our lives cut off. And it'll be much better than living only for the sake of our own sweet selves.  And I know it will be far better than living in the old, selfish and sinful ways that we've always been accustomed to. Will you take a chance and join me?  Will you join the family of Jesus?