SERMON Amazing Joy

Easter 5 (B) (2009): Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

This is a morning of amazing contrasts. An action packed account that could have been lifted from a best-selling first century Roman Empire novel. And then theological reflection about vines and branches and love and abiding that is abstract and mystical, warm and fuzzy. And in the contrasts there is the fantastic on the one hand, and the familiar on the other -- which make them so easy either to dismiss or to ignore. Dismiss because they have little in common. Ignore because they are fantastic or cliche..

Take the fantastic. Here we have the author of Luke-Acts at his skilled best. Philip whom we meet has been consecrated a deacon in the Jerusalem Church and is serving as its outreach minister. He's been in Samaria preaching and healing, when the appearance of an angel of the Lord directs him to head southward on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza.

The angel is fantastic event one. On the road there is an exotic black Ethiopian (in Greek, the word for Ethiopian means "A people with a burnt face") -- a eunuch who is in charge of the entire treasury for the Ethiopian queen. We know that this exotic Ethiopian is either Jewish or a Jewish proselyte because he is reading the Hebrew scriptures, possibly in Hebrew but most likely in Greek. We also know that he is rich because he has a chariot large enough to hold him, the scriptures, and later Philip. The Spirit directs Philip to run after the chariot -- which Philip does.

Fantastic event number two takes place when, after the eunuch is baptized, Philip is snatched away by the Spirit of the Lord and finds himself re-deposited in Azotus, an ancient Philistine town due west of Jerusalem. All the fantastic stuff makes it hard for us to believe the story.

And if the fantastic stuff makes it hard for us to believe Luke's story, our familiarity with what we hear from the authors of First John and the gospel makes it hard to hear what's being said.

How many times have we heard: "perfect love casts out fear";"We love because he first loved us"; "I am the true vine . . . Abide in me as I abide in you";"if you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you"? And all the love talk makes us think (or at least makes someone my age think) of the Beatles' song Love, love, love. "All you need is love, all you need is love,." And the abiding part is a warm, fuzzy Linus security blanket that gets us anything we ask for. And none of it has anything to do with Philip and the eunuch on the Road to Gaza.

Maybe.

It doesn't hurt to take a closer look at Luke's fantastic events. For Luke and his first century readers, the angel and Philip's being snatched up are literary devices -- literary devices that they expected and got in the popular literature that they read. And the second device is not one that has been totally abandoned. You may have read The Magic Barrel, by Bernard Malamud. It's a short story about a 1950s Jewish marriage broker on the upper West Side in New York. In it, Bernard Malamud repeatedly has his protagonist disappear at one location only to re-appear at another a few seconds later. This, of course, makes us uneasy. But it does grab our attention which means it still does work (well sort of works) as a literary device.

But it's not only the angel and the disappearing that are typical of first century Hellenistic authors. Those authors were preoccupied with the exotic and social rank. And with an Ethiopian Ben Bernanke who is a Jewish eunuch to boot -- a Jewish eunuch who is reading the Hebrew scriptures, maybe even in the Hebrew, while being driven in his own roomy chariot -- well, you cannot get more exotic or powerful. No question, Luke's narrative skills here caught the attention of his readers and captivated them.

But if that were all Luke were doing we would not be captivated by this encounter. And we are captivated by it. At least I know I am. And I am captivated, and I hope you are, too, because this is about so much more than the magical, exotic, and rich.

For one thing, it is about someone who is deeply religious. Someone who has gone to worship in Jerusalem even though, as a eunuch, a castrated male, he will not be allowed to worship in the temple proper. Someone who is nonetheless reading the Hebrew scriptures.

It is also about an outreach minister named Philip -- someone whom I have to confess I occasionally identify with as I contact individuals who have said they are interested in learning more about Wicker Park Lutheran Church. Someone who (directed by the Spirit) runs -- runs! -- along aside the chariot. Someone who, while running along side the chariot, asks if the eunuch understands the scripture that he is reading.

And it's about the eunuch's asking to know more, and Philip's telling him the good news. And it's about the eunuch's seeing water and asking, "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" The answer? Nothing! The chariot is ordered to stop, and Philip and the eunuch both solemnly enter the water, and Philip baptizes the eunuch. Just like that.

The working of the Spirit so evident in the eunuch's commitment is breathtaking. It is also miraculous. It is not, however, magical or a clever literary device. It is real. Very real. We find Luke's account of Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch captivating because it is about a reality we recognize -- a reality that many of us have experienced as adults when we are led by the Spirit -- sometimes to our great surprise and wonder -- to baptism or church membership. (Having said that I'll confess that not all would-be members of Wicker Park Lutheran Church are as propelled as the Ethiopian eunuch. There have been moments of Philip envy.)

But Luke's account of this encounter and commitment does not end with the eunuch's baptism. Luke tells us that, after the baptism, "the eunuch . . . went on his way rejoicing." And for Luke joy is always the response to God's work in the world. And, according to some of the early church fathers, filled with this joy, the eunuch went home to establish the Christian church, the community of faith, in Ethiopia.

And it is here that John's gospel and letter of First John intersect with the commitment that inevitably leads to community.

For Jesus in the Gospel of John to say that he is the vine and we the branches is like Paul's saying that we are the members of the body of the Christ. Christ abides in us and we in him because we are, as a community of faith, Christ's presence in the world.

And what this means, and the love that this entails, is spelled out by the author of First John. "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us," that author writes, "because he has given us of his Spirit" -- the same Spirit that directed Philip to run along side the chariot and the eunuch to seek baptism. The same Spirit that gathers and enlightens us here and now. Because of God's love for us in Christ, we love one another, in community.

This is not the warm and indiscriminate kind of love that Beatles said that is all we need. The author of First John is writing from a community where there had been recent defectors. These defectors are the ones who had said, "'I love God,'" but who "hate[d] their brothers and sisters." These are the ones whom the author of First John calls liars. In that author's words, "those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love a God whom they have not seen." These defectors were dead branches pruned from the vine. No love lost there.

No, the love here is a different kind of love. The love, the agape that is commanded here, is about esteem and respect for the other -- something the defectors from the First John community ceased having. It is, as Krister Stendahl writes, a love measured by its "elastically" and by "a positive embracing of the other in the awareness that it is those who have different gifts and visions who can enrich me and our common community." It is the love of a redeemed community that embraces exotic Ethiopian eunuches as well as the old and young, rich and poor, married and single, gay and straight, black, white, red, and yellow -- and then goes on to bear fruit by reaching out to the greater community in which it finds itself.

By God's grace, we know this love in our commitment to and participation in a community where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female. It is because of this love that we as individuals abide in Christ and are Christ's disciples bearing fruit. Abiding in Christ means that we can ask God to enfold and surround us. This is personal but it is never private.

During my first year at Wicker Park and over several months, I spent time with someone who had spent a life time living out God's love by embracing others. She had just been told that she had inoperable cancer and that she did not have very long to live. And, when I first met her, she quite simply said, "I am a person of faith." And, in that statement, was a lifetime of commitment and participation in the body of Christ. A lifetime of living in her baptism. A lifetime of discipleship that had borne much fruit. A lifetime of abiding in Christ and he in her. And as God enfolded and surrounded her, we as a community did the same. That's what it means to abide in Christ, individually and collectively.

At the end of this part of John's gospel, Jesus says, "I have said these things to you [the "you" here is plural] that my joy may be in you and that your joy [the joy of the Ethiopian eunuch!] may be complete." May all of us as people of faith abiding in Christ know that joy. That amazing joy. This day and always. Amen.

May 10, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church

Chicago