Rembrandt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
5 Easter
2 May 2021
I keep asking myself why, over the nearly 2000 years since Jesus walked as one of us, has there been such a proliferation of denominations within Christianity, and then subsets within denominations. It finally hit me: it’s because we humans have not gotten over the notion we know the mind of God, or worse that we are the voice of God. As for me, I want no part of that. I have enough problems figuring out what clothes to wear each day so the thought of being some sort of messenger of the divine word really sets me on edge.
Unfortunately Jesus did not leave us with a set of blueprints with complete assembly instructions and an operator’s manual. Not one the oldest fragments of Christian scripture contain any such material. This is hard for linear thinkers and especially hard for folks like me whose mind wonders every which way and who needs some concrete instructions upon which to assemble my project. Not even an 800-help number or YouTube video. Sadly, I am a sort of paint by number or adult coloring book sort. I love those lines guiding me as to where the colors go. But even my color between the lines never seems to exhibit great color combinations. I find it sad that I can’t seem to master paint by number. Even when I was a kid, I had issues. There was a time when you could mail order paper doll kits. Some of my neighborhood friends and I would coordinate and send in an order all together and when they arrived we would get together with our giant set of colored pencils, likely with some Kool-Aid and cookies, and decide what colors to use on the outfits; when we were finished we would then play with our paper dolls. Mine never looked very good. I am almost embarrassed to say I was jealous of someone else’s paper doll outfits.
Where I seemed to find my niche was car repair. My father said everyone who had a car needed to know how to change the oil, fix a flat, instill new shocks, and be able to put in plugs and points and a carburetor. He was one of a few fathers of daughters who felt that way about girls. How many of you know what I am talking about when I say “gap a spark plug”? I could do it all; later I learned the basics of bike repair and my crowning achievement was to build a bike from the frame up.
These things did help prepare me for adulthood. I learned cooperative play with my friends; we were well versed in how to make the most intricate and imaginative play times. We had some rudimentary toys, but early on batteries were only for flashlights. Manual toys and that was that.
Learning skills like housekeeping chores, car maintenance, and gardening help you make it in the world, but more importantly, like play time, help teach you to work with other people in a positive way.
Yet none of this prepared me when I finally decided it was ok to confront the Gospel and re-examine what I believed to be the message of Christianity. Let me say first that I believe that there is room for great variation in our liturgies and our worship. The more austere Protestant worship I experienced as a child and young adult stopped feeding me. I apparently resonate more with the so-called smells and bells of orthodoxy and Catholicism (but not the theology). Other folks find their worship homes in mosques and synagogues or in a Hindu temple, or even in their own home. Those are the outward trappings; they are there for us and are like the kind of icing we put on the cake.
Theology is the cake itself. If you think about it, a standard cake differs mainly in the flavors and the shape; the basic ingredients are the same.
Now I do not believe the Ethiopian in today’s lesson from Acts was pondering whether Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines made a better cake mix, or whether made from scratch was even better. He was coming from the temple in Jerusalem, which meant he was at the very least a God fearer; someone who accepted the Jewish religion but had not taken the formal step of becoming a full convert. He was wealthy, for he was in a chariot or carriage and he had the means to own a scroll of Isaiah. He was educated and would likely have been reading in Greek as that was the common language of the Jewish diaspora. I would also say he was humble, for he realized the limits of his own knowledge and was willing to invite a humble and poor traveler to join him. I suspect we have all experienced something like this. You read something and you can’t piece it together fully; you know you need someone to help you interpret. If I were to pick up a journal about astrophysics, I would be able to read every word, if it were written in English. However I would need an astrophysicist to help me understand what it was saying. Phillip was the astrophysicist of the day, guided by the third character in the story: the Holy Spirit.
I wish I had Phillip’s chutzpah; he doesn’t bat an eye at being whisked all over Palestine by the Holy Spirit. He actually seems to know what he needs to say at any given moment. I fear I would not know exactly what to say. Why didn’t the author record all of Phillip’s words? Wouldn’t it make Christianity easier to explain? Instead we are left to our own devices. Or not. Both the Ethiopian and Phillip knew the crucial words in the passage were about justice denied. To Christians those words speak of the justice denied Jesus, but they also speak of the justice denied the Ethiopian. I could read the passage today as justice denied blue collar workers, prisoners and prison workers, people with Section 8 vouchers, Black and Brown people, people living near a CAFO. So why is it Good News that justice was denied? Because love triumphed. Jesus died for us, not so much for our personal trespasses, but more for what has been denied us. God is Love and Love laid down its life and said this is the way to life! So if God laid down God’s own human life for us, what more is there to say? It does mean the only way to truly live is to love as God loved us. The Ethiopian knew by the end of that conversation that God’s love extended to everyone; that everyone was in some way a lamb shorn and slaughtered. All of us are broken in some way and he recognized his own brokenness and his own worthiness. He asks to enter into the promise given by and through Jesus, the promise given to all peoples in all stations of life. [1] As both he and Phillip realize, there is nothing to keep him from being baptized.
This should be a cautionary tale for all of us; we rely on scripture as authority; but what is scripture without the authority of the interpreter? The Ethiopian knew that the words did not stand up on their own as I used to believe. Today’s lessons caution us as readers of scripture and hearers of the Word to interpret it carefully and always, always through the lens of Love.
[1] It is important to note that Judaism was not rigid in its interpretation of Deuteronomic and Levitic codes concerning eunuchs; Isaiah was written 500 years previously and included passages about eunuchs being part the full assembly as well as passages concerning all nations sharing in the blessing of God.