Hi, I’m Jan. I’m an aspirant for holy orders to the priesthood in the Episcopal church. Here I am writing my wondering over today’s lectionary readings. Peace be with you.
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I love how in my faith tradition our lectionary leads us through our holy texts, holding them up and contemplating their meaning in community with one another. Over time, we return to the same stories. Each time we meet these stories, we might notice something different, because we are different each time we return to them, and there are other things that remain constant and eternal, just as the stardust of our being is constant and eternal.
Today’s passage from Acts (8:26-40) tells of the Ethiopian Eunuch reading the prophecies of Isaiah in his carriage on his way home from Jerusalem. Philip is led by the Spirit to meets this unnamed man on a desert road to Gaza. As the Reverend Mary Haggerty discussed in her sermon today at Holy Communion in University City, this man was a sexual anomaly from the order of the society of the time. He was an outsider, an other. And the words he read from Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of Gd’s embrace of the innocent others of society. Our Gd is the Gd of the margins, of the ones who don’t fit into the social and economic power structures of their time, of the dispossessed, overlooked, and underestimated.
I am intrigued by the Eunuch’s question to Philip, when asked if he understood what he was reading: Without someone to guide me, how could I?
I wonder if the Eunuch actually understood more than what he let on; perhaps he wanted to see what Philip knew of the prophecy. The way the Eunuch asks who the prophecy is referring to suggests he’s been evaluating the text for at least a little while. Or, perhaps it was in pouring over the words of the prophet that the Eunuch became so enthralled that when a stranger came running up to his carriage and asked him about what he was reading he was delighted in the opportunity to learn more.
At the center of today’s Acts passage is Isaiah’s prophecy of the suffering servant.
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.
This prophecy is a heart-wrenching description of the Messiah, who Christians believe to be Jesus of Nazareth. To the people who first heard the prophet’s words and to all of us throughout time and place who have looked to these words, the Messiah is hope for resurrection and restoration, an end to violence and war. In the time of the Ethiopian Eunuch, a time of political upheaval and foreign occupation that harshly dictated societal norms and expectations of who was in and who was not, these words would have been as a cool drink of living water in a parched and barren desert.
It is on a desert road that Philip and the Eunuch speak and it is along that road that the Eunuch asks to be baptized. There is something so potent, something deep that calls to the depths of our humanity, in the character of Jesus, the humble suffering servant: Gd with us, enfleshed in our experience of life and death.
In the second lesson today, (1 John 4:7-21), John exhorts his beloved friends to love one another: Dear friends, if Gd loved us this way, we also ought to love each other. No one has ever seen Gd. If we love each other, Gd remains in us and his love is made perfect in us. This is how we know we remain in him and he remains in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit… We have known and have believed the love that Gd has for us.
I imagine these to have inspired Victor Hugo’s quote from Les Misérables: And remember the truth that once was spoken, to love another person is to see the face of Gd.
It is in loving one another – and that means everyone – that we see the face of Gd.
Gd, this mystery who is without form or substance, and yet is as close as our next breath, which Gd breathed into our lungs from the foundations of the earth and placed Gd’s name on our lips: Yahweh. Breathe in – Yah – breath out – weh.
In our Gospel lesson (John 15:1-8) Jesus describes himself with imagery of a gardener tenderly caring for his garden and the relationship of a plant with its vine and branches. This relationship is one of community, of connection and abiding and presence. When a branch is separated from the vine, it withers and dies. But when it is connected to the vine, it bears fruit. The branches stretch out as the roots reach deep, absorbing sunlight and water, reaching and anchoring. Plants have a fascinating kinship with their environment, including other plants. If a nutrient deficiency is detected in the environment, some plants produce and send the remedy to bring about balance which benefits everyone and everything. If a plant is threatened by illness or injury, its parts and others around it send extra nutrients to the impacted part, nurturing and restoring. We humans should look to our plant friends for their wisdom on how to live in community.
Because frankly, as a whole we humans are pretty lousy at harmony and balance. We let fear cloud how we see our fellow human beings. Today, fear is monetized. So many public figures and institutions uphold the view that the world is a dangerous and scary place, full of people who want nothing more than to cheat you and take you for all that you have. Conveniently, those same figures and institutions turn around and endorse hyper-militarization, which they essentially sell like water to a fish. This manipulation prevents us from living into our belovedness in community with one another. We don’t see Gd right in front of us, in the eyes of every human being.
It did not escape my notice this morning when I first read the Acts text that Philip was lead by the Spirit to go to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. The same Gaza which today our American government is aiding and abetting Israel to ethnically cleanse under the guise of self-defense and claiming that it is somehow anti-semitic to oppose these atrocious actions. In the years after 9/11, there was a surge of hyper militarization that maintained public support for the War on Terror. I distinctly remember the absolute gem of a song from Toby Keith about putting a boot in an anatomically impossible place because “it’s the American way.” I do not claim to have the solution that so many have argued over for so long. I do know that it is fundamentally and at our deepest core contrary to the sacredness of creation when we murder our fellow image bearers. There is no atoning for this utter defilement of the human condition. As Jesus was a sheep lead to the slaughter and denied justice, so too the American people are loading the guns for those who are leading the people of Gaza to be denied the most basic justice of life.
In pouring over these texts by hearing them read and preached by one of my faith mothers I am struck by the rootedness of community and how we were made for it. We were not meant to be alone.
Fear separates and isolates. Fear expects punishment, as John wrote in today’s epistle. Fear metastasises and people die. Fear makes people turn the other way when glimmers of humanity break through the haze of propaganda.
Love made us and it is in love that we move and have our being. Perfect love casts out fear. Love bends low and looks us in the eye as we grieve the painful, tragic, and sinful things that hurt us.
Love tells us: I am here. You are not alone. I am the Gd of all things… of broken hearts, the gold of kintsugi beautifully binding broken pieces back together, of the cry of a red-tailed hawk as it soars high and the breath of the smallest mouse burrowed deep, of watering eyes and rivers of tears, of children preaching with their noise in hallowed places, of the steam that hovers over piping hot coffee presided over by old friends, of flower sellers on street corners, of rubble and those who walk from it and those left below, of cries for justice on campus lawns, of whispered prayers behind locked doors, of raising dry bones and calling for the downfall of empire, of pinecones and ash, mycelium and radical crazy mercy, of resurrection and life …
of everything.
evergreen vox 