Easter 5

Text: Acts 8:26-40 

Since last Tuesday evening when I went to bed knowing that the final results of the provincial election wouldn’t be clear for couple of weeks, I’ve been vacillating between thinking
that we are in an impossible moment of difficulty,
and that we are in a wondrous moment of possibility.
I say that in relation to the state of our world in general,
and our province in particular.

This week, I have to admit, that the sense of difficulty
at times has outweighed the sense of possibility.
Maybe it’s enough to say that I find myself seriously asking:
given the givens, what room is there for any real newness?
Do the three political parties really have the capacity or the will
or the imagination to go for it,
to honestly work together for a different future?
Do we as people of faith, as the church in James Bay,
really have the capacity or the will or the imagination to hope
and pray and act for a new way forward?
Here we are-
gathered a few hundred yards from the legislative buildings,
on the first Sunday after the election, and I wonder
what word of life, what words of wisdom,
does our faith story offer to us as citizens?
How can we be a witness to God’s vision of an alternative way of being human together?
How might that wisdom reach into the hearts and minds of those who
have been entrusted to govern?
Maybe it’s enough to say that I’m at least as eager as you may be this morning, to hear a fresh Word from God.
Might here be a word of life for us from this passage from the book of Acts that Cheryl has just read for us?

It wouldn’t be unlikely on reading this story from the Book of Acts,
that we would find ourselves taking our place alongside Phillip,
the follower of Jesus,
the one who comes to the aid of another … for isn’t that who we are?
Maybe we’ll get there this morning,
but as I returned to the story this week, something else kept coming to the fore that I couldn’t work around, so I think we’ll go there first.

I think we’ll go first to the Ethiopian.
What we are told is that he’s a high ranking civil servant,
in charge of the queen’s treasury.
The man holds significant responsibility.
He’s not a pauper, not despised;
we’re talking about a person of privilege.
AND we’re told he’s a eunuch … very likely offered by his family
as a young boy to serve in the queen’s court,
in the hope that through his employ, his family would be looked after.
On the surface at least, it’s not a bad life.

We come upon him in this story on his return from a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem.
He’s a spiritual man … perhaps a restless seeker.
And there he sits reading these words from the Book of Isaiah:
He was led like a sheep to the slaughter; like a lamb that is dumb before the sheerer. He does not open his mouth. He has been humiliated and has no redress. Who will be able to speak of his posterity, for he is cut off from the world of the living.

“Who is speaking?” he wonders …
as though he has come upon an echo of his own voice.
(It’s almost as though this is one of those instances when you open the bible, perhaps at random, and the words are meant just for you.)
I wonder what might be breaking through for him here …
could it be that in his relative privilege there’s a whole other dimension of his life that in some way has got buried …
that he hasn’t really let himself think about too much …
the loss of his sexuality … the loss of a generative power …
the power to be part of creating the future.
And how that happened, outside of his control, without his say.
I wonder if that’s something of what’s come up for him,
reading this passage of scripture …
his powerlessness even as a person of privilege.

How familiar is that? … to be people of privilege and yet to find ourselves without a voice, powerless to effect something new,
finding ourselves within the structures of social or political systems … even serving those institutions … without real generative power.
How many of us, no matter what our political leanings,
felt powerless as last Tuesday’s results came in?
And what it is to be people of privilege and yet powerless in our own personal circumstance … in the face of illness, or the loss of work,
or our children or grandchildren in trouble, or the loss of independence as we age, or the dissolving of a relationship.
Being a people of privilege and yet powerless to generate change –
I suspect that most of us know that place.
and so maybe the Ethiopian eunuch isn’t such a stranger after all.

So let’s go back to the story and watch what happens.
There he is making his way home from his pilgrimage …
this journey of opening to God,
when he comes face to face with this profound realization
about his life … his inability to create a future.
Here he is sitting with this inner emptiness,
in the middle of a desert, at high noon.
What is that - if it isn’t a place of desperation?
It is precisely to THIS place that the Spirit sends Philip.
It is precisely into this hopelessness that the Spirit arrives …
the same Spirit that brooded over the formless void,
over the darkness that covered the face of the deep;
the same Spirit that out of nothingness brought forth light and life,
that Spirit climbs in right next to him.
The Spirit who was already there, opening the scriptures to him,
now shows up in the person and presence of Philip.
And right there, right where he is, deep calls unto deep.

“Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asks.
It’s such a simple and beautiful question.
For it opens the way for even more to be realized.
It’s like having someone ask you "do you know where you are?”
at a time when you see only in part.
“How can I unless someone guides me.” he replies.

So Philip begins to set this passage from Isaiah,
and this moment in the Ethiopian’s life, into a much larger context.
From the Suffering Servant in Isaiah he traces the themes
of God’s self-giving all the way to Jesus …
We don’t know what were all the details he highlighted,
but we can be sure before all is said and done,
the story takes on a very personal quality
… of Philip’s own experience
… his first encounter with Jesus at the lakeshore
... his experience as one of the 12,
sharing in the hope and promise of Jesus’ ministry,
and then the dread on that Friday,
when it all came to nothing with his crucifixion.
But then how unexplainably,
Jesus was there among them, his life rising up within them.
They found themselves embodying a generosity and compassion
and a power to heal that surprised them.
The radically new way of being human together that Jesus taught, and that he embodied was alive and flourishing among them.
It was anything but gone with his death.
In fact the more brutal the efforts to silence Jesus’ followers,
the bolder they became, and the more their numbers grew.
Even the threat of death would not stop them,
for they knew that something more powerful yet was at work-
God’s unquenchable Spirit of Life, and it was right there,
rising within them, guiding and empowering their lives.
Nearing the end of their conversation we can imagine Philip saying,
“It’s that Spirit that has led me to you.”

Into the barrenness of the desert and into the barrenness of this Ethiopian man’s life comes an amazing word of life…
that by the wonder of God’s creative Spirit
life rises out of the ashes –
new life is given, such that Friday is never the last day.
Philip himself is a witness to the truth of it,
not just with his words but with his contagious Spirit filled being.
Somewhere along the way we can assume that the Ethiopian wondered, “how might this life live in me?”
Philip must have told him about baptism,
about making his life a home for the Spirit;
who dearly desires to be wildly and freely at work in each of us,
empowering a whole new way of being human together.
What Philip is describing is the possibility of participating
in the creation of a whole new future…
the very thing that has eluded this man.

Not by his own where with all,
but by letting the Spirit of Life guide and be alive in him.

At the first sight of water along this desert road, the Ethiopian insists, “what’s to prevent me from being baptized right here, now?”
And so he becomes the next witness to the truth –
God’s Spirit is alive and at work moving into barren,
dead end places bringing unimagined life.

The story tells us that after he came up out of the water,
he went on his way rejoicing filled with the life of the One who sang:
“They cut me down and I leap up high,
I am the life that will never, never die.
I live in you if you’ll live in me,
I am the Lord of the Dance said he.”

And so as we move into the days and weeks ahead,
into the unknown and at times fearsome and discouraging times
that may well lie ahead in both our personal lives,
and in the political life of our province,
may we be faithful witnesses to the truth –
God’s Spirit is alive and at work moving into barren,
dead end places bringing unimagined life.

Will you stand and join me in witnessing to this truth by singing,
“They cut me down and I leap up high,
I am the life that will never, never die.
I live in you if you’ll live in me,
I am the Lord of the Dance said he.” Voices United 352