August 29, 2010
The Ethiopian Eunuch - Acts 8:26-40
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadIn this nation’s 234 year history, only thirty people have had the honor of lying in state in the US Capitol Rotunda upon their deaths. Only one woman has held that honor. In October of 2005, Rosa Parks, the matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement, lay in state at the US Capitol. As you might remember, Rosa Parks was just an average woman in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, she had worked hard all day as a seamstress at a local department store. She took a bus in order to get home, and she sat down on the bus. The segregation policies at that time forced her to give up her seat, though, to a white man. Well, Rosa Parks was tired, in more ways than one, and she was not going to move. So instead, she got arrested and sent to prison, thus starting an outcry that would result in this country living more consistently with the content of its creed. We are better now for what she did. For all her life, Rosa Parks was told that she was inferior simply because of the dark color of her skin. Yet around 1955, she discovered that she had been lied to, that she was not inferior at all, and that she did not need to give up her place on a city bus simply because she was inherently inferior.
I see Rosa Parks and this Ethiopian Eunuch as a cut off the same block. We normally think that the hero in the passage is Philip. I will agree that Philip did some heroic things. Yet in many ways, Philip was a passive player in this passage. If you pay close attention to it (and this is especially true in the Greek) Philip almost had no choice but to go on that wilderness-road from Gaza to Jerusalem, and to go up and share his faith with this Ethiopian outcast. I will also concede to you that the real hero in this passage is neither Philip nor the Ethiopian eunuch, but the Holy Spirit. God is the One who makes everything happen in the Book of Acts, and this chapter in no exception. Yet if it came down to it, in my opinion, you would at least have to say that the nameless Ethiopian Eunuch acted just as if not more heroically than Philip.
Like Rosa Parks, the Ethiopian Eunuch was black, and was thus ostracized and viewed as inherently inferior. It is true that he was an authority in the Queen’s court, and it’s true that he obviously had some means and some clout… in Ethiopia. Yet, it’s also true that he lacked that clout in Jerusalem. In fact, it’s ironic that he had gone to Jerusalem to worship, when he was not even allowed in Jerusalem to begin with, and certainly not the Temple, simply because he was black. He and Rosa Parks could have commiserated together on that one. Unlike Rosa Parks, though, the Ethiopian Eunuch was also, well, a eunuch. He had been castrated. He lacked those things that “make a man a man.” Whether he was born that way or whether somebody made him that way in his childhood (which was not all that uncommon then), we do not know. What we do know, though, is that he would have been much further ostracized for being a little less than a man. In fact, even had the man not been black, he still would not have been allowed in the Temple because he was a eunuch. So that was two strikes against the man, none of which he could help and none of which speak to the inherent value of a person.
And yet, the Ethiopian eunuch, the double outcast, refused to see himself that way. He refused to believe the lie that he was second class because, I think, he knew somehow that God did not make second class people. So he knew, then, that his place was in the Temple just like anybody else’s place. He knew that the Prophet Isaiah was actually speaking about him. He knew that he needed to learn this new thing about Jesus. He knew that he was just as entitled to God’s grace in Jesus as anybody else. He knew that he could be just as baptized, just as washed clean of his sin, just as called, just as marked, just as claimed by God as God’s very own child as anybody else. He refused to believe the lie that he was something other than a beloved child of God Almighty.
I believe that we have been sold on a lie, too. On one hand, we are the polar opposite of this Ethiopian Eunuch. Most of have been perfectly accepted in our culture and we do not know much about being discriminated against. We just don’t. Yet I still think that we have been sold on a lie that says that we are less than we really are. Furthermore, the more pervasive technology becomes, the more opportunities we have to buy into that lie. “In the past twenty-five years, while the general incidence of suicide has decreased, the rate for those between the ages of 15-24 has tripled. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death in that age group.” No one knows exactly why that is, but I think it’s because we have bought into this prevailing lie. We have been manipulated into believing that the way we are is not the way that we are supposed to be.
Now I believe some of that myself. We are, after all, sinful people and God did not create us to be sinful. But that’s not what we’re told. Rather, we are told that we don’t have enough stuff. And if we could just get this new car, if we could just move into a bigger house, or get another degree, then we’d finally be who we’re supposed to be. We become defined by what we have, and we define ourselves by what we have, so that, if we don’t have as much as the next person, then we must be inferior. In fact, we can see ourselves are so inferior that we think that the world would be better off if we were not in it. What God has given us is nowhere near enough. His eye is on the sparrow, so I know he watches me? Whatever, this myth says. And, by the way, God is not big enough to provide for us. We’re on our own, so we better learn to cover our own backs.
We also don’t look good enough right now. That’s another prevailing myth. I used to think that I didn’t buy that myth not because I thought I was all that good-looking, but because I just didn’t care. But I do care, too much. Nicole Clark reveals many of those lies in her recent documentary, Cover Girl Culture. When you look at a picture of a model wearing some clothes that you wish you had, women, especially young women, are led to believe that they need to look like that model. They don’t look good enough right now. The way God made them in their bodies is deficient, and so they need to look like that model. And the way to do that, of course, is to buy that model’s clothes. It’s called manipulation. And so they buy the clothes, and yet they still don’t look like the model. Twenty years ago, models were ten pounds lighter than people’s average weight. Now they are twenty-three pounds lighter. And, the pictures you see aren’t even real anyway. They’ve been touched up to produce the “perfect woman.” So not only do young people have a high suicide rate, young women especially have an alarmingly high rate of eating disorders. In fact, eating disorders in this country are more common than Alzheimer’s disease, affecting as many as ten million people. 40% of newly identified cases of anorexia are in girls from the ages fifteen to nineteen. The incidence of bulimia in young women has tripled since 1988.
We are told every time we turn on the TV and get on the internet that we are not who God created us to be, that we are objects, that we are mere consumers, and if we just keep spending and spending and spending, and starving and starving and starving to look like perfection, then we can finally reach it. The implications of those lies are devastating. Can you imagine your child committing suicide? What if your little girl gets anorexic or bulimic? Like the Ethiopian eunuch, we need to see that more importantly than being accepted by culture is the fact that we have already been accepted by God. The Ethiopian eunuch, even though culture had long since rejected him, knew that, and he refused to believe anything less. He refused to let Philip go without explaining the Scriptures. He refused to believe that he was not worthy. He refused to believe that the cleansing waters of baptism could not be his. In many ways, the Ethiopian eunuch was not trying to become someone that he fundamentally was not. He was simply living in to who Jesus Christ said that he already was.
God created us to be in relationship, ultimately with God himself. Faith calls us into a life with God, and into whom we really are. Culture gives us another line altogether, and that is that God sort messed up when he made you. When you leave this sanctuary today and get bombarded with literally thousands of messages telling you that you are a mistake, just remember that you are being lied to. My charge for us is not to believe that garbage. You need to believe the truth of Jesus Christ, which is incredibly good news, both for you and for the whole world. So don’t buy the lies, but stand firm in the Gospel of whom and whose you are.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
