"Fill-Up on Easter"!

4-21-21

Narrative Lectionary: Acts 8:26-39

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

When I was in seminary, the church I was assigned to for “field education” for my first 2 years was Trinity Lutheran Congregation in downtown Minneapolis, which met at Augsburg college.

This congregation was very special. Half of the congregation were former hippies and the other half were first- and second-generation families from Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is a strong Lutheran presence in Ethiopia called Mekene Jesus, and an even longer history of Orthodox Christianity present there, from which the Mekene Jesus Lutherans borrowed heavily. So, in this congregation, we celebrated Easter Sunday twice – once on “Western Easter,” and the 2nd one on Orthodox Easter a few weeks later. It was awesome, because you can really never have “too much” Easter!

I learned a lot from this wonderful congregation, and much about checking my own privilege. One year on a women’s retreat, I learned that after marriage, women in these 2 countries traditionally retain their maiden names and laughed at the assumption of American women to take their new husband’s last name. These Ethiopian and Eritrean women thought the irony particularly funny – that the United States claims to be so forward thinking in ideals but seems so backward in practice. There is so much that I thought I knew, but turns out I actually didn’t.

Like the Ethiopian Court Official from Ethiopia. We know a few things about him – He was from around or near the area of Ethiopia and Eritrea, he was an extremely powerful, wealthy, and well-educated court official for a queen in that region, he is a serious follower of Judaism, and he was an outsider in the ancient world because of his status as a eunuch.

While it is none of our business HOW this person became a eunuch, but the truth is, the state of his body fell outside of the accepted norms. He did not fit into the accepted gender or sexual binary, and therefore he was also an outsider in many aspects of life. I wonder if his pronouns were even “he/his”? Maybe if given the choice, they would be They/Them?

We know that Philip had no qualms about sharing a close space with this person. When invited into the chariot to help them decipher the passage from Isaiah on the scroll they were reading, Philip hopped right in. Philip didn’t wonder what it would be like to share a chariot with a queer person. Philip didn’t refuse and demand that “only real men can drive chariots.” Instead, Philip sat down, read with them, and told them about Jesus.

The Ethiopian court official must have felt a resonance with the passage from the Isaiah text they were reading, and I imagine hearing that Jesus went through similar humiliation and suffering must have felt like a huge relief. Perhaps this person finally felt seen and loved and affirmed, perhaps for the first time in their entire life. It must have felt too good to be true.

Philip’s divine transportation – being snatched away in the spirit - wasn’t even the most miraculous thing that happened in this text. When they came upon a body of water, the court official asked if anything prevented them from being baptized. The miraculous thing was that Philip said nothing…. Because NOTHNG prevents us from being loved and claimed by God in the waters of baptism. Not gender, sexual orientation, race, or social status. All are welcome, all have access, and all deserve this grace upon grace. There is no barrier, human or otherwise that can prevent us from being God’s beloved child.

Jesus didn’t suffer death, defeat it, and burst from a tomb three days later only to allow us to deny abundance and joy-filled life to anyone. Jesus taught, lived, died, and was raised in order to show humanity that God’s love centers on the very people we push to the margins. God’s love is expansive, and limitless, and cannot be contained to only a few people.

Therefore, let’s not limit celebrating the resurrection to Easter Sunday, or even just an Easter Season. The more inclusivity, the more love, the more celebration, the more Easter, the better! Thanks be to God, amen.