Fifth Sunday of Easter 2021

 

Fifth Sunday of Easter 2021

‘Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

‘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.’

‘The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.’

Acts 8:26-40

 

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.’

John 15:1-8

 

We are still in the season of Easter, still reading through the Book of Acts paying close attention to the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection, and this Sunday we come to a most amazing story. It concerns a court official from Ethiopia, not modern-day Ethiopia but the Aethiopia of antiquity, the Nubian kingdom of Kush. This was an advanced, cosmopolitan, urban society, to the south of Egypt, a major trade power exporting highly prized goods from the sub-Saharan continental interior across the Arabian Peninsula and the Mediterranean basin, and, in exchange, importing goods from those regions and beyond. Over many centuries, the kingdoms of Egypt and Kush had co-existed, at one time Egypt ruling over Kush and, later, a century of Kushite Pharaohs ruling over Egypt, their cultures overlapping while retaining their own distinctive features. Kush had its own writing systems, architecture, civil engineering technology, even advances in medicine. They had pyramids—smaller and steeper and many more of them than in Egypt, protected now as the world’s heritage. Moreover, theirs was a matrilineal society, and women played a prominent role in public life. The Kandake (kandaakey: Latinised, Candace) was the honorific title given to royal women, who at times were Queen Mother, at times queen co-regent, and at times ruled in their own name outright. The Kandake were the power behind the throne, kingmakers: it is claimed that they could even order their son, the king, to complete suicide—and that he would have to obey—if she decided to appoint another king, or take the throne for themselves. They were also warrior queens, leading armies into battle as well as bearing sons. The Candace referred to in Acts chapter 8 may have been Amantitere, who exercised some form of rule for over twenty years in the mid first century AD. At this point in history, Kush was independent of Egypt, independent of Rome, and centred on its third capital city, Moroë, half-way between the fifth and sixth Cataracts of the Nile.

Eunuchs played key roles in many civilisations in the ancient world, including the personal servants to royal households. They were castrated men, neither male nor female, but overlapping both genders in their distinctive features, sometimes considered a third sex. Their various duties included washing and dressing their master or mistresses, making their bed, cutting their hair, intimate moments giving them the ear to the crown. Castration was considered a necessary precaution, engineering a cutting off, or diverting, of their sexual desire. Not only were they, figuratively-speaking, seedless and fruitless, unable to insert a claimant to the throne; but, without household of their own, they were impotent to instigate a coup. They were simultaneously honoured and humiliated; the cost of being venerated, to be vilified; in order to be unquestionably depended upon, they were disposable without question. They were neither one thing nor another, but formed a different category of being altogether.

We meet this person because they have been to Jerusalem to worship a foreign god at a foreign temple. They have undertaken a journey of over 1,000 miles to do so, following the course of the Nile—past Thebes, and Memphis, sites where black Pharaohs from Kush had expanded earlier Egyptian temple complexes—opting, perhaps on account of physical size, for the Egyptian preference for a chariot over the Nubian preference for horseback. And now they are making the thousand-plus mile journey home again.

The text is as sparse as the wilderness, but we get the impression that this is a journey they have undertaken perhaps many times before. A habitual pilgrimage. And this, in turn, suggests a certain seniority within their court, even for a eunuch, to have the freedom, and the resource, to do so. Yet in the temple, their presence would have caused a certain level of anxiety, even in the outermost court of the Gentiles: a large, soft, effeminate, dark-skinned, queer body. Quite separate from their actions, they would be objectified, by some as ‘exotic’ and ‘alluring,’ by others as a defiling threat. Quite likely, they experienced open verbal aggression from some; the shame of parents pulling their children close as the eunuch passed by; the pain of being studiously ignored by others.

They have probably been here before, have probably bought home scrolls before, and this time, the treasurer who understands the value of trade has invested in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And this queer librarian is the one whom the Holy Spirit decides will make the perfect parent for sub-Saharan African Christianity. And so, the Spirit sends them Philip.

Why Philip? In its earliest days, the church was almost entirely Jewish, but it was composed of two overlapping but distinct groups: the Hebrews, who kept themselves as separate as possible from their Gentile neighbours; and the Hellenists, who assimilated as much of Greek culture as they could without losing their own identity. One of the earliest challenges the church faced was that, in the distribution of food to the widows among them—a serious obligation—the Hellenist widows were being overlooked. This was exposed as a systemic issue, not simply an unfortunate oversight. The apostles determined to appoint stewards to administer the distribution fairly. Had they been Anglicans, they would probably have sought to have the Hellenists represented on the task group, perhaps even aimed at (eventually) 50% (in all things, the middle way). But they were not Anglicans, and they felt prompted by the Holy Spirit that the way to secure a fair distribution for all was to appoint the task group entirely from among the wronged group, the Hellenists. The appointees included Philip, a Jewish man with a Greek name. In fact, the name Philip means ‘fond of horses,’ and suggests that the Holy Spirit is not only attentive to justice but also has a sense of humour, for, ‘Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.’ (Psalm 20:7). Moreover, Philip had four unmarried daughters who exercised the gift of prophecy within the expanding Christian community: clearly a man at home with women exercising a prominent public role. Why does the Holy Spirit send Philip? Who else is better placed!

Philip approaches the eunuch’s chariot, and engages them in conversation. They are reading from Isaiah (chapter 53), a song of a servant who is familiar with suffering, who knows the stinging humiliation of justice denied, whose life is cut off, such that they can have no children, can leave behind no descendants on the face of the earth. Does the writer speak of himself, or of someone else, they ask—for as they read, they see themselves, seen, noted, recorded in the story of this foreign (to them) god and their people. And just a little further on, as they continue reading, with Philip, in the intimate space of their chariot, they are plunged into this life-changing hope:

‘Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.’ (Isaiah 56:3-8)

And so, the eunuch is undressed, washed, and dressed again, in white linen—the servant becoming the master; the man who fathered four daughters becoming unsexed, a fruitful vine, pruned—and then Philip is removed without question or explanation, and the eunuch goes on their way, rejoicing. Much fruit will be born, to the Father’s glory, as is the way with the Spirit and the Son.

I wonder how the eunuch was received, on their return home?

I wonder how they were received, on their return to Jerusalem, searching for their place among the disciples of Jesus, now to be found in every corner of the known world?

I wonder whether, in subsequent years, they often broke their journey, and bread, with Philip and his daughters in Caesarea, part of the family; or whether their paths never crossed again?

And I wonder where the Spirit would direct us, today?

How the life coursing through the true vine might burst apart our cherished mausoleums?

Where the vine-grower might wield the knife to prune our hearts and minds and strength and will, that we might love our liberating Lord, and our neighbour as ourselves?