Bombs, Earthquakes, and Barriers: A Sermon on All That Tries to Stand in the Way of God’s Grace
“Life is difficult. It can knock you down. Sometimes an entire nation gets knocked down.”
Those words began Thomas Oliver’s article published a few days ago called “America’s Rough Week,” and I think they do a pretty good job of summing it up. This has been a very rough week. We’ve all watched scenes of the Boston Marathon, a celebration of human achievement and greatness, turned into a chaos of sirens and panicked faces. We’ve watched a major city freeze as a manhunt to catch the suspects went into high gear. We’ve heard reports of the fertilizer plant explosion rocking the small town of West, Texas, and taking the lives of workers and first responders in the process.
It’s been a rough week in America, and it’s been a rough week elsewhere, too. A blast in an internet cafe in Iraq took the lives of innocent bystanders checking their email. An earthquake in China took dozens of lives and injured hundreds more. It’s been a rough week everywhere.
It’s a hard week to come together and proclaim the Easter faith of resurrection and new life. And my first reaction was that it’s a hard week to hear about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. In the midst of all this wreckage and hurt around us, this interaction between two strangers out on some wilderness road two thousand years ago can sound trite and small and a little too polite. What can their conversation have to say to a week as rough as this one?
The thing is, I think that beneath the questions that sound measured and careful and reserved, there’s more to be found. The Ethiopian traveler is as polite as can be, but behind each seemingly tame, casual question, there’s a current of hurt and isolation and hope running deep and wide–maybe even wide enough to touch our lives this week.
When Philip, a deacon in the early Christian community, huffs and puffs his way alongside the chariot speeding along the road, he engages the passenger in conversation: “Do you understand what you are reading?” he says (Acts 8:30). And in response, the Ethiopian asks his first polite question: “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (8:31). Yes, it’s a kind invitation, asking Philip to guide him in understanding the scriptures. But it’s also a plea from a seeker with a great deal at stake.
We don’t know all that much about the unnamed Ethiopian traveler. We know that he’s got a high social standing, as the one in charge of the treasury for the queen of Ethiopia; we know that he’s well-off financially, since he’s driving a chariot (sort of the first century equivalent of a decked-out SUV); we can guess that he’s either Jewish or a gentile seeking to become part of the Jewish community, since he’s been to Jerusalem and is reading a Jewish scripture; and we know that he’s a eunuch.
And a eunuch would have good reason to be confused about scripture. In Deuteronomy, eunuchs are expressly forbidden from being part of the worshipping assembly; at this time in the Jewish faith, they were considered unclean by virtue of their different sexual status. Eunuchs were outsiders, relegated to a life on the margins of their society. But Isaiah, looking ahead to God’s future, said something different: “For thus says the LORD: To the eunuchs who… hold fast my covenant… I will give a name better than sons and daughters” (Isaiah 56:4-5). Eunuchs, too, will be included in the great, wide embrace of God, according to Isaiah. So which is it, Philip? Is it Deuteronomy or Isaiah? Am I in, or am I out?
He says, “How can I understand, unless someone guides me?”; but maybe he means: “The scripture is incredibly confusing, and it even contradicts itself! I need some help here!”
The reading in the Ethiopian’s lap is from Isaiah:
“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.”
And this reading is the occasion for his second polite question: “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” (8:34). Yes, this is a good, respectable, academic question from a student to his teacher; but it’s also a very personal question from a person who has likely known his own share of humiliation.
There are lots of confusing passages in Isaiah–but the Ethiopian is reading and re-reading this one. Maybe it sounds more than a little familiar: maybe in the image of a lamb silent before those more powerful, in the image of one shorn and separated from others, in the image of one humiliated, he sees something he recognizes. Maybe something burns inside him, and he can’t stop reading this passage, because it feels like it’s speaking directly to him. Maybe you’ve read a passage of scripture and burned a little inside as well; maybe you, too, know what that feels like.
He says, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this?”; but maybe he means: “Is this an old story about a long-dead prophet, or is this somehow my story, too?”
As they talk along the way, I imagine Philip speaking about this suffering one in Isaiah, and about the God we know in Jesus who suffers alongside every person in pain, every person separated from their community, every person humiliated and excluded and in need. And as they round a bend in the road, the Ethiopian asks his third polite question: “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (8:37). Yes, it’s a simple request for that rite of initiation into the Christian community; but it’s also a profound recognition of everything that seemed to stand in the way.
Because the truth is, there was plenty to prevent this man from being baptized. He was from the wrong place–Ethiopia was far outside of the land of Israel where the early church was taking root and where the Jewish faith was anchored. He held the wrong job–he was working for a foreign ruler and so loyal to a foreign government. He had the wrong sexuality as far as popular opinion was concerned. He was in the middle of the desert, on a wilderness road, where you’re unlikely to encounter people, much less water.
He says, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”; maybe he means, “There are lots of barriers in the way; are they big enough to block God’s grace?”
It’s a profound question however you ask it, because at times it can seem like there’s plenty that could stand in the way of God’s grace in the world. There are broken relationships that can keep coming back to haunt us and seem prevent anything new from breaking in. There are patterns of exclusion and barriers built up in churches that tell all sorts of people they’re not welcome. There are earthquakes, and explosions in factories, and frightening medical diagnoses, and senseless acts of violence and fear.
I think plenty of us are asking the same question in one form or another: “Are all these barriers big enough to block God’s grace?”
The traveler asked his question, Philip listened, and into that polite and heavy silence, the Spirit spoke: no barrier is big enough. Nothing is to prevent you from being baptized. Nothing. The chariot stopped in its tracks in a rush of dirt and dust, and the two men stepped down. They stepped down to the water by the side of the desert road where no water should be; Philip spoke words of grace that society said should be denied; and a man who had been an outsider found himself now truly at home.
Hidden behind all those polite questions was the hard reality of a single human life with its hurts and hopes and exclusions. And in the picture of that soaking wet traveler standing by the roadside in the middle of the desert is the deep faith of Easter: no barrier is too great for the grace of God. The grave could not hold Jesus, and so no barrier can hold back the love he has made known.
Our past failures are not permanent marks to define us; they are washed in the waters of baptism, redeemed with the rest of us. The barriers that humans put up–especially the ones churches put up–are not the last word: God will topple every last one of them. The violence and fear around us cannot win out: God calls us to be voices of hope and peace, pointing once again to a better way, teaching our children a better way, embodying a better way.
What is to prevent the grace of God from flowing down like water? Nothing. That’s the word of grace: all we try to put in its way can be nothing more than stones in the bed of that great, rushing river of life.