What is to Prevent Me?

Preached at Ascension Lutheran Church on July 7, 2019. The text was the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. 

Pamela was the most remarkable woman I’ve ever known. She died in 2011 and I still miss her. She was a dear friend and member of a former congregation that I served, although she was only with us a couple years before she died.

We celebrated her for the gifts she brought to our community. Not despite the fact that she looked so different than the rest of us. And not because it was fine with us that she used to be a man and now she was a woman. But we celebrated her because she was Pam, and a part of her being Pam was the fact that she was a transgender person.

We had other transgender people who worshiped with us, but they always sat in the back, as if they were afraid to engage with the community gathered. Pam worshiped from the center of the nave. She expected to be a part of the community. And she was, fully.

That was evident the day she received more votes to serve on our Congregation Council than anyone else on the ballot, including the incumbents. We had a lay preaching group in that congregation, much as we do here at Ascension. And it was a transcendent moment for all of us the Sunday Pamela stood in our pulpit and preached.

Pamela grew up in a conservative Christian church. She had a dream of bridging the gap between the LGBT community and faith community and she called a group of faith leaders together to work on it. That’s how I first met her, and we became friends. She was the kind of friend I’d go out for a drink with after a meeting. One night, she asked me, “Would it be all right if I worship with you?” Before she ever stepped foot in our worship space, Pamela asked if it would be all right if she worshiped with us. Have you ever asked a pastor for permission to worship in their church?

I can only imagine what it must be like to be in a position where you feel like you have to ask for permission to do something that other people take for granted. Would it be all right if I worship with you? I think of Pamela when I read this story from Acts.

If you were with us last week, you may remember the story of Stephen, and how he was one of seven guys appointed to take care of the widows. Well, another one of those guys was Phillip. This is the story of Phillip’s encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch.

This eunuch was returning from Jerusalem, where he had gone to worship. And he was reading from Isaiah. He was a student of the scriptures. No doubt, then, he was also familiar with the book of Deuteronomy, where he had read in chapter 23: “No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” That’s the first time I’ve ever said those words in worship because that’s a verse we don’t ever read in worship. But it’s right there in the book of Deuteronomy and you’d better believe the Ethiopian eunuch was aware of it because it was talking about him.

This law strictly forbids him from entering the assembly of the Lord. He’s clearly not a woman and a clearly not man. There was no place for a person like that among God’s people.

Well, despite the fact that he knew he would be turned away by the religious establishment, the eunuch went to Jerusalem to worship. He sought God anyway.

I’m always amazed when I meet someone like Pamela and I hear stories about how they have been excluded from the church in painful and often cruel ways. And yet they continue to seek God anyway.

When Phillip joined this person who was excluded from God’s people and yet, despite that, sought to worship God, it was a transformative moment for both of them. The Holy Spirit was in charge, sending Phillip to this place, with the directive: “Go and join the other.”

The text doesn’t say why the eunuch invited Phillip to sit with him. But it doesn’t have to. The Spirit told him to invite this nice Jewish boy – one who represents all those who cling to the law and reject him from God’s house… “Invite him to sit with you,” the Spirit says. “Invite, ask questions.” And in the process, Phillip learns from the Ethiopian eunuch what it really looks like to seek the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul.

This story has led the author Nadia Bolz-Weber to ask, “How can I know what it means to follow Christ unless I learn it from someone who has done so despite every obstacle possible?” We have so much to learn from those who have heard again and again “there is no love for you here unless you let us change you into who we feel comfortable with you being.” This isn’t only true for LGBTQ folks, but also those who have the wrong personality or the wrong socio-economic status or the wrong gender or the wrong immigration status or the wrong politics or the wrong way of believing in God.  

Nadia writes: “… we can’t actually know what this Jesus following thing is about unless we too have the stranger show us… The truth is that we need the equivalent of the Ethiopian eunuch to show us the faith.” We need to hear the stranger, the other ask us, “Here is water in the desert, so what is to prevent me from being baptized?”

I wonder what Phillip really thought when he was asked that question. Did a part of him want to say, “Are you kidding me? You can’t be baptized! What is to prevent you? Everything, that’s what!” I suspect that before his conversation with the Ethiopian eunuch that would have been exactly what he said.

But he wasn’t in change. The Holy Spirit did a number on him and there was conversion in that conversation. “Here is water, what is to prevent me from being baptized?” Phillip realized the answer to that question was, nothing. Absolutely nothing is to prevent you from being baptized.

“Would it be all right if I worship with you?” Pamela asked me. It turned out that it was more than all right. The saints gathered in that place were blessed beyond measure by her presence.

Our open communion table is a visible reminder to us of all that God calls us to be. When we come to the table, Jesus is the one who invites us. We are his guests. And we don’t get to make the guest list. We come to the table with those who accept us and those who don’t. We come with those we trust and those we don’t. We come with those who are lovable and those who aren’t. And that’s where we find our hope.

In the waters of baptism, and when we worship together, and when we drink the wine and eat the bread at Christ’s table, the Spirit is forming and transforming us through one another, for sure, but especially through the “other.”

Through those the Spirit places in our lives to teach us what it means to truly seek God when God’s people haven’t made it easy. The Spirit calls us, not just to be willing to let those we consider the other into our midst because it’s the nice thing to do, but because we are diminished without them. They may challenge us and we may wish they were like us so we could be more comfortable with them. But we need them to be who God created them to be so we can grow into the people God created us to be.