Queer, Gifted, and Black - Complex Identities and God's Embrace

Acts 8:26-39

26Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27So 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 28and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32Now 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. 33In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” 34The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36As 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?” 38He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39When 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.

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch - Herbert Boeckl

At first glance, this seems like a pretty simple evangelism story. Go, tell, baptize, disappear. Down here in the Bible belt, we have read that story before. Likely, even if we haven’t been a part of it, we’ve seen and heard it many times over – faith as just another conveyor belt of production, an easy replicable system. And yet, for many, that simplistic formulaic pattern feels like flat words on a page. There’s a longing to deeply understand the meaning that the story holds. We can read sacred text, some even have the words memorized, but that’s not the same as understanding what is held there. There is so much richness dwelling in the nooks and crannies of this sacred story. 

Starting with the identity of the people involved. We know that our own identity isn’t just one thing or easily summed up in a title or label. We, like the people in this story, are layers of being, woven together. And those details aren’t clutter to be disregarded, but an essential of our stories and of God’s story. 

Philip is one of the recently-appointed Deacons, like Stephen who we heard about last week - blessed and commissioned from the community of Greek-speaking followers of the Way. Recognized for his wisdom and faithfulness to following however the Holy Spirit moves, and entrusted with the work of caring for those who were being pushed to the margins of society and religion. He’s not a rabbi, not an apostle, not necessarily one of the central preachers of the early church, but he knows the holy stories and has experienced their life-giving transformation and significance. His work is to care for the essential, practical, and physical needs of the community. But as we noticed before, it seems that these needs are spiritual too. It naturally connects with sharing God’s stories and teaching about them, and the profound healing of body and soul that comes alongside. 

Now, at the edge of what Philip knew of the earth, God is still on the move.  The angel of the Lord says “get up and go.” Get up and go….not necessarily to any particular place, but just start moving in the general direction of where the Spirit is leading you, and keep a lookout for what the Spirit will reveal next along the way. This wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza isn’t one direct road, but a web of roads, full of intersections and turns.  And it is there that he encounters an Ethiopian eunuch, in a royal chariot, reading the words of the prophet Isaiah. 

All those things coming together tell us that this Ethiopian eunuch is not a straight-forward, single-layered person either.  They are politically-powerful, well-educated, black, and queer. Let’s dive in. 

In the ancient near east, ain’t just anybody riding around in a chariot. That is a particularly luxurious way to get around. As the scriptures tell us that this person is a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. So we know they hold a significant political role within the inner circle of royalty. They have access to most anything…except the place where God was understood to reside…but we’ll get to that. To further highlight how important and capable they are, the text tells us that they are reading the scroll of Isaiah. So this person is literate in a world where very few have that opportunity.  AND they have access to a personal library in a world where paper was not a mass-produced thing, so the only people who had scrolls were temples and rich folk.  This person is Ethiopian, a descriptor likely referring to the color of his skin, and possibly also to traditional items of clothing…they’re black.  

All that access and power and influence… could be a substantial threat in a royal court system, especially if that person was also male, especially if they were to be entrusted with access to powerful women.  So powerful households would employ people that they perceived to be incapable of exerting sexual power – no producing heirs to challenge the stats quo. The word “eunuch” can refer to a castrated man, but it also had a broader definition in ancient times that could include homosexual men, or intersex folk . A eunuch can be someone whose genitalia does not match the societal expectations or is altered in some way, either because they born that way or they were subjected to violence by the empire.  It can also be someone whose gender expression does not match societal expectations, what we might identity as trans, or non-binary, or queer. Biblical eunuchs can represent a number of sexual and/or gender identities that were foolishly thought to be dismissible. I say foolishly because the Bible has several stories of eunuchs who turn that assumption into opportunities for the glory of God.

I wanted to highlight this complex intersectional identity because too often we’ve been lead to believe that it doesn’t exist within the Holy Scriptures.  Too often, the sacred stories we’ve been told make it seem like one-dimensional characters are included and so we begin to believe that we, in our complexities, are not fully included.

I believe this complex identity is highlighted in scripture not because it’s something to overcome for some glory of God, but because these things signify the way the world has distanced itself from this person and underestimated their value….it even more powerfully reveals the fullness of God’s embrace. 

Deuteronomy outlines how eunuchs are excluded from the temple and thus a full life within their faith community. But then in Isaiah, the prophet proclaims that God will bless eunuchs and foreigners and even give them the house of God. Perhaps that’s why the Ethiopian eunuch is reading and re-reading the words of this prophet.  Perhaps on this journey home from Jerusalem, the home of God’s most –cherished temple and what represented God’s very presence, where they had longed to be a part of the holy rituals…they had been turned away and rejected by religious leaders who thought this was the faithful thing to do. Perhaps that’s one more reason they relate all too closely to the section highlighted here, which tells of God’s suffering servant, subjected to exclusion, humiliation, and injustice because they are not who others thought they should be. This passage from Isaiah 53 highlights the claim that Jesus’ crucifixion was an injustice, a fulfillment of this prophetic passage. Perhaps Isaiah’s description of a silenced victim whose generation was cut off reflects the eunuch’s own experience of being diminished and rejected. Perhaps they are seeking to understand the presence of God’s story within their own being.

I wonder…Whom are we reluctant to join because of their complicated story?

Where might the Spirit be sending us? 

What complicated stories do we wear on our own bodies? 

The Holy Spirit brings Phillip and the Ethiopian together and creates meaningful connection between them.

The Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Philip comes alongside this person, enters into where they are. He doesn’t yank them out of the chariot or send them to the nearest expert, but trusts the Spirit to lead them as they reflect together. We don’t know exactly what it said between these two that prompts the action that follows, but what we do see at the beginning is an exchange that feels mutual, with each one inviting the other into deeper conversation. There’s a posture of openness. Phillip is willing to ask big questions that open up further reflection together, rather than move them through a prescribed process. The eunuch is willing to be vulnerable and honest by naming what they don’t really understand. Can you imagine what might be possible, if before asserting their certainty or their opinion, people were willing to say, “Actually, I don’t know much about that, but I’d like to.” If people were willing to ask for help in understanding?

Philip doesn’t have to be the world’s leading scholar on the prophet Isaiah to share how he reflects on scripture in light of what he DOES know and HAS experienced of God. The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, reflecting on what she might have said if she would have been sitting in that chariot writes that: “When I hear these texts, I hear Jesus because of my experience with Jesus.” Philip engages the holy, if imperfect, act of simply reflecting and sharing where he notices meaning and God within the story of another. It is ancient and sacred tradition of a pair of people faithfully looking toward God’s movement in the world and in their lives and giving voice to what they have noticed. Philip has noticed that the Resurrection blows all the doors off their hinges, that God should not and cannot be “restricted access only.”

“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” There have been plenty other voices that could give a laundry list of reasons, but now it’s clear that none of them is truly sufficient to stop the Holy Spirit. 

With this, this powerful, smart, black, queer traveler recognizes that there are no barriers between them and God and God’s promises, no hoops to jump through in order to access God and God’s blessing.  Perhaps for the first time, they know that God’s gifts are for them as they are, and they long to have that promise poured out over them, seeping into every fiber of their being through the sacrament of baptism.

It makes me think of a story I once heard of a teacher who filled a jar with large rocks. When the last rock sat at the very top of the jar, he turned and asked those gathered…is this jar full? Yes, obviously, the people replied. Then they poured smaller pebbles into the jar and shook it around a bit so that they began to sift into the spaces between the larger rocks. “Now is the jar full?” Yes, definitely now it’s full. Then they poured sand into the jar and watched as it spread into the spaces that hadn’t even seemed like spaces before, all the way to the top. “Now is the jar full?” Yes, of course. 

And this is where that original story ends as a fable on priorities and time management, and making sure you focus on the big things in life first. But I see a fable of the complex interlocking ways we are made – all the large stones, small pebbles, and intimate sand that make up our identity, meaning, belonging, wholeness. And I think there’s still room for something more. What would happen if we added water to the jar? Can you envision it as it seeps into every corner, touching and filling up every space of our lives and our being? That’s what the water of baptism does in us as we are joined to every other place that the water has been and will be as a mark of God’s ever-flowing familial embrace. And the cool thing about water is that it’s always right here, anywhere you turn, anywhere you are, accessible to anyone - reminding and inviting us into deep, refreshing, and pervasive blessing.

I think we often get stuck or separated by the idea that there’s some trick, some stipulation to coming close to God and God’s goodness. Or we’ve been told and/or internalized that who we are is too messy, too complicated, to be fully a apart of holy life, to have it seep into every nook and cranny of our identity and being. But it’s impossible to completely contain or stop water that’s on the move, alive through God’s Spirit. Nothing can prevent God’s proclamation that you are beloved, every inch of who you are. May this pervasive love wash over your head and fill up your heart. May it pour into the parched places of your soul. May it refresh you deeply so that you find yourself rejoicing. 

Let us pray:

Fulfillment of the prophesies,
With Scripture and water you claim people as your own. Claim us with water and the word, so that we may rejoice in the life given to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the one whose spirit lives in us, Jesus Christ. Amen.