Sermons from the Pulpit

     Philip asks the Ethiopian eunuch, Do you understand what you are reading? And he answers, How can I, unless someone guides me?

     I wonder, how can this story help a preacher to offer any guidance to these confirmands and any others who may be listening? Surely the condition of being a eunuch too delicate a topic to be helpful in the spiritual edification of youth.

     Well, we invite young people into the church's confirmation process when they reach a certain age. They are old enough, we say. What on earth do we mean by that?

     The standard answer is: They can think for themselves and they can make their own decisions. So we say, but I'm not sure either the confirmands or the rest of us really believe it. It would be truer to say that they see themselves, accurately I think, and the rest of us see them, as people in the midst of rapid change. Not like kids - any fool can see that. But not like their parents either, as they would be the first to point out. People on the move.

     I've decided there's one important thing they are definitely old enough to do. They are old enough to put themselves in someone else's situation. They have the imagination and the intelligence and the emotional maturity to see reality from a point of view other than their own.

     And therefore they are old enough for the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, or as I like to think of it, the story of Philip and the weirdo from outer space. Look at the story from the inside. Philip is a Galilean Jew. To him an Ethiopian is a non-Jew, a Gentile. That's what the word "Gentile" means. He's also an alien - Ethiopia was the very limit of the known universe. And he is racially exotic - an African. And his body has been permanently mutilated without his consent and in brutal violation of what any Jew would take to be God's purposes for creating human beings. In short, when this man travels up to Jerusalem, everything about him screams out, "I don't belong here! I am very strange!"

     And Philip has been trained all his life long to see him exactly that way and steer clear of him. But surprise: Philip doesn't do that. The Holy Spirit won't let him. The Holy Spirit shows him instead a fellow creature in need of what he, Philip, can give. And he runs to give it.

     I have finally figured out just this week why Philip ran to the chariot. It was moving! All these years in my mind's eye I've been seeing the chariot parked by the side of the road with this Ethiopian sitting in it, reading his Bible, because he couldn't read and drive at the same time, right? Wrong! He doesn't have to keep his eyes on the road. The horse can do that. He can let the reins go slack and sit back and read a Good Book. So he's a moving quickly along, a moving target, just like a confirmand. And the only way Philip can get to him is to run. This is a huge revelation to me.

     Now I am not trying to suggest to you that each confirmand in our church is a fast-moving weirdo from outer space and each mentor is a kind and caring and helpful Philip. It's tempting, but that's the wrong message. Rather I invite you all to find the Ethiopian eunuch within yourself, and to find the Philip within yourself, because believe me, they are both there.

     And more than that, I remind us all that those two are not the only characters in the story. When the Ethiopian says, How can I understand what I am reading, unless someone guides me? the reference is not just to Philip. Philip himself needs a guide too. He would not have gone chasing after that chariot if the Holy Spirit hadn't told him to. He couldn't have done anything helpful if the Spirit had not been leading him. And here in the United Church of Christ we take that very seriously - we expect every single one of us to find the true Word of God in the Scriptures with no doctrinal formulas, no fixed catechism, no take-it-or-leave-it pronouncements, no nothing but the Holy Spirit and the Word to guide our own God-given brains through all the changes and chances of this mortal life.

     Remember also, please, what God is doing here, the one God who is the God of Israel, God in Christ and God the Holy Spirit. We heard it in Jesus' words in the Gospel. God is not just attending to a eunuch here and a Philip there; God is tending a vineyard in which you and I and Philip and the Ethiopian all abide.

     Abide, abide, abide - that Gospel is full of abiding. It means: to stay, to dwell, to remain, to stick around, to hang out. Exactly the opposite of being on the move, you'd expect. But look again. It's not about staying where you are or even about staying what you are. It's about staying with who you're with. Presence, not place. Abide in me, Jesus says.

     When I read about Christ the vine and us the branches, I imagine sort of a tree, but a vineyard isn't like that. Its branches are so tightly intertwined that you can't tell one branch from another. And in order to grow and be fruitful every branch has to be pruned way back every year. So the only constant is their connection to the vine in which they are rooted, and through that to each other. Everything else is on the move, just like a pilgrim in a chariot, the moving target who by the grace of God got connected.

     Sometimes you will be the lonely pilgrim in need of the connection, sometimes you will be the connector who comes running. Either way you will receive at least as much love and nurture as you give, as anyone who has been a mentor can tell you. I'm grateful to the mentors for being the heart and soul of our confirmation process, yes, but grateful to them even more for taking the risk of inviting the Holy Spirit to be incarnate in their peculiar selves, for the sake not only of the confirmands but of us all.