A Governor, A Firefighter, A Eunuch and the Holy Spirit
You never know where the Holy Spirit will take you.
The following was adapted from a sermon preached on July 21, 2024.
It seems like when the calendar flips from May 31 to June 1 rainbows seem to appear everywhere. LGBTQ Pride went from a weekend or week to a whole month where we put rainbows on everything and everyone.
As a gay man happily married to a man, this is a good thing. I live in Minneapolis and I remember reading in an alternative newspaper something about the history the Twin Cities Pride Festival which started in 1972. That first festival took place where it does today; Loring Park, in downtown Minneapolis. The event was rather small; with the people gathering in a circle, looking over their shoulders for fear of the police. Life today is just different. Back in 1972, you could have been run out of a church and there are still churches where that happens. But this June, I saw pictures of churches taking pictures of their people at the various pride festivals, and over and over again the message was pretty clear, they wanted to be witnesses to God’s inclusive love.
When Christians talk about inclusion, we usually talk about it as something we do and on some level, it is something we do. But what if the work on inclusion and reconciliation is not just a human action, but the movement of the Spirit? What if the work of the Holy Spirit is not just inclusion, but also to share the good news of the gospel?
The story of Philip and the Ethiopian is one of my favorite stories. It is a living of example of what Jesus says in Acts 1 when he says that the disciples would be his witnesses to the “ends of the earth.” Here is this man, a treasurer in the Court of the Candace, the Queen of the Ethiopians. In Greek, the word for Ethiopians meant people with “burnt skin” or someone with dark skin. As an African American, you can probably see why this story appeals to me.
But this isn’t simply a story of inclusion. It is a story of the spirit and a story of evangelism. We don’t tend to think inclusion and evangelism as going together, but they do. We learn this man was leaving Jerusalem after spending his vacation worshipping. This man was someone who might not have been a believer, but he did worship this God, and most of all he was curious. What did this all mean? He is reading the scriptures as he makes his way back home from his little vacay to Jerusalem. Phillip, a Jew runs up to the eunuch’s chariot and spends time explaining the scriptures to the eunuch. There’s an important lesson here. A friend of mine who is a pastor in Memphis has said that he gets people who come to his church who are part of the LGBTQ community. They come from welcoming churches but come to this church because they not only welcome them but talk about Jesus at his church. We want to welcome people and we must welcome people, but welcoming is also about talking about the good news of Jesus. It is about making disciples, and it means growing in faith. We aren’t being inclusive to be inclusive, but to welcome them to the table, to God’s table where we remember that Jesus showed God’s love for us by dying for us.
This unlikely duo pass some water and it is the eunuch that understands: “here is water!” he says. “Is there any reason I can’t be baptized?” Of course, the answer is yes! Do we understand what it means to be baptized? It meant following Jesus. The word baptize means being immersed and Jesus was immersed into the life of this world into the messiness of the world. We are also called to be immersed into God and into the messiness and craziness of the world. The eunuch is ready to enter into the life of Jesus and be in solidarity with Jesus of the sinful humanity that Christ comes to save.
Is the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch about inclusion? Yes, but it also so much more. It is about telling the good news and about listening to them. It’s about allowing them to join in the life of Jesus. It isn’t just about having a rainbow flag, but about having people know the love of Jesus and entering a cross-shaped life.
This passage reminds us to reach out across boundaries. But reaching across boundaries is not always easy is it? It’s easy to reach out to groups we already agree with. But what about reaching out to people who you don’t see eye to eye?
I want to close with the story of two people. The first is Corey Comperatore. This is the 50-year-old man who was a husband and father who died in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13. The former firefighter laid on top of his family to protect them as the bullets started flying. As it is in the age of social media, people soon found out that Mr. Comperatore was an avid supporter of former President Trump and people started posting his tweets and even taking to Twitter to condemn him.
That leads me to talk about the other person: Josh Shapiro, the Governor of Pennsylvania. Shortly after the tragedy, he spoke in front of cameras about Corey mentioning he was a girl dad and even going as far as to say that Corey was there because he was a fan of the former President. The Governor mentioned that actions Corey did to save his family he said that this man died a hero. Being Jewish, Governor Shapiro ended his remarks by using a familiar phrase shared when someone dies, “May his memory be a blessing.”
I’m not expecting that one should agree with Mr. Comperatore’s views on Donald Trump. But we should see him as someone who is a child of God and willing to cross boundaries to connect with and even talk about God. Governor Shapiro’s actions remind us that everyone, even the people we don’t agree with, is someone who was loved by God and is deserving of respect.
If there is anything we should hope for is trying to be witnesses to the love of Jesus to someone who might believe differently from us. We should hope the spirit will move us to talk to others and be curious to learn about who this child of God is and reach out. May we be led by the wild Spirit to places we would never expect for the sake of the gospel and the sake of the world.