When "Hear We Stand" Meets "Y'all Come"

Sermon, 6/6/10. Many branches of the church universal have systematically singled out lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons for exclusion. Scripture is clear: Those designated for exclusion are those Christ calls us, as a congregation, to specifically include in our welcome …

LGBT Inclusion:

When ‘Here We Stand’ Meets ‘Y’all Come’

Prayer: Come now, O Christ: our stem, our stalk, our tree.

Let your fruit take root in me!¹ And, we pray, in us all. Amen.

A wilderness road.

Parenthetically – as an afterthought, almost – we are told it was a wilderness road.

The road that the angel asked the apostle Philip to travel that day. A road “that goes down”.

Going down, a wilderness road: both metaphors for something fraught with risk. Metaphors which apply to this day for the Jerusalem road to Gaza that Philip travels in this text: what with multiple military checkpoints, choking back Palestinians desperately seeking the dignity of self-sufficiency.

A wilderness road. A road that goes down. Which is why it probably took nothing less than an angel to convince Philip to travel it. I can’t imagine otherwise. The apostle’s recent sojourn to Samaria was practically a joy-ride compared to this. “Down to Samaria” he had  traveled, to proclaim the Good News to those infamous half-breeds there: part Jewish, part Gentile, their blood long intermingled. “Down to Samaria”: It’s really up on the map from Jerusalem, to the north, but its danger …

Down to Samaria, then – and down to Gaza, today. But Gaza’s – unlike Samaria’s – is a wilderness road. A road less traveled. A road yet traveled, by Jesus or his apostles. This is different. This is frontier. This is foreign turf, with … well, foreigners.

As Philip is soon to discover, in the form of an exotic personage whose chariot crosses his path. And who Philip then greets with warmth.

But wait: That’s not exactly the story, here. That’s another biblical story of hospitality, altogether. That’s the story of Abraham greeting the angels unawares who came to him beneath the oaks of Mamre, leading to a miraculous conception of a whole new people. That’s the story of the Moabite Ruth refusing to leave the shadow of her longsuffering Hebrew mother-in-law, Naomi: “Whither thou goest, I will go.” That’s the story of Jesus welcoming sinners – the impure, the unclean – society’s lepers running up to him and screaming, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!”

That’s another type of biblical hospitality story altogether: close encounters of a receptive kind.

But that’s not this scripture. We are not told the chariot crosses Philip’s path – much less that it comes to him. Another type of hospitality – a more proactive variety – is being expressed here.

The Spirit, we are told, comes to Philip and says, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” Next sentence: “So Philip ran up to it …

Proactive! “Philip ran up to it …”

Reaching out! “Philip ran up to it …”

And who does he find he is running up to meet in that chariot?

An Ethiopian eunuch. A castrated man of color. The secretary of the queen’s treasury, come to Jerusalem to worship.

Note, however, what is not said here. Note that we are not told the eunuch had been allowed to worship in Jerusalem. Eunuchs, after all, were considered impure – stereotyped, ironically, as sexually immoral. Hence, they were often excluded from worship, especially in Jerusalem. He probably was Jewish, this eunuch – many Ethiopians were and are to this day …

… but his sexual condition …²

And so, is it any wonder that this man, quite likely excluded from the Temple of the Lord – not by his race, mind you, but by his sexual condition – is found by Philip searching Hebrew scripture for some spiritual meaning about his exclusion?³ Is it any wonder that when Philip encounters him – excuse me, runs to him – the eunuch is reading from a passage he can find solace in? Indeed, he has found his life’s reflection in the prophet Isaiah’s words: a sheep led to slaughter and a lamb silent before its shearer, justice denied in his humiliation, his life taken away from the earth. A Suffering Servant prophet who then writes, two chapters later:

Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right … do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree” … (To these eunuchs) who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant – to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.”⁴

Now we know. Now we know why the Holy Spirit would not leave Philip alone, to pass this chariot in the night. Now we know why she – the Spirit, in scripture’s original Greek, is a she – possesses Philip to go out of his way to greet the eunuch and comfort him and share the Good News of Jesus’ solidarity with his plight.

As the eunuch soon asked the apostle Philip: What, indeed, is to prevent him from being baptized?

What … indeed?

You know the answer.

I have been with you and listened to you and shared with you and eaten with you for nearly a full year now. And I know that you know the answer to this sexual minority’s question – “What, indeed, is to prevent him from being baptized?”

You know the answer: Nothing. As for each of us, on one level or another, the scripture story collides with his story – and vice versa. And Philip – you – we – would help him to see this and to understand this. And Philip – you – we – would baptize him in a Presbyterian heartbeat. The heartbeat that says the only requirement for church membership is an affirmative response to this question: “Do you believe Jesus to be your Savior and Lord?” So what if he’s … a sexual minority?

But church membership is not really this scripture’s challenge to us today. Its hospitality challenge for us is a bit different.

It challenges us not to limit ourselves to a purely receptive hospitality: “Here we sit in the church – so, y’all come!” It stretches us to say, “Here we stand as a church – so, y’all come!”

This, my friends, is a proactive hospitality, moved by the Spirit, that runs to welcome the marginalized home – the marginalized population of a particular context – lest they pass us by, Jesus-like, in rejection and despair.

And just who might those marginalized from our church universal be?  The homeless. The hungry. The health-less …

And – out-publicizing them all, in our wider church furrowing of brows … well, I think we know. I hope we know. If we do not know, the high school graduates we commission today might be able to tell us.

For we all know that our church’s ritual exclusion of African-Americans and women have smoldered into the embers of our humbled past. Today, it’s the fire next time. Our Presbyterian church – and countless others, their name is Legion – have sadly and tragically and systematically singled out lesbians and gays for systematic rejection for over 30 years.

Singled them out – for rejection. A rejection we revisit for the national media every two years – every General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA).   

Singled out for rejection by our denomination, that it – though not by us here at BPC. But aren’t we part of the denominational “us”, here? Last time I looked, we were PC(USA)-affiliated.

And so I offer to you today, my friends, the humbling understanding that we share in a holy responsibility. The responsibility of bearing witness, with a proactive hospitality, in the face of our denomination’s collective rejection.

The responsibility of singling out the rejected for our welcome. As scripture – today’s and in general – has made it abundantly clear to us, those most rejected by the larger body are those we, the smaller body, are called to make the most welcome.

I think we all know at BPC that we – a church blessed, no lavished, with the Spirit-gift of hospitality – would welcome and already do welcome lesbian and gay persons into our membership. As I trust we would welcome other sexual minorities such as bisexual or transgender persons – no more exotic and myth-laden than that eunuch embraced by a prophet and an apostle both.

Is it not, then, the logical next step for us to claim that blessing that God has given us – and use that blessing that God has given us – and provide a safe place, a sanctuary, that God has given us – for these sister and brothers our misguided sisters and brothers have so categorically turned away? Even if there turning away be a rejection benign – often worse, in its insidious way, than a rejection malign?

Is it not, then, the logical next step for us to say, “Here we stand. Y’all come”?

For the measure of our hospitality is not about how we might face hostility from others by taking such a stand. The measure of our hospitality is about how we might come face-to-face with the hospitality of Jesus in so doing.

The face of Jesus: The face of humiliation. The face of silence. The face – even – of slaughter.

The face of the sexually ostracized one, like the Ethiopian eunuch … who saw his reflection in the pool of Isaiah’s very words.

But the church never would have seen, nor ever would have known, nor ever would have experienced this Jesus-mirroring event if something by the name of the Holy Spirit had not spoken to Philip on that wilderness road. ‘Go over to this chariot’, the Spirit said – this chariot of shame and rejection and utter dejection – ‘Go over … and join it.’”

“So Philip ran up to it.” Philip – took action. And because he took action, that’s when Philip heard.

Heard the Good News. God’s living Word, found slumped in that chariot.

What is to prevent us from being baptized, in turn?

What is to prevent us from being baptized with the Spirit?

Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.

¹After Miriam Therese Winter, as found in Susan A. Blain [ed.], Imaging the Word: An Arts and Lectionary Resource, Vol. 3 (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1995), p. 211.

²Karen Baker-Fletcher, “Fifth Sunday of Easter: Acts 8:26-40”, Theological Perspective, in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (general editors), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year B, Volume 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), pp. 454 and 456.

³Ibid., p. 456.

⁴Isaiah 56:1, 3-4 – New Revised Standard Version.

Benediction …

Let’s depart from Worship today with these memorable words from the poet Robert Burns:

  O wad some Power the giftie gie us

  To see oursels as ithers see us.

To see ourselves – the church – as a lesbian and gay person sees us …

At our special congregational meeting to follow, you will receive a glimpse from that perspective from our very own Patrick and Fred – speaking not from their experience among us here, but from the experience of lesbians and gays with churches in general. One gay perspective, at least; they cannot, of course, pretend to speak for any group.

Our scriptures make it plain: Those most rejected are those Christ call us to make most welcome. The experience of singled-out rejection that singled-out hospitality can begin to redeem, in Jesus’ name.

Go out into the world in peace, to love and serve our servant Lord.