‘B’   //   Easter 5   //   5-10-09   //   Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian

 

Scripture    Acts of the Apostles 8:26-40

 

Doug Case is nobody’s revolutionary. And why should he be?

 

The retired schoolteacher has been a member of the same village Presbyterian church his entire life. Marrying another schoolteacher, now also retired, who has been a member of that same village Presbyterian church her entire life. Chairs the stewardship committee of that same village Presbyterian church – perhaps, his entire life (!) Has dared venture, for the sake of that church, into a frontier that can rightly be called his children’s homeland: website design.

 

But a 60-something small town boy dabbling in website design does not a revolutionary make. And Doug Case is nobody’s revolutionary.

 

So what makes this elder and current session member of Blissfield Presbyterian Church such a renegade? One of a cabal of normally sedate white folk who one day this past March decided to perform an abnormally radical act: formally affiliate their congregation with the More Light Presbyterians movement?

 

 

 

 

Got up and went on the Jerusalem road to Gaza. “(This is a wilderness road),” the biblical narrative puts it. Our translation before us renders this sentence parenthetic to the action. I doubt if Philip saw it that way. Or any Palestinian or Jew today, for that matter. To all of them, this Jerusalem road to Gaza is a wilderness road – in all its peril.

 

And – here’s the rub – Philip not only saw inclusion, he acted on behalf of inclusion.

 

Hear how the narrator frames Philip’s careful deliberations precedent to and during his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch:

 

·        “So he got up and went.”

 

·        “So Philip ran up to (the chariot).”

 

·        “(Philip) asked (the eunuch), ‘Do you understand what you are reading?”

 

·        “Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.”

 

·        “Philip baptized him.”

 

Some careful deliberations!

 

But I thought Philip was a Presbyterian … didn’t you? He was, after all, one of the original presbuteroi: the Greek New Testament word for the elders called forth by the earliest church just two short chapters ago. Called to supervise the daily distribution of food to the widows. Which is not necessarily what being a Presbyterian has come to mean in our more decent-and-orderly days. (Oh, we’ve certainly kept the supervising part. It’s the actual feeding that too often confounds us!)

 

For as you know, it takes at least a few dozen Presbyterians today to change a light bulb: One to change it … but only after all of them have conferred for months in five committees.

 

But whatever happened to the original punch line of that joke – perhaps a more enlightening one? “It takes no Presbyterians to change the light bulb. For the light bulb will simply go on at predestined times.”

 

Maybe there’s something to be said for such a traditional Reformed posture. For certainly, great and good deliberation may be needed on any given matter – it may be the only trustworthy thing to do. But great and good deliberation aside: The slighter the trust, the greater and the worse the deliberation. The slighter the trust in the Holy Spirit, that is, as reflected in our slightness of trust of one another.

 

And the greater the committee work, the blacker the governing body hole. And the blacker the governing body hole, the tighter the circle of wagons that passes for a Christian community.

 

“Out-of-the-box thinking?” The box must first be opened. “Permission-giving church?” We must learn to trust in the power of forgiveness, first.

 

 

Along these lines, I am afforded today one last opportunity while your pastor to cite from that finest of theological cinematic classics, “Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.”

 

In one scene, the commandos of the People’s Front of Judea are huddled one more time to plot the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Meanwhile, their cohort Brian Cohen has just been seized and is about to be crucified.

 

Commando Loretta proclaims, “It’s action that counts, not words, and we need action now!” Her comrades agree: “Hear! Hear!” Reg, their leader, adds, “You’re right. We could sit around all day talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It’s not going to shift one Roman soldier!”

 

All of a sudden, commando Judith bursts in with some news: “They’ve arrested Brian!”

 

“What? What?!”

 

“They’ve dragged him off! They’re going to crucify him!”

 

Reg steps up: “Right! This calls for immediate discussion!” Others chime in: “Right! … New motion? … Completely new motion, that, ah – that there be, ah, immediate action –

 

“Ah, once the vote has been taken.

 

“Well, obviously once the vote's been taken. You can't act another resolution till you've voted on it … In the light of fresh information from, ahh, sibling Judith –

 

Judith is now beside herself: “Reg, for God’s sake, let’s go now! … It’s perfectly simple: All you’ve got to do is to go out of that door now, and try to stop the Romans’ nailing him up! It’s happening, Reg! Something’s actually happening, Reg! Can’t you understand?! Ohhh!” And she runs out.

 

The commandos are nonplussed. Reg comes to their rescue. After dismissing Judith’s intrusion – “another little ego trip for the feminists!” he calls it – he turns their attention back to the motion.¹

 

 

Sound familiar to any of you?

 

As you know from the variety of ministry opportunities laid before us today: Something is happening outside the door of our little People’s Front of Northside! Babies in need of the basic supplies of our Church World Service offering today … Mothers of those babies, who find today’s Hallmark holiday to be but a cruel joke … bipartisan Congressional action promoted by our Offering of Letters, seeking to reform our way of foreign development assistance that is only a few months younger than I am!

 

Something is happening outside the door of our little People’s Front of Northside faith community! And so, we are called today, to be a part of that happening!

 

Instead of circling our inclusive wagons into an “enclosive” spiral, we are called to learn from Philip a way of blossoming outward and expanding that circle. Moving us, commissioning us, beyond ourselves, and toward those contemporary eunuchs of our world who have been involuntarily rendered – let us say it – impotent by the powers and principalities.

 

Those who know not the mark of God that baptism can bestow upon them. Or who know not the power that remembering their baptism in a faith community can continue to bestow.

 

 

 

Let us remember: This is no ordinary time Philip is working in. Neither is it the case for us. The best theologians today, it seems, are already predicting that the twenty-first century in America will look more like the “Pre-Christian” first century environment to Christians than it will look like the Christendom of the twentieth century.²

 

And so let me suggest that we must become more like that first century church than our twentieth century one. For our church’s survival – not unlike Philip’s church’s survival – depends on our timely response to the Spirit’s prompting to “get up and go”:

 

·        To run not alongside, but right up to, the chariots of the powerful, and the powerless being carried away by those chariots.

 

·        To ask ourselves first, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and then proclaiming to the chariot-driven the Good News where they meet God in the text, and the text of their lives.

 

·        And finally, to help them to remember their baptism, if not baptizng those who may not know they’ve been remembered.

 

For sometimes – sometimes – we must make the choice whether we are Presbyterians, or whether we are Christians. Whether we focus on learning and knowing about God – two good things – or whether we focus upon experiencing and knowing God – the two best things. Whether we are about “all deliberate speed” in our discipleship, or whether we strive to catch up to the Spirit who’s already done and is doing our deliberations for us.

 

For doing the right thing – at all costs – means our timely response to fling wide our doors of hospitality to the world. That our mission may be defined and redefined by our partnership with the needs of those outside these doors.

 

It means doing the right thing, in those times when doing things “right” only succeeds in getting in the way.

Friends: Each of us – from presbuteros to the powerless – is already special, in the eyes of our God. No special way – Presbyterian or otherwise – of doing things right can ever even begin to enhance that.

 

But doing the right things because we remember we are already created special? Ahhh. That’s another matter, altogether!

 

  Whoever has ears to hear … let them hear.

 

 

In the depths of the Great Depression across our land, bank robbers captured the public imagination as never before or since. One of those outlaws was a favorite of my father’s: a man by the name of Willie “the Actor” Sutton.

 

When asked one day, “Why do you rob banks, Mr. Sutton?” he responded without hesitation. “Because … that’s where the money is.”

 

The Ethiopian eunuch knew where his queen’s money was. He was, after all, her appointed treasurer.

 

Philip the evangelist knew where his Lord’s value was. He was, after all, his called disciple.

 

  Know your value – your baptized value – as a disciple of our Lord.

 

  Know your value. So that you – and we – may go out into the world in peace, to love and serve our servant Lord.

 

 

¹“Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (Handmade Films, 1979),” “The commandos act another resolution,” http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-21.htm.

 

²Observation by the Rev. Peter James, workshop co-leader: “Can ‘Old Dogs’ Learn ‘New Tricks’? Transforming Traditional Protestant Congregations to Thrive in a Postmodern, Post-Christian Society”, Union PSCE, Richmond, VA, October 4, 2004. See also, among others, http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_fut3.htm.