The Conversion of Philip

 Acts 8

4-28-24

 

Acts is the story of the first church.

Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch
Paul Goodnight

The risen Jesus shows up at the beginning of the book,

but then he goes up and leaves

Peter and the rest of them to figure

things out for themselves and Acts is that story.

 

At the beginning of the story, for the first 7 chapters,

The church seems like it’s got things firmly in control.

Peter is its obvious leader and he’s

doing his administrative best.

 

They’re stationed in Jerusalem,

They’ve got a church of about 120 people,

a pretty good size church to work with.

They make solid administrative decisions,

they have nominating committees,

Peter preaches great sermons,

They have people join in membership,

the church is growing,

They have healing services

they have a very aggressive stewardship program.

people die from shame if they don’t give enough.

 

Acts says “They devoted themselves to teaching,

fellowship and the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

A good church plan if I ever heard one.

Peter was doing great things in Jerusalem.

 

Then, I think the Holy Spirit got bored with the whole thing.

Around chapter 8, the Holy Spirit decided to take

the nice, pleasant, well-run church

in Jerusalem and do something new.

 

 The beginning of Chapter 8 is the first time

we see Paul, who is still Saul, who is a Pharisee

and is working overtime to get rid of the followers of Christ.

He turns the heat up, and the church and its people

are forced to leave their comfortable Jerusalem

church and scatter around and go elsewhere.

 

In the rest of chapter 8 we get the first story

of what that scattered church does.

 

It says the Holy Spirit leads Philip down the road from

Jerusalem to Gaza, it points out that it’s a wilderness road,

a road of the unknown, the dangerous, the unexpected,

just like the Holy Spirit likes it.

 

And there Philip meets an Ethiopian Eunuch

who’s riding in a chariot.

It said he had come to Jerusalem to worship

but he was now heading home.

The Holy Spirit tells Philip to go and talk to him.

The Eunuch is reading the book of Isaiah.

 

Philip offers to explain the scriptures to the Eunuch

The Eunuch invites him on board the chariot.

There Philip explains the words of Isaiah

and tells him about the Good News of Jesus Christ.

 

The Eunuch is obviously moved

he sees some water outside the chariot and says,

“What is to prevent me from being baptized right now?”

 

The answer was, at the time, everything.

Everything was stopping this man from being baptized.

He was a eunuch.

A man who was physically altered so he could

be hired to take care of female royalty.

He was sexually different than the norm.

And as such,  the scriptures prevented from joining

in the life of the temple.

Told, in very clear terms in Deuteronomy 23:1

“No one who has been emasculated can enter the house of the Lord.”

 

This man was an outsider. His sexuality was different.

The rules of religion made him an outcast,

called him an abomination, rejected him.

Even some documents from the earliest Christian church

rejection of Eunuchs from being able to be baptized

and participate in the church.

 

It says that the Eunuch was coming from Jerusalem.

and that he went there to worship.

And it’s not unthinkable that he was sent home from there.

Sent away from God and the worshipping community

because of who he was.

 

Religion turned the Eunuch. away, but he still sought God.

He still read the scripture. He still talked to Philip.

He still let the Sprit move him.

 

Over the years, I’ve met people in the church

who, just like this person have been rejected

by the church because of their sexuality.

They’ve been told the church doesn’t want them.

That they need to deny themselves

or God won’t love them, can’t love them.

And the church can’t accept them as they are.

And yet, many of them still come back.

They still seek God, they seek the Christian community.

These people are an example of bravery.

These people are a testament to the power of the Spirit

to overcome years of bad theology led

by a very narrow reading of the scriptures.

 

Anyone who has been rejected by

the church for any reason, 

because of their sexuality, or color,

or gender, or what they’ve done in the past,

or how they look, or who their parents are . . .

anyone who has faced rejection and still seek out

God and the Christian Community

they are an inspiration.

They renew my faith.

They convert me again.

They help me to know that there is more

to this than reason and rules.

They drive me to understand the way of Jesus

and the Word of God better.

They let me know the power of the Spirit.

 

And this Eunuch is an inspiration.

He hears the story of Jesus and hears about

the healing and forgiveness of baptism.

He sees some water by the side of the road

and he wants to be baptized right there.

What is to prevent me from being baptized?

And apparently, Philip doesn’t see that there is

anything preventing it, and Philip baptizes him

right then and there.

 

Now sometimes they call this story

“The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch.”

The Eunuch is converted to the faith.

He became like us. The church rejoices.

 

But is that really the most amazing thing that happened?

Was  the Eunuch the main one converted to the faith?

Or was Philip converted to the faith?

Was the church was converted to the faith?

Was the church converted to the Way of Jesus?

 

Did the Spirit lead the Eunuch to Philip?

Or did the Spirit lead Philip to that Eunuch?

 

That same water, that same spirit

that has washed and sent so many people

that has inspired people through the generations,

has inspired us to welcome the stranger,

to help those who are hurting,

to treat others with kindness,

to work for justice, to feed the hungry,

to offer comfort and prayer to those who are hurting,

and it sometimes just inspires to make it through the day.

 

In our baptism God has claimed us.

We are forgiven and we know that

we are loved eternally.

And that love changes people.

That same Spirit, those same waters of salvation

that drove that Ethiopian out of his chariot

and into a new life, drives us.

That same Spirit that drove Philip to go

from the comfort of Jerusalem

to the wilderness road that led Gaza

drives us too.

 

That same Spirit that got bored with

the nice, stable church in Jerusalem,

snatches us up and send us out into

strange and uncomfortable places,

hopefully to meet people we never would

have met before.

 

She drives us to follow the way of Jesus

and to use the scriptures for love

and inclusion instead of hate and exclusion.

 

She shows us that nothing is preventing us

from sharing the love of God with everyone.

 

That same Spirit, that same water of baptism,

that drove them, drives us today.

Authority In His Wounds

Jesus Christ With Open Hands
Bernardo Ramonfaur

Luke 24:36b-48

April 14, 2024

Easter 3

 

I had a friend in Texas who was pastor.

He just died in November.

His name is David Doerfler.

He worked in the Texas prison system

with victims of violent crimes,

he did restorative justice work.

He specifically worked with those

victims who want to meet their convicted offender.

Both parties have to be willing to meet.

He did work with the victims and

with the offenders to prepare for the meeting.

The point of the meetings was so the victims

who were stuck in grief could move on  with their lives.

Some of his work was with death row prisoners.

 

David’s work was actually featured on the

news program 48 hours in the early 2000’s

so there was video of one of these meetings.

I had taken a class that he taught

and he showed us the program.

The person they focused on was

a woman whose name was Paula.

 

Paula’s 21 year old daughter was killed

about 12 years earlier by a man named John.

He had stabbed her and her roommate

who he had been stalking.

It was a really violent attack.

He had been in and out of jail with mental illness.

He was on drugs at the time.

He was on death row for the murders.

 

Paula said she died the day that her daughter died.

She hadn’t been able to move on with her life.

She was so consumed with grief and hate.

Paula had been trying to convince the Texas

prison system to let her speak with John

And she finally got her opportunity with David’s program

John was going to be executed in a few weeks.

 

They showed the video of my friend

working with her before the meeting

She was hard and tough and angry.

She was understandably bitter.

She wanted the offender to know about

all the pain he caused her.

She didn’t know how it would go.

Her family was not in favor of the meeting.

We also saw video of John, the offender.

Over time he had become extremely remorseful

and torn up about the crime too.

 

They met for the first time

through a plate glass window in the

death row area of Huntsville prison.

 

When they finally met, she spent the first half hour just crying.

She reminded him that her daughter was a person.

He repeatedly said he was sorry,

but he said he knew sorry would never be enough.

Then they talked for the next five hours.

Paula asked John many questions about what had happened.

Why he had done it, what his life was like before and after,

and he learned about her daughter and what

her life was like before and after.

 

 In my mind, I had thought that they were

on completely opposing sides of this equation and

they would never have a connection.

But the truth is their lives were completely

interconnected through this terrible act.

They shared more together than other people.

They shared the same wounds.

 

Her wounds were the mirror image of his wounds,

the pain of her daughter’s murder that she lived with

was the shame that he lived with too.

Both of their lives were completely destroyed

and transformed by this one senseless act.

They discovered that through this pain,

they actually knew each other intimately.

In the five hour meeting, she said her

hatred for him melted into something else.

 

She kept on saying to him, like so many mothers

have said to their own difficult children,

“I don’t know what to do with you, John.

I don’t know what to do with you.”

 

One of the most startling things to me,

was at the end of their first meeting

they were still separated by a piece of glass

and before they left the meeting, she held her

hand up to the window.

And he held his hand up to hers palm to palm.

It was like they were touching their wounds.

 

Imagine this meeting with Jesus and the disciples.

The last time the disciples had seen Jesus,

they had run away and left him.

One of their own had betrayed him.

Peter had denied knowing Jesus at all.

They abandoned the leader that they had

pledged undying devotion to.

They had been completely and embarrassingly human.

They were surely full of sadness at Jesus passing

and they were surely also full of guilt

that they didn’t do more to stop it.

The last time Jesus was alive,

everyone who loved him left him to die.

 

Jesus had risen, but what would his reaction be?

Would he be infuriated?

Would he condemn them?

Would he scold the disciples?

 

No, he enters the room with them and says: “Peace be with you.”

He declares peace between them.

Their wounds were the same.

Jesus’s wounds of pain were their wounds of shame.

He comes to them to be with them.

Asks to share a meal with them like the old days.

To bring them peace.

 

The risen Christ appears to the disciples

still in possession of his own wounds,

and understanding their wounds as well.

 

Forgiveness has often been touted as one

segment or one program of Christianity.

Just one thing that Jesus does

and that Jesus asks us to do.

 

But the appearance of Jesus raised

is the embodiment of forgiveness,

it is the avenue to rebirth in God’s name. 

And the time we have experienced real forgiveness

We have witnessed the resurrected Christ on earth.

Jesus says that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is

to be proclaimed to all nations beginning in Jerusalem.”

Starting with Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was crucified.

The city that also shared his wounds with him.

 

Forgiveness is the whole of the mission

that Jesus give to his people,

Not just something that’s done at the

beginning of worship and then we’re done with it.

But forgiveness and all it encompasses.

 

Forgiveness – the belief that all things can start again.

That a relationship that’s been harmed,

even by the worst, can be restored.

That people are never forsaken

That nothing is lost, no one is hopeless

not even a murderer on death row.

 

In church, we throw around

the word forgiveness a lot

so much so that we might think that it is simple

or that it happens all the time

or even that it’s expected

that each of us will experience it on a regular basis.

 

The actions and tasks that come

with forgiveness might come easily:

But I think that true, deep felt, freeing forgiveness,

is nothing short of a miracle.

When it happens to us, when we experience it,

when we forgive others, or ourselves,

we are experiencing a miracle.

The miracle of the resurrected Christ.

 

I think that when Paula first thought about talking with John,

she was not planning on feeling compassion for him.

I think she wanted to give him a piece of her mind and leave him.

Considering the situation, I don’t know that I could have forgiven him.

But I think the Spirit intervened.

 

Over the next few weeks, she met with him repeatedly.

She was still torn, she was infuriated with him at times.

She still thought he deserved the death penalty.

But she said this experience gave her life back to her.

He said it gave him peace before he died.

 

In one conversation that they showed

She said to him "I feel compassion for you, Jonathan," 

He said, "I don't know if I deserve it," 

She said, "No you don't, but you have it," 

 

She came to his execution

when his own mother wouldn’t come.

And before he was executed,

he said out loud, “I love you, Paula”

And she said, “I love you, John.”

That’s the last thing he heard.

That is nothing short of a miracle.

 

There was a soldier who

was terribly wounded in the Vietnam war.

From his torso up to his head he was burned.

His face and his whole upper body was terribly disfigured.

 

He spends his time now working at hospitals

in the burn unit talking to recent burn victims.

He tells them that somehow they will live.

They will get through.

 

Doctors and nurses have told the patients before,

over and over again but the patients don’t believe them.

The doctors and nurses saying it didn’t carry the same

weight as this person who had been through it.

This man was a testimony in his life.

This man’s authority is in his wounds.

 

Paula’s authority is in her wounds.

Forgiveness is possible.

There is always hope.

 

Jesus authority is in his wounds.

Jesus with his real flesh and bones,

stands among us saying,

“Peace be with you.”

“I have those wounds just like you.”

But these wounds are not the end of the story.

 

Blessed are the Doubters

 John 20:19-31   Easter 2 April 4, 2024

 

Poor Thomas.

He gets a bad rap from this story.

he gets kind of a derogatory nick name –

He’s known as Doubting Thomas.

 

I mean he’s the same Thomas 

who leads the disciples

to follow Jesus to Judea to help 

an ailing Lazarus by saying,

“Let’s go also so that we can also die with him.”

which was kind of brave. But he gets called Doubting Thomas.

 

Other people have been called Doubting Thomases too

because they doubt, or they want more proof.

Doubt. We have said it as if it’s a bad thing.

 

I’ve just recently had one person outside of the church

talk to me worried that they were

going to hell because at some point in their lives they

had doubt and turned away from the church and God.

Someone had to instill that in them. Doubt is bad.

 

And sometimes we look at people with unwavering

almost naïve trust as the pinnacle of what we’re supposed to be

Which just leaves the deep thinkers out completely.

 

But haven’t we all had doubt about the story of Jesus?

Haven’t we all been there?

Even the most faithful of us have had doubt.

 

Haven’t we all wondered been suspicious, wanted more information.

Haven’t we all at one time or another wondered about

the truth of these stories, wondered about their importance?

I know I have been there. I know I have stopped myself

and gone, wait, do I really believe all this?

 

I think that is okay.

I think it’s part of a healthy, thinking, rational mind.

I think doubt is part of our growth as disciples.

 

There are lots of ways we doubt or lots of ways that I doubt anyway.

Sometimes we doubt the facts of something as they’re told

in the stories in the bible.

Like Jesus really feed 5000 people?

Did they actually count them or was that an exaggeration?

 

We doubt that things were really miracles,

or was there another explanation for them?

Like did Jesus really make food for those 5000 people with

five loaves and two fish or did other people in the crowd

share their food with each other?

 

There’s the doubt that asks

Does God really exist, did Jesus really exist?

Did people just make them up?

 

We doubt the truth of the story,

maybe Jesus was just a regular person

and we’re all just silly to be following him.

 

And then there’s another kind of deep doubt

that asks does God actually love me?

Does God love us or want to punish us?

Has God abandoned us in our time of greatest need?

 

All those doubts are normal.

I’ve cycled through all of them at one time

or another sitting in my office, writing sermons,

reading books, sitting in classes, praying for people,

moving furniture alone in the sanctuary.

 

Contrary to what we might have been told in the past.

Doubt is normal. Doubt is part of faith.

In the past, Christians, especially children,

have been scolded for voicing their doubts,

people have been excommunicated,

banned, shunned and worse.

 

But doubt is part of a of a healthy faith life.

God and Jesus can take our doubts.

They accept them, I think they even encourage them.

 

Look at this story of Thomas,

Everyone was locked inside the upper room in fear,

but Thomas was out, maybe he was going on a Kroger run,

or taking the donkey for a walk.

Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t there, cowering in fear

like the rest of them, (see I think he should be Brave Thomas),

And while he was gone, the risen Christ popped into the room.

And when the rest of them told him about it, he didn’t believe them,

and said he wouldn’t believe it unless he saw it for himself.

 

Now, Jesus didn’t scold him, or tell him he was a heathen

for not trusting everyone else.

Jesus didn’t say, well if you don’t believe, too bad for you.

Jesus responded to Thomas’s doubt and satisfied it.

Jesus made a second trip, to that upper room just for Thomas’s sake.

and said “Peace be with you” a second time just for him.

He let Thomas put his hand in his wounds,

he helped Thomas work through it.

Whatever it took for him.

 

I believe that Jesus does that for us.

Whether it takes an instant, or hours, or days, or decades.

 

The quote goes, “There is no faith without doubt”

I can’t even find exactly who said this because

so many wise people have said this, or a version of it.

Faith often begins with doubt.

Faith bounces back and forth with doubt.

Doubt can strengthen our faith.

Doubt can feed our minds, strive for learning more,

until our hearts can catch up and rest in

God’s love and forgiveness again.

 

When I first started to go back to church in my late 20’s

after many years of absence from church,

I went to an ELCA church. For the first few of weeks

during worship, I opted out of saying the apostles creed.

I would say all the rest of the liturgy, but

I thought to myself, I just don’t know if I can

commit to everything that’s said in the creed.

This went on for a while

until we were in a discussion after church

and someone mentioned the creeds,

and I said, kind of defiantly, maybe proudly,

“I don’t say the creeds, I don’t know that I believe them.”

 

And one of the pillars of the church , someone I considered

a model of the faith, laughed, “Oh, I don’t believe it all the time eithr”

Then her husband who was a seminary professor,

and one of the smartest people I had met said,

“me either” and other people were agreeing with them.

And another seminary professor, who was really

the smartest person I had met til that time, said, “I don’t.

I don’t think any one hasn’t had doubt individually,

But we believe as a community”

 

Although I didn’t fully understand what that meant then.

The conversation stuck out for me in my mind,

because so many people that I looked up to

said they had doubt, and that my doubt wasn’t

horrible, or even unique, but it was a normal

part of being in the community.

It actually helped me move ahead in my faith.

 

And now after these years, I think I understand.

The truth of Christ’s resurrection doesn’t

rely on my individual belief in it at every moment.

When I don’t believe, the rest of the community

will believe for me.

When you can’t say the creed, there are others

who will say it and hold it up for you.

When you can’t believe in God’s love for you,

other people will hold that place for you.

When your faith is shaken by life or circumstances,

other people will be here, to believe for you,

until you’re ready. Then you can hold onto the

faith for them, when they can’t believe.

 

“We doubt individually, but we believe as a community”

 

And I learned from my experience,

that doubt can move us to a deeper faith,

and it moves our community to a deeper faith.

Thomas’s doubt offered the other disciples

another chance to see and experience the risen Christ.

 

Jesus said “Blessed are those who have not

seen and have come to believe.”

 

And blessed are those also, like Thomas, who

have doubted, who question, and who want to see more.