Text: Acts 8:26-39

This passage isn’t the text assigned for this day by our lectionary. The Narrative Lectionary wrapped up at Pentecost. But since we did that series on discernment I’ve been dipping back into the Acts passages that we skipped and I was delighted that this story was one of the options to choose from for a Pride-focused sermon. 

Delighted because this is an opportunity to talk about the no-barrier, open, enthusiastic reception into beloved community of one of the persons (and groups of folks) most obviously an outsider. When this outsider – a gentile, an African, a sexually and gender non-conforming person – asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?!” the implication is: absolutely nothing! You are one of us!

I am very grateful to the scholarship of Dr. Wilda Gafney for her work on this passage. I am particularly grateful that Dr. Gafney suggested a name for the person who is only called ‘the eunuch’ by the narrator Luke (once he’s called ‘the man’). Too often in the Bible, people of marginalized identities are called only by their otherness. 

Gafney suggests the name Abdimahlka, which means ‘servant of the queen’ and which, she says, would have commonly been adopted as a name for those in the position that he occupies in the Candace’s court.

So I will call him Abdimahlka from now on because certainly he had a name, although it seems like it either didn’t occur to Philip to ask or to Luke to record it in Acts. 

Abdimahlka and the presence of other eunuchs in both the Hebrew Bible and here in the New Testament are pretty important to queer-friendly readings of scripture. They are people who have been surgically castrated, apparently to make them less threatening and more trustworthy to those in royal positions. 

They may have had intimate relationships with other eunuchs or with men but not with the women whom they served. Esther, for example, has eunuchs in her service when she was queen. They often had positions of great responsibility.

This particular story in Acts throws open the doors of the Gospel to anyone who might previously have been excluded as one of God’s people. We learn unambiguously that there is nothing to prevent Abdimahlka and anyone who shares one of his identities – queer (although that’s obviously an anachronism), Black/African, non-Jewish – from being baptized into the way of Jesus.

We learn that Abdi has just been to Jerusalem where he intended to visit the temple. This is someone who is a spiritual seeker. He is longing for God and looking for a place to learn and follow. But even though they are present in the Hebrew Bible, Jewish law is also clear that men like Abdimahlkah are not, in fact, welcome in the temple. Deuteronomy 23 prohibits men whose genitals are not intact from being a part of the ‘Lord’s assembly.’  He almost certainly would have been turned away – even from the court where foreigners were allowed to assemble.

I think about how many churches say ‘All are welcome’ but in theology and practice do not actually welcome people who are openly queer or gender expansive. My friend Debbie was estranged from the church for many years because she is gay but she began to feel God calling her back. She was longing for a place to belong and be loved. 

She and her wife started looking for a place to worship and when they visited new churches they would go into each place holding hands. Debbie said she always wanted to be absolutely clear about their identity to test who would shy away, who would give the side-eye and who would offer a warm welcome and invitation. Who would say with their words and actions, “What is to prevent you from belonging?” They did finally find a place at Chapel Hill Mennonite Church and now Debbie is a pastor in Edmonton AB.

Like Debbie, Abdimahlka has a seeker’s heart. He is ready for a teacher and he finds one in Philip – and in the Holy Spirit, who is sending Philip at every mysterious step. After his rejection at the temple he is ready for someone to ask him curious questions, share scripture and study with him, tell him, “You belong!”

Philip and Abdimahlka open the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and the text they are reading in Isaiah 56, the passage commonly known as ‘the suffering servant.’ And first of all – great teaching by Philip, starting not with a lecture but with a question: What do you understand about what you’re reading? 

Like Philip, the church has interpreted this passage to be about Jesus. To specifically refer to the suffering of the passion. But I would suggest that Jesus’ humanness and suffering allowed him to fully identify with the suffering that so many people experience who are on the underside of the legal system, of social norms, of sexual or gender expectations.

There are very few people in our contemporary American culture at the moment than people with identities they share with Abdimahlka: Black and gender non-conforming. Trans people in particular are having their rights and humanity stripped away day by day. They know the suffering of which Isaiah writes and Jesus too knows what it is to be in a body that is punished and violated. What is preventing us from rushing to their side and proclaiming belonging and welcome! The Spirit compels us!

I see parallels in this story to another in Acts: the story in which Peter is called in a dream to eat foods that he had previously understood as unclean. He understands that dream to mean that he is to welcome and baptize the gentile Cornelius. I think that story is told three times in Acts – kind of like how Paul’s conversion story keeps getting told. It’s a story that keeps making the Gospel more and more expansive.

But this story came first. This is the story that makes a way for welcome. The Spirit has claimed Abdimahlka for a child of God, a child of God who will take the Gospel all the way to his home in Ethiopia – where Christians still claim to be the oldest Christian communities. And where we now have the largest population of Anabaptists in the world! 

I was elated when MCUSA passed the resolution for transformation and repentance.  Years ago I remember sitting across as table from a woman who had come to Seattle Mennonite through the community ministry, a volunteer who had also been close to being unhoused herself. She confessed that she was a lesbian and was so grateful for the welcome she experienced at SMC. 

She was seeking baptism and so we were talking about the MCUSA and the greater Mennonite Church she would be joining. It was so painful to have to tell her that she would not encounter that same welcome in every Mennonite Church. That she might not be comfortable at a Mennonite Convention or church gather. We cried together.

So yes, I am so grateful and proud – and frustrated with how much time it took – to be in a Mennonite Church that has repented of its exclusion of our queer kindred. I am grateful and proud to be pastor here, at a church that has declared its welcome and affirmation and belonging for people of every gender identity and expression, for people of any sexual orientation. For what is to prevent us from this welcome? The Spirit is compelling us. And may she continue to drive us in this way!

image: Isaac N. on Unsplash

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