This sermon was preached at Dreams and Visions, Baltimore,
at a worship service that focused on call and vocation.
In the bible,
there are lots of stories where people get called
to do something God wants them to do.
Most of these stories follow the same pattern.
God, or an angel suddenly appears and says,
“go do this thing!”
And the person says,
“No thank you, that sounds terrible!
You must have the wrong person!”
Then God says, “Listen, it’s gonna be fine,”
and the person who’s being called reluctantly accepts.
It was that way for Moses.
God says, “Lead the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt.”
And Moses says, “I’m no leader!”
It was that way for Mary.
God says, “You’re going to have a child!”
And Mary says, “But I’m only a girl!”
And it was that way for Jonah.
God says, “Go to Nineveh!”
And Jonah runs the other way.
(He ends up in the belly of a fish!)
These call stories teach us that, whatever God calls us to,
it’s usually hard!
We usually don’t feel prepared!
We might even think, “you’ve got the wrong person!”
But before any of that, how do we hear God’s call?
Not everyone gets an angelic visitation, or God showing up right in front of them.
For most of us, it’s a little more ambiguous.
So today we’re reading a story
of someone who has a very clear call.
But his call looks a little bit different than everyone else.
In fact, he’s pretty different from everyone else.
It’s the story of a man who’s from Ethiopia. And he’s a Eunuch.
He isn’t given a name in this text.
But in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, he is remembered as Bachos.
And that is what we will call him today.
*
A Reading from the Book of Acts, chapter 8:
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philipbaptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.
*
Let me begin by saying:
nothing about Bachos is a mistake.
Just like nothing about you is a mistake.
Everything about the Bachos is on purpose.
Just like everything about you is on purpose.
Here we have Philip, a sort of second-tier cast member in this drama of the early church.
And an angel of the Lord appears to Philip and says:
“Go out into the middle of nowhere.”
The roads between Jerusalem and Gaza
are all crisscrossed and funky.
There’s not one main highway.
Philip wanders out into the boondocks and there his discovers,
in a very fine chariot,
this official of the Ethiopian court.
God had something in mind.
A new sense of call was about to unfold in Bachos’ life.
But just like Bachos was different,
his call will look different too.
What did it mean to be a eunuch during the first century?
Womanist Biblical Scholar Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney tells us,
in her excellent sermon about Bachos,
that in the Ancient Near East and North Africa,
it was the custom for men who worked for monarchs to be surgically altered.
This was to diminish the chances that they might attempt to establish a dynasty of their own.
And so there was a class of men at that time,
who were highly educated, wealthy, and served in high-ranking positions,
who were, in a important way, different.
Bachos knows he’s different.
In fact, he’s just returning in his chariot from a visit to Jerusalem
where he was worshipping at the temple,
despite the fact that he will never be allowed to participate fully in temple worship
because of his status as a gender minority.
Yet, he’s drawn to the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
He longs for someone to be his rabbi — to teach him how to interpret these texts.
Then he stumbles upon Philip: just standing there in the middle of the road!
What does Bachos experience, deep in his gut,
that causes him to invite this stranger, wandering in the desert, right into his fancy chariot?
It’s like someone in a limousine pulling off the road to pull a street preacher inside.
But Bachos knows something is good and true when he sees Philip.
And after they read and interpret scripture together, he knows something else, deep in his soul.
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?” he asks.
Nothing.
Nothing stands in the way
between Bachos
and the promise of God.
And he knows it.
He knows it in his bones.
That even though he may not be seen as “whole” at the temple,
he *is* whole.
And he is worthy.
He claims the promise that God offers to him
right there on the spot.
*
Why is the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch so rarely told, I wonder?
And why has his name been conveniently forgotten by those
who wrote the book of Acts?
Maybe it’s because it’s sometimes hard for us to wrap our minds around
just HOW wide God’s reach truly is.
Bachos is not a mistake.
Bachos is the one God chooses
to bring a message of belonging back to his nation of Ethiopia.
This is how God “gave birth” to the African Church.
The Ethiopian Orthodox church, Dr. Gafney reminds us,
has “survived into modernity without schism or reformation.”
It is the Eunuch who was entrusted to carry this message of God’s love.
*
We don’t know anything about the rest of the story.
We don’t know what Bachos says or does when he returns to Ethiopia.
Does he keep his job at the treasury or does he quit?
Does he go and start a new life?
We only know two things:
That he rides home in his chariot rejoicing.
Everything that comes next extends from joy.
And a church is born because of the message he shares.
*
Bachos’ call is different.
Instead of a story where an angel tells him what to do,
his story has three ingredients:
The first is longing.
He longs to understand the scriptures and know the God they speak of.
The second is insistence.
He refuses to believe that this calling is not for him.
He will not let go of it.
And the third is joy.
His response to God meeting him in his call is great joy.
You know, listing those three ingredients,
I’m reminded of all of you.
Maybe this is what a Queer calling story looks like.
We long for a life that is honest and true.
We will insist that we deserve all that life has to offer.
And we rejoice, claiming our fulness.
*
So…all of this sounds great, in theory, right?
But what if our lives are really messy?
What if just surviving is the first thing on our minds?
Discovering our call can feel so far away,
especially if we are faced every morning with feeling unseen or unheard,
with the creeping worry that there’s not enough money in the bank,
or the aching fear of violence on our corner.
With the never-ending struggle with depression or anxiety.
What if discovering our call feels really…unattainable?
Patrick B. Reyes is an author who writes about Christian vocation.
In his book, “Nobody Cries When We Die,” he tells the story of growing up in a household
where he was frequently forced to place his small, adolescent body
between that of his violent stepfather and his two younger brothers.
Reyes heard God’s call for his life when he twelve years old,
in a violent moment when he found himself was held, suspended against the wall
by his stepfather.
He heard God’s voice calling him to live.
For Reyes, God’s first call — the call that comes before all others —
is to survival.
And for some of us, especially people of color or Queer folk, that’s a call
that the rest of the world doesn’t tend to reinforce.
So if you’re just trying to figure out how to make it through,
if life is a one-day-at-a-time right now,
there is no shame in that.
You are answering God’s first and primary call:
to live.
Reyes writes that, “conditions worthy of human flourishing are needed for deep vocational discernment. However, these conditions are always tenuous, for our world is broken, and sometimes we have to do our discerning through the mess.”
I hear him saying that no matter how difficult life is,
no matter what you’re facing each day,
God’s call is never out of your reach.
Even if you’re traveling a wilderness road.
*
Another writer who addresses calling, Parker Palmer,
reminds us that, buried in each us are “clues to selfhood and vocation.”
Palmer invites us to reflect on what we loved to do as children —
not what we excelled at — but what brought us joy.
Interpreting these clues helps us see where our joy lies.
Our joy is a clue to what God is calling us to do in the world.
I know in my own experience of understanding my calling,
the clues were buried deeply.
But now, in retrospect,
I see the threads of what God was doing with more clarity.
I loved playing music as a child and young adult — I was a trombonist.
And for a while I thought that I would be a musician.
Now I can see that it was not so much the music that I loved,
but the experience of making something beautiful together with a community of people.
There was no box for “making beautiful spiritual spaces with others”
on the career aptitude tests they give you in high school.
But now I can see that my calling to create new spiritual spaces
showed through in my love for music as a child.
*
It’s easy to wonder if what I do matters.
The world is basically a giant dumpster fire right now.
We’re in the middle of a climate change disaster,
our federal workers were furloughed for weeks
and are only now, precariously, back at work.
There’s historic, systemic discrimination eroding our city every day.
Sometimes I wonder if I should throw away this call and simply try to be useful.
But I do believe, as Frederick Buechner so famously said, that “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
I believe that in God’s world, our deep gladness matters.
And though there may be times when the world’s need asks us to simply get up and do what needs to be done,
most of the time,
if we’re listening carefully to God’s calling,
our joy and the world’s need will meet.
The news of our calling is not always good news.
Like Moses and Mary, we’re usually pretty sure God’s got the wrong person.
We don’t feel ready or equipped.
That’s the way God works —
call is not about the easy path.
God calls out out of comfort and ease,
to a road that leads straight into the wilderness.
It’s daunting.
Following our call won’t bring us wealth or status or material gain…
it won’t free us from pain or bring us unending happiness.
It offers something deeper and richer:
Fulfillment.
Satisfaction.
Growth.
Life.
And joy.
Like Bachos, we will go home rejoicing.
***
Explore!
recommended readings on call and vocation
Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, And Surviving to Adulthood by Patrick B. Reyes
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer
To Serve this Present Age: Social Justice Ministries in the Black Church: Danielle L. Ayers, Reginald W. Williams