This is the sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen to the congregation of Unfinished Community on Sunday, May 5, 2024, drawing from Acts 8:26-40
One of the greatest challenges in life itself is something that I have found best expressed in, of all places, a quote from a character in the television show “The Boondocks” (played at full-intensity by a wildly profane Samuel L. Jackson); a quote which was itself paraphrasing - of all the wildly unexpected things it could possibly be quoting - former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The original quote, which the aforementioned Secretary of Defense was using to justify the American invasion of Iraq despite a total lack of evidence, is as follows:
“…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”
Aside from being one of the greatest examples in known history of someone being simultaneously completely right in one sense while being horrifically wrong in another, this now very famous quote highlights a challenge which, surprisingly, runs through much of what we do today as Christians out in the world:
How do we handle the things that we do not know, or understand?
Today’s scripture passage, the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, despite being perhaps one of the best examples I know of how to deal with this problem, is a passage that we almost often skip right past. It’s in the lectionary, believe it or not. It was actually listed for last week, but it was one of the secondary, optional texts.
For a great many of us, this exchange between Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is just a footnote; some minor text highlighting how excited Philip the Evangelist (not to be confused with the Apostle Philip, who was a different guy entirely) was to share the news of the risen Christ with anyone he happened to come across. It’s a nice text, but not a terribly important text.
But for a few of us out there, this text is more than just important: it is life-giving.
When. I was a kid, this story only ever came up in church one time, and that was in a Bible study we were doing in youth group. While I was intrigued by it, I quickly learned that the only reason it had been included in our youth Bible study was so that the rest of the kids (and, if I’m being perfectly honest, the adult youth leaders also) could make fun of the Ethiopian eunuch. To them, he was a comedic character; a sort of village idiot. This oddly-dressed, not-quite-a-man was a source of scorn for them, someone to laugh at; someone to be mocked for ever thinking he might be able to understand God’s holy scriptures. “Thank God Philip was there,” said the youth leaders with their signature condescension, “..otherwise he might have gone on in life never knowing that he needed to change his ways!”
And that was it, really. That one, single take on this passage was the only time between that pre-teen Bible study and my studies at the seminary some two decades later that this verse ever even came up.
In those years it stuck with me, you know? It just niggled at the back of my head, the way the youth group had approached the text with mockery and derision, followed by smug condescension. It bugged me, even though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what other message we were supposed to take from the text.
I just…didn’t know.
I knew that I didn’t know of course, but there was some missing piece of information that I was unable to identify that kept that knowledge beyond my reach. As a kid I couldn’t really put it into words, so I just wrote it off as some kind of Biblical humor that I didn’t really get; perhaps some holdover from a more conservative, crueler time in history.
Of course, in the years of study since, I was able to figure out what that “unknown unknown” piece of information was which kept me from seeing the gospel truth just screaming out from within this story. And it was such a simple piece of information too; something I, like all the others at that Bible study both children and adults, thought I understood but about which we were all totally, completely, hilariously wrong,
You see, we had no idea what a eunuch actually was.
At the time of course, we thought we did. The assumption was that a eunuch was a man who had been castrated, who’d had his reproductive parts removed, as a consequence of his role as a lower-class slave, sold into bondage to some wealthy socialite or another. And while that definition of a eunuch had once been a thing in history, it was something from hundreds, if not thousands of years before the time of Christ, and from cultures more local to Israel.
But what we’re dealing with here isn’t anything like that. The Eunuch of today’s story comes from Ethiopia, for one. Now, for those of you who aren’t up on your geography, our encounter today happened in Gaza - and don’t worry, the significance of that isn’t going to go overlooked today either - which, depending on your starting location, is something lie 1,500-1,600 miles (somewhere around 2,500 kilometers) away from Ethiopia.
That is…not the same place at all.
And our eunuch in particular, he is referred to right away in verse 27 as someone of great authority. His position, in the NRSVUE at least, is given as a “court official,” but even this is a bit inaccurate. The Greek term used here for his position is δυνάστης (dunasteis) which is more like a prince, or a potentate. At the very least a high-ranking, independent member of the royal court, if not royalty himself.
So…not some random, castrated slave, then, huh?
So if not this one, very narrow thing…who is this guy?
Let us begin with the term εὐνοῦχος for a moment; the term we translate as “eunuch.” While it is the root of the English term, the meaning in the two languages are very different. In English it only refers to the one thing - slaves who were made victim of that particular, painful, surgical procedure. In the Greek however, this term has a fantastically broad range of meaning, referring only to someone who either naturally or voluntarily chose to abstain from the social and economic constructs of marriage and childbearing.
Remember that in those days, being a “man” or a “woman” had an incredibly narrow definition. To be a man, you had to be willing and able to purchase a wife, physically able to bear children, and mentally willing and able to be the head of your household economically and socially. To be a woman, well…that was to be property, plain and simple.
Of course, not everyone can fit inside those very narrow definitions. Children don’t of course, but there is a word for those. Slaves and prisoners don’t fit either, but we have separate words for those too. But what do we call someone who was born without the ability to have children, or someone who cannot bring themselves to operate under those particular rules. What would we call someone born a woman who could not bear to exist as property, or a someone born a man who felt more at home within the home? What would we call anyone who was exclusively attracted to the same gender, and therefore unable to reproduce?
Well, if you’re Greek, the answer is simple. You called all of them εὐνοῦχος.
Today of course, we use many different words, but the majority of them fall under the heading of the LGBTQIA+ community, folks who today are doing much the same as our Ethiopian friend was in those days; living their lives as the best example of who God made them to be, regardless of the strange and arbitrary rules that society has chosen to force upon them.
So if we know this about our Ethiopian friend - that he was, in fact, probably something more akin to a trans person living happily and well-respectedly as a member of the Ethiopian court - how does it change our understanding of the passage itself?
First off, let us not skip past the fact that Philip was sent by God into Gaza specifically to encounter this person. At the same time Philip, being a follower of Christ from that place where Greek and Jewish cultures were wildly overlapping, likely had some very specific understandings of how people should look, and act, and behave. So to come across a trans person from a country 1,500 miles away decked out in royal finery, riding along in his chariot while casually reading the Book of Isaiah…it must have blown his freaking mind!
Can you imagine that? It’s kinda like wandering around the backstreets of your hometown, turning a corner, and running into the British Prime Minister! It’s nuts!
But not only is it random in that it is just unexpected, it’s even more random because Philip would have absolutely no frame of reference for what he was seeing. Even if he did recognize him as royalty - and there’s no clear evidence that he did - everything about this man would have baffled Philip’s expectations in terms of race, gender, physical presentation. There would have been precious little about this person which would have even slightly made sense to Philip in context.
He didn’t know what he was looking at.
Right before him was a clearly obvious, known unknown. And, just like my confused pre-teen self sitting in Bible study, he couldn’t have had any of the necessary information to figure this out on his own. Like a giraffe casually walking through downtown Tokyo, it just…didn’t…fit.
And into that moment, the Spirit tells Philip to go and join him.
So Philip goes, and right away he finds this trans person, this εὐνοῦχος, reading the book of Isaiah, hearing the words of the prophet preaching through the years about the indignity of injustice, the unjust silencing of those who empire has condemned but God has called good.
And Philip listens.
He doesn’t lecture, doesn’t condemn. Doesn’t go on a tirade about how this Ethiopian must conform himself to the expectations of his Hellenistic world. He listens, and ask questions. He waits to be invited to share, and when he is invited he does so not with the stern and moralistic countenance of a lecturer determined to convince the unrepentant to change their ways, but with all the the joy and excitement of someone who has crossed every barrier of society and culture, every barrier thrown up by geography, nation-states, and even our own inherent biases, and found beyond those barriers a kindred spirit.
A friend.
In friendship he shares with this man the story of Christ Jesus, who came to fulfill the exact promises that Isaiah was preaching about. He shares with him about the grace, mercy, and above all the love of Christ Jesus which was given not to a select few who followed the rules, but offered freely to every last one of us whether we deserve it or not. He tells him the great and wonderful story of a God who so loved the world that God’s only son was sent that we all might have access to eternal life itself.
All this he tells him, and still no demand. No altar call. No insistence that he believe.
Just…sharing of knowledge. Just love.
And in that moment, they both know. Philip sees what God intended him to see, that the love of Christ extends far beyond the paltry human boundaries we make for ourselves, far beyond the walls of gender, or culture, or custom. And our Ethiopian friend sees the promise of God’s justice fulfilled, made manifest in this true believer who came to him not with confusion or condemnation, but with all the excitement and love of kindred spirits, walking together along the same road home.
My friends, there are known knowns, there known unknowns, and there unknown unknowns, and all three of these things disappear when we embrace the calling of the Holy Spirit to go forth in love rather than condemnation, in excitement rather than in fear, and as friends rather than saviors.
There is a whole world full of people who do not conform to the standards of this world, and our charge from God is not to go out and demand that they change to meet our understanding of God, but to walk alongside them; to listen, to learn, and to share so that, in so doing, we might see how God is already present, walking alongside us both.
As friends.
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