A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [90]
Perhaps you feel the profound pathos of his question, especially if you imagine it being asked in a high tenor, testosterone-deprived voice. The pathos becomes all the more intense in light of the small detail that Luke has already mentioned: this man is returning from Jerusalem, where he had been hoping to worship. What would have happened to him there? As an Ethiopian—a “person of color,” we might say—he was obviously not Jewish, which would exclude him from full participation in temple worship. (Remember that a riot breaks out in Acts 21 simply because Paul is accused of bringing a tan-skinned Greek fellow into the temple precinct. Think what would have happened if a coffee-colored Ethiopian dared enter.) But there was a “court of the Gentiles” in the temple. Perhaps he could have at least worshiped there, from a distance? Sadly though, even second-class participation would have been forbidden, because for the Jews castration was considered a “defect.” The defect disqualified a person from priesthood, and this disqualification for priests was specified to be in effect “throughout their generations.”11
But even more sweeping, Deuteronomy graphically extends the exclusion beyond the priesthood to everyone: “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” (23:1). So our castrated official has come to worship in Jerusalem, but he has undoubtedly been turned away; his racial and sexual identities have put him outside the worshiping community. In this light, do you feel the full pang of the question he asks as the chariot passes some water? “I have just been rejected and humiliated in Jerusalem, but you have told me of a man who, like me, has no physical descendants, a scarred and wounded man who like me has been humiliated and rejected. Is there a place for me in his kingdom, even though I have an unchangeable condition that was condemned forever by the sacred Jewish Scriptures?”
Philip doesn’t speak. Nor does he leave for Jerusalem to consult with the apostles there, nor does he convene a five-year committee to study the subject. Instead, he simply acts. The audacity of his action is seldom appreciated, I fear. As the horses are reined in and the chariot comes to a stop in a cloud of dust, he leads the eunuch down from the chariot and into the water, and there he baptizes him. The sign of the kingdom of God that began in Jesus—a place at the table for outcasts and outsiders—continues in the era of the Acts of the Apostles. The poor are accepted, and the sick. Samaritans are accepted, and Gentiles, including Africans, and here, even the “sexually other,” those considered “defective” who will never have a place in traditional religion or in the traditional culture based on the “traditional family.” The old “other-excluding” sanctions—against the uncircumcised, against the “defective”—even though they were claimed to be in effect “throughout their generations”—have been buried in baptism, left behind as part of the old order that is passing away. As Philip and the Ethiopian disciple climb the stream bank, they represent a new humanity emerging from the water, dripping wet and full of joy, marked by a new and radical reconciliation in the kingdom of God.
Not only does this represent an acceptance of a member of God’s creation (from the Genesis narrative), and not only does it represent liberation for one who has been deprived of justice within an oppressive social system (the Exodus narrative); it also is an expression of the peaceable kingdom, in direct resonance with the prophetic narrative of Isaiah:
Thus says the LORD:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.
Happy is the mortal who does this,
the one who holds it fast,
who