"So, You Wanna Talk About Eunuchs?" | Nathan LeRud | April 28, 2024

So, you want to talk about eunuchs?

I want to talk about eunuchs, so we're gonna.

It's a contested word, actually, there's a– there's some debate about what that word "eunuch," what that would have meant to the first hearers of the book of Acts. That's that story that Deb read for us, the first story we heard this morning. Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. That was a story that was written in the book of Acts right around the year 90, and since ancient days, Christians been subbing out the usual Old Testament lesson in the season of Easter with a story from the book of Acts. And most of the stories that we read in Easter from the book of Acts are similar to this one: they're about the early Christian community on the other side of Jesus's resurrection encountering, I mean, all of the wrong kinds of people, right? And we're going to hear more of this over the next couple of weeks. Often they're wealthy and powerful, people like this Ethiopian court official whom Philip, who's a deacon in the early church, Philip encountered this person on the road to Gaza. That's a that's an interesting place to situate this story given everything that's happening in our world. But this official who works for the court of the of the queen– she's a very powerful figure in the Kingdom of Kush– this is the Kandake. It gets anglicized as Candice, but we actually know who this person was. A very powerful Queen in the Kingdom of Kush, which is what is now Sudan. And this official is described by another word. It might indicate his job, some people think that "eunuch" actually has more to do with a functional position. It might indicate the status of his genitals or his gender identity. He's described as a eunuch. Sometimes that means a castrated person. More often– and this is how more scholars are starting to read this story– it's a kind of general covering word for anybody in the ancient world who doesn't fit neatly into a gender binary, right? Anybody who kind of challenges ancient ideas about masculinity and femininity. I mean at the risk of, like, reading contemporary notions of gender and sexuality under this text, I don't think it's too far of a stretch to describe this court official as transgender or as nonbinary. I mean, however this person got to be the way that they are, whether that was by choice, whether that was by circumstance, whether that was, you know, something that happened to them as a process by which they were enslaved. We think this person was also probably enslaved, although they're riding in a very powerful chariot with clearly access to a lot of funds. Whoever this person is and however they got to be the way, are there's a reason that the writer of this story 60 years after the fact remembers who they were and puts them at the center of this text. The book of Acts doesn't give this person a name, although there are traditions in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which traces its origins back to this person, there's a tradition that this person's name was Simeon, or maybe Bachos. Sometimes they call him Simeon Bachos, that's the name that the tradition uses. And the way that the story is traditionally told, it's a conversion story, right? Philip converts Simeon Bachos to Christianity, and then baptizes them. But in many ways, I think the story is also about Philip's conversion, right. Simeon Bachos converts Phillip to a totally different way of understanding what the Jesus story looks like on the ground. Philip begins the story thinking that it's his job to be the answer man, right, it's his job to preach and teach and bring the gospel to other peoples of faith. [sings] "We've a story to tell to the nations that will turn their hearts to the right-" [speaks] That's basically how he's going about this thing, right. Simeon Bachos explodes the whole framework, and he breaks wide open Philip's ideas about what it means to be a follower of Israel's God. These two are are thrown together by the Holy Spirit in this chariot. They do this weird thing, they do a Bible study in the chariot, and then Simeon Bachos makes this extraordinary request of Phillip, asks Philip to do something that Philip has probably not done before. Look, they say, here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?

I mean, everything, right? "What is to prevent me?" Everything in their world conspires to prevent Simeon Bachos from being baptized. They're returning from in this incredible court chariot, they've been up to pray at the temple– there's confusion about that there's debate about that, because according to the laws of Deuteronomy, eunuchs were not allowed to enter the temple precincts. So one possibility is that Simeon Bachos was turned away at the gate, and that's the reason why they're on this wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza, that road with all kinds of contemporary resonance for us. Who is this extraordinary person, and more to the point, how the heck did they get a copy of the book of Isaiah in that chariot? I mean, you don't just order it on Amazon, right, this thing is very expensive, it's hard to get in the ancient world. But Simeon Bachos had it. Some people have suggested Simeon Bachos is probably a Jewish proselyte, probably a convert to Judaism, or possibly is a convert to Judaism. So Philip gets into the chariot and they do a little bit of Bible study. Maybe you have done Bible study in your past. That was that was, like, the one thing growing up at an Evangelical megachurch of a kind: that was, like, the one thing I knew I was good at, right? I was that nerdy kid, I was kind of a theater kid, I was the geeky son of the pastor, and I knew at some level that I did not fit in in a big youth group full of popular kids who went all to the same high school and dated each other and made out with each other in the bathrooms, and so I tattled on them. I was real popular, as you can imagine. I knew this was not my scene, right? But there was one girl in my youth group. Her name was Debbie, Debbie Lucas. She was a couple years older than me, I think, and she could see that I was kind of having a hard time fitting in. So one Sunday, we were in the same small Bible study group on a Sunday. We were signed a passage of scripture. I don't remember what it was, I don't remember what I said about it, I was a little nervous to speak up in this group. But Debbie really paid attention when I spoke, and she like she picked up on the thread that I offered, she kind of ripped on it a little bit, and and built it into the larger conversation. And then when we kind of did, you know, the sharing out bit, right, in this room full of like 60 or 70 kids, Debbie stood up, and she said, "you know, Nathan had a really interesting insight into the story. It kind of changed the way that I that I see this text." And I was mortified. Like, I could hear the snickering in the corner, like, oh Nathan thinks he's got the text figured out or whatever. I was also like, I was so um, I was so grateful to her. I knew exactly what she was doing, right. Debbie had power in that room. Debbie had authority that room. She was going to be Oregon City High School's homecoming queen that year. I also knew that Debbie took her Bible really seriously, right. Debbie was a Jesus girl. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Jesus girls.

And when Debbie prayed, she was often the one who would lead prayers, right, like "Who wants to say a prayers as we end?" and this room full of 70 high schoolers or something goes silent, and Debbie was usually the one who would stand up. And when Debbie prayed, it was like she was talking to her friend. I think we all kind of, we all wanted to know how to pray the way Debbie prayed. We all wanted the relationship with Jesus that Debbie had. I wanted to be like her. I think everybody in that youth group wanted to be a little bit like Debbie.

She grew up, she got married, we lost track of each other. I would hear about her from time to time through my parents. She became a second grade teacher, she had two kids, and when she became pregnant for a third time, she was diagnosed with a really aggressive form of cancer. And Debbie chose to delay treatment until after she had given birth.

That decision probably cost her her life.

She died a year later. She was barely 35 years old. That was 10 years ago.

I think about her all the time. I think about her especially when I'm engaged in Bible Study with people who come from a similar place that I do, people who come from a very different place than I do.

Debbie taught me how to do Bible Study, right? Debbie taught me how to think about how power works in a room, to think about who's speaking and who's not speaking and who needs to be invited and who needs to be given spacem right?

I think about Debbie when I think about what it means to encounter somebody different from you in a Bible Study, and that's a thing when you grow up in an Evangelical Church right?

Philip climbs into Simeon Bachos's chariot on the direct order from the Holy Spirit, right? Go over to that chariot. Talk to that person. Meet that person on their terms, find out what they're reading, find out what questions they have about it, find out what it what it feels like, what it sounds like, what that text means to them.

There's a reason this text from Isaiah grabs Simeon Bachos by the throat. It's about the suffering servant, right: "Like a lamb led to the slaughter, he did not open his mouth. Like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his throat. In his humiliation justice was denied to him." So Simeon Bachos says to Philip, "Who is Isaiah talking about? Is this Isaiah, is this Jesus, is this about me?" And he and Philip unpack this text together. Philip gets to see a text that he thinks he knows, and in the process of hearing it through the ears and eyes of Simeon Bachos, I think Philip comes to understand this text in a very different way.

The Bible Study changes Simeon Bachos, and it changes Phillip, and the process of this Bible Study the whole trajectory of the Christian tradition, right, is shifted.

This is no longer a little group of marginalized folks who say the who share the same racial, ethnic, and traditional markers of gender identity.

Simon Bachos comes into this thing and breaks it wide open. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Trinity Cathedral exists because of people like Simeon Bachos, who plant this seed at the heart of Christianity. What does it mean to encounter somebody who is different from you? What does it mean then to be open and welcoming? What does it mean to practice radical hospitality? What does that– what does that look like on the ground? "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" That's what Simeon Bachos asks Philip.

"Look, the water is right here, the faithful one is right here. We've just shared this moment. Are you going to deny me this?"

It's a test.

It's a test. Turned away, probably, from the gates of the temple because of a gender identity that does not fit neatly into the categories assignedm Simeon Bachos is like the patron saint of anybody who ever felt like church was not really a place they could belong,. So rather than, like, elbowing their way into somebody else's strait-laced church, Simeon Bachos is sent to found a new church, a different church. I mean, in some ways it's the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, that's one possible way of understanding this thing.

In a different way, you kind of imagine, like, who does Simeon Bachos then connect with, right? People who read the Bible a little bit differently. Maybe they understand it from an African context, from an enslaved context, possibly, from a queer context. People in whom the Holy Spirit looks and sounds pretty different from what the people back home in Jerusalem have come to expect.

These are the gifts, I think, that people like Simeon Bachos have been bringing the church for hundreds of years.

We the eunuchs, right, we the nonbinary, the gender non-conforming, the homos and the trannies and the ethical sluts and the monogamous thruples and the BDSM kinksters and the polyamorous and the aces, all of these expanding letters in the LGBTQIA-EIEIO anagram thing.

I had somebody say like how many letters are they going to cram into that thing? I like God only knows, right?

Like, until all the letters are crammed in there, right?

There are so many letters.

It's terrifying. It's exhilarating.

And we're asking you to do uncomfortable things like learn new pronouns, and learn new ways to interact with the English language, to see people differently.

And it is hard. And it's so beautiful.

These are these are the people that are in this text, right? People like Simeon Bachos. People like me, people like you.

We know this story because this is our story. The good Bible study kids, right, and then the queer kids who don't quite fit in thrown into the same chariot, and they have to learn how to figure it out together.

They meet on the road to Gaza. I mean obviously the way that the writer of Acts uses that name in year 90 is not necessarily what we hear in 2024. But that is where this writer situates the story. He puts these two very different bodies on the same road. It's a wilderness road. They're from totally different worlds. The Holy Spirit literally like picks up the good Greek boy, plops him down in the queer kid's chariot, puts him in the middle of the queer kid's Bible Study. Some of you know what that feels like. You have been to my Bible Study. [laughter]

These two each have something to teach each other. They each have something to learn from the other one. They are both converted. And the text is really clear about this. They go down into the water together, right, when when Philip takes Simeon down into that water, I think both of them come back baptized. That's how it works in church if we're doing it right right?

We go down into the water of chaos together, we end up saving each other's lives.

And then one of them drives on ahead into Gaza. I mean hear that in all the ways in which we hear it on April 28th, 2024. When the two of them came up out of the water, Acts says, the spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away. The eunuch saw Philip no more, and went on their way, rejoicing, into Gaza.

Into the heart of suffering, into the place of total devastation, the land of vanishing people and contested borders, a place of weeping and bombing and terror. The Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The baptism of this Ethiopian eunuch equips them to take good news into the heart of a suffering people. The spirit of God sends them rejoicing into Gaza.

"I am the way," she says.