“Some Mother’s
Child”
Acts 8: 26-40
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
May 10, 2009
Easter 5 and Mother’s Day
I
begin with a question. Where
are you?
You
can answer that question in a lot of different ways. You
could say, for instance, “I am in the middle of the tenth pew back from the
front of the sanctuary in the First Presbyterian Church of Jamestown, New
York.” Or, you could say, “I am
at the tail end of the first decade of the twenty-first century.”
Or, if you were thinking politically, socially, or theologically, you
might respond, “I am left of center.” Or
right of center. Or smack dab in the
middle. You might reply to the
question, “Where are you?” by saying, “I am sitting in a newly empty
nest.” Or, “I am in the morning
of my life.” Or afternoon.
Evening. Maybe an honest
answer to the question, “Where are you?” is “in denial.”
Or, maybe, “in grief.” The
psalmist talks about “walking in the valley of the shadow of death.”
Are you in
Where
are you? Where are you in your life
at the present time? Be clear about
what I am asking. I am not asking where you want to be or where you think you ought to be
or should be. Just, where are you now? Where
are you?
One
of the reasons I want you to ask yourself that question is that God comes to us where
we are in the real and actual contexts and circumstances of our lives.
(I love that in the story of Adam and Eve, the first question that God
asks them when they are walking in the garden after having eating the forbidden
fruit is “Where are you?”
Presumably God did not pose the question because God could not locate
them but because God wondered if they could find themselves after succumbing so
calamitously to temptation.)
One
of the reasons I have appreciated Alexander Shaia’s “quadratos” approach
to the four biblical gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – is that they
ask the four questions and highlight the four paths of our lives.
If we learn how to read them in light of those four questions, then, no
matter where we are in life or where we find ourselves, the gospels can illumine
our way. Are you facing change in
your life? Is that where you are?
Matthew is all about facing the uncertainty, discomfort, and excitement
of change. Are you experiencing
trials or suffering in your life? Is
that where you are? Then Mark can
help you to endure it and find your way through it.
Are you at a good point in your life, a time of delight and equilibrium?
Is that where you are? John
is the gospel that will help you to live fully into your joy.
Are you ready to deepen your commitment to community life and to other
people? Are you at the place where
you want to express your gratitude for life and all of its good gifts by serving
the common good or, as we say in this church, the oneness of everything?
Then Luke will both teach and encourage you.
Where
are you? If the winds of change are
blowing into your life and you try to turn away from them so as to keep things
as they are or to stay where you are, you are going to be carried along anyway
and to places or circumstances for which you will not be prepared or suited
because you resisted. Change is the
bedrock experience of life. The
“survival of the fittest” about which Charles Darwin wrote was not in
reference to strength, but adaptability. Those
who survive are those most willing and able to accommodate change in their
lives. If you resist change, you
will not learn the lessons that change affords you and you will become stuck in
a life that is increasingly sour, bitter, or irrelevant.
Where
are you? If you do not allow
yourself to feel the full brunt of your suffering or the trials that come your
way, if denial or a stiff upper lip are your prescriptions for handling the
inevitable hurt of life, you never will develop a root system deep enough to
enable you to survive the storms that inevitably rise up in your life.
Instead, you will be like shallow-rooted trees that topple over in a
squall of wind.
Knowing
where you are will help you to make appropriate responses to the situations and
circumstances that come to you in your life.
I have known people who have done seemingly good things for others but
they have done them in order not to have to face their own needs and issues and
so, in the long run, it created unnecessary suffering both for themselves and
for the recipients of their misdirected largesse.
I have known people who too readily accepted other people’s assessments
of what they should do in and with their lives because they did not themselves
want to do the harder work of self-assessment.
The result of such complacency almost always is insidiously destructive.
In
our story today, Philip, a deacon in the early church, prompted by an angel of
God, goes and meets an influential Ethiopian from the court of Queen Candace on
the desert road between
Philip
gets into the Ethiopian’s chariot with him and, Luke, to whom the book of the
Acts of the Apostles is attributed, writes, “Then
Philip began to speak, and starting with the scripture the Ethiopian was
reading, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.”
Other versions say, “Philip began to speak to the Ethiopian, and starting where he was, he
told the Ethiopian the good news about Jesus.”
Either way, through Philip, God came to the Ethiopian where
he was. The Ethiopian knew where
he was – in a place of non-understanding, in a place of questioning and
inquisitiveness, in a place of hunger for spiritual anchoring, in a place of
hunger for God and purpose in his life – and that is where the sacred presence
was manifested to him. If the
Ethiopian had answered Philip’s question about whether he was understanding
what he was reading with the answer, “Yes,
of course, thank you” when he did not, Philip would not have climbed
aboard the chariot and taught him. But
as it happened, the Ethiopian’s life was changed, he asked for and received
baptism, and, as Luke writes, “he went
on his way rejoicing.”
The
Ethiopian was an outsider. He was
not a Jew; he had complicated gender issues, he was a person of different racial
and ethnic composition than the Jews and the early Christians.
But none of those barriers or borders mattered to God.
God knew that even the outsider Ethiopian was some mother’s child and,
as such, as a member of the human family, the Ethiopian was beloved of God.
So God met him in his need, met him “where he was” and, the text
says, “he went on his way rejoicing.”
He did not stay stuck where he was but was able to go and grow into a
larger, deeper life.
So,
two things: First, if you want to
experience God’s presence and power, then it is a good thing to be honest with
yourself about where you are in your life because God meets us where we are.
We may try to kid ourselves or to fool others about where we are in our
lives, but when we tire of that, when we tire of being fake and false and
futile, when we are honest with ourselves and then with others, the truth will
set us free because God is always present to us where we really are, not where
we are not.
The
prodigal’s life changed when he admitted he was sick of feeding pigs, an early
form of swine flu, perhaps. Being
honest about where he was in his life, he was freed by God’s power and
presence to move beyond a place that was not good for him.
And so he went on his way
rejoicing. In the parable of the
Pharisee and the tax collector, the Pharisee is heard reciting a lofty litany of
lovely deeds he had done while the tax collector prayed, “Have
mercy on me, O God, a sinner.” The
story tells us that it was the tax collector who ended up finding favor with God
because it was the tax collector who knew where he was in his life and God
always comes to us where we are and works on us and in us and through us.
And so the tax collector went on
his way rejoicing. If you
want to experience God’s presence and power in your life, then it is a good
thing to be honest about where you are because that is where God meets us.
Or, to say it another way, God already knows where we really are and is
waiting for us to meet him (sic)
there.
The
second thing is that, as a church and as church members, God sends us on God’s
behalf, as Philip was sent to the Ethiopian eunuch, to meet people where they
are, not where the church is. Churches
are struggling today at least in part because the church too often expects that
people are supposed to meet the church where it is rather than the church
meeting people where they are. The
church expects people to come to us rather than the church going to them.
The church expects people to meet its needs rather than the church
meeting theirs. The gospel story
today tells us otherwise.
Where
are you? That is one of the most
important questions you ever can ask yourself for God meets you where you really
are. And then, buoyed by that
meeting, changed, transformed, loved for loving, we are sent, in God’s name,
to meet others where they are so that they, too, may go on their way rejoicing. What
a life! Thanks be to God!
Amen.
©
Copyright 2009 First Presbyterian Church