Year B
Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:24-30
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

I continue to be surprised…  sometimes…  by the ways in which we as theological consumers…  too often discount the value of the biblical treasure which comes our way…  it’s almost like selling diamonds at the price of spinach…  the ways in which we…   sometimes…  project the meaning-making of our own experiences…  onto the experiences of those who…  thousands of years ago…   wrote down their own stories…  and the ways in which we impose our own worldviews…   our own preferences…  our own parochialism…  onto a world that was vastly different than our own…

And part of that I think…  is because it’s cleaner…  easier to manage…  and we like certainty…  not nuance…  we like orderliness…  not messiness…  and sometimes we even approach our relationships…  and those we hold in esteem…  to standards which border on super-human…  to standards of perfection…  in Exodus 12:5…   as the Israelites prepared to eat their Passover meal…  they were told…  Your lamb shall be a year-old male…   without blemish…  one that’s perfect…  it’s perhaps reflected in the notion…   that when you give flowers to someone…  you’re not even to smell them…  lest you steal away any of the fragrance and diminish the gift itself…  it’s like giving the best of our first fruits…

In Genesis 1:28…  one of God’s prime directives…   first to the man and woman…  is to be fruitful and multiply…   and this was more than a vague suggestion…   and then again in Genesis 9:7…  to Noah and his family when they left the ark…  be fruitful and multiply…  and so critical was this imperative that later on…  that in Leviticus 21:20 and Deuteronomy 23:1…   we’re told that if a man was unable to fulfill that command…  he could not even be part of the congregation…

We don’t know the eunuch’s name in today’s reading from Acts…  but in Jeremiah 38…  in response to the prophet’s dire prophecies against Judah…  Shephatiah [ she-fa-ty-a ] the son of Mattan [ matt-yan ] …   Gedaliah the son of Pashhur…  Jucal [  jew-kal ] the son of Shelemiah…   and Pashhur the son of Malchiah [ mal-ky-a ] …  convinced King Zedekiah to quiet Jeremiah’s voice… and allow them to throw him into a cistern to die…  but a few verses later in 38:7…  an Ethiopian eunuch…  named Ebed-melech…  saved the prophet’s life by convincing the King that these men had acted wickedly against the prophet…

And in today’s passage from Acts…  this other Ethiopian eunuch is reading aloud from the scroll of another prophet…  Isaiah…  about a man who was cut off [ pause] from the land of the living…  and the Spirit told Philip to join the chariot…  and you can almost imagine him jogging alongside it…  perhaps out of breath…  and hearing Isaiah being read…  because if the eunuch was seated in his chariot reading…   there must have been a chariot driver…  and so Philip shouts loud enough for his voice to be heard above the chittering of chariot wheels on a rocky road…  and asks…  do you understand what you are reading…

Wait…  driver…  stop the chariot…  and he turned to Philip and asked…  How can I understand if I have no one to guide me…  and so the eunuch invites Philip to sit beside him…  please understand…  this moment is as radical as was the moment when the Good Samaritan…  the outsider…  helped the man who had been beaten and robbed…  and to help us put it into even greater perspective…  the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote that it would be as if a diplomat in Washington, D.C…   invited a street preacher…   to join him in his late model Lexus…   for a little bible study…  that radical… and it’s radical because here is an accomplished…  successful man in his own right…  a court official of the Queen of the Ethiopians…  who is in charge of her treasury… who is educated and can read…  and he has purchased… an expensive scroll of the prophet Isaiah…  and he knew he didn’t know it all…  as opposed to those who claim to…  

Our reading from 1John mentions love twenty-two times…  affirms that God is love…  and affirms that those who abide in love also abide in God…  but if they say they love God…  but hate a brother or sister…  well…  then they’re liars… ] and this passage claims that perfect love casts out fear…  because like Jeremiah…  we can fear unwarranted attack…  but if we are in relationship…  and I hurt you…  I also hurt myself…  so perfect love… casts out fear… because I know that while I am looking out for others… others are looking out for me…  that others have my back…  and my fear then…  is unwarranted…  

The Gospel text says…  you have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you…  I wonder how we might understand it if it said…  you have already been pruned by the word that I have spoken to you…  I have cut away that which bears no fruit…  or that which bears inferior fruit…  so that you may bear exceptional fruit…  because what most of us modern non-grape-growing people don’t know…  is that grapes need to be pruned during their dormancy…  usually in late winter…  and when it comes to pruning…  the most common mistake people make is not pruning hard enough…  not pruning severely enough…  because light pruning doesn’t promote adequate fruiting…  but really heavy pruning creates the greatest quality and largest harvest of grapes…

But too many of us…  who live in fear…  worry that we’re the branches that are going to be gathered…  and thrown into the fire…  and burned…  but all God wants to do…  all God really wants to do…   is whack off anything that gets in the way of us producing the best fruit…  the best quality and quantity of grapes that we possibly can…

And the diamond in this story that’s worth so much more than spinach…   is knowing that God grafts us onto God’s vine and into God’s family…  even with all of our physical and emotional and psychological and spiritual brokenness…  

And in his baptism…  the eunuch was grafted into God’s family too…  was grafted onto the vine…  and since the prohibitions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy…  that one has to be without blemish…  no longer apply…  this person is no longer the ultimate outsider…  he finds community and connection he’s never known…  and blessing…  and his baptism is the clearest indication that everyone is welcomed into God’s family… ]  and to those…  like this eunuch who has no name…  God says in Isaiah 56:4-5…  to the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths…  who choose the things that please me…  and hold fast my covenant…  I will give…  in my house and within my walls…  a monument…   and a name…  better than sons and daughters…  I will give them an everlasting name…  that shall not be cut off…

And since Jesus is the true vine…  and God is the vine grower…  then we are the branches which are pruned with only one goal in mind…  so that we can be Jesus’  disciples… and bear…  and share…  much sweet fruit…