“What Prevents Us?”
Pastor Randy Butler
The Bible is full of memorable and meaningful one-liners. At Jesus’ resurrection the angels say, “Do not be afraid.” Writer Richard Rohr calls that the greatest one liner in the Bible. Jesus says things like, “Abide in me.” “Go and do likewise.” The Apostle Paul in Romans: “You have been saved through faith.” The letter of 1 John: “God is love.” James: “Faith without works is dead.” These are pithy meaningful one liners meant to take a place in our hearts. Well, this morning we have two more to add. They both come from our text: The first is a command: “Get up and go.” The second is a question: “What prevents us?” “Get up and go, what prevents us.”
It doesn’t take much to see that we have, as preacher Andrew Connors puts it, “a get up and go” kind of God. Get up and go are perhaps some of the most important words in all of the Bible. From the very beginning God is telling people to go. To Abraham he says, “Go to the land that I will show you.” Abraham gets up and goes, and the rest is history. Moses is told to go back to his people in Egypt. He has all kinds of excuses not to go – but he does. Samuel is told by God to go and anoint a new king. Samuel goes and anoints David, even though Saul is still King. The prophet Jonah is told to get up and go to the people of Nineveh, whom Jonah despises. Yet after being thrown into the sea and swallowed by a big fish Jonah finally obeys God. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah are commissioned and told to go and speak hard things to Israel. Even Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus, are commanded to go to Egypt during a dangerous time for them in Israel. God is constantly telling God’s people to go, to leave what is comfortable and go to others who need to know the love and grace of God, this get up and go God.
This is especially true in the Book of Acts. The actual title is the Acts of the Apostles, and it tells the story of the spread of the gospel after Jesus ascends to heaven. Jesus tells them “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” He describes the mission field in concentric circles: Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. “Get up and go.”
And so we pick up the story as the Spirit is directing Philip. We are told that an angel of the Lord, also simply called the Spirit or the Spirit of the Lord in this text, said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south, to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” The text adds that this is a wilderness road.
As Philip travels along he sees a man in a chariot. He is obviously someone with wealth and privilege – he is in fact an Ethiopian, from south of Egypt, and he is the treasurer of the Queen of Ethiopia. Now Ethiopia in that day was thought of as the edge of the world, an exotic destination up the River Nile. So this is not the person Philip expects to see. But the Ethiopian is here because he has been in Jerusalem to worship in the temple. It is not likely that he is a Jew, but rather someone with a spiritual hunger and interest in God as the Jews understood God. We are also told that the Ethiopian is a eunuch. It was not uncommon for court officials to be castrated, and be eunuchs. This way they avoided distracting court intrigues and passions. Yet as a eunuch this Ethiopian is set apart, different, his sexuality not clearly defined. He is likely quite lonely, and as he travels this man is reading a scroll of Isaiah. This is the one Philip meets when he is commanded to get up and go.
And so we ask, “What does it mean for us, First Pres. Baker, to get up and go? To whom are we sent? Where is our wilderness road? Where does it lead us? What about the Baker gay community? Many struggle today with roles and definitions and sexual identities. And more than ever before in America there is open discussion about these issues. LGBTQ communities are growing as more and more people reject traditional sexual definitions and question sexual identities. This may be difficult for some to accept, but it is a reality. The gay community in Baker City continues to grow, and times have certainly changed.
Where is God sending us? To whom is our gracious God asking us to open up our doors and be welcoming? Perhaps our get up and go God wants to send us to the Powder River Correctional Facility. Maybe there is a prison ministry for us. Or maybe God sends us to the children of our community, as God surely has. We continue to provide over 250 backpacks every week for children and families in need. Maybe we are sent to children and their families playing on the sports and recreation fields, or in their choirs and music programs. To whom is God sending us, telling us to get up and go? How might we continue to put to use our significant financial resources in the community? Might we begin our own foundation that funds children or prisoners or whomever?
Get up and go. That is a good one-liner. The next is a question. What prevents us? As Philip joins him the Ethiopian has many questions and Philip is glad to answer as best he can. And as they ride along talking, they come to a body of water, perhaps a creek, and the Ethiopian asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” I have simplified it to apply to us as well. What prevents us? What prevents us from being baptized or baptizing or sharing the good news? What prevents us from getting up and going? What hinders us, inhibits us, prevents us?
Sometimes our interpretation of the Bible prevents us. The book of Deuteronomy says very clearly, No one who is a eunuch shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord. It says the same thing about foreigners and other outsiders. But the Bible is often in conversation with itself, and when we read the prophets, Isaiah says this: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; 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 my sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” So you see the prophet Isaiah wrestling, taking issue with his own scripture in the Torah the book of Deuteronomy.
The Ethiopian happens to be reading too from Isaiah and he asks about this description of a suffering servant there: Like a sheep led to slaughter, silent before its shearer…in humiliation justice denied, his life taken away from the earth. He doesn’t even open his mouth. Who is the prophet talking about? And of course Philip connects the description in Isaiah with Jesus, who suffered for us, was crucified for us, who loves us enough to die an unjust death on our behalf. Jesus, who knows and understands the eunuch’s own suffering and alienation. He loves the eunuch.
So we read the Bible through the lens of Jesus who loved us died for us, was raised for us. And we understand the scripture through the interpretive touchstone of Jesus Christ and his love for us. Everything else in scripture is subject to Christ. And we place troublesome, sometimes archaic passages alongside the life death and resurrection of Jesus.
Sometimes the desire for church order prevents us from getting up and going. The eunuch didn’t display a great grasp of the Bible or theology. Should Philip have waited to baptize him until he had been through Christian education classes? Should he have waited to baptize the eunuch in church, not out here in some creek away from the community? These proper church obstacles prevent us from carrying on the ministry of Jesus Christ where and as we find it, not as we might like it to be.
And our erecting of boundaries prevents us too. The tribalism of our day prevents and hinders the testimony of the love of God. Division within the church, division in our culture. Our own certainty about who is right and who is wrong gets in the way of reaching others with good news for their lives.
So all these things can prevent us, but really what prevents us other than our own selves and our fear? What do we wait for? What prevents us? As we move into a new season of life and ministry these are important things to consider. Let us live freely and boldly in the years ahead in the name of Jesus Christ in our community. We are a gifted community of Jesus followers with much to offer the Baker Valley. What prevents us? Let’s get up and go.
