Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Preached by Winton Boyd, September 27, 2009
Text Acts 8:26-31; 35-40

Many years ago, when Tammy and I shared a youth ministry job in a Presbyterian church in Minnesota, we took a group of middle schoolers on a retreat that required a 2 hour bus ride. To have some fun, we developed what we thought was a creative “quiz” for them to take as we drove that required paying attention to what they saw out the windows. The name of the turkey farm in this town, the number of Dairy Queens, the name of the county here… What we discovered, of course, is they could care less about our quiz. Even before Walkman’s and MP3 players – they were more interested either in talking with each other, or fending off their boredom and loneliness in some other way. It was an early lesson in parenting – be very judicious about asking your kids to “look at this” out the window on road trips. If they are awake and involved for Mt Rushmore, don’t expect much of them on the multi hour road trip before and after. Driving through the stunning Mississippi bluffs area – enjoy it yourself because trying to “make” them enjoy it will only frustrate you and them. While we never used DVD’s, we also tried not to force enjoyment. Games like the alphabet game last only so long. Go with it, but know when enough is enough.

Just like our doctors said about young children eating – “your job is to put the food out for them, their job is to eat” – so it seems our job is to “put the beauty of the world in front of them, their job is to take it in, enjoy it or be marveled by it.”

While there are a million approaches to traveling, it is clear what to one person is a trip of a lifetime, to another could be a total bore. Traveling preferences and desired locations are an individual preference best to be respected.

But when a “traveling story” shows us in our sacred text, as in today’s story of the Ethiopian eunuch, we do pay attention.

It is a curious story here in the book of Acts, Luke’s continuing story of Jesus. This man has traveled from Ethiopia, and he is curious about the Jewish faith. So curious that he travels to Jerusalem, a distance of at least 2000 miles, maybe 2500. Camels could travel about 25 miles a day, chariots like the one the eunuch used probably faster. Either way, it would have been a trip of months up and back. A massive undertaking. And then, when he did get to the temple, as a gentile he would have been restricted to worship in the outer court.

Eunuch’s were understood to be castrated men who often held high office in royal courts as keepers of harems, but sometimes they had other important roles, like this eunuch who was a royal treasurer in his homeland.

On top of that, as Ken Pennings reminded me this week, despite his high status in his own country, ancient Judaism would not have given him much status at all. Deuteronomy 23 says eunuchs could not be part of the religious assembly because they bore a bodily imperfection or defect. First century teachers of Jewish law forbade the conversion of eunuchs. He might have heard that once again while in Jerusalem.

While we could debate this historical accuracy of the story, what is clear is that the early church told and retold this story for some reason. There are many “traveling” stories in the Bible. Some seem to be just markers in time and location. Others, like this one, seem to point the power of a sacred journey.

It is not an accident that this traveler is a “foreigner.” In fact, the word “pilgrim” derives from the Latin word meaning ‘foreigner or wayfarer.’ Richard Niebuhr points out that an even older derivation of the Latin roots means “through the fields.” This image, he says, suggests a “curious soul who walks beyond known boundaries, crosses fields, touching the earth with a destination in mind and a purpose in heart.” Huston Smith says that what characterizes “pilgrims” is “openness, attentiveness, and responsiveness.”
The eunuch is clearly a pilgrim, and his journey intriguing and curious. He goes with a purpose and devotion, he defies a variety of cultural expectations, and he expresses a deep openness to learning (asking “how I can understand unless someone explains it to me”), to being humbled and to being changed.

The journey is rigorous and it is life changing. There is the powerful symbolism of baptism – that we die, or are “drowned” in the waters and then brought back to life in Christ. This man of high power, high position, and authority willingly offers himself to be humbled in this sacramental act.
Indeed, it appears that this story lived on in oral and written tradition because in him, we see the power of living life as a soulful journey – wherever we are – rather than just going through the motions.

When my sons and I drove out and back to Wyoming this summer to go backpacking – most of the driving was just “traveling.” Watch the gas gauge, stop for food, switch drivers frequently, sleep when you can. While there was great conversation – that was a product of time – not where we were. (The backpacking was another thing all together!)

At the same time we were doing that, one of my older brothers took a trip to Salem, Ohio, the longtime home of many of our maternal ancestors. Salem today is a tired, past its prime manufacturing town like many throughout Ohio. My brother had discovered recently that some of our relatives were connected to the Underground Railroad from Civil War days. His trip to that region was more than a road trip. He didn’t go to eat at a fun restaurant, buy trinkets or hit an amusement park. It was a journey of the heart – to read the records at a historical museum, feel the earth of this town under his feet, talk with distant relatives. It was a journey into the faith and activism of at least part of our family. It was a trip for education, but more than that, for inspiration and introspection on how to live his life today.

And so it is with many of us – we take sacred travels to important places – to learn from our past, to make sense of our present and to inform our future. The journey could be to a former school, church, or house. It could be to an “old country” where relatives lived or emigrated from. It could be a journey to an amazing natural setting to feel more deeply our connection to the earth, its inhabitants, and its history.

The eunuch in this story wasn’t just a traveling tourist checking out the sites in Jerusalem. No doubt as a palace treasurer, he could have imagined, or maybe had even taken, all kinds of trips to larger urban and trading areas for all kinds of purposes in his life. The the ancient world had its share of obnoxious and mindless travelers, ticky tacky tourist traps and charlatans seeking to make a buck. We know it was happening even in the outer halls of the temple.

No, the story is told because the eunuch, against great odds, was willing carve out time and heart space for another kind of journey – and in so doing invites us to consider our own “pilgrimages.”

But the story reminds us that pilgrimages are not all about physical movement. The climatic point in the story is the exchange around the prophet Isaiah and the act of baptism. It was about the quality of exchange and the attentiveness to living with a full spirit.

Tammy and I received an email this week from a long time mentor. We have known this man and his wife for our whole married life. At one point, we lived in the same retreat center with them and have stayed in touch over the years. He has always been a funny, creative, and ‘boundary breaking, crossing the fields’ kind of guy. We last saw him about a year. Even then, he was cracking jokes, telling stories, and working on innovative grant proposals that he wanted my input on. The email told us that his prostate cancer has spread rapidly into his liver and he is dying. He and his wife inquired whether we might be able to make time sometime soon to visit them in Minneapolis for what they are calling “third cups of tea.” They want to spend time laughing and telling stories rather than lamenting.

Of course we were honored to receive that email. In the language of this story, he is making one final journey in this life and he is intentionally making it a pilgrimage. In his lifetime he has literally traveled the world, but I doubt he will be going very far out of his apartment now. Rather than feeling sorry for himself, rather than asking why, rather than blaming others – he is seeking to learn, to grow, and to make one more life changing, rigorous journey with his loved ones.

His email was a reminder that some of our most important journeys are inward. Some of the most difficult and rigorous terrain of our lives is the inner landscape of our relationships, expectations, hopes, dreams and gut wrenching realities of daily living.

Therefore, one of the gifts of this story in Acts is that it confronts us where we need challenging most. In a fast paced, un-reflective and busyness obsessed world, it is so easy to plow through life without curiosity, to be set in our ways, to make quick judgments about people and situations, to place life’s difficult issues and realities in tightly controlled boxes and to think that in so doing we can live with some measure of control.

The difference between obnoxious tourists and pilgrims – whether we are going anywhere physically or not – is that pilgrims understand that we actually know very little about life; AND that seeking understanding and insight and new ways of living is what it means to be a person of faith.

So throughout this series we will address any number of very practical topics and issues in our lives – relationships, money, grief, fear, the use of time to name a few. The hope is that all that we might consider how these practical aspects and issues of everyday life might be understood as sacred journeys. If Lao Tzu was correct 2500 years ago when he said, “the journey begins with a single step” then we are on a pilgrimage the moment we ask what is sacred about the life we live. The moment we consider that our relationships, money, time and attitudes are sacred, we open ourselves being called out of our “secure, high-ranking position in the royal courts” of our lives so that we might see how it is that we can grow, learn, and experience transformation in any area of our lives.

We don’t have to take these journeys, but we also don’t have to live with the angst and awkwardness that fills so many of our days. Throughout the eunuch story, throughout our story, is the constant affirmation that whether we find ourselves in some remote Gaza rock, in our own, hidden turmoil, or on an amazing mountain top – the Spirit of all travelers, the One who calls each of us into the fullness of life, will be very present. May we open ourselves to the companionship of the Holy and may we be willing to cross the fields and break out of the boundaries of our lives.