Easter 6, Year B | Acts 10:44-48 (Acts 8:26-40)
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
May 5, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
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“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” – Acts 10:47[1]
Each Easter season the Lectionary replaces our Hebrew Bible readings with selections from the Acts of the Apostles. Tradition tells us that Luke, the Gospel writer who appears as one Paul’s journeying companions throughout these pages, also penned this book. Acts is a bit of an anomaly in the New Testament. Its historical presentation means that, despite its letter-style opening, it doesn’t really fit in with the Epistles. However, its focus on early Church activities and practices following Jesus’ ascension means it can’t exactly be included with any of the Gospels, either.
I once heard a professor call Acts, “the Marvel Comics of the New Testament,” and while I might not agree completely, it isn’t hard to see where they were coming from. The more fantastical elements of the book—supernatural deaths, perfectly timed natural disasters, and flying people, to name a few—make elements of it at least a little suspect to most modern readers. I’m not saying those things are necessarily impossible—as Jesus told us, “for God all things are possible”[2]—but they don’t relate well to (most of) my everyday lived experience.
But, as is always the case, my personal hesitations don’t have any relevance on Acts’ status as part of our Christian Scriptures, and it provides plenty of opportunities for us to learn about not only early Church history but how apostles and other leaders applied “the Jesus movement”—what was then a burgeoning branch of prophetic Judaism—to the world around them.
Last week we read the story of the deacon Philip and his interaction with a eunuch from Ethiopia. This week we heard the tail end of the conversion of the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household. While the two events, which occur several chapters apart, might appear unrelated to us, there are several elements connecting them.
To really understand the significance of either scene, we need to go back to the first section of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or Pentateuch. As Hebrew tradition developed, the customs regarding who was allowed to actively participate in worshiping God became more and more delineated. Foreigners wishing to convert—or children born to unwed Hebrew parents—might be allowed limited access, but it literally took three to ten generations of faithful practice before those kinds of families would formally be accepted as part of the assembly.[3] Likewise, the Pentateuch contains limits on who, even among the Israelites, would have a voice or be allowed to attend or participate in major ceremonies.
One explicitly excluded group was eunuchs. In reference to priests, Leviticus says, “No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his[4] God. For no one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a blemish shall come near to offer the Lord’s offerings by fire; since he has a blemish, he shall not come near to offer the food of his God.”[5] Deuteronomy later extends the concept to the entire Hebrew community, stating: “No one whose testicles are crushed or…cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.”[6]
Applying these and similar injunctions to our Acts readings, neither Cornelius, as an uncircumcised foreigner, nor the eunuch, who was both foreign and castrated, had hope of access to God’s Kingdom as expressed to and through the ancient Hebrew people. They might reap some benefits among “the dogs under the table [that] eat the children’s crumbs,”[7] but according to the Bible, that was the best they could have ever hoped for from following God.
But thanks to the working of the Holy Spirit, the Jesus-followers[8] Peter and Philip didn’t abide by these written instructions. Following the teachings and practices of our Savior, they were beginning to recognize God’s Kingdom as something bigger than they might have ever before considered—something already expansive that appeared to be continuing to spread beyond any of their expectations or even accepted legal (and what we would define as “God-breathed”) restrictions and prejudices.
Cornelius and his family were foreigners—people that 1st Century biblical religious tradition still held as out of bounds. Yet God the Holy Spirit publicly swept through their midst and recognized them with the exact same sign the Apostles themselves had received on the Day of Pentecost. Because of his physical status, the eunuch would remain an outcast in most ancient societies throughout his life—considered what the modern world might describe as a social or sexual deviant, whether or not they had chosen that life for themself. Despite having no hope for acceptance, much less inclusion, among God’s people, this person put a tremendous amount of time and expense into following God as closely as the Torah would allow, actually being faithful enough to commit to a more than three thousand mile round trip pilgrimage to Jerusalem![9]
And God saw.
God saw them seeking solace from Isaiah while returning to Ethiopia in their chariot. And God saw Cornelius up in Caesarea, also seeking the Divine. And God said, “No more—no more of this division and rejection.” And, as we read this week and last, the Holy Spirit not only brought Jesus’ followers to these people but recognized them as full members of God’s family before anyone ever would have dared.
Somewhere along the line, though, we who inherited the mantle of the Church lost touch with that loving, prophetic Spirit. We found it easier to establish rules and customs justifying the exclusion and even outright rejection of certain groups of people rather than walk in the discomfort of the Spirit’s voice. For centuries we clapped our hands over our ears and squeezed our eyes shut, doing everything we could to avoid God’s vision—even singing hymns and quoting Scripture in hope that we could drown out God’s voice. But that ancient prophetic spirit has begun to wake us from our sleep, opening us to who and what the Church could truly be if we returned to the roots of our practice—to the Way of radical love and inclusion.
We saw it in the movement to ordain women as priests back in the 1970’s. We encountered it two decades ago when the Episcopal Church recognized Gene Robinson as a Bishop. We watched it happening this week as the United Methodist Church chose to admit sexual minorities—people who, like the eunuch, stand outside of traditional expectations—as full members and participants within their own denomination.
There are some who decry these moves as being evidence of the corruption of the modern Church, of us aligning with “the world,” of being unbiblical and openly ignoring God’s clear statements in Scripture. And these actions do violate long-held theological traditions based on certain verses in the Bible. But in Acts, an equally sacred text, we see early Church leaders—even an apostle!—similarly stepping beyond “clear statements of Scripture” as they choose to honor God the Father by following God the Son at the guidance and insistence of God the Holy Spirit.
Other groups might rebuff these changes as political positioning or attempts to cater to or curry favor with some particular demographic or special interest group. But what we’re seeing isn’t politics infiltrating the Church; it’s the Church finally stepping beyond the politics that have so long restrained us—inherited systems that forced us to take sides against one another, to reject someone else’s humanity—to demean and oppress God’s own Image—in favor of personal philosophical preferences.
But look—look to the history of the Hebrew people and the continuing revelation of God’s love throughout the Bible! God’s love for an individual grows into love for a family that grows into love for a people group that grows into love for a nation that grows into love for the world! Look at Jesus siding with “sinners”—which were cultural outcasts of every kind! Look at the Spirit, literally carrying Philip to the eunuch, someone living as alien even within their own society. And then watch as that same Spirit pours itself out upon foreigners, people who not only stood outside Abraham’s tradition of circumcision but ones who hadn’t even been baptized yet!
The Spirit moves ahead of us. God moves ahead of us. God has been preparing the Reign of the Heavens and nurturing God’s children in places and in faces that we, in our pride, have too long and too often chosen to reject. Yet God’s Image and Word has been thriving in people and communities and subcultures we’re afraid to even consider. We bind ourselves to customs and traditions, certain that everything is fulfilled and God’s redemptive work ends with us. Yet somehow the Spirit has once again overcome our inertia and begun to pull us along despite our kicking and screaming—and our hearts once again begin to open to God’s boundless and eternal love for all Creation.
What we’re seeing is us, as Christians, beginning to turn our eyes from the strictures of Christendom—the millennia-long alliance of Church and State—in order to listen to the call of the Holy Spirit. We’re once again beginning to recognize that God’s Kingdom extends beyond any one political party, beyond our social barriers, even beyond any theological boundary we use to justify our prejudice and isolate ourselves from our own family members.
God’s Kingdom has been among us despite our other long-held different ways of thinking and living. God’s Kingdom exists not just in this space but beyond these walls—already established wherever we might find ourselves wandering in the future. That’s because God’s Kingdom is everywhere, and our siblings, God’s children, are already dwelling within it.
For far too long we’ve been content to ask ourselves who among God’s beloved we might be allowed to reject. But the question of the apostles, the question of the early Church, and the question of Scripture is far more challenging and provocative: just how far does God’s love actually go? How far will we allow our acceptance and respect for one another to continue to grow as we follow the Spirit not away from but deeper and deeper into God’s Kingdom?
“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?”
[1] All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[2] Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[3] Deuteronomy 23:2-3
[4] The Hebraic priesthood was limited to men.
[5] Leviticus 21:17-21
[6] Deuteronomy 23:1
[7] Mark 7:28
[8] Jesus-followers who wouldn’t be known as Christians until sometime after Cornelius’ story. | Acts 11:26
[9] The distance between modern Jerusalem and moder Axum (the 1st-Century Ethiopian capital) is 1,630 miles.