Towards Sunday, May 3, 2015

Reading:  Acts 8:26-40 and John 15:1-8

When Jesus says, "I am the true vine" he is not talking to Christians trying to identify themselves in relation to other world religious.  Nor is he talking to Christians as opposed to Jews.

Jesus is talking to disciples who see themselves as Jews following the traditions and rites of Judaism in the ways Jesus is showing them, and like Jesus trying to sort out what their inherited tradition is really about.  Imagine Jesus born today into a Christian community, living it out in a particular way and with a particular understanding of God -- both like and unlike different contemporary versions of Christianity, then saying to his followers, "In the midst of all the different ways of being Christian and of understanding Christian life and faith, remember always to come back to me as closely as you can, to be connected to the truth of it all.  I am the central vine -- the heart of this tradition, and you will be fruitful branches of it as long as you remain closely connected with me in whatever circumstances you find yourself."

Which is what Philip discovers and lives out in his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch.  This is a story of the early disciples of Jesus being led to rethink and redefine their own practice of faithful community because of their commitment to Jesus as the "true vine" whose life and spirit are their guiding light in all situations.

This eunuch is a male who has been sexually neutered to make him "safe" to work in the royal court in intimate proximity to the queen, princesses, and the king's concubines.  He is also a Jewish believer, and knows (because of passages like Isaiah 11:11 and Deuteronomy 23:1) that he is not acceptable to participate fully in the assembly of Israel because of his sexual un-wholeness.  Hence his interest in Isaiah 53:7-8 and the reference there to God's servant being "shorn" and "cut off."  This is a new image for a servant of God, and he wants to know who this "servant" is whom he can identify with, and who surely can identify with and understand him.

The eunuch's pain-filled and hopeful wondering is an open door that Philip enters boldly, telling the eunuch that the servant of God he is reading about has proven to be Jesus, and together Philip and the eunuch go on to discover something that neither saw quite that way before -- that in and through Jesus, the old laws excluding "sexually abnormal" persons from full participation in the life in the assembly are done away with, and people "of that sort" are now welcomed in and able to participate fully just as they are.

As Karen Baker-Fletcher of the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University (Dallas) so eloquently puts it:

"Philip does not tell the eunuch that if he only confesses Jesus Christ, receives water baptism, and prays hard, then God will give him gonads and a desire for women.  Philip simply teaches that the prophecies in Israel [about the inclusion of all in God's blessing and in the assembly] have been revealed and fulfilled in Jesus."
 
The implications for us as the church of Christ today are for us to work out, remembering the fundamental principle that it's always by connecting as closely as possible to the life and spirit of Jesus that we are able to share in the true growth of the Christian tradition.