When you read a story – or hear one, or watch a movie – are you looking for someone in that story who is like you – or who you want to be like?
It’s pretty normal, it seems, for many of us to come to stories looking for a character to “identify with” – unconsciously if not deliberately.
To see someone whose experience or perspective is like my own – hey, I’m in this story.
Or someone whose experience or perspective I want to have – I want to be like them.
It’s also perfectly normal to just enjoy the story without seeing ourselves in the story – but a lot of the time what we remember, or tell others, about the movie we saw, or the book I read, is about how it connects with my story. About “identifying with” the story.
That’s how I’ve had this morning’s story about Philip and the Ethiopian explained to me. Very nearly every commentator I read or skimmed this week talks about how the Ethiopian man – a eunuch, someone who is “cut off” from lots of parts of community he might want to join – must be “identifying with” the figure he’s reading about in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
That character in Isaiah is a famous one for scripture scholars. Called “the suffering servant”, there are whole chapters about this figure who is a “servant of God”, a messenger of good news…who is insignificant, despised, rejected, bears the sins of others, makes many right with God, suffers in ways that benefit others…and also triumphs.
If some of that sounds a little familiar to you, and you’re thinking “hey, didn’t people say that about Jesus?” – well, Philip in our story today was probably not the first, and definitely not the last, person to identify Jesus with the suffering servant in Isaiah’s prophecy.
That’s an “identifying” that’s a big part of the traditions of Christianity – an idea that has helped many generations wrap our minds around the idea that the Messiah of God actually might win by appearing to lose.
But as our story today begins, one of our heroes, our eunuch, doesn’t know anything about Jesus. He’s reading all of what Isaiah has to say; he’s looking at this poetic description of someone like a shorn sheep, “cut off” and despised and shunned. And lots of folks who read this story and comment on it think that maybe the eunuch felt that way about himself. He’s a person of wealth and power in the court of Ethiopia. But the Roman-empire world – the dominant culture of that time and place – would look at him as “less than” a man, someone who doesn’t really count, doesn’t really belong. And he couldn’t fully participate in the worship of the Temple in Jerusalem – where he has just been, on a journey to worship God.
So, yes, our eunuch might see himself in Isaiah’s story. And then when Philip starts to tell him “well, there’s this incredible person called Jesus, who is God, and his life was just like what Isaiah says”, he might have an even more powerful experience of connection with Jesus.
I could imagine him thinking: This is like me…wait, that means that God was like me…or I am like God…and this story comes to a whole promise of healing and inclusion and salvation…Yes!
With a connection like that, it’s no surprise at all that the eunuch wants right away to claim that identity, claim his belonging to Christ – to the one who suffers, and triumphs, and brings God’s triumph to everyone who is cut off – claim that right here and now with baptism.
I wonder how many of us here – how many of us listening to this story now – can “identify with” that?
I wonder how many of us had a moment where you felt a sudden belonging, a sense of acceptance – no, welcome, a perfect fit – with Jesus, with the love of God – or with a community that loves like God loves – some time in your life.
Many of us have felt like outsiders, like you don’t belong; felt as if other people avoided me – or would, if they knew what I really thought or felt or was.
Many of us have felt like that in places, communities, where everyone else assumed we did belong. Even places where we might have had an important job – like being in charge of the treasury!
(I know I’ve been there, sometimes.)
So it’s a gift when we recognize that we do belong.
Sometimes that fit, that belonging, that identifying creeps up on us slowly.
Sometimes we know all at once.
Some of us – maybe many of us – can identify with the eunuch in our story – with him recognizing himself in Jesus’s story, and discovering with joy that he does belong. That all that he is belongs.
And then some of us might be in the parts of life where we already know we belong. Or in the parts of life where we help decide who else belongs. Like Philip, in this story.
Philip, who when we see him here, is a recognized leader in the fledgling Christian community. Philip who has just been off in Samaria, actively inviting people to belong – and full of success in healing people, connecting people – having his work and presence welcomed with joy.
And here he is – knowing he’s being sent and guided directly by the Spirit of God – knowing he has the knowledge and connection this stranger on the road needs, that he has the good stuff to share – and asked to decide if this new believer can belong: can be baptized, when they come across some water by the road.
I wonder how many of us might “identify with” Philip. How many of us like to be the one who knows the good stuff, who can hook up a friend with a great opportunity?
I wonder how many of us have felt guided by God’s spirit – to the right place at the right time – whether we planned it or not.
I wonder how many of us have found joy in saying “yes!” to someone else: yes, you matter. Yes, you belong.
Or how many of us would love to have those experiences.
(I know I do.)
Just like it’s a gift to be welcomed, it’s a gift – of God’s spirit, a gift of the heart, a gift of joy – to welcome someone else. To make belonging happen – not just in the church; in your neighborhood or workplace [or classroom] or friend group – or on a wilderness road – or the modern-day wildernesses of the internet or the airport or any of those places where everyone doesn’t quite belong.
So I’m coming to suspect that Luke doesn’t tell us this story of dramatic conversion so we can identify with one of the characters – but rather with both of them.
So that we can see ourselves as the ones who need welcome, and good news, and revelations about God – even when we’ve been here forever and look like we belong.
AND see ourselves as the ones who have power to befriend, and teach, and include others in the love of God – even when we aren’t sure if we belong yet ourselves.
I don’t think this is a story we’re meant to enjoy without seeing ourselves in the middle of it.
I don’t think God’s story is ever one we’re supposed to watch from the sidelines.
You and I, I think, are always supposed to find our identity in God’s story, always supposed to belong in the story – in the whole story.
Because, after all, God keeps choosing to belong in our story, with us.
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