Readings for Sunday, Apr 29, 2018,  5th Sunday of Easter: Acts 8:26-40 Psalm 22:25-31 1 John 4:7-21 John 15:1-8;  Reflection delivered at SWP Plenary worship on Community Ministries, Tuesday, April 24, 2018.

The reading in Acts is the story of two men.

He was a nameless Ethiopian, a court official in charge of the entire treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He had come to Jerusalem for Passover to worship, in the institutional community of faith, and on his return home, was reading the prophet Isaiah. The poetic verses in Isaiah describe someone vulnerable who was denied justice. But he did not understand this poem.

Philip was the apostle who Jesus tested by asking him where they can buy bread to feed the large crowd, the 5,000 coming toward him.  As a man familiar with Jesus’ treasury, he replied by saying that half a year’s wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to eat a little (John 6:5-7). It was this Philip, who in obedience to the angel of the Lord’s command to go to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, who met the Ethiopian and had gone over to his chariot and joined it. He offered to explain the poem.

And that encounter is what led the eunuch to demand, when they came upon some water, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

In each of our understanding of our faith, we must all find a language, a way to hear and interpret poems that will help us learn to tell the story of our own salvation. A language that is lost when institutionalized communities of faith are tied up in creeds, rules and regulations such as that found in Deuteronomy 23:1 “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.  Yet we read in Isaiah 56:3-5:

Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,

‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;

and do not let the eunuch say,

   ‘I am just a dry tree.’

For thus says the Lord:

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 sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

that shall not be cut off.

Jesus’ ministry was a struggle between the institutionalized community of faith, that was bound up in certitude and an adherence to rules and regulations against the witness of the power of love and relationships that dared to break the rules, in order to fulfill the law of loving God and loving neighbour.

In my ministry, I witness the desire of people to learn more about this new governance of love that has overcome fear. As an example, it is a love that challenges the agenda of austerity — that austerity that takes meagre steps in improving travel assistance while at the same time hiring fare inspectors to guard against fare evasion. The folly is not having enough money to give accessible rides to its people, but having money defend itself against a multi-million lawsuit for assaulting a young passenger who is black.

The wisdom of the world believes that the solution for scarcity is to exclude others in order to have enough for us. Against that, evangelical faith asserts that the way to end scarcity is to include, for inclusiveness generates fruitfulness, inclusiveness causes creation to rejoice, so that trees want to produce, rivers flow with righteousness and justice, and the hills yield fruit.

How powerful it is to read in IJohn 4:7, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”