the Ethiopian eunuch and the Gospel

I wonder how many sermons you’ve heard about eunuchs?  Not many I would guess. Yet is actually quite extraordinary how many eunuchs are mentioned in the Bible.  Perhaps the story from Acts of the Apostles (chapter 8 verses 26-end) might be one we do recognise.  Many others however are simply passed over.  Jesus for example spoke positively about eunuchs and his words are recorded in Matthew chapter 19.  Very little is ever said about that and some people do not even know those verses are there.  Even the story we hear today is also usually interpreted without too much attention to the specifics of the person baptised.  This is all very sad.  For it misses out some very powerful messages for us, for the Church, and for the world, not least those, like the Ethiopian eunuch, who are quite different kinds of people to many expected norms.  It is one of those very many ‘queer’ stories in the Bible which speak of a very ‘queer’ kind of God and mission…

---

Let us start with the identity of the baptised person as an eunuch.  What does that mean?  Well, the word eunuch, as Jesus pointed out, covered a number of different types of people in the ancient world, some of whom were castrated by force.  Yet others, as Jesus said, were eunuchs by birth.  Others, as Jesus said, became so ‘for the sake of the kingdom of God’, which may mean many things.  For, at the risk of historical anachronism, the word eunuch probably included many people who were what today we term ‘sexually or gender diverse’.   No wonder the mainstream Church and wider society has been therefore been reluctant to talk too much about them.  Eunuchs and diverse people clearly mattered to Jesus, and, as we see in today’s story, to the early Church.  Even today however we are coming to terms with this reality. 
 
This secrecy and silence is unfortunate, both for people of diversity today and for the Church.  One of my friends, a deeply committed Christian who is also trans woman, was surprised when I pointed out Jesus’ words about eunuchs.  Yet she was understandably joyful about it.  Similarly I myself had never recognised the prophecy of Isaiah chapter 56 verses 3 to 5 about the great promise God proclaims for the eunuchs : ‘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.’  Why weren’t we told? – is a common reaction, together with delight.  How different would our churches be, and our churches reactions to current sexuality and gender controversies, if we took this on board?
 
God’s promise in Isaiah to the eunuchs must surely relate to the passage we heard from Acts chapter 8 today.  For the eunuch in the story is not what we would call today a transgender person in the modern sense.  To acknowledge them as a sexually or gender diverse person, even a ‘transcestor’, does however give much deeper meaning to the scriptural reference to Isaiah.  For we are told that the eunuch is drawn to the Suffering Servant.  Well, of course, they are!  For which outsider, struggling with perhaps profound internal shame, as well as the humiliation inflicted by others, would not be drawn to this figure who conquers and delivers through bearing and transforming all shame and humiliation?  The reference in that sense is to Isaiah chapter 53 but this too must be read in relation to what else then appears in scripture.  For it is hard not to believe that what really spoke to the eunuch were the passages which followed, especially what we now call Isaiah chapter 56, which speak of God’s radical inclusion of outsiders. 
 
Personally I wouldn't want to dwell too much only on the sex and gender diverse theological implications, significant though I believe they are.  For the key point is not simply God’s radical inclusion of those kinds of often marginalised people.  It is God’s love, hospitality, and celebration of all people marginalised by the confining norms of religion and society.  This was Jesus’ witness and it is to be the witness of the Church, as Luke-Acts wishes to affirm in this story.  Immediately after this story we have, in chapter 9, the story of Paul’s conversion and acceptance into the Christian community.  Then, in chapter 10, we have the story of Peter’s strange dream which leads to his conversion to the full acceptance of Gentiles without demands.  Typically these stories are treated separately, as discrete events in the life of the early Church.  Yet, I wonder, may they not actually be interconnected, as part of one truly remarkable story told by Acts?  For in these stories we see something of how the early Jewish Christian sect became a highly engaged and outward looking community of radical inclusion: embracing the outcast, the oppressed and the oppressor, from whatever race, religion or other identity they came.  
 
This story is about eunuchs, and therefore about all kinds of sexually and gender diverse people who are created and loved by God, bearing the divine image and recipients of God’s promise.  Yet it is much much more.  For the eunuch in our story is the classic outsider.  They are not only gender variant.  They are of a different race and colour, religious background and cultural practice.  They even work for a pagan queen!  So different from Saul, who becomes St Paul.  The eunuch is oppressed and excluded, on several levels.  Saul, in contrast, is the oppressor par excellence: who, in so being, is also oppressing and excluding their own self and acceptance of God’s grace.  So the reversals of Saul and the eunuch are like two parts of God’s new jigsaw coming together, which Peter’s dream and own conversion completes.  Both need guidance and support in their coming to full faith in Jesus: one through Philip and the other through Ananias; one receiving affirmation, the other forgiveness and healing.  In this is the dynamic vision of the new community made manifest.  In it we too are given powerful directions for Christian life and mission. Do we have ears to hear and lives to embody them? 

a reflection originally shared at St John's Cathedral Brisbane, 19 April 2018