The Church is Still Catching Up
When will we stop excluding those Christ includes?
This week saw the election of a new pope in the Roman Catholic Church. My preaching text for this past Sunday was the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8.
These two things may seem unrelated, but in my view, they’re tied together. How? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, only men are considered viable candidates for the office of the papacy. In fact, women still are barred from holding leadership roles.
This isn’t unusual. Many Christian denominations continue to bar women from leadership. Most Orthodox traditions, Southern Baptists, Missouri and Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, most Lutheran churches outside Canada and the US, Evangelical, some non-Denominational…the list goes on and on.
How are women being barred from leadership roles in the church related to the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch? Well, there was a time when the Ethiopian Eunuch was barred from any sort of leadership role in the church as well. In fact, he was barred from the assembly all together. Scripture was “clear” about this reality in Deuteronomy 23.
“No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall come into the assembly of the Lord.”
Ouch. Add insult to injury, right? Deuteronomy liked to outline a lot of exclusions. It continues with,
“Those born of an illicit union shall not come into the assembly of the Lord. Even to the tenth generation, none of their descendants shall come into the assembly of the Lord. No Ammonite or Moabite shall come into the assembly of the Lord even to the tenth generation.”
Yet, Ruth, the Moabite, is David’s great-grandmother.
There were a lot of prohibitions in scripture surrounding who was in, who was out, what foods you could and couldn’t eat, what type of clothing you could and couldn’t wear, etc. etc.
What we find in the pages of the New Testament is a shifted reality. A reality where all are made one in Christ. There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.
One’s identity is no longer wrapped up in things like race, nationality, gender, or social status.
Jesus entrusts the good news of his resurrection to women. The Spirit goes ahead of Philip and brings in the Ethiopian Eunuch. Peter, years later, will have a vision and an encounter with Cornelius, another Gentile.
Unfortunately, both the early church and the church today has struggled to grapple the reality of this upside down (or right side up, we’re the upside down version) Kingdom of God that Jesus was ushering in that tore down all the barriers that we like to put up.
In fact, it would take a lot of years, meetings, councils, and debates, for the early church to acknowledge that Gentiles were in fact being brought into the family of God. Even longer to decide that they didn’t need to adhere to Jewish laws and customs regarding circumcision.
Two thousand years later, the church continues to debate and struggle with the reality of what Jesus came to do. One might try just reading the Magnificat to get a clue what his mission here was.
To tear down the powerful, and lift up the humble and needy. To lift up those on the margins.
Yet over and over, the church has resisted this upside-down Kingdom from taking root, still mired in both its patriarchy and bigotry.
It clings to the “old order” of things and stubbornly refuses to let go of its power structures and hierarchies.
I think of the many LGBTQIA+ that sit quietly in worship, clinging so faithfully to Christ while being chastised, demeaned, and many times, run out of their faith communities just for being who they are. I see them sitting in the wilderness, isoalted and alone, reading their scriptures and wondering, “what is preventing me from being included?” Oh, I know, there are those who will argue “scripture is clear” about this topic…and I would submit to you that a) it’s not as clear as we think as we’re dealing with translations that don’t always accurately represent the original meaning, and b) that scripture was clear as well regarding whether Ethiopian Eunuchs could be allowed in the assembly.
There’s a lot that “scripture is clear” about that changes when the Spirit of God goes ahead of us and gets involved.
Like my LGBTQIA+ siblings in Christ, I think of the many women who are still not permitted to stand in the pulpit, much less think of being considered elected to the papacy. Oh, they’re allowed to serve—to make sure the altar guild runs, that ushers are scheduled, that meals are prepared for gatherings, preparing church bulletins, stuffing envelopes, changing the paraments, teaching Sunday School, and all the other myriad of tasks that women perform on a daily basis in the church and at home. But lead worship? Preach the Word? Pfft. Can’t have that!
And let’s face it—even those churches that do now ordain women and LGBTQIA+ pastors, power has not been handed over to them in any tangible way. I hear over and over again from fellow women pastors that at least the SBC, LCMS, Catholics, etc. are honest about their misogyny and bigotry. Women clergy are frequently abused and scapegoated. Their complaints go unheeded, their warnings fall on deaf ears. Their reports—not believed unless multiple other people can verify they’ve experienced the same issues. (Author Lynn Horan addresses this topic in her book, “Dismantled: Abusive Church Culture and the Clergy Women Who Leave”)
And as if gender and sexual identity/orientation isn’t enough, I also think about immigrants from Mexico, Central, South America and the Middle East. That so many Christians would continue to look suspiciously on immigrants and foreigners to the point that they cheer on rounding them up and sending them without due process to a concentration camp in a foreign country they will never leave for the rest of their lives saddens me beyond belief. That Christians gleefully support this while ignoring the myriad of places in scripture where we are told to welcome the foreigner, treat them like a native born, and love them like ourselves seems so antithetical to everything Jesus stood for. Their immigration status no longer even matters—whether here legally or illegally, they’re having their statuses removed or cancelled. The irony? Most of them, likely 80%, are fellow siblings in Christ. “Whatever you do to the least of these…”
The reason scripture highlights the issue of the foreigner over and over again is because they are among some of the most vulnerable populations—and always have been. Our prejudices against immigrants is nothing new. It’s older than the oldest nation-state. It likely goes back to early human tribalism. If you weren’t from my tribe, you were an outsider. An “other,” who was not to be trusted. So we demonize, scapegoat, and dehumanize them, calling them rapists, murders and criminals; forgetting these are real, live people with hopes and dreams and most are escaping a dangerous situation or simply hoping to give their children a better life than what they have had.
“Then they should follow the law!” Most try. Applying for asylum/refugee status isn’t illegal. But the other reality is that we do not have a system of immigration that allows for people simply seeking a better life to enter this country legally. So many times, we are demanding something that simply doesn’t exist. There are only three paths to achieving legal immigration status, and simply wanting a better life isn’t one of them. This is not to negate the reality that our immigration system is broken and desperately needs to be reformed—but treating immigrants who are fellow human beings worse than animals (for what is essentially a civil violation and a misdemeanor offense) is not something Christians should ever codone and that this is controversial in Christian circles is shameful.
It is into these often uncomfortable and unpopular places that the Spirit continues to drive the church. It drives us to these places on the margin where God lifts up their plight, their voices, and their leadership. Where Christ’s “upside down kingdom” tears down the powerful, and lifts of the poor and humble of heart.
This of course begs the question that I asked this past Sunday in my sermon: Who has God already pulled into the fold that the church is still trying to catch up with?
So often, we Christians think our job is to take Christ to the variety of communities that are out there, when the reality is, more often than not, we discover Christ is already there, simply waiting for us to catch up. Like Philip, when we arrive in the isolated wilderness, when we are pushed to speak with and get to know the marginalized on the outskirts of society, we discover the Spirit is already at work. The Spirit has already been laying the groundwork for us.
Like Philip, we might feel we’ve left behind the safety of community, the certainty of tradition, the comfort of what is familiar. It forces and challenges us to rethink long-held beliefs and prejudices.
But it is on that desert road, in those areas of isolation and marginalization where we meet the ones the world has cast out. The ones that society tries to regulate, to make laws and rules against. It’s where we learn again what grace really means, and what the upside-down Kingdom of God truly looks like.
