"No More Boundaries": The Conversion of Phillip

As the death toll in Gaza surpasses now 34,000 people, encampments and protests have been spurring up at colleges and universities across the country. The students, faculty, and administration participating in these protest have demands: that they stop reprisals of those who speak out in pro-Palestinian efforts, and that their respective universities and institutions divest from the ways in which it supports the genocide and ongoing funding of military aid to the state of Israel. As a result of these encampments, hundreds of students have been arrested. An NYU first-year PhD student spoke to Aljazeera and said, “As students who are being taught in class about colonialism, about Indigenous rights, about the effect of non-violent protest across history, it would be extremely hypocritical — or it would totally undermine the point of our education — if we didn’t act.” Their actions, in my mind, are to be commended as they call those in power to account, and uplift the ways in which our Palestinian siblings continue to be maligned, genocided, and cut off from having their basic needs met. And I think we see mirrors of this in our Scripture passage today, from the book of Acts, in which a eunuch asserts his worth to the disciple Philip, in their words, “Look, here is water! What is preventing me from being baptized?” Perhaps those words are also to be heard in our time: “Look, here is bread. What is preventing us from stopping this genocide?”

As we consider this passage, it’s common to read this passage as a one-way conversion story: as a castigated eunuch encounters Philip and decides, upon his explanation of the scroll, to be baptized in roadside waters. Today, what if we flipped the script? I’m curious how this could be read as a story of Philip’s conversion: namely, a conversion to the realization that there are no boundaries we can place around worth, no boundaries we can place around inclusion and safety, and no boundaries that we can place around accessing the Divine. Let’s look at the story from that lens today.

As the story begins, Philip hears from an angel of God that he is to go toward the south, on a road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza. He begins his journey, and while on the road, Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch. Now, the important thing to understand about eunuchs in Scripture is that they occupied blurry spaces between belonging and non-belonging, living both privileged and ostracized lives simultaneously. He occupies many margins: geographical, sexual, and social as a royal official who is in charge of the queen’s treasury but maligned because he does not fit into the social and sexual paradigms of their time. He is interested enough in Israel’s God to make a journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem but according to Hebrew Law in Deuteronomy 23:1 he is not free to practice his faith in the Temple. He is wealthy enough to possess a scroll of Isaiah, and literate enough to read it, but lacks knowledge and context for his understanding.

Philip comes up to this eunuch and discovers that he is reading the verses from Isaiah that read, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” And I don’t think that this is a coincidence, because I think that Scripture finds us where we are in the moment. Perhaps this story calls to the eunuch because he finds his own complex life and what he has suffered for it represented there. Perhaps there’s something about the vulnerability of this passage that speaks to the ways in which he has experienced injustice. I like to think of this also as a learning moment for Philip – that he sees that silence and resilience, suffering and rejection also have their place within the story of Jesus.

The eunuch asks for an explanation of this scripture passage, and Philip shares what he knows while they travel together in the eunuch’s chariot. And as they are traveling, they come upon some water along the roadside, and here the eunuch exclaims, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” It’s important to notice here the silence that follows after the eunuch’s question. He has just worked out his own liberation and belonging, and Philip does not respond. Perhaps here, Philip’s silence speaks what words cannot, as he comes to his own internal response, “Nothing…nothing can prevent you!” And soon after the eunuch’s exclamation, the chariot stops, and both Philip and the eunuch go down to the water, where the eunuch is baptized. After this, Philip is mysteriously snatched away, while the eunuch continues on his way, rejoicing at what has just taken place. Philip is also not left unchanged, as he goes throughout the region proclaiming the good news of what had taken place.

If anything, my friends, this encounter between Philip and the eunuch is a call throughout the ages to let go of what we believe will save us, to drop the false narratives of power through security and control, to dispel the notion that God only meets us when we are living in the space of purity and law code and legalism. The only question for us is if we will drop our defenses and join in this post-resurrection work – because this is what Jesus rose for: that the eunuch might know in his body and in his space and with all of who he is that he belonged and was worthy. I’m reminded of this in the poem, “We Love You. We Want Genocide to Stop.” By June Jordan, excerpted here:

“we say we want freedom and we want to experience nothing but pure pleasure

we say “love us” and we want to be seen for all we are

we say friendship and we want the critters too

we say please & we want our power back

we say “power!” and we want our children to know love without fear

we say children are our future & we want them to have a future to be our future in

we say we love the water and we want it clean for everyone, for every living being

we say love is here and we want bridges

we say we are already worthy and we want to believe it

we say “enough” and we want every living being to be honored always and in all ways

we say another world is possible and we want no wars, no nato, no borders, no america, no thirsty child dying hungry beneath the rubble

we say WE KNOW WE ARE FREE and we want ALL to know it and act like it

WE SAY WE ARE ALREADY FREE AND WE WANT OUR WORLD TO LOOK LIKE IT.”

May it be so, dear church, and may you be well. Thanks be to God. Amen.