We Join the Outsiders | AND IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT WORSHIP SERIES

Recently Discipleship Ministries adopted a new campaign slogan, “See All the People.” I appreciate many things about this campaign: the catchiness of this phrase, drawn from a simple children’s rhyme, the call upon disciples in the United Methodist Church to see those in need, those who might look different, those whom some have rejected. The encouragement to move our ministries outside the walls of our churches and into the places in our communities where people gather.

The campaign is about doing more than seeing all the people. It is about calling upon disciples, like Philip, to jump into the heart of whatever situation we find people. Jump in there, even if it is messy. Jump in there, even if it is dangerous. Jump in there, even if it is costly to us. Jump in there, even if some might judge it to be irreverent or unholy. Get in there with the lost, the lonely, the forgotten people of the world. Go physically into the places and spaces people who don’t yet know the saving love of Christ inhabit and share the good news!

Christians in Gaza

by Dawn Chesser

One of the things people who have not traveled to the Holy Land may not realize is that if you are a Christian living in what we call the lands of Israel and Palestine, you are most likely of Palestinian descent. Most Christians in Palestine live in the West Bank today. But a small number of Christians live in the Gaza Strip as well.

Today there are about 1300 Christians living in the Gaza Strip. [Continue Reading]

We’ve heard the story read, but let’s take a moment to review so that, as we begin this second series of the Easter Season, we are clear on the issues at stake for Philip. (Note that this is not Philip the Apostle. This is Philip the Evangelist, who was chosen along with Stephen and the rest of the “seven” to care for the poor in Jerusalem [see Acts 6].)

An angel of the Lord directs Philip to leave Jerusalem and go to Gaza. Yes, THAT Gaza, which is located in the part of the Palestinian Territories known today as the Gaza Strip.

So Philip headed out. On the road to Gaza he came upon an Ethiopian eunuch who happened to be the treasurer of the queen’s court who was returning from a visit to the temple in Jerusalem. This eunuch is Jewish, a product of the strong Jewish community in his home country of Ethiopia (a faith community that continues to thrive to this day). This is why he is reading the book of Isaiah.

Now this in itself is worth pondering. He is clearly an educated man. Not only is he in charge of the entire treasury of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, but he is literate and he possesses a personal copy of the Hebrew scriptures. But as a eunuch, this would have been a person who was ritually unclean and therefore prohibited from entering the Temple. My colleague Jackson Henry noted that the eunuch must have been a man of great faith, to have gone all this way to visit the temple where he could not go in. No one would have talked to him there because he was unclean.

This is the scenario, then, in which Philip, at the Spirit’s prompting, stops his journey in order to ask if the eunuch understood what he was reading in the book of Isaiah, and the eunuch invited him to climb into the chariot to join him in an impromptu Bible study.

Recently my twenty-two-year-old son has been wrestling with who he is and what he believes. As my son, he grew up in the church, was shaped by the teachings of Jesus Christ, and attended church every Sunday. But like so many other young people, once he left home he stopped going to church. Often when he comes to visit me, or when I go to visit him, he asks me hard questions about my faith. I have written about this before in this space.

As I have been dealing with my mother’s declining health and the crisis that it has brought in our family, both of my sons have been calling me to offer their support. The status of my parents has caused my younger son to ponder anew the aging process of his own parents, and his own eventual death.

The first week I was here he asked me to watch a movie that featured the Jewish tradition as central to the characters’ lives and the plot of the story. After I watched it, he wanted to talk about Judaism and how it was different from Christianity.

Then, after reading a preview of my preaching notes for Easter and the Easter season, he asked me why Christians believed that Jesus was God, when other religious traditions don’t consider their primary teachers to be God incarnate. Yesterday he called me to ask me what I believed about salvation.

I’m glad my son asks me these hard questions. I told him I was happy to talk about these things with him, but that I also thought it would be helpful for him to find a local church where he could explore his questions with others who are seeking to grow in their faith and understanding. Even as I suggested that, I wondered if he would be able to find a community in which his hard questions would be not just welcomed, but engaged, and in which no one would try to spoon-feed him answers or try to lead him to Christ in a way that does not respect his journey so far or the beliefs with which he is wrestling.

A Model of the Catechumenate

by Taylor Burton-Edwards

Cata what? It’s pronounced cat-uh-KYOO-min-et. It’s one of those Greek words we English speaking folk never quite translated, but simply transliterated into English, much as we did with the words baptism, Eucharist, deacon, and bishop. You might see another Greek word we didn’t translate in English inside this one if you look closely, the word “echo.” “Kateechein” in transliterated Roman script, means most literally, “to echo back.” [Continue Reading]

At the opposite end of my youngest son for me right now in terms of difficult conversations stand my mom and dad. Both are facing the hard realities of their changing situation and declining health. My mom was recently hospitalized with congestive heart failure. She spent nine days in the hospital and almost three weeks in a rehabilitation facility. Because she also suffers from moderate stage Alzheimer’s disease, and has little command of her working memory, she was constantly confused about where she was, what had happened, and who everyone around her was (including her family at times). She was, in a word, scared. She asked multiple times every day if she was dying. My father and brother and I patiently explained that she was sick, but she was getting better and was not going to die. And then we’d add, “Well, not today we don’t think. I mean, we are all going to die.”

On several occasions, during periods of more lucidity, she and I had longer conversations about dying. I reminded her of her faith and the things she’s said to me in the past about her beliefs. I shared my own beliefs about death and dying. But none of this alleviated her fears. And the truth is, I’m scared too. I don’t have any answers. I have hopes. I have the promises of Jesus. I have faith that the Holy Spirit connects us in mysterious ways, and that this connection continues into the life that is to come. But I don’t know what any of that means.

Is it okay to say that as pastors? Is it okay to admit we don’t have all the answers? It is perhaps more helpful to just engage in the questions people have right where they are? Can we try to be open and listen as people reach to find their own answers?

The fact that we have Philip reaching out to respond to the eunuch, who is an unclean man, is radical. And the fact that Philip not only talks to him, but climbs into the chariot with him, is an act of radical discipleship. He risks his own ritual cleanliness by putting himself in close proximity to the eunuch. It is through this act of radical outreach with no concern for what it might cost him that the eunuch is transformed.

Being available for impromptu Bible studies is a witness to the faith. Being willing to climb into the chariot with the “unclean,” the confused, the different, the lost, the hurt, the doubters, the cast-off, the angry, the needy, the scared, the dying, and indeed, any person who looks or feels or believes or acts differently from the way we do is a very real and present need in our communities. And it is a witness to the faith.

How often do we do this? How frequently do we risk putting our bodies, our reputations, our health and well-being, our time, our faith, our own long-held beliefs on the line in order to respond to the need of another?

The Spirit leads Philip to assume the posture of Jesus. He gets into the chariot with the guy. He sees him. He touches him. He engages the questions he has about the scriptures. He doesn’t reject him, as all the others have done, probably all his life. He accepts him, listens to him, and offers himself in loving response without a specific purpose or agenda, other than to share his thoughts and his personal experience.As Philip and the eunuch study the passage together, Philip is able to open the scriptures to the eunuch in a new way, through the lens of his own faith experience through Jesus Christ.

We too have to be willing to join the Spirit in its work, going where she leads us and listening deeply with not our own ears, but Christ’s. The sign of God is when we are led where we did not plan to go. Bold discipleship means puts ourselves at the disposal of the Holy Spirit for as long as we are needed, only to be snatched away to another part of our journey when this same Spirit leads us to serve somewhere else.

Say the name. See the person. Befriend the marginalized. Welcome the unclean. Embrace those whom society has rejected for whatever reason. That’s the power of the Spirit of Christ we see here.

Who are we refusing to touch, see, embrace, love, accept, welcome? Who is the world rejecting that we can, in the power of the Spirit, reach towards? How can we, like Philip, offer the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ (however it is understood) to those who come to us seeking to study and have conversation about the challenges of life in all the ways they present themselves?

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the one true church, apostolic and universal, whose holy faith let us now declare...

Christians in Gaza

by Dawn Chesser

Today there are about 1300 Christians living in the Gaza Strip. These faithful disciples of Jesus Christ worship in three communities of faith. The Orthodox Palestinians worship at the Church of Saint Porphyrius, a community that dates back to the twelfth century. Roman Catholics attend Holy Family Catholic Parish. And there is one Evangelical Protestant congregation, the Gaza Baptist Church.

There is also a hospital, Al-Ahli Al-Arabi Arab Evangelical Hospital, that serves people of all religious traditions. This hospital was established by the Anglican church, and contains an Anglican chapel.

Christians in Gaza are free to practice their religion and the Palestinian state respects the observance of Christian holy days. While there has been some violence against them, for the most part Christians in Gaza get along well with their Muslim neighbors.

A Model of the Catechumenate

by Taylor Burton-Edwards

Catechumenate was the name early Christians gave to their process for helping newcomers to the way of Jesus discover what it means to follow him. It’s described in varying degrees of detail, beginning as early as the late first century, and culminating in what would become fairly standardized across the early church as a three year process of formation in the way of Jesus. The heart of the work of the catechumenate, as a process of formation, is to come alongside another seeking Christ, and walk with them and guide them, until their lives start to “echo back” Jesus.

Neither the verb (kateechein) nor the noun form (in English, catechesis) appear in this week’s story of Philip with the Ethiopian official. But Christians have seen in it from early times a pattern for the process they would use. The Spirit moves first, both in the one seeking (the Ethiopian official) and in the one who would be his catechist, or guide (Philip). We Wesleyan Christians might call this a sign of prevenient grace. It’s really important, though, to recognize this point. The Spirit is already at work. We do not “make disciples.” We foster their development.

And we do this exactly as this story unfolds it. We do not focus on telling. Our first move is not to give any prepared speech. It is to “come alongside and join” the place where the seeker is. Coming alongside means matching the pace, approaching with peace, getting in sync with the journey of the other person. Philip doesn’t come with a prepared message. He comes with a listening heart. He hears the Ethiopian official reading from Isaiah. He asks (not tells, asks) how the official understands it, looking for the echo of Christ within him. The official doesn’t understand it, and himself asks for “someone to guide me.” Note this. The official asks for guidance. It isn’t pushed on him. He asks for it.

And then Philip, at the official’s invitation, stepping over into the chariot, sits with him.

They’re sitting together now, and the official asks his question more succinctly. It’s in response to the question of the official, and starting with the scripture the official has identified, that Philip announces to him the good news about Jesus.

He didn’t evangelize and leave. They continued “journeying down the road” (vs 36) for some time after this. We don’t know how long or how their conversation went from there. The point is the journey continued, they were traveling the road side by side for a time, and then, then they came to water. And the official asked whether he could be baptized. And he was, and went on his way, rejoicing.

Why do we have this story? At least two reasons, I think. One is to connect the foundations of Ethiopian Christianity, which was already a vibrant and growing movement by the time Luke wrote Acts, to the evangelistic work of a deacon from the first Christian congregation in Jerusalem. And the other is to say something important about the character of evangelism and formation, especially among people who may appear to the “sending” culture different, exotic, or even unclean (as this man did, being a eunuch-- meaning he did not fit any binary standard of gender or sex).