Yes, and...I’ve Got Your Back!

Acts 8:26-39

I have a confession to make. On Thursdays, I’ve been taking improv classes. Now, don’t worry, I don’t intend to turn my sermons into improv skits – although you never know how the Spirit may move – no, I’m more interested in exercising my brain. I’m more interested in coming up with new ways to teach and lead in a variety of other contexts, and I’m learning what it means to work on creative solutions to unforeseen circumstances.

Life is like that, you know. No matter how well thought or planned your life may be, there will always be unforeseen circumstances that require creative thinking and cooperation. That can require some heavy lifting – mentally and emotionally – and Dramatic Improvisation is a way to build the “muscles” that are needed to do that work.

What I love about improv is that it forces me to think in ways that not only create solutions but also create opportunities for others. It’s not enough for me to offer the answer. I have to create space for others to shape and change the conversation with me. There are two fundamental principles that I’m learning, and I think they go pretty well with today’s reading. They are “Yes and…” and “I’ve got your back.”

In fact, I’d like everyone to put their hand forward as though we were in a big huddle and repeat after me, “Yes, and…[Yes, and…] I’ve got your back. [I’ve got your back.]” Thanks! Now, in case you don’t know, “Yes, and…” means that I accept your perspective, and I’m going to build on it in a way that invites someone else to accept my response and build on it. I’ve got your back means that if you are struggling, or if you just need to know that you aren’t alone, I’m with you.

I want you to think about these ideas while I talk a little more about our text today, and hopefully, you’ll hear the Holy Spirit say “Yes, and….I’ve got your back” to you as well.

Let’s start with a little more context for our reading, because there are a lot of issues that this text contains that are both similar to and entirely different from the present-day experiences that we are going through as God’s people.

We already know that it takes place on a wilderness road and has three main characters: Philip, a man known only as an Ethiopian Eunuch, and the Holy Spirit. We know the Ethiopian Eunuch is a wealthy court official, so there may have been some kind of entourage, but they are not mentioned in Luke’s letter to Theophilus about the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Our passage starts out suspiciously with the word “then” in verse 26. “Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ If you read the part before that (vv1-25) then you will see that, after the stoning of Stephen, Philip (who was elected in the same class of officers as Stephen) got out of town and went to Samaria – the last place that he thought they may look for him. He did some good work there, even convincing a local sorcerer named Simon to change his ways.

Then the Holy Spirit sent him packing down the “wilderness road” as it’s called in v26. A wilderness road was a risky place to go, especially traveling alone. Maybe that’s why he was so eager to catch up to the Ethiopian Chariot at the urging of the Spirit.

Whatever his personal motivation was, we know that Philip was following the lead of the Holy Spirit. What we don’t know is why this person – a court official of The Candace, queen of the Ethiopians and in charge of her entire treasury (v27) – was so ready to be hospitable to this potentially threatening stranger on the road. Now, it’s important to note here that the Ethiopian Eunuch was both a person of power and an outsider at the same time. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, let’s talk about Ethiopia.

Unfortunately, our modern take on Ethiopia is a post-colonization, crumbled society susceptible to famine and abuse by greater powers, but that’s not how it was then. In the time of the Roman Empire, they were a rich trading partner, and they were seen as the end of those trade routes, and therefore the end of the earth in the South just as Spain was as far North as they could envision the world to be.

This man was powerful because he represented The Candice, the Queen, but he was an outcast because he was a Eunuch – someone who had been purposefully injured so that he would not have children. The text says that he was returning from worshiping in the Temple, and we have no idea if he was a Jew or a God-fearer (although there was at that time a strong community of Jews who were more rooted in Mosaic law and temple worship than in the Rabbinic tradition in Ethiopia). What we do know is that he would not have been allowed to enter certain parts of the temple because Deuteronomy 23 forbade it.

He was reading the prophet Isaiah, and I can’t help but wonder if he was drawn to it because of Isaiah 56:3 which says that the “Eunuch [would no longer be] a bare tree” on the great and terrible day of the coming of the Lord. We don’t know for sure if he was aware of that verse, but we do know that he was reading Isaiah 53:7-8, which the NRSV translates as, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice, he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.”

Notice that Philip did not launch straight into telling the Eunuch what to think, feel, and believe but rather asked, “Do you know what that means?” The Eunuch replied, “How can I, without someone to teach me?” and the conversation begins in the style of “Yes, and...I’ve got your back.” Now it’s the Eunuch’s turn, “Is he talking about himself or someone else?”

Philip’s “Yes, and” tells the story of Jesus and inspires the Eunuch to say, “Look! Here’s some water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” What else could Philip say? “Nothing! I’ve got your back, man!” Then comes the weirdest part, the Holy Spirit takes Philip away and leaves the Eunuch rejoicing. The end. Amen. Except it’s not the end. In some ways, it’s just the beginning. It’s just the beginning of what the Holy Spirit of God is doing and will do through the church.

So far we have not talked much about the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit of God is actually the main actor – the protagonist, if you will – in this story, and throughout the letter that Luke wrote to his dear friend, Theophilus (a name that means, God’s beloved).

Let’s talk about that a bit. The Holy Spirit is what we say when we want to talk about the active presence of God, and one of the things that we believe in the Presbyterian Church and the Reformed tradition is that God is active in and through us all the time. God is as close as our breath, and It’s just a matter of whether or not we are willing to open ourselves up to it in order to be a part of what God is doing.

The story of Philip and the Eunuch assumes that Philip has “received” this same awareness of the Spirit of God and is about as open to it as one can be. So, how is the Holy Spirit saying, “Yes, and...I’ve got your back” to Philip and the Eunuch, and how might God be saying it to you and me today?

For one, Philip gets some pretty specific instructions that I would love to hear, but there are also opportunities that present themselves that Philip is able to respond to in faith. While I may be a little jealous of all that, I think it’s fair to say that the Spirit of God speaks to our conscience when we see things that just aren’t right or we meet someone who doesn’t quite fit in. Not only that, we see the work of the Spirit in the connections that we make when we open ourselves to what God may have in mind – especially when it involves outsiders from the social circles and religious institutions that we maintain. I say “especially” because we don’t often expect God to be active outside of our religious institutions, yet sometimes the “wilderness road” is the place where God is most active.

It’s not a particularly religious example, but I’m reminded here of the story of Gillian Lynne. She was a precocious child who could never sit still. Educators and parents and other experts could not find a way to manage her behavior until one amazing teacher left her in a room with music and saw how she danced. She was then encouraged to take dance classes and later in life she became the choreographer of the musical, “Cats,” touching thousands of lives with story and movement and imagination about life and what it could be.

What, then, is to prevent us all from imagining what life in the Spirit might be like? Look! There is water! What is to prevent us from living into the covenant of baptism – the covenant in which we are all claimed as Theophilus (God’s beloved)? What is to prevent us from seeing that there are those who have been told over and over that, they are not God’s beloved because of orientation or physical characteristics, even while they read scriptures that proclaim the good news of love and mercy? What is to prevent us from saying, “I’ve got your back!”? What is to prevent us from seeing that there are people who have been told directly and indirectly that the color of their skin holds a different currency than the content of their character and that we can and we must say to them, “I’ve Got your back.”? What is there that can prevent us from seeing those who flee from wars and poverty as brothers and sisters in Christ who have also been claimed by the waters of baptism?

The thing is, no matter what you or I think about those questions, the movement of the Holy Spirit in this passage is to fulfill the promise of Jesus that the disciples were unable or unwilling to fulfill. Jesus said to them in Acts 1:8, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” yet they (for the most part) stayed put in Jerusalem.

Philip went to Samaria and the Ethiopian Eunuch went to the “ends of the earth”. Christian tradition holds that he is the one called “Simeon the Black Man” in Acts 13:1 and that he is part of the foundation of one of the oldest and most enduring Christian faith communities in the world – which is still active in present-day Ethiopia because the Holy Spirit has their back.

So it must be with you and me if we can listen to God’s “Yes, and...I’ve got your back!” So it is with us, if we can say it for one another as we trust in God’s active presence together. In fact, if we can do that… when we do that, I think we will hear the Holy Spirit of God’s “Yes, and… I’ve got your back!” all around us!

As for me, I’ll leave you with a “yes, and” from Shell Silverstein, who once wrote:

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never-haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

So it is for those of us who love God and are open to God’s “Yes, and…” for I promise you that God “has your back.” Amen.