Longer Tables, Shorter Walls: Difference Belongs
Isaiah 56:3-5, Acts 8:26-28, NRSVUE
Reflections
According to the law, a eunuch is excluded from the assembly. The law is very clear on that point. As a Jew, Philip should have viewed the eunuch as “damaged goods” and refused to baptize him on that basis. If Philip baptizes the eunuch, he will be breaking a serious rule. A rule that determined your standing with God. This is the tension throughout the early church. What do you do when your religion isn’t big enough for God? What do you do when your rules and codes and laws simply aren’t enough anymore? What do you do when your system falls apart because the new thing that God is doing is better, beyond, superior, more compelling? This isn’t just a tension for Philip; it’s one of the central struggles of the early church. For Philip, the eunuch’s question about baptism raises a far deeper set of questions about what it even looks like to follow God.
— Rob Bell, Jesus Wants to Save Christians
- Just as the church has an underdeveloped practice of embrace so too is our ability to celebrate difference. This is especially the case for those whose sexual orientation moves beyond heterosexuality. God’s love presses us beyond quiet toleration (and certainly beyond lightly concealed revulsion) and toward extravagant appreciation of our creatureliness woven in difference and destined for communion with the divine life. — Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary on the Bible
