Sermons

https://joelssermons.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/20150524sermon.mp3

Text: Acts 2:1-13

I wonder how many languages we have represented here – that we can speak or at least partially understand.  We speak English, Spanish, Japanese, some Chinese, German, sing language…  What others?…. Some of you speak fluently in the language of music, its notations, its layers of meaning, its references to itself and beyond itself, each instrument speaking its own dialect.  Some of you are attuned to the language of mathematics, the language of psychology, of physiology, the language of politics, of design, the language of computer programming – a foreign language indeed.  There is the language of children which parents learn to understand, perceiving within a moment the messages after a day at school which say, “It was a hard day,” or “today was awesome.”  There is the language each couple has developed between themselves to express their affection, and their frustrations.  There’s the unique language between siblings and friends, laced with inside jokes and obscure references to favorite movie quotes.  Who here knows the language of the chickadee, chattering away with their companion calls, their signaling of danger, and talking about lunch.  Who can understand the milkweed, speaking, “Here I am” to the monarch...

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Text: Acts 8:26-40

Every once in a while one of the lectionary readings for the day is pertinent enough to current events that it might have been the passage one would select even if one had all of scripture to choose from.  Today’s reading from Acts is one of those passages.

It’s the story of Philip, one of Jesus’ original 12 apostles, and his encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch, an official in the queen’s court, who had made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship and is now on his way home.  The Ethiopian eunuch is studying the prophet Isaiah, and Philip uses the opportunity to talk with him about the good news of Jesus…convincingly, because the man requests to be baptized right there on the spot, which Philip gladly does.

Given the events of the past week in the Supreme Court’s hearing on marriage equality, one could focus, if one were so inclined, on the fact that as a eunuch, this man was a sexual minority of his time.  As was common in various kingdoms of the ancient world, men who served in the court were often castrated so as to remove the threat of them...