Scripture text: Acts 8:26-40
I had a realization this week, a revelation even, an epiphany. I had one of those moments when the world started to make sense. Now most of us, I think, would find such a moment of enlightenment to be invigorating, exciting, something good and positive, but my moment was not that. It was sad and it was infuriating. I was angry; Angry at the society in which I live and perhaps most importantly, angry at myself. And, I also suspect, after I share what I’ve learned, you’ll be angry too.
Like many of you, I was watching the news, reading articles, and so forth regarding the Baltimore uprising. A moment of history happening just a few dozen miles to the south of us here in York county. And I saw the hemming and hawing over what was happening down there. I watched the news media ignore the thousands of peaceful protesters to focus solely on the hundred or so violent ones. I heard people lament how it was just awful that those stores windows were broken and those businesses were looted. I heard people call for ever escalating responses to those violent looters, everything from treating them as terrorists to gunning them down in the streets.
And then I read an article that argued that “if you’re more upset about a few broken store-fronts than you are about the numerous black men who are dying under mysterious circumstances in encounters with the police, you are part of the problem.” And then the light came on. The author of that article was right. The Twitter hashtag that has accompanied this and many of the other similar protests across these past six months has been “Black lives matter.” Except they don’t. Not to us. We care more about store-fronts than their lives. We care more about property than people. We care more about inanimate objects than we do about living breathing children of God.
That is our sin. We don’t care.
Honestly, would we have even noticed if those folks down there hadn’t ripped apart that CVS? Would we have paid even the least bit of attention to those protests and the reason for them if they hadn’t wrecked up that place? The overwhelming emotion I sense in my own circle of friends and acquaintances regarding these events is annoyance. It’s not outrage. No one is really outraged that a drug store and other businesses got trashed, and certainly no one is outraged that yet another black man died under questionable circumstances in police custody. No, most people are annoyed, annoyed that these events have disrupted their pretty little lives. Annoyed that they can’t just keep on ignoring these things like they always do.
Because that’s what we want to do. That’s what we’d like to do. Ignore it all. And that speaks volumes about how much we don’t care.
It gets worse. It’s not just about a few crooked cops and a dead man. It’s not just about generations of economic injustice in one of the most abused cities in our nation. It’s not just about race and class. It’s about all that and a lot more. And because of that, it reveals the truth is even uglier than we want to admit. It’s not just black people who don’t matter. It’s pretty much anybody and everybody who isn’t a part of our increasingly narrow little clique of “our people” who don’t matter.
A member of my family posted that ancient-and-long-debunked internet meme about how we spend millions on foreign aid and fix none of our problems here at home. She did this just a couple days before the Nepalese earthquake.
FYI, this is crap and here's why.
Death toll over there is over 6,000 now and is expected to be almost double that when all is said and done. But why should we help those people when we have problems here at home? Why should they matter? Why should the folks in Africa who had Ebola last year matter?
Well, most of the time they don’t. Because we don’t care.
I’m trying to imagine what it would be like if the characters of our first lesson were living today. The Ethiopian eunuch is doubly-damned. Not only is he a black man, but he’s also...how shall I put this...someone of alternative sexuality. Not anyone we’d regard as important. Not anyone we’d regard as worth our time and energy. We wouldn’t care.
But here’s the funny thing. It’s very obvious that people did care about this man. He is a foreigner and he definitely doesn’t look like your typical resident of Jerusalem. He can’t pass as a Jew. He stands out, sticks out like a sore thumb. And he’s a eunuch and according to the Torah, he is therefore forbidden from the temple courts. He cannot worship among God’s people. It’s forbidden.
And yet, despite those handicaps, someone has cared enough about this man to share with him the rudiments of the Jewish faith. Someone has taught him the Scriptures. Someone has given him an education in the religion of the Jews and he’s taken to it. He’s hungry for it. He loves God and despite the fact that the rules prevent him from treading upon the holy places, he still travels to Jerusalem to be closer to that God, to witness even from afar the temple and its rites, rituals, and worship.
And then there’s Philip, who really comes into this story at the 11th hour. He would have seen what was obvious: a black eunuch, a high court official of a foreign nation. They have nothing in common. Not a lot there to care about and yet he runs to this man’s chariot and jumps aboard. He cares too and gives the eunuch the last missing piece to puzzle of his faith.
To me, this is a story about what happens when we DO care. LIVES GET CHANGED.
My friends, we are rapidly reaching a point in our own times and in our own lives where we can no longer afford this apathy that we have so eagerly embraced. People all around us are suffering. Our society is brutalizing people: economically, physically, and most certainly spiritually. As the Church, it is our job to do something about that.
We talk all the time about how we need to be a Christian nation. Well, let’s start by being Christians and loving our neighbors instead of ignoring them. John spoke rightly when he said that “Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars.” I’d argue that it’s also those who “ignore” their brothers and sisters, those who “don’t care” about their brothers and sisters. That’s our sin and it’s time we stopped.
Jesus did not call us to turn a blind eye to the world around us. He did not call us to not care. He called us to love as he did. He called us to do as he did, reaching out to the sick and the suffering, the outcast and the lost. He called us to do as he did with the eunuch, sending to him people who cared enough to give him all the answers to his life. My friends, we are those people, sent to all the other proverbial eunuchs in the world. People who need us. We cannot turn our back on them. Not anymore. Amen.
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