Sermon for the 28th of April - Fifth Sunday of Easter

Lectionary Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 8:26–40
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.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

John 15: 1-8
‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.
Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
 
Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter

As James has reminded us, we are living into the light of Easter this year guided by a Rule of Life, a trellis of growth, that we have divided into five parts.
Worship, generosity, and, this week, study. With rest and service to come. I was given the topic, study, that I have been pondering, with pleasure.
What to say about this vital part of Easter life?
Why should we be interested in it? Why should we pursue it?
Let's begin with biography. Jerome.

I chose this detailed portrait of Jerome for the cover of today's order of service because I am inspired by the figure of Jerome, and of Albrecht Durer, who made this portrait of him. Jerome is almost always depicted as being in his study (and just an acknowledgment that this act is so much a part of human life that the verb gives its name to a room of our houses!)

Jerome lived centuries ago, in the first centuries of the Christian tradition, from about 342 until 420. He was a priest, confessor, theologian, translator, and historian; his name is best known to us as the translator of the Bible into Latin from the most commonly used Greek Septuagint version. Born in the region of Croatia or Slovenia, he made his way to Rome as a young man because he wanted to pursue theological and philosophical studies. As a student, he engaged in casual sexual escapades, but then felt terrible bouts of guilt. He converted to the Christian faith, leaving Rome for a time to study in the desert near Antioch, in Syria, learning Hebrew from a converted Jew. He returned to Rome and came under the patronage of Pope Damasus in the 360s. Jerome also became closely associated with a group of patrician and ascetic women who were themselves noted Hebrew scholars. We know their names: Paula, Marcella, Lea. Paula had four daughters, among them, Eustochium. These women had formed a community to pursue serious study of the Scriptures and to live lives far removed in spirit from the hedonism prevalent in the lifestyles of Rome, including the secular clergy.

Soon after Pope Damasus's death in 384 Jerome had to leave Rome because of the hostility of the clergy there. He moved to Jerusalem, funded by Paula, who as an aristocratic widow, was extremely wealthy. A note on the remarkable figure of Paula: While on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt, she visited monks and other ascetics. She then settled in Bethlehem with her daughter
 
Eustochium and founded a monastery for men and a convent for women near the Church of the Nativity, as well as a hostel for pilgrims. The monks' monastery was run by men with Jerome living and writing in one of its cells and Paula was abbess of the nuns. So she was the benefactress of Jerome--it was she who enabled him to devote his life to study. Jerome completed his Hebrew translation of the Bible there, in about 405, and spent the next 15 years, the rest of his life, producing many commentaries on Scripture.
Jerome is now honoured as one of the four Doctors of the Church, along with Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, honoured for their great learning. It would be good to talk more about Paula and her circle of women!

So the tradition of study, of scholarship, has been part of the Christian tradition from the beginning, from the time of the earliest desert hermits who pondered the words of sacred Scripture in remote and isolated places.

Scripture, itself, has never been a simple set of rules to be followed but a rich set of texts to be studied and pondered and discussed, as we have done and still do today in this community.

Take our reading from Acts for today.
This is one of my favourite passages in all the Bible.
It is the beautiful and deeply moving account of the Holy Spirit guiding the earliest disciples in their attempts to widen the circle of hearers of the Good News of the Resurrection.
This is a great passage!
An angel, one of the ways the Holy Spirit is experienced, speaks to Philip with a very specific, a very particular, direction:
Go over to this chariot and join it.

Who knows what Philip was doing, but he listens and he hears what the Holy Spirit has to say to him and he runs up to the chariot to respond to this unusual direction. As he does, he hears a high court official of a foreign queen reading aloud a passage from the prophet Isaiah. This Ethiopian eunuch is a pilgrim returning from Jerusalem,
one of those who worshipped the Hebrew Yahweh. He is already prepared to hear what Philip has to say to him. And Philip asks him a question:
 
Do you understand what you are reading?
The foreign pilgrim replies,
How can I, unless someone guides me?
How, indeed?

So Philip interprets the text from Isaiah that the distinguished visitor has open across his knees and explains to him that this prophecy has to do with Jesus, the Christ, the one who was crucified, risen, and ascended. That this Good News includes this very particular person, the Ethiopian eunuch, in this very particular encounter.

The chariot, meanwhile, continues on its way and rolls along and so passes a pool of water. And the pilgrim who had simply been on the return journey from a visit to Jerusalem sees this as they pass and he exclaims with urgent excitement:
‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’
This is his joyful response to all that Philipp has enabled him to understand. He sees with new eyes these same words of Scripture; he understands with deeper meaning the heart of the message they contain.
And he commands the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, go down into the water, and Philip baptizes him.
And with this completed act, his request to Philip made and his own heartfelt immediate response to this sharing of Good News for him consummated in this sacramental enactment, the eunuch sees Philip no more, but goes on his way rejoicing.
He goes on his way, rejoicing.

I would hope that all our own encounters with the study of Scripture might result in this same joyful response! At its best, study can result in a feeling of enlightenment, of empowerment, of joy.
Sometimes life confronts us with so much information that the best we can do is fend off most of it. But if we can make the time to study what we most value,
 
we go deeper into the truth of what is there for us to discover, and our lives are enriched.
So I hold up to you this morning the value of Bible study, the centering and grounding it gives us, the deepening of our faith that it enables. It will be like a deep reservoir of certainty and truth, of reassurance and consolation, of inspiration and encouragement. It will help us to lead more abundant lives.
How do we appropriate this long and distinguished tradition of study that is part of the story, and history, of our Faith? By openness to the work of scholars as they share new insights into Scripture, by our own desire to be always learning more, by patient study that never is completed, because there is always more to know. And by faithful participation in this gathered community.

So here we are---on the road---with Jesus, with Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch, with one another. Thanks be to God!
Amen.