Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 4, 2006
Acts 8: 26-39
Ernest Hemingway said of this novel, “All American literature comes from one book…It’s the best book we’ve had. There was nothing before. There as been nothing as good since.” The book Hemingway was talking about? Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I know that this novel has come under attack in recent years by the cultural guardians of the politically correct – for example Huck repeatedly uses the phrase “nigger” in ordinary conversation. But if you stay with it, this novel continues to have an important word to say to a world still divided by barriers of class, sex, nationality and race.
You know the story. Huck and an older and wiser black slave named Jim float together on a raft on the Mississippi River, each trying to escape from an evil that has invaded his life. In Huck’s case, evil takes the form of a drunken and abusive father. For Jim, evil is the institution of slavery.
Huck, of course, tells their story in his own unique style, and much of the fun in the book comes from hearing him express his view of life. Take prayer, for example. Huck doesn’t put much stock in it because Miss Watson had once told him that if he prayed, he would get whatever he asked for. So he gave it a try, but, says Huck, “It warn’t so. Once I prayed and got a fishing line but no hooks. It warn’t any good to me without hooks.” I know how he felt. Very few, if any, of my fishing prayers have ever been answered.
But, as you know, in Huckleberry Finn, there is something very serious underlying all the fun. I once heard it described as “the most moral novel in American literature.” As he tells his story, Huck is struggling with his conscience, and with all that his world has taught him about right and wrong – the world where “nigger” is a commonly used term. Huck has been taught that people with black skin are inferior in every way to white people, and that it is part of God’s design, God’s ordained plan for the world, that black people can be owned as property by whites. In fact, one of the worst crimes a white person could commit in Huck’s world was to help a slave escape to freedom.
But now Huck finds himself doing precisely that. He finds himself floating on a raft with an escaped slave, living side by side with him day after day, and discovering that he is a human being too. What is Huck to do? It is a moral dilemma that increasingly gives him no peace. On the one hand, he knows he is breaking the law by helping Jim. But on the other hand, he is growing increasingly fond of Jim.
Finally he can’t take it any more. In Huck’s words, “My conscience got to stirring me up hotter than ever, until at last I says to it, ‘Let up on me – it ain’t too late yet – I’ll paddle ashore at the first light and tell.” He decides to do the right thing – what the world says is the right thing – which is to turn Jim in.
He gets into his canoe and sets off. Nearing the shore, he meets a boat with two men in it. They tell him they are looking for five slaves who have run away from their master. They ask Huck if there is anyone on the raft they can see floating out on the river. Huck admits there is a man on the raft. Then comes the critical question: “Is he white or black?” Huck hesitates. He knows he should tell the truth, everything he has learned tells him to tell the truth, his conscience tells him to tell the truth, but he cannot. He gives up trying and finally says, “He’s white.”
So Jim is not captured, but Huck feels he has done a terrible thing. So even as he and Jim grow closer and become friends, Huck feels like he has committed a terrible sin by not turning Jim in as the law requires. His heart and the law are in conflict. You can see the point that Mark Twain is making. Namely, that Huck’s decision to choose the wrong thing, to save Jim, was in fact the right thing, the moral thing, the human thing, all happening as they float on the Mississippi River. On the water, all barriers put up out of fear, ignorance or hatred are gradually washed away as these two sinners-become-saints float along.
Reflecting on the novel, the relationship of Huck and Jim, and the river, Kenneth L Gibble, a Church of the Brethren pastor, writes. “We see in this river the waters of a new creation, a relationship of love and caring between the white boy and the black slave, a relationship which transcends their status in their community as the old dies and the new comes forth. For Huck and Jim, the old standards of white and black, slave and free, are transformed into a new standard of common humanity.” I don’t know what Mark Twain thought about the work of the Holy Spirit, he was probably as cynical about that as he was about everything else, but in this story we are mighty close to Pentecost.
And so the man on the desert road asks Philip, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He wants to know, what are the barriers to my full participation in Christian faith and community? Well, let’s see…he is a eunuch, so his sexuality and sexual orientation certainly are not clear and he obviously will never father children and this is a family church; he is a foreigner – could he have entered the country illegally?; he comes out of a pagan culture, is a Gentile, and coming from Ethiopia, he is clearly of a different race. Have we found enough barriers yet? And Philip is aware of each and every one of them. He knows the law. At the recent preaching conference I attended in Atlanta, one of the preachers concluded worship with this benediction: “People of God, the Holy Spirit is with you…watch out!” I read this text and I think I begin to understand that benediction.
Consider this question…in today’s text, who receives the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Who receives the gift of the Holy Spirit? Last Monday when I started working on this I would have said that the answer is obvious - the Ethiopian – the one once excluded who is now baptized and part of the Christian community. But today, after working with this text for a week, I have changed my mind, or my mind has been changed. Today I think the answer to that question is Philip.
Make no mistake about it, on this Pentecost Sunday when we celebrate the church receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, this text from Acts 8 is all about the work of the Holy Spirit. Philip didn’t wake up one morning and decide, hey I think I’ll be going out into the burning desert looking for converts today. No, this action, indeed most of the action in the Book of Acts, is initiated, prodded, accomplished by the Holy Spirit. Philip was probably dreaming of serving a 1000 member church in the suburbs somewhere. Instead, he finds himself out in the desert, of all places, ministering to this Ethiopian eunuch, of all people.
This story does not begin in the mind of Philip. It begins in the heart of God. So Philip goes, meets and baptizes the Ethiopian, and in the process discovers that the promise of the Gospel is far bigger and broader than he ever imagined. In the words of one pastor, “The Holy Spirit, that old, surprising power of God, had just leapt over another boundary, pushed down yet another wall, kicked open another once locked door.” What an expansive, embracing gospel we have. It certainly keeps things interesting as new brothers and sisters are brought into our midst. We are back to Jim and Huck on the raft, with old standards of slave and free, black and white, who is in and who is out being transformed. The Spirit blows and barriers cannot stand against this wind. And God won’t have it any other way.
Martin Luther once insisted that he led the Protestant Reformation by sitting in the tavern, drinking good beer and minding his own business. The Holy Spirit did the rest. Now there’s a concept – sounds good to me. Next week you’ll find me working on my sermon at the Main Street Saloon. I know the spirit will come. We all have our definition of ‘spirits’ but you know what Luther was talking about. The Spirit is at work and is determined to use us, even to change us, and none of the barriers we establish between each other or between us and God are going to be allowed to get in the way.
And, oh by the way, did you maybe come here today thinking you are somehow unworthy, that you don’t measure up, that your life really doesn’t matter for much, that you’re on the outside looking in, that God certainly has no use the likes of you? Think again. The story of the Ethiopian is our story. We are now Pentecost People. The word spoken to Philip, the word spoken to the Ethiopian, the word spoken to Huck and Jim, is spoken to each of us: “Come on in and join the party! You are welcome here….you are wanted here! You are needed here”
The worship service was over and the preacher stood at the door to greet his departing congregation. One man approached him and said in a stern and serious tone: “Preacher, this changes everything.” The preacher, not knowing what the man was talking about, asked, “What do you mean Bob? What changes everything?” Bob responded, “If what you said in the sermon is true, then we can’t just go home and do what we thought we were going to do this afternoon…Our world is not right…we have to put God’s kingdom into place here and now, God’s care for the planet and God’s care for every person…right now! Everything has changed!”
The preacher, getting a little worried about Bob and his strong reaction to the sermon, found himself saying, before he realized it, “Now Bob, don’t get so worked up. I was only preaching!”
But Bob was right. Just ask Philip and the Ethiopian. For that matter, ask Huck and Jim. Ask anyone in this congregation who has felt the spirit of God in his or her heart. A white man and a black man, and Jew and an Ethiopian, water in the desert, a new creation. The Spirit blows, and nothing, nothing is ever the same again.
Oh yes! People of God, the Holy Spirit is with you…watch out! Amen”