Eunuch
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Eunuch" by David O. Bales
"Family Resemblance" by C. David McKirachan
"Glory Days" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
How do we come to understand the nature of the Lord? This week's edition of StoryShare offers three divergent approaches. In our feature story, David Bales paints a vivid portrait of the Ethiopian eunuch's miserable trip to Judea. Tasked with delivering some royal correspondence, the eunuch is curious about the God he has heard about -- but he remains an outsider in a strange land… until he chances upon a mysterious scroll of prophecy that will lead him into an encounter with Philip and baptism. Then David McKirachan draws on a pair of personal experiences: He discusses some time spent working in citrus country to illustrate how we need to be grafted to the "true vine" of the Lord to flourish, and he shares a story about a special Valentine's dinner date to intimate that no matter how opulent this world may be, it can't hold a candle to the glory of God's kingdom.
* * * * * * * * *
Eunuch
by David O. Bales
Acts 8:26-40
Eunuch had left the confines of the palace, abandoned counting coins and arranging provisions for the queen, her family, counselors, and flatterers. He didn't mind serving the queen, but he was glad to leave the rest, all of whom enjoyed addressing him as "Eunuch." He was then privileged, because he was considered nearly royal, to bounce in a cart for five days next to his palace escort. Along with his escort, he passed through dry wilderness, crossed a small stream, even traversed a marsh, then went up hills, and finally came to the sea. As uncomfortable as the cart had been, Eunuch, now shed of the royal escort, found the Red Sea worse. Eunuch had never before seen the sea or a boat.
For five days he believed he was experiencing something of what torture after death was like. Although the small sailing ship seldom met strong winds, Eunuch was unable to keep a morsel of food down while the deck beneath him was even the least unstable. On the second day of the voyage, while he again leaned over the boat's side to vomit, he considered turning back. The queen wouldn't be upset. She'd find someone else to convey her correspondence to Judea's Prefect.
With the sea finally behind him he found it easier to continue his trek. He was so grateful to land in Arabia he didn't mind the extortion of the locals called "protectors." If he hadn't agreed to their price to accompany and protect him, they would have robbed him somehow. They held to their word, however, transporting him three days by horse to relatives who lived over the next row of hills. The first group received their payment and handed him on to relatives -- a cousin or uncle -- in the next group. He realized the blessing of having a family, an experience denied him as a eunuch.
Every evening he reclined in his small tent while his protectors around the campfire gambled, told stories, laughed, or argued. He was safe, but every day he became more lonely, even more lonely than in the palace as a eunuch, where he wasn't part of the royal family and was condemned to stay separate from all others so he couldn't be bribed. Opulent as was palace life, it held almost no human satisfactions for him. In Ethiopia he lived as if he were a stranger. In Arabia he was a stranger, and he liked it less every day.
Daily his mood became worse. He complained about his horse, his food, and the dirty water. All the while he wondered if he was a fool traveling to Jerusalem for a mirage of religious hope. One day while accompanied by his third group of protectors he saw a hillside spring whose seeping created a thin green strip of vegetation half way down the knoll. It ended before reaching the valley floor. He wondered if that decreasing growth portrayed his hope for something different in Jerusalem, the city of the temple to one God. The Judeans he met in Ethiopia promised that only one God created everyone. But Eunuch also? Did this God also create him? Care about him?
That was a week ago. He now traveled west from Jerusalem in a hired cart. Whereas he had traveled toward Jerusalem with hope, he departed with confusion. He had found the temple: a grand, imposing structure, the largest set of buildings he had ever seen. From outside he smelled the smoke of the sacrifice and incense. And such steps -- crowds of joyful people ascending! But his foreign garb and style of turban gave him away. He was questioned at the entrance by temple police and refused entry. He was a eunuch, and as such not allowed. His Judean acquaintances in Ethiopia didn't know or at least hadn't mentioned that.
He spent another two angry days pushing through crowds to deliver the royal correspondence and receive an answer to return. When he wasn't angry, he was depressed. No family, no descendants, and now no God either? Almost anywhere in Jerusalem he could gaze at the temple to the one God of all people, the temple he couldn't enter. Was he God's only exception? By the time to leave Jerusalem he felt desperate. He wanted, he needed, something to take from Jerusalem, something tangible to hold to as one grasps for something when a dream fades at waking. That's when he walked by the booth of scrolls. The merchant raised his voice, "You're dressed like an educated man. This will serve you well." He bought the scroll without knowing what it was: a portion of Isaiah's prophecy translated into Greek.
Now without thought of those who conveyed him to the coast, he read Isaiah aloud, word after painful word, toiling first -- because the words had no spaces between them -- to decide what the prophet said. Then he struggled even harder to determine what the passage meant. The driver slowed the cart, and from the right a man ran toward him saying, "Do you understand what you are reading?"
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
Family Resemblance
by C. David McKirachan
John 15:1-8
I worked in Lake Placid, Florida, two summers during college. My brother was director of the Presbyterian Conference Center in Lake Placid, which is a few miles from Sebring, out by Okeechobee. It's farm country. They call it muck farming. It's proto-peat, all organic and shimmies like jello. It doesn't smell too sweet, and the decomposing material that produces the smell acts like compost. Stuff grows out there like it's trying to get away from the stinky jello.
When we were first driving into the area, we passed some fields that looked like they'd come from a science fiction movie. Tree stumps about four or five feet tall, cut off and painted white, went on as far as the eye could see. It was weird. It took me all of 30 seconds to ask my brother, "What the heck happened there?"
He explained that it was a citrus grove. They grow lemon trees, being the hardiest of the breed, and when they get to a certain height they chop them off, paint them white, let them sit for a little while, and then graft whatever fruit they want onto the lemon stumps. So grapefruits, oranges, tangerines, etc. are all grown on lemon stumps. I don't know if he was spouting (he had the same blarney blood in his veins as I do), but the whole thing sounded interesting. All those fruits depended on the lowly lemon for their propagation and their health.
Being grafted to the vine of the Lord is basic for us if we are to flourish. Not because we'll get fried by an angry God but because it makes sense. If we are to bear the fruit of life, if our lives are to be something more than scrambles toward the grave, we need to be grafted to the one who demonstrates the nature of eternity in the flesh.
The other interesting part of this is that you can't graft apple trees onto the lemon ones. Citrus is the rule. If you're going to be grafted to the Lord, you're stuck loving. You can't do it partway. You're connected. You may not look like a lemon (tangerines don't), but you're part of the same family. And we all honor the source of our life.
Now you know why we're sour sometimes.
Glory Days
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 22:25-31
"You can't buy happiness, but I'd love to rent some for a while." Such lovely sayings we've heard our whole lives, speaking of the prerogatives of wealth. It is hard in our culture to avoid the patina that is placed on piles of money. We are all confronted by the issues of concern over bills and anxiety about our futures. It seems to most of us that the wealthy must be immune from these. I am not here to debate that.
But along with that we consider much of our faith to be separated from wealth. "Spiritual wealth" has little or nothing to do with money, and further, the biblical evidence of the difficulties that money and its pursuit create is enough to put us off the money train at its next stop. I was always told that if we preach a "real gospel" wealthy people would be scandalized. Moreover, if wealthy people were to be "saved" they would be forced to forgo their wealth. It's as if the two repel each other -- money and the spirit.
There is a restaurant near us named Nicholas. It evidently has a reputation all over the east coast of the US as one of the best. It is also known to cost most of the college fund you've been putting together for the last 20 years. We got a gift certificate to go there, a princely gift. It was an experience to be remembered. My wife was radiant in red. It was Valentine's Day. I wore black tie, of course. Wow!
Now, wait a minute. I'm a spiritual leader. I'm supposed to be above all that stuff. Guilt, guilt… but after looking at her, I couldn't be guilty if I tried.
This line about even the rich bowing down is very instructive to me. The psalmist saw the world much more holistically than we do. Aquinas did a job on us with his neo-Platonism. This great divide has caused us a lot of useless horror. The hope buried in the heart of the broken and isolated soul that wrote "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is not for some spiritual escape or personal victory, but for a great incalling of all humanity. And this shall not be some threadbare sharing of the crusts. A lot of us got that as children: "We ate dirt and we were happy!" This will be a feast and a glory that will make Nicholas pale. Even the snootiest of the snooty will be impressed. Oh, the glory of the feast!
But to tell you the truth, if she wears that red gown I'll be happy with crusts. Oh, the glory of Love!
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. He is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
**************
StoryShare, May 10, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
"Eunuch" by David O. Bales
"Family Resemblance" by C. David McKirachan
"Glory Days" by C. David McKirachan
What's Up This Week
How do we come to understand the nature of the Lord? This week's edition of StoryShare offers three divergent approaches. In our feature story, David Bales paints a vivid portrait of the Ethiopian eunuch's miserable trip to Judea. Tasked with delivering some royal correspondence, the eunuch is curious about the God he has heard about -- but he remains an outsider in a strange land… until he chances upon a mysterious scroll of prophecy that will lead him into an encounter with Philip and baptism. Then David McKirachan draws on a pair of personal experiences: He discusses some time spent working in citrus country to illustrate how we need to be grafted to the "true vine" of the Lord to flourish, and he shares a story about a special Valentine's dinner date to intimate that no matter how opulent this world may be, it can't hold a candle to the glory of God's kingdom.
* * * * * * * * *
Eunuch
by David O. Bales
Acts 8:26-40
Eunuch had left the confines of the palace, abandoned counting coins and arranging provisions for the queen, her family, counselors, and flatterers. He didn't mind serving the queen, but he was glad to leave the rest, all of whom enjoyed addressing him as "Eunuch." He was then privileged, because he was considered nearly royal, to bounce in a cart for five days next to his palace escort. Along with his escort, he passed through dry wilderness, crossed a small stream, even traversed a marsh, then went up hills, and finally came to the sea. As uncomfortable as the cart had been, Eunuch, now shed of the royal escort, found the Red Sea worse. Eunuch had never before seen the sea or a boat.
For five days he believed he was experiencing something of what torture after death was like. Although the small sailing ship seldom met strong winds, Eunuch was unable to keep a morsel of food down while the deck beneath him was even the least unstable. On the second day of the voyage, while he again leaned over the boat's side to vomit, he considered turning back. The queen wouldn't be upset. She'd find someone else to convey her correspondence to Judea's Prefect.
With the sea finally behind him he found it easier to continue his trek. He was so grateful to land in Arabia he didn't mind the extortion of the locals called "protectors." If he hadn't agreed to their price to accompany and protect him, they would have robbed him somehow. They held to their word, however, transporting him three days by horse to relatives who lived over the next row of hills. The first group received their payment and handed him on to relatives -- a cousin or uncle -- in the next group. He realized the blessing of having a family, an experience denied him as a eunuch.
Every evening he reclined in his small tent while his protectors around the campfire gambled, told stories, laughed, or argued. He was safe, but every day he became more lonely, even more lonely than in the palace as a eunuch, where he wasn't part of the royal family and was condemned to stay separate from all others so he couldn't be bribed. Opulent as was palace life, it held almost no human satisfactions for him. In Ethiopia he lived as if he were a stranger. In Arabia he was a stranger, and he liked it less every day.
Daily his mood became worse. He complained about his horse, his food, and the dirty water. All the while he wondered if he was a fool traveling to Jerusalem for a mirage of religious hope. One day while accompanied by his third group of protectors he saw a hillside spring whose seeping created a thin green strip of vegetation half way down the knoll. It ended before reaching the valley floor. He wondered if that decreasing growth portrayed his hope for something different in Jerusalem, the city of the temple to one God. The Judeans he met in Ethiopia promised that only one God created everyone. But Eunuch also? Did this God also create him? Care about him?
That was a week ago. He now traveled west from Jerusalem in a hired cart. Whereas he had traveled toward Jerusalem with hope, he departed with confusion. He had found the temple: a grand, imposing structure, the largest set of buildings he had ever seen. From outside he smelled the smoke of the sacrifice and incense. And such steps -- crowds of joyful people ascending! But his foreign garb and style of turban gave him away. He was questioned at the entrance by temple police and refused entry. He was a eunuch, and as such not allowed. His Judean acquaintances in Ethiopia didn't know or at least hadn't mentioned that.
He spent another two angry days pushing through crowds to deliver the royal correspondence and receive an answer to return. When he wasn't angry, he was depressed. No family, no descendants, and now no God either? Almost anywhere in Jerusalem he could gaze at the temple to the one God of all people, the temple he couldn't enter. Was he God's only exception? By the time to leave Jerusalem he felt desperate. He wanted, he needed, something to take from Jerusalem, something tangible to hold to as one grasps for something when a dream fades at waking. That's when he walked by the booth of scrolls. The merchant raised his voice, "You're dressed like an educated man. This will serve you well." He bought the scroll without knowing what it was: a portion of Isaiah's prophecy translated into Greek.
Now without thought of those who conveyed him to the coast, he read Isaiah aloud, word after painful word, toiling first -- because the words had no spaces between them -- to decide what the prophet said. Then he struggled even harder to determine what the passage meant. The driver slowed the cart, and from the right a man ran toward him saying, "Do you understand what you are reading?"
David O. Bales was a Presbyterian minister for 33 years. Recently retired as the pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church in Ontario, Oregon, he is also a freelance writer and editor for Stephen Ministries and Tebunah Ministries. His sermons and articles have appeared in Lectionary Homiletics, Preaching Great Texts, and Interpretation, and he is the author of the CSS titles Scenes of Glory: Subplots of God's Long Story and Gospel Subplots: Story Sermons of God's Grace.
Family Resemblance
by C. David McKirachan
John 15:1-8
I worked in Lake Placid, Florida, two summers during college. My brother was director of the Presbyterian Conference Center in Lake Placid, which is a few miles from Sebring, out by Okeechobee. It's farm country. They call it muck farming. It's proto-peat, all organic and shimmies like jello. It doesn't smell too sweet, and the decomposing material that produces the smell acts like compost. Stuff grows out there like it's trying to get away from the stinky jello.
When we were first driving into the area, we passed some fields that looked like they'd come from a science fiction movie. Tree stumps about four or five feet tall, cut off and painted white, went on as far as the eye could see. It was weird. It took me all of 30 seconds to ask my brother, "What the heck happened there?"
He explained that it was a citrus grove. They grow lemon trees, being the hardiest of the breed, and when they get to a certain height they chop them off, paint them white, let them sit for a little while, and then graft whatever fruit they want onto the lemon stumps. So grapefruits, oranges, tangerines, etc. are all grown on lemon stumps. I don't know if he was spouting (he had the same blarney blood in his veins as I do), but the whole thing sounded interesting. All those fruits depended on the lowly lemon for their propagation and their health.
Being grafted to the vine of the Lord is basic for us if we are to flourish. Not because we'll get fried by an angry God but because it makes sense. If we are to bear the fruit of life, if our lives are to be something more than scrambles toward the grave, we need to be grafted to the one who demonstrates the nature of eternity in the flesh.
The other interesting part of this is that you can't graft apple trees onto the lemon ones. Citrus is the rule. If you're going to be grafted to the Lord, you're stuck loving. You can't do it partway. You're connected. You may not look like a lemon (tangerines don't), but you're part of the same family. And we all honor the source of our life.
Now you know why we're sour sometimes.
Glory Days
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 22:25-31
"You can't buy happiness, but I'd love to rent some for a while." Such lovely sayings we've heard our whole lives, speaking of the prerogatives of wealth. It is hard in our culture to avoid the patina that is placed on piles of money. We are all confronted by the issues of concern over bills and anxiety about our futures. It seems to most of us that the wealthy must be immune from these. I am not here to debate that.
But along with that we consider much of our faith to be separated from wealth. "Spiritual wealth" has little or nothing to do with money, and further, the biblical evidence of the difficulties that money and its pursuit create is enough to put us off the money train at its next stop. I was always told that if we preach a "real gospel" wealthy people would be scandalized. Moreover, if wealthy people were to be "saved" they would be forced to forgo their wealth. It's as if the two repel each other -- money and the spirit.
There is a restaurant near us named Nicholas. It evidently has a reputation all over the east coast of the US as one of the best. It is also known to cost most of the college fund you've been putting together for the last 20 years. We got a gift certificate to go there, a princely gift. It was an experience to be remembered. My wife was radiant in red. It was Valentine's Day. I wore black tie, of course. Wow!
Now, wait a minute. I'm a spiritual leader. I'm supposed to be above all that stuff. Guilt, guilt… but after looking at her, I couldn't be guilty if I tried.
This line about even the rich bowing down is very instructive to me. The psalmist saw the world much more holistically than we do. Aquinas did a job on us with his neo-Platonism. This great divide has caused us a lot of useless horror. The hope buried in the heart of the broken and isolated soul that wrote "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" is not for some spiritual escape or personal victory, but for a great incalling of all humanity. And this shall not be some threadbare sharing of the crusts. A lot of us got that as children: "We ate dirt and we were happy!" This will be a feast and a glory that will make Nicholas pale. Even the snootiest of the snooty will be impressed. Oh, the glory of the feast!
But to tell you the truth, if she wears that red gown I'll be happy with crusts. Oh, the glory of Love!
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. He is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
**************
StoryShare, May 10, 2009, issue.
Copyright 2009 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
