Teach Me

Acts 8:26-40, John 15:1-8

May 10, 2009

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Every sermon I have ever heard or preached on this marvelous story from the book of Acts has taken the point of view that the main idea of this story is that we are to be like Philip. We are to be inclusive, reaching out to people that others in our society might reject, as he reached out to a foreigner and someone whose gender identity was unacceptable in Judaism and other religious communities as well. Philip is the epitome of what Mike Penn-Strah urged us to be in his workshop on inviting people to church a couple of weeks ago, one who invites someone into the Christian community because of the joy he has found in being part of it. Philip sees a stranger (not even a friend or acquaintance or relative) who appears to be seeking God and, without hesitation or judgment, engages him in conversation and then baptism! He should give all of us courage as we seek to be evangelists as he was: joyful, without hesitation or fear or inhibition, inclusive and inviting. Amen, end of sermon?

Sorry to disappoint! Preaching is an art in which the Holy Spirit is one of the creators. This week the Spirit led me to read a marvelous piece in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine that led me to think about this text not from the point of view of Philip at all, but for the first time from the point of view of the eunuch, not someone I would normally identify with in any way! I am not from Africa, not a wealthy and powerful figure in any government, I have not had my gender identity altered, and I already know about Jesus and have been baptized! How can I connect in any way with the Ethiopian eunuch?

It starts for me with this story from last week’s Times magazine. The author, Maggie Robbins, tells about a trip she took to Kenya on a Fulbright grant in the 1980’s as a college student studying Swahili. Her group visited a small island off the coast where she met a group of little boys, one of whom bravely swaggered up to her and started to talk about her shoes, “beat-up canvas pull-ons from Kmart.” He thought her shoes would help him play soccer better, since he was captain of his team. She thought the shoes were much too big for him. Then he placed a small piece of paper on her knee, a paper much written on and erased because it was one of only a few small scraps he had, along with a stubby pencil, and he said to her in Swahili, “Teach me.” She was confused about what he wanted to learn. He repeated, “Teach me. You are from America.” They talked awhile longer, and then she left. Let me finish the story in her words.

“I first considered beginning to pray not long ago. In one of his books, the theologian Anthony Bloom suggests writing your own prayers, so I picked out a notebook….On the first page, I sketched a burning bush. My book sat otherwise empty. I put off writing prayers till I’d cleaned house and arranged my books in alphabetical order by author, then size, then by color instead. I took up yoga. Finally I tried writing prayers. They sounded stupid. So I copied other people’s prayers for a while.

“And then one night I heard a prayer of my own in a language I’d forgotten; the voice belonged to someone who had by now certainly outgrown the ripped red canvas shoes I had sent him from the Lamu post office, stuffed with folded sheets of loose-leaf paper. The voice was small and determined, and it said, [Teach me].” (May 3, 2009 New York Times Magazine)

Philip asked the eunuch if he understood the scripture he was reading that day on the road south of Jerusalem. “How can I?” the eunuch responded, “Teach me.” Think about who asked to be taught. The eunuch was not a youth, not uneducated, not unsophisticated. Unlike so many adults, he was not afraid to admit he had more to learn in life. So he asked for teaching and Philip taught. Out of the teaching, the eunuch found himself grafted onto the vine that is Christ, connected through Philip, through baptism, through the Spirit, through his desire to learn more, to understand more, to see God more clearly. He was not put off by obstacles that might divide him from Philip and the early Christians, obstacles like those that divided him from others: his nationality, religious background, political position, gender identity. He was eager to learn, and God bless Philip who also was not put off by any of those things and so welcomed the eunuch into connection, into a relationship that would continue even if they never saw each other in the flesh again. The eunuch, so the story goes, took what he had learned back to Ethiopia and told others, entering into new connections which grew the Ethiopian Christian churches, some of the oldest Christian churches in the world. “Teach me” was the prayer he spoke, not knowing it was a prayer. That prayer opened up the world to him in a way he had never imagined.

Some of the greatest joys I have had as a mother have come in those times when I see the amazing eagerness of my children to learn. “Teach me” is the call of a young child to a parent when they ask all those “why” and “how” questions that sometimes you don’t know exactly how to answer. “Teach me” speaks of the deep desire of a child to connect with their world in all its wonder and complexity. I remember that amazing scene in the film The Miracle Worker about the blind child Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan where Helen finally understands that things in the world have names that she can spell with her hands. She runs from the water pump to a tree to the house and finally to her mother, father and teacher, asking with her hands at each place what the things are called. When she finally opens herself to learning, she begins to connect with the people in her life for the first time. Anne Sullivan mothered Helen to speech and relationships in the same way Philip mothered the eunuch to faith, in the same way God mothers us to deeper wonder, deeper understanding, deeper connections with each other and the holy when we pray, “Teach me.”

So today, although I would have us be like Philip in many ways, today I urge us all to hear this story and strive to be like the Ethiopian eunuch as we pray with open and eager hearts, “Teach me,” even if we think we are wise already, especially if we think we are wise already. I’m going to add that to Anne Lamott’s two word prayers “Thank you” and “Help me” as the basics of prayer language. “Dearest God, there is so much that I do not understand, and I want to. Teach me. There are times that I don’t know how to pray. Teach me. Teach me.” Amen.