Sermon by the Rev. Jay Hanson
Rhinebeck, NY, May 10, 2009

College chaplains are familiar with those cases in which parents bring their children to college as freshmen, and hoping to exercise some last influence, escort them to the local episcopal congregation or the campus Canterbury Chapel, to introduce them to the chaplain. I don’t know what it is like now, but in the 60s we chaplains used to say, “Well, we’ll not see that student again until the parents visit next time.”

Of course, the problem was that the student wasn’t driven by his own spiritual quest, but by someone else’s desire that he have a spiritual quest. My focus here is not on the parents making a mistake. They didn’t. They did what they thought best. And, generally speaking, the students didn’t stay away just because their parents had tried to influence them, though a few might have. They stayed away because they were surrounded by a whole new world and were trying to find their way in it, including finding friends, dealing with unlikeable room-mates, a new sense of independence about their schedule, classes that were more demanding and less personal than in their past experience, and so on.

In due time, they would begin to search for meaning in dormitory discussions, classroom dialogues, campus forums and even church meetings. And when that time came, the quest was becoming internal. A new journey was beginning. Just then, they might find themselves somewhat like the Ethiopian eunuch in this morning’s reading from the book of Acts.

Here was a man of some influence and wealth, riding in a chariot either to or from Jerusalem, reading from the Jewish scriptures, specifically, the book of Isaiah. He was from what was then called Ethiopia, perhaps closer to what we now call northern Sudan. Some scholars think that because he needed help with understanding the scriptures, he may have been studying to become a Jew or may have been a recently converted Jew or a Jew who was just getting around to studying his scriptures. In any case he is reading because he is interested and he is open to teaching because he really wants to know. Such people are likely to learn. They are teacher ready. Educators have a saying, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Thus it is with each of us. It is hard, if not impossible to rush us along on some standard schedule. I am not saying we should not have age related classes in our schools, though there are schools that try to individualize their teaching and some home schooling parents are motivated by such goals. Oldtimers here perhaps recall the adage that the best classroom is a student on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on the other. There are a lot of Mark Hopkins’s in our schools today who do a marvelous job even though the other end of the log is crowded.

Nor am I suggesting that we shouldn’t have some standardizations of curriculum and testing. But we might note more frequently than we do that when a student is ahead of or behind that norm, we would do well not to label them a genius or slow-learner.

Actually, I am not even talking firstly about education. I am sneaking up on religion. I am just saying that you might have gone to church every Sunday of your life and still only recently, perhaps even just now, have decided that you want to know or experience something more deeply, have some previous mystery explored more meaningfully. And so, you are now or have been at some time, on your road from Gaza to Jerusalem, and thinking about something puzzling.

And then, along comes your Philip, an interpreter who is enthusiastic about telling you about his experience such that it might be helpful to you, and thus your quest, perhaps in its infancy, gets a jump start.

This spiritual questing is not necessarily confirmation class stuff. I’ll never forget the first confirmation class I taught, with about 15 or 20 ninth graders. (As a side note, we keep changing the age at which we think such teaching should occur, the Ethiopian servant of the queen would not have felt comfortable in that class of mine) At the end of that first year I told the students that I wanted to talk with them individually to see if they really wanted to be confirmed and to share my judgment as to whether they should be. My boss, the rector of the church was horrified that I might not recommend some of them for confirmation and there were some that I wouldn’t have. But the real surprise was from the kids. I asked them if they were all ready and they all said yes. I said, now really, be honest with me and one particularly mature young student said, well, Mr. Hanson, if you really want to know, all my friends are being confirmed and it would be humiliating if I weren’t, and besides, if I don’t, then I’ll have to go through this class all over again!

You might even say that my making judgements about how ready they were was hypocritical. After all, at age 12 I was confirmed without so much as a single confirmation class. The bishop was visiting and I was the only candidate of age and so I had to memorize quickly the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer in case the Bishop asked me to recite them, which I don’t recall him doing.

So, what was the traveler reading? He was reading a section of Isaiah that spoke of the role to be played either by the expected Messiah or by Israel in its future. It is a section that speaks of suffering, humiliation, of a man wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, upon whom was the punishment that made us whole and by whose bruises we are healed. It is the first known written association of Jesus with this poem from Isaiah, a poem which many of you have heard, perhaps many times in Handel’s Messiah.

We don’t know just what Philip said. Luke, who very likely also put together the Book of Acts, only tells us that he told him about Jesus in the light of Isaiah’s poem. And the story tells us that it was the perfect match of student and teacher. When they saw some water, the Ethiopian asked to be baptized.
We can well imagine that Philip interpreted Jesus’ death as sacrificial, not in the sense of some weird sense of self-destruction or some protest against civil injustice, but as the most radical instance of love centered completely on others, especially to those who were by their own admission undeserving.

In the Episcopal Church we keep rethinking the right age for baptism and whether confirmation should wait till an age of understanding and at what age children should be given communion. I don’t mean to discuss those issues here. Sometimes I feel like the Eastern Orthodox churches where infants receive baptism, confirmation and communion via a spoon all at one time. Sometimes I feel like some level of understanding is certainly helpful, if not necessary.

But of this I am fairly clear, that the understanding that helps is about love, not romantic love as in feeling the vibes for that person across the room, but love in the sense of noticing others, being more interested in what is on their mind than what is on yours, being ready to take action to help them in times of need, and even sometimes, without feeling you are the Messiah being ready to take drastic and perhaps costly action on behalf of others. This can be described in a sermon or a confirmation class, but it is learned by example and experience. If I can risk a homely example, one which in my day was pretty much left to mothers, but these days is done by many fathers, it is hard not to love someone who changes your diapers.

We want to offer to any parents here who wonder about their children being ready to receive communion, whatever help we can. But you parents and other family and friends can’t get out from under it, whatever words and stories we tell will take root in whatever setting you have prepared. You are at one time the Ethiopian questor and at another, Philip the bearer of good news, and sometimes both at the same time.

It might feel like a burden to you to have such a role but you are ready. You may feel unable to deal with deeper spiritual things. In our Gospel reading, Jesus is giving his last talk to his disciples. They are no doubt nervous about his words implying an impending departure. They gave up good businesses fishing and collecting taxes to go with him. His words, intended to respond to their fear are that he would leave them a companion, to whom he gave the title Advocate or Helper or Comforter, referring to the Holy Spirit. He tells them he will not leave them orphans.

It is hard for us to trust that the Spirit will make something helpful out of our deepest beliefs and most meaningful experiences. It is easier to say, let’s do baptism on these five great significant Sundays, let’s do confirmation at the great cathedral, let’s leave all the spiritual teaching to the Sunday School teachers who have an approved curriculum. Al these are wonderful practices of the church, none of which were available to the this Ethiopian traveler. We live in a world in which we think we can name every personality difference with some diagnostic moniker and discover the cause of every effect we experience, and I am deeply grateful to those inquirer’s who give their lives t such investigation. But we can’t schedule when the student is ready, when the trip from Gaza to Jerusalem begins, when your Philip will appear or when you will be the Philip. We can trust that at any of these unscheduled moments, you will be well served to expect help from the Spirit.

One of the now retired Bishops of our church, Sandy Hampton, a very outgoing, optimistic man with a great sense of humor, on his parish visitations, followed his sermons with the very un-Episcopal habit of an altar call. He, would, I am not kidding, with seriousness, ask if anyone in the congregation wanted to come forward to be baptized. I don’t know whether anyone ever did. I didn’t see it. I did see him throw his arms up in a great gesture and fall into great laughter as his robes crumpled to the floor. I asked him why he kept on using this altar call with staid, sophisticated Episcopalians. He said, you never know when the Spirit will move someone. He was always ready for the possible appearance of a high ranking servant of the queen of Ethiopia, or anyone else who may have been on the road or surfing the net, wondering about the meaning of something that might open up her heart.