Today’s reading from Acts is the wonderful story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. Since the issues this story touches on have only become louder in the past year and a bit since I wrote about them, and since I have out-of-town company keeping be busy right now, I thought I’d re-share what I wrote on this passage and what it means last year (original post):
One of the biggest challenges confronting queer people of faith in our desire to be welcomed and fully accepted by our communities is simply the weight of history. This weight is sometimes felt as inertia: just as it’s hard to get a heavy object moving once it’s settled, so too is it hard to make change in institutions about issues or ideas long believed to have been settled. At other times it is felt as a kind of case law: could the Tradition really have been wrong about something for so long? But what’s interesting — and a source of hope for us — is that the Bible itself changes its mind. This shouldn’t be surprising. After all, the Bible is not a book but a library, comprised of dozens of voices, in different sociopolitical and cultural circumstances, writing in different languages, and at vastly different points in history. Some may think of this as a problem — they want their sacred books to be uniform and unquestionably capital-T True in everything they say. But it’s really a wonderful blessing, because it speaks to the multiplicity of ways people of faith have understood God’s work, and the ways that understanding shifted over the course of history, even within biblical history. One example of this, which I’ve mentioned in passing in this blog before, is of particular relevance to queer folk because it deals specifically with people who didn’t fit into the accepted orders of gender and sex roles: eunuchs.
Eunuchs were men who had been castrated, generally to assume some particular function in a royal court or temple. The practice of creating and keeping such individuals was widespread in the ancient world, known from Egypt to China and pretty much every place in between. Eunuchs had a variety of roles within society, including as courtiers, guards, spies, entertainers, priests and wisemen, and even concubines and slaves kept for sexual purposes. The motivation seems to have been to make these figures, often kept close to the people in power, seem less of a threat, and undistracted by their own family loyalties. While attitudes towards eunuchs varied from place to place and time to time, there is some evidence that in at least some contexts they were thought of as a kind of third gender, as neither male nor female but something in between.
Eunuchs do not play a large role in the Hebrew Bible, but they are mentioned in Deuteronomy, within a larger section on laws relating to sexual and gender relations. Squeezed in between a law preventing a man from marrying his stepmother and a law marginalizing bastards and their descendants, it says: “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall come into the assembly of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 23.1). Thus eunuchs are prohibited not only from being priests, but even from entering the religious assembly. They are therefore intentionally excluded from the people of God, without comment or rationale.
This would seem pretty cut-and-dry. The LORD has spoken in God’s Law that eunuchs cannot be part of the community of the faithful. And yet, that is not the end of the story.
In a gorgeous oracle proclaiming God’s welcome to all outcasts, Isaiah proclaimed:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely separate me from his people,”
and do not let the eunuch say,
“I am just a dry tree.”
For thus says the LORD:
To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off. (56.3-5)
What makes Isaiah’s — and indeed many of the prophets’ — vision of the world so fascinating within the Bible is that it so often goes against the grain from what we see in the Torah and the so-called ‘Deuteronomical History’, texts like the books of Samuel and Kings, which interpret Israel and Judah’s history through the lens of the book of Deuteronomy. Whereas the Law sought to separate the people of God from ‘foreigners’, and the ceremonially clean from the ‘impure’, the prophets unravel these divisive impulses and weave instead a story of a God who calls those marginalized under the Law into community and relationship with God and God’s people. Even though the text of Deuteronomy is clear that eunuchs hold no place in the ‘assembly of the LORD’, Isaiah envisions a time when, by keeping Sabbath and doing what is right, they will not only be welcome but given “in [God’s] house and within [God’s] walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.”
The oracle ends with a clear warning shot to all who would think that separation and division among humanity is God’s final word: Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel: I will gather others to them besides those already gathered (56.8).
If we fast-forward to the earliest days of the Church, we see apostle Philip intentionally apply Isaiah’s vision instead of Deuteronomy’s in his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch. Now, if this story from Acts 8 is to believed, at least some Jews already had come to apply Isaiah’s more welcoming vision of their faith. For, the eunuch is said to be returning back to the court in Ethiopia from worshiping in Jerusalem. So clearly, his status as a eunuch did not prevent him from doing this. But, when he meets Philip he is confused about the Suffering Servant figure (whom we meet yet again this winter!), and asks him if he knows anything about it. Once Philip explains to him what happened with Jesus, he eagerly says, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Since Philip immediately baptizes him, it is clear that as far as Philip is concerned, his status as a eunuch — despite what the Law says about them — was in no way an impediment to his full welcome and participation in Jesus’ new blessed community.
So what might all this have to say about queer folk and the Church today? Perhaps nothing; there’s certainly not a one-to-one correspondence between the eunuchs of the ancient world and those today who don’t conform to received norms of gender and sexuality. But, this story is still relevant for two main reasons: First, it shows that the gender binary that makes essential divisions between male and female and equates this division specifically with sexual roles of penetrator-penetrated is not an absolute in God’s vision of the world. Eunuchs don’t fit into this binary and yet God welcomes them gladly and even builds monuments in their honour for their troubles. And second, it shows that a word from the Scriptures is not necessarily God’s last word on something. Eunuchs are excluded from the community of faith under God’s Law, yet the prophets were able to see a bigger vision for God’s blessing and understood that they were welcome. And the New Testament follows this broader, more welcoming, vision. Perhaps more controversially, this opens the door to a further welcome of change within the tradition: If we see the Scriptures change their mind, within the Old Testament, and even more between the Old Testament and the New (think of Jesus’ “You have heard it said … but I say to you…”s), might not the Holy Spirit still be at work in the world, inspiring us and leading us further down God’s road of grace, welcome, and loving community? If we think it is our Christian duty to be abolitionists, or to offer a stronger stance on women’s participation in society than the New Testament’s waffling would suggest, then we have to admit that this is true. God is still leading God’s people into a fuller appreciation of the truth of God’s grace, welcome, and love.
There is hope in the Scriptures for the eunuch, excluded under God’s law. And that means there is hope in the Scriptures for us as queer folk too.
Matthew Root 