CUT OFF NO LONGER
Isaiah 56:1-5; Psalm 22:1-18, 25-31; Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21
May 21, 2006
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper

“Cut off.� “Cut off.� I can’t begin to tell you how painful that language became for me. It seemed to define, to limit, to cut off my whole existence. And of course, that was the whole point.

You see, there was no place in my faith for the ones who were called “cut off.�

But, I realize, you don’t know who I am, do you? I was a Jew by birth, and by heritage and belief, but not by practice. My family had moved South and East along the caravan lines, finally settling South of the Sahara Desert, in the land we called Cush, and you call Ethiopia, part of the great Diaspora, all the forces that took Jews into all parts of the known world. I was raised in the community of faith, but when it came time to become a son of the covenant, I was barred. Even then, you see, it was obvious that I would never marry, never have children, never be a part of the continuing line of our people.

Now, I understand that you all have some language for what it means when there is no one to carry on the family name, a sense that it is a sad thing for a family when that happens, and a rejoicing when a next generation of sons is born. That might give you a tiny inkling of what it meant to us, when one of us wasn’t going to have children. You see, our life past death, our on-going existence in the memory of the people—all that was carried in the great line of ancestors and descendants, a chain that carried us from the distant past into the unimaginable future. So long as the chain continued, every ancestor participated in the present, and would be there still in the future. But if that chain was broken, by me, for example, then it wasn’t only me that lost any hope of continuing in the mind and presence of God; it was all my ancestors as well. Can you imagine how terrible it would b e to realize that, because you will never have children, all of your ancestors will disappear from the mind and memory of God? I was a disgrace, a sadness, a travesty visited upon my family, a cause of unending grief for my parents and disgrace for my brothers.

How bad was the disgrace? Well, the term “cut off� was applied to only three classes of people: to those who had been sentenced to capital punishment, to die because their offences against the community were so great; to those who had been banished and could never again live among our people; and to those, called eunuch if they were male and barren if they were female, who would never have children.

Now, I suppose you might wonder just how disgraced I felt, given that I had taken the eunuch’s path into service to the court—of course those of us who could be trusted around women were highly prized in the queen’s court, and I was honest, intelligent, and trustworthy, let alone good with numbers. So I had risen in court service, eventually becoming the person in charge of the queen’s entire treasury. This position had its perks: freedom to travel, a good deal of luxury, fast chariots, authority. You might think I was a happy man, relishing the good life, living high. And maybe I was, but for this: I was a man who longed to know and be known by God, but I was not welcome in the community of faith. In this, I looked at life like a child standing outside a sweets shop: able to smell the sweet fragrance of faith, but never able to participate in its rituals, never to belong.

Why is that, you ask? Well, the Torah is clear. Perhaps you have seen this in your Bibles, which contain our Torah, in the front portion. In our book of Deuteronomy, the 23rd chapter, it says: “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.� Years of interpretation had made it clear that this was really about anyone who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—reproduce, anyone who would cut off the ancestral line, the ones who were castrated, by birth defect, accident, or inclination—well, we weren’t welcome in the community of faith.

But I longed to know God. I thought maybe, if I went to Jerusalem itself, maybe if I took a pilgrimage to the temple there to prove my faithfulness, maybe then I would be accepted as a person who loves God. So, I sought and received permission to go, my little caravan, making a holy trek to the holy land.

Ah, but it was a lost cause. I should have known that. I arrived, only to find that it was the same as at home. My money was welcome in the temple; my presence was not. But not all was lost. I managed to find a scroll of the law and the prophets to buy, and decided that I would read it and seek to know God in that way, through the Word. It was a first for me, to have these holy words in front of me, and I was deeply entranced by reading them.

I was reading the words of the prophet Isaiah when I came across a passage that was just amazing. It started out talking about one who was despised and rejected by others, who was cut off from the land of the living—that’s what it said, really—about one who sounded like he would know what I lived with. But then, it went on and on, into passages that invited everyone, everyone who was thirsty to come to the waters, everyone who was hungry to buy bread with no money, into passages that told the barren ones to sing out, and, can you believe it?, passages that promised an everlasting name to eunuchs, to the ones who had been cut off.

I was amazed, excited, completely stunned by this, the words of my own faith, telling me what I had never learned from the rabbis back home, from the neighbors and gossips who were so busy telling me that I was sinful and unwelcome. I wondered whether it could really mean what it said, and tried to think how I could find out more. I didn’t know the area, and the road seemed mostly deserted, so what was there to do but pray?

And then, there he was, a man approaching me, asking if I understood what I was reading. An answer to my prayers, and eager to talk to me, as well. So I invited him up into the chariot, and we rode along, with him telling me about Jesus, who he said was the one who gave no offense but was despised and executed, and lived still, present with believers, promising them forgiveness, transformation and restoration to God’s favor.

“Come to the waters,� the passage had said, and there it was, a small stream. Could this be the water of life, the liquid that would slake my unending thirst for God’s presence in my life? I asked Philip, for that was his name, and he said yes, I could be baptized, birthed into a restored people of God united not by blood but by love. He only asked me this: did I renounce the evil forces that twist people’s lives and push them away from God’s love; did I believe that what he had told me was true, that Jesus was the Christ, offering me the freedom and power to resist all the forces that would twist any life, mine or yours; and did I accept that power and take responsibility to use it to transform life and lives? “Yes, O yes indeed,� I cried and leapt from the chariot even before it had come to a stop, wading, robes and all, into that unlikely stream in the desert, water of life where I had not expected it. Under I went, and came up laughing and sputtering and oh, so full of hope, only to find that Philip, wonderful man who had told me a story to transform my life, Philip was gone.

I think maybe an angel brought him, and took him off again. No matter. He had been there when I needed him, and I am no longer the person I was. I am a new man, a whole man, a child of a God who lives and loves us all. I am the one who carried the word of Jesus into Ethiopia, starting a church in my own land. Did you know that we were Christian long before you whose ancestors came from Europe were? But no matter, for it is not ancestors in blood who matter, who give us connection to a living God, it is not ancestors or descendants that connect us to the long chain of God’s presence, but love, God’s unconditional love, and our response.

While I was waiting in your pastor’s office [what an amazing thing, that a woman can be a leader of the faith—will God never stop opening doors?] to come out here to tell you my story, I found a book that said something I would like to share with you. It’s important; it might change your life. William Countryman wrote, in 1993:

Too often, Christians have spoken as if God’s love were available only to those who respond to it in the ‘right’ way—by believing the doctrines of this creed or that confession, by following this or that rule of life (the more repressive the better), by having just the right kind of conversion experience, by being ‘born again’, by belonging to the right denomination (taken by its members to be the only true church) or to some group of especially pious people, by reading the Bible in a certain way and drawing only the ‘right’ conclusions form it.

Such teaching is a betrayal of the good news. Not because creeds or rules of life or conversions or theologies or pious associations are necessarily wrong. Some of them, in fact, may be admirable. They may help us think about what the good news really means for us. They may give us guidance in shaping loves that reflect the good news. They may support us on our human journey of growth and change. But God’s love for us does not depend on our ‘getting it right’.

‘This is what love consists of, not that we have loved God, but that God loved us’ (1John 4:10). God’s love is not conditional on anything. It is expressed in forgiveness. You can ignore or oppose God, if you really want to. It will probably do you no great good, but it won’t deprive you of God’s love, either. God’s love has already taken any possible wrong or error or failure on your part into account. You are loved anyway. You have been all along. You will be all along.

It does make a difference, though, when you begin to suspect, however doubtingly and uncertainly, that this good news is true. It makes a difference not in God’s love, but in your awareness of yourself and your world. The difference it makes takes the form of two gifts that we receive along with the good news and that grow along with our acceptance of it: a gift of honesty and a gift of authentic and appropriate self-love.

I am no longer cut off, and neither are you. I am a part of God’s great story of love, receiving it, living in it, passing it on. There is no end to this line. No matter who you are, no matter what your condition, gender, history, race, abilities, orientation, story, you are a part of it. God loves us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing, but this: believe it, and pass the story along. It is the very best of good news. Take it from me, one who knows. Amen.

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