A month after I arrived at Good Shepherd as the new rector, I discovered a stack of visitor cards in a mess of papers in the office. It was 2020, the height of the pandemic, and my assumption was that the cards had been completed before COVID struck and that none of the visitors had been contacted. A voice within me said, “Reach out to them.”
Truth be told, I was desperate to attract new people to the parish. We were trying to rebuild, and so stumbling upon a stack of visitor cards felt like winning the lottery. I also knew that anyone who would take the time to complete a visitor card probably wanted to be contacted. And although I was a bit embarrassed to reach out so belatedly to those visitors, I, nevertheless, listened to the little voice inside me. I emailed everyone in the stack of cards.
As I predicted, a few responded, but many didn’t. But one response came back quickly and enthusiastically, with capital letters and exclamation points. I arranged to meet with the author of that excited email—let’s call her Anne. We sat on the porch of what is now our retreat house, with our face masks on, and we talked. In-person conversation in those days was such a welcome relief to Zoom. I discovered that Anne frequently passed by the church on her daily walks, and one day, she felt compelled to fill out a visitor card that she found in the church. She was delighted to receive my email, because it had been a while since she had first left her contact information at the back of the church.
Little by little, Anne and her husband, whom we’ll call Richard, became involved, Anne more so than Richard. But Richard felt a draw to this church, too. At the time, we’d just decided to close our Thrift Shop, housed in the basement of the Parish House. It was chock full of stuff, and we had about thirty people involved in the parish, and many were avoiding social interaction because of COVID. So, I had no clue how we’d get all the items cleared out of that overstuffed basement. “Fear not,” Anne said. “We’ll get this done.” “Perhaps we could set a goal for the summer,” I said to her. “We’ll finish it by March,” she said firmly. And finish we did, largely due to the efforts of Anne and Richard.
Over time, it became clear to me that both Anne, Richard, this parish, and I had three things in common. We had a need, a question, and a dream. Anne and Richard seemed to be longing for community and a spiritual connection with God. Their question was how to reconnect with the Church after some time away. Their dream was to find fulfillment in their lives through a relationship with God.
For me and the parish, our need was to attract people to participate in the ministry to which God was calling us. A very specific need was to clean out a room full of stuff in a former Thrift Shop. Our question was how we could rebuild after so many difficult years. More specifically, who would help us clean out a Thrift Shop, not to mention where all the items would go! Our dream was to be a flourishing parish once again after coming so close to death.
The voice that urged me to email Anne was not just a whim. I believe, now in hindsight, that it was the Holy Spirit. And it was the Holy Spirit that connected me and this parish with Anne and Richard, changing our lives forever after that. This same Spirit is the one who speaks first through an angel of the Lord to Philip and tells him to go south to the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza. And it’s the same Spirit who tells him to go and join the chariot in which an Ethiopian eunuch is sitting and reading from the prophet Isaiah.
The Spirit knows what Philip and the eunuch don’t yet know: they’re being drawn to one another by a need, a question, and a dream. The eunuch needs companionship in his quest to interpret Scripture. His question is how he can interpret Scripture without guidance. And his dream is to come closer to God through the study of his holy Word.
It would seem, at first, that the eunuch—this outsider and social oddity—is the only one with a need, question, and a dream. And maybe that’s exactly what Philip thought in his evangelistic fervor. But in the mysterious providence of God, aided by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the eunuch and Philip meet in their shared need, question, and dream. Philip has a Gospel with which he’s been entrusted, and he has a need to share it. His question is with whom it should be shared. And his dream, of course, is that he will be an instrument of God in bringing the good news to the ends of the earth. In the beautiful provision of God, shared needs, questions, and dreams coalesce as Philip goes up to the eunuch’s chariot and sits beside him.
The voice that prompts him to go to the chariot invites him to stick close to it, literally, to attach himself to it. And he does. He patiently journeys with the eunuch and interprets Scripture to him, and the eunuch’s enthusiastic response is its own gift to Philip. When they finally arrive at water, the eunuch asks the question that seems to be undergirding his quest for knowledge all along: “what is to prevent my being baptized?” Nothing, is God’s answer. Nothing at all. And in a stunning moment, both the eunuch and Philip go down into the water and rise up again, changed forever.
Philip and the eunuch go down into the water as old selves, people who might have thought they were the only ones with a need, question, and a dream. They go into the water as individuals, but they rise out in the shared knowledge that they need each other. They rise to the new life of Christian fellowship, where joys and sorrows are shared, where no one is alone, where we can’t be the people God has called us to be without each other. The same Spirit who urges Philip to go to that lonely wilderness road and climb into the chariot also unites Philip and the eunuch in the shared love of Christ, who died and rose again so that we all might die to our old selves and rise to new life in him.
Nearly two years after I first met Anne and Richard, Richard was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Early on one glorious September morning with the first hints of fall in the air, I was awakened by a phone call from Anne. Richard had died peacefully in his sleep that night. I went over to the house, and as Anne and I sat at Richard’s bed that morning, she said to me, “Well, the Good Shepherd certainly found the lost sheep.” I knew what she meant, but I also knew that Richard and Anne were not the only sheep in this story. The Good Shepherd had not only brought Anne and Richard to the sheepfold of this parish; he had also brought me and this parish to them. We were united in our shared needs, questions, and dreams.
A month later, Anne told me that she was moving back home to be closer to family. I understood. Our lives had intersected for a fleeting moment when in God’s mysterious providence our needs, questions, and dreams needed to be shared and held in God’s love. Anne’s departure was a bit like Philip being snatched away from the eunuch’s presence after the glorious moment of baptism. Their lives had meshed in the power of the Spirit for a time, and then they moved on, changed forever.
We’re told that the eunuch went on his way rejoicing. Philip, brought to him by the Spirit, had met his need, had sought to answer his question, and had given him a means to fulfill his dream. The eunuch had done the same for Philip. And then the Spirit sent them on their way, and I imagine that Philip was rejoicing, just like the eunuch.
Anne went on her way, as did I and the parish, each of us grieving over Richard’s death, but also rejoicing that we had known one another. We rejoiced that through the power of the Spirit, something of God’s earthly vision had been realized in the intersection of our lives. I suppose that we instinctively rejoiced that we had listened to the voice of the Spirit inviting us to get up, go, and find one another.
This is the bittersweet joy of the Gospel. Within each of us, there are needs, questions, and dreams. Within each of us, the Spirit speaks to prompt and guide us to those who will respond to our own needs, questions, and dreams with their own. And although we may feel that it’s presumptuous to attribute our nudges and urges to the power of the Spirit, when we take a chance and do, we’ll undoubtedly be surprised. We’ll learn that the Spirit isn’t just feeding us when our lives intersect joyfully with another. The Spirit is also feeding the world. And when we and the world are fed by the sweetness of the Gospel, however fleeting it may be, we are changed forever. And we go on our way, rejoicing.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 28, 2024