What Is To Prevent Me?

Last Sunday, we read about the encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40. As the two traveled down the road together, Philip shared with this official from the court of the queen of Ethiopia the good news about Jesus. At one point in their conversation, the Ethiopian official asked a question that has remained with me all week like a cloud of cigar smoke hovering over my head: "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" (Acts 8:36 NRSV)

This Ethiopian official was a man of significant status in his own community. Yet, because he was a eunuch, he was barred from participation in Temple rituals and from full admittance into Israel's community. He may have come to believe in the God of Israel and diligently studied her sacred texts, but he was never going to be allowed full entrance into that community of faith. 

It was in response to Philip’s proclamation of the Gospel that the eunuch recognized that there was nothing that could separate him from the love of God in Jesus Christ. His was a rhetorical question: “What is to prevent me?” Nothing!

What is it about this question that has remained with me all week? The United States is currently wrestling with how to respond to what some are calling a “border crisis.” Tens of thousands of unaccompanied children are leaving their home countries due to human trafficking, poverty, death threats, gang violence, or abuse. Some are seeking to be reunited with family members who are already in the United States. Whatever the cause, these children are making the long, harrowing journey to our southern border. We are struggling with how to best respond. What is of concern to me is how toxic some of the response has become. As a nation, we’ve got work to do when it comes to our immigration policies, but as my friend Clint Schnekloth writes: “the way we are treating marginalized children who come to our border for refuge represents a major moral failure.”

One of the great hymns of the church proclaims:  “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one community of love throughout the whole wide earth.” (ELW 650) National borders do not define the baptized. We have been claimed in the waters of baptism and "marked with the cross of Christ forever." As the body of Christ, we are compelled to look upon these children not as a foreign threat, but as members of the body of Christ. Even if these children showing up on our borders are not members of the body of Christ, the synoptic gospels all give evidence of Jesus’ mandate to welcome: 

(Matthew 19:13-14 NRSV) Then little children were being brought to him in order that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples spoke sternly to those who brought them; but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs."

(Mark 10:13-14 NRSV) People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

(Luke 18:15-16 NRS) People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it. But Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

What troubles me most about this issue is that we are debating and playing political games where the needs and well-being of children are at stake. I’m not smart enough to solve the immigration problems faced by our country. In many ways, it’s rather easy to make these statements of mine so far from the communities that are being directly affected. But this is an issue of moral deliberation that our faith compels us to deal with in a humane, loving, and generous way. As it’s written in the letter to the church at Ephesus: But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Ephesians 2:13-14 NRSV)

Pastor Mike