Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

Overcome, the eunuch looked out at the rugged landscape that surrounded them and shouted, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” We don’t know how long that question, brimming with such childlike joy it wrenches the heart, hung vulnerable as a drop of water in the desert air. At another time in his life, Philip might have pointed to the eunuch’s ethnicity, or his anatomy, or his inability to gain access to the ceremonial baths that made a person clean. But instead, with no additional conversation between the travelers, the chariot lumbered to a halt and Philip baptized the eunuch in the first body of water the two could find. It might have been a river, or it might have been a puddle in the road. Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in. Nothing could prevent the eunuch from being baptized, for the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills had been made smooth, and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere. Two thousand years later, John’s call remains a wilderness call, a cry from the margins. Because we religious types are really good at building walls and retreating to temples. We’re good at making mountains out of our ideologies,

obstructions out of our theologies, and hills out of our screwed-up notions of who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. We’re good at getting in the way. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we don’t approve of, that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of hand. Well, guess what? It already has. Grace got out of hand the moment the God of the universe hung on a Roman cross and with outstretched hands looked out upon those who had hung him there and declared, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Grace has been out of hand for more than two thousand years now. We best get used to it. And so the call persists: Repent. Reorient. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make clear the path. God’s tumbling through the world like white water on rock. There’s nothing left but to surrender.

Billy Graham once said, “It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.”

Through touch, God gave us the power to injure or to heal, to wage war or to wash feet. Let us not forget the gravity of that. Let us not forget the call.

God, go with us. Help us to be an honor to the church. Give us the grace to follow Christ’s word, to be clear in our task and careful in our speech. Give us open hands and joyful hearts. Let Christ be on our lips. May our lives reflect a love of truth and compassion. Let no one come to us and go away sad. May we offer hope to the poor, and solace to the disheartened. Let us so walk before God’s people, that those who follow us might come into his kingdom.

Let us sow living seeds, words that are quick with life, that faith may be the harvest in people’s hearts. In word and in example let your light shine in the dark like the morning star. Do not allow the wealth of the world or its enchantment flatter us into silence as to your truth. Do not permit the powerful, or judges, or our dearest friends to keep us from professing what is right. Amen.

Church is a moment in time when the kingdom of God draws near, when a meal, a story, a song, an apology, and even a failure is made holy by the presence of Jesus among us and within us.

It reminds you that grace is as abundant as tears and faith as simple as food.

This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.

But this is only because we have such a hard time believing that God cares about our routine realities, that God’s glory resides in the stuff of everyday life, just waiting to be seen.

When hit with the glint of love’s light, even ordinary things become holy.

When the Spirit lives within you, any place can become a sanctuary. You just have to listen. You just have to pay attention.”59