Sermon by Pastor Brian - February 11, 2026
Sermons
Beyond Binaries
Acts 8:26-38
“Once you arrive at the edge of the world,” the angel instructs Philip, “keep going.” “But we’ve never planted a church,” he responds, “beyond the old neighborhood.” “The Gospel doesn’t keep good boundaries,” the angel counters, “When you’ve walked off the map, you’re almost there.” Eager to exercise his new role as a deacon, Philip reties his leather sandals and starts out against the desert wind.
Days into the wilderness, Philip hears the grunt of chariot horses approaching from behind. Gripping the reins, atop a bedazzled set of wheels, a eunuch, likely castrated as a boy, rolls by. The brown foreigner traveled to Jerusalem for worship, but they were denied at the sanctuary door. Told by the ushers, “No stones; no entry.” Unwilling to dismiss God despite God’s people, the eunuch continues searching the scriptures.
After running ahead to catch up, Philip climbs inside the cockpit to join the Bible study. Believing faithfulness provokes questions, the eunuch asks, “About whom does the prophet Isaiah speak? Does this humiliated and mutilated Messiah love people like me? While your religion polices the font, can I be baptized now?” Stopping at a limestone aquifer, Philip invokes the Spirit, says grace over the water, and plunges the stranger.
Dripping with acceptance, the Ethiopian emerges from the depths as a new creation. Singing the doxology, the newest member of the Church rushes back to Africa as the first evangelist to share the Good News south of Egypt. After Philip embraces his new sibling in Christ, God whisks him away to the next mission field on the Mediterranean coast. In this dramatic conversion story, what or who gets converted?
Acts 8:26-38 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.
Congregational Responses:
Philip’s doubts about his usefulness to God
That God can only be experienced inside the walls of a church
Doing theology alone
“The woman who is a man,” says a local, “and the man who is a woman, we live together in harmony. That doesn’t happen very often in this world. But it happens here in Juchitán,”1 (hoo-chee-TAHN) the largest city in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Nearly every family on the isthmus of Tehuantepec (tuh waan tuh pek), a narrow land bridge separating the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean, has a child who identifies as third gendered. Muxes (moo-shays) are born biologically male but later adopt the traditional roles and clothes reserved for women. As non-conformists, they are cherished at home as blessings and admired in public as revolutionaries. Annually, in November, the city gathers for a massive party celebrating gender ambiguity. The evening culminates with a raucous catwalk, where the muxes promenade in native Zapotec dress. Last year, before an adoring crowd, one of the queens clutched the microphone and said, “This is a message for Mexico and the world. Diversity is not a concession. In Juchitán, [it has been] our heritage [for the 2500 years]. We are not asking for space; we are the space. May the ancestral respect for the muse be the standard for all identities.”2
Back in Jerusalem, at the first board meeting of the early church, the elders are debating admission criteria. “We can only let in circumcised Jews,” the lay leader demands, “not Gentiles outside of the covenant.” The treasurer interrupts, “No! We’ll only fellowship with naturalized Israelites, not alien Samaritans.” “Our pews,” the secretary pleads, “only have room for men of the light, not women of the night.”
While the quarreling continues, God is south of town at a desert baptistry. Beneath the holy waters, the eunuch- this androgynous figure, think Prince on the Purple Rain tour, both masculine and feminine, hetero and homosexual, able-bodied and disabled, religious and irreligious, affluent and impoverished, who defies every categorization- joins the family of faith.
Through baptism, the sacrament of belonging, the eunuch’s welcome decenters maleness as normative, delights in the created goodness of divine diversity, and widens identity to include more than just either/or. Because of the Spirit’s disruptive work through a queer body, the first church is saved from itself, converted to stretch the Gospel beyond binaries. If Pentecost is the church’s birthday, Acts 8 is the church’s day of salvation.
With 1022 anti-trans bills recently introduced across the United States, there’s never been a more urgent moment to reclaim traditional, biblically based Christianity.3 Here it is in Luke/ Acts, the holy writ most concerned with gathering up the left behind and affirming the cast aside. This is, and will forever be, the foundational ministry of Jesus and his followers.
For as long as we have breath, may we never prevent anyone- she, he, they, or them- from experiencing the all-inclusive love of God.
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1 Shaul Schwarz, “Muxes,” The Guardian, Oct. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/
2 Edwin Rosales, “Así se vivió la VELA MUXE de las AUTÉNTICAS INTRÉPIDAS BUSCADORAS DEL PELIGRO / JUCHITÁN DE ZARAGOZA,” YouTube, Nov. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/
3 Trans Legislation Tracker, https://