Yes, we take requests

Some folks have requested the sermon that I preached in Allentown, PA, which was accompanied by the Presbybop Quartet. I'm mostly taking off the summer from preaching, but this was a sermon about improvisation. Since it draws on some material from the new book, here it is:

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A Dispatch from the Frontier
Acts 8:26-40
First Presbyterian, Allentown PA
July 25, 2021

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. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

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The story is told of a young male minister who went to Haiti on a mission trip. Midweek, the team split up. Four members of the group were sent to stay with a family in a small settlement, off the beaten path. There were four of them – three women and the minister. The hostess showed them to a single bedroom with two small beds. The minister smiled, looked at the three of them, said, “I hope you get along.”

Oh no. The group had to improvise. I will not tell you how they solved those sleeping arrangements, even if that distracts you for the rest of the day. All I will say is when you are on the frontier, you cannot rely on easy answers and settled procedures. But you must do something.

Today we hear a Frontier Text from the Book of Acts. We can locate it far from the Settlements of Organized Religion. This is a text that lies beyond the safe regulations of the Presbyterian Book of Order. It happens on the frontier. One of the apostles must improvise.

Philip draws near a chariot, somewhere on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza. It is not settled land. Luke, the storyteller, describes it as “wilderness.” That means it is desert land, desolate land, a place with little vegetation. Resources are limited. The challenges are great.

“Wilderness” is a good description of where we are, not just as we keep moving into a post-Covid environment. All of us, particularly Christian people in this country, had begun to locate ourselves in the wilderness as numbers were dropping off, congregations were again, and the Show Biz church was snatching some of our people away.

The old certainties don’t have the same juice. The former assumptions do not hold. Those who are indifferent will not come back. The indecisive have already made their decision. If we were playing it safe before, we now know that safety won’t be sufficient. If we were coasting in any way, now we could be in danger of going adrift. So the situation is ripe for improvisation.

This makes some folks nervous. They express their anxiety in words of judgment, even dismissal. Like Homer Simpson, who once declared, “You jazz guys are just making things up.”

Well, there’s more to it than that. Improvisation functions on some assumptions. The first is that it doesn’t come from nowhere. Improvisation comes from somewhere.

For instance, I can set the tempo. Describe the situation (“Let’s play a blues in F.”) And then we turn it loose… (Band plays)

What just happened? The musicians were drawing from their experience. They were not picking notes out of thin air. No, they dig the music out of rich soil. There is a difference. Paul Berliner is an ethnomusicologist. He wrote an 800-page treatise on how jazz is made. He discovered the musicians draw on what they already know about harmony, rhythm, musical form, the construction of melodies, and the tradition that precedes what they are playing.

Consider Philip in wilderness. Who is he? He is not one of the original Twelve. No, according to Acts, chapter 6, this is a second Philip. He is one of the first deacons in the church, one of the Greek-speaking Seven. That means he was a Jew who spoke Greek. According to the story, he was just up preaching in Samaria. Samaria! So he is accustomed to flexibility. Imagine that: a church person who is flexible!

When you step onto the frontier, you take your traditions with you. They have shaped you. They have formed who you are. You cannot help but carry that tradition.

Philip, the Jew, believed that Jesus was the Messiah. He heard the echo of Jesus saying, “Be my witness in Samaria,” so he went. And Jesus said, “Take my witness to the ends of the earth,” so now Philip is on a desert road, talking with an Ethiopian.

That leads to a second condition for improvisation: pay attention to where you are. Pay attention to the circumstances. Tune into what’s happening around you. Listen deeply, so when the moment comes, you can participate in the conversation.

Maybe the jazzers can show us what that looks like. Let’s take an F blues again, and I will ask one of you to create a phrase that the others respond to. (Musicians play again.) They have never played this before, yet drawing on their experiences, they create as they listen to one another.

The nature of this kind of music is dialogue. There is a conversation going on. Not speech-making, not posturing, not defending a well-oiled position – but dialogue. It’s a mutual conversation.

Philip runs up to the chariot. He hears the Ethiopian, who is wealthy enough to command a chariot, and this Ethiopian is reading from the prophet Isaiah. So he’s wealthy enough to possess to a set of Biblical scrolls, which were rare in that time. In an age of widespread illiteracy, this Eunuch also knows how to read. Philip pays attention to all of this, and says, “Do you know what you are reading?”

That’s a good question. Who can understand Isaiah? The Ethiopian doesn’t. He’s confused. Who can blame him? A lot of people get confused when they read the prophet Isaiah. There are no quotation marks in the original Hebrew text. Indentations happen in the wrong places. You can’t tell who’s speaking or what they are talking about. But the Ethiopian, reading from the Hebrew text, believes he has found some good stuff. He has a finger on a section where the prophet speaks of a servant who suffers, like “a lamb led to the slaughter, as one who has been denied justice.”

And he wants to know, “Who is the prophet talking about? Himself? Somebody else?” Perhaps even an Ethiopian eunuch? Philip, paying careful attention, says, “I know who that is,” and he tells him about Jesus. Jesus is the servant who suffers, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, he was denied justice, and by his wounds we are healed.

Please note: Philip does not pull that out of thin air. He has been shaped by the scripture. He has been shaped by the living tradition of Jesus. He does not throw a bunch of Bible verses like spaghetti on the wall, hoping something will stick. No, he reaches for the right word, the appropriate word, the living word. It’s the word that fits that particular conversation. Most of all, it is the word that opens up to the future.

This is the third assumption about improvisation. It is rooted in our experiences. It is specific to our circumstances. And we faithfully presume there will be a future. Jazz surges forward – it has a future. Did you notice? When the musicians played, they went on longer. They dug in a little bit more. Why? Because when you are engaged in a conversation together, things open up and surge forward.

That’s how it is in music. That’s how it is in faith. Beneath it all is one of the primary assumptions of everybody who improvises. Ready for this? Can you write this down? There must be more.

I had to explain this to my grandmother. She came to hear our band play. After the concert, she drew near to express her appreciation. Standing beside the piano, she picked up a single page of sheet music and asked, “How did you play from this for seven minutes?”

I replied, “Grandma, they ask the same question when I’m home in the pulpit. I read a few Bible verses and go on for eighteen more minutes.” There must be more.

Tradition is healthy; that’s where we come from. The present circumstances are what they are: that’s where we dwell. As we consider the future, there is one adjective greater than all others: pregnant. Even the Ethiopian eunuch who cannot father a child has a future. At least that’s what improvisation says. There must be more.

But look around, you say. We are in the desert. It appears to be a dead place. Nothing seems to be growing here. And I say unto you, “Look again.” Philip and the Ethiopian see a pool of water. In the desert. It’s not supposed to be there, but there it is. Where did it come from? Well, if you know the prophet Isaiah, you remember what he said, back in Scroll #35:

   For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
   The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. (35:6-7)

There’s the water. Previously hidden, but now available. The desert is not as desolate as we thought. There are resources around us that we did not expect. There are gifts we would never have discovered if we had not stepped forward and take the risk.

That, of course, is the fourth requirement of improvisation, perhaps the hardest to embrace. It is the fourth and greatest invitation of anybody who steps into an uncertain future with the skills of the tradition and a clear view of the circumstances: you have to take some risks. You have to try something that you have never tried before. You must bring everything you have, everything you know, to the opportunity in front of you – and you step with confidence even though you are uncertain.

So let me translate this into the language of the Ethiopian eunuch. Ready? “Philip, what is to prevent me from being baptized?” That’s a really good question. Consider what is at stake.

• Philip, if you play it safe, the only people you would welcome into the church would be Jews, not Ethiopians. If you baptize him, you’ll have some explaining to do back in Jerusalem.

• Philip, if you play it safe, you will not allow a eunuch into the church. After all, don’t you remember the 23rd chapter of Deuteronomy? It forbids eunuchs from stepping into the Jerusalem Temple. What do you mean that they are now welcome in the church? If we have heard Jesus say, “Go into all the world,” maybe the love of Jesus welcomes those whom Deuteronomy still pushes away.

These are legitimate questions. They are reasonable. But they are settlement questions, not frontier questions. Look at where we are: on a frontier road, with an Ethiopian who has the scroll of Isaiah opened to him, who hears a clear word about who Jesus is and what he has done for us, and there is a pool of water right there. What is to prevent him from being baptized?

Before you answer, let me tell you what I heard one night at the Deer Head Inn, the jazz club in Delaware Water Gap. I went up to the bar to greet Jim McNeely, a great pianist who once gave me lessons. He asked what I was doing now, so I told him. He smiled, nodded his head, and he said, “Improvisation is an act of faith.” There it is, the final truth.

Call it risk, call it faith, to improvise is to bring what you have to meet the moment that you’re in. Especially when the old certainties no longer work like they once did.

Now, I know this difficult. I don’t know about your church, but most of the churches I know can turn about as quickly as a barge on the Lehigh River. Ever see a barge turn on the Lehigh River? Yes, I know. But here we are now, once again, finding ourselves on the frontier.

So (1) we remember where we come from, and (2) we pay closer attention to where we are now. (3) We stay open to the possibility of a surprising future. Then (4) we step into that future, risking everything and trusting in the mercy of God.

For that is our safety net. Beneath everything we do for the glory of God, there is a safety net of grace under our feet. You can trust that. In fact, I hear it in the words that Philip said finally to the Ethiopian eunuch. These are not words actually written down in your Bible (that was an inadvertent omission), but I know for certain what Philip said.

Know what he said?

He looked the man straight in the eye and said, “If God has said yes, who am I to say no?”[1]


(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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[1] A line first heard from Fred B. Craddock, in his sermon, “Can I Also Be Included?”