Between Text and Sermon: Acts 8:26–40

“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36). This question from the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–40 proclaims a subversive vision of the possibilities of baptism and faith that reverberates today amidst our ecclesial and social realities of intense anti-LGBTQ+ hate and backlash in the USA and beyond. This reflection engages the ambiguities of the water and social locations of the Ethiopian eunuch in this passage, reflecting on how this story might lead us to expansive awareness of the “holy water” and “holy people” who surround us today as we go about our lives and worship. I will do so relying on biblical scholar Sean Burke’s queer reading of Acts 8:26–40 as “drag show,” in three sections: roadside water, “drag show,” and holy baptism.

Roadside Water

The nature of the water in Acts 8:26–40 is ambiguous. There is not much data regarding the water within the one exclamatory sentence, “Look here is water!” (v. 36). The water has been unexamined in biblical commentaries, which have focused on the two characters in the story and theological issues of conversion, faith, and baptism. We do not know the water’s specific location, name, depth, flow rate, surface area, source, or quality. However, we do know that this water was visible, that it was in the desert, and that it was proximate to the road (v. 26), i.e., roadside water. ¹ As a rare, life-giving desert commodity, it is highly likely that the water was used frequently—perhaps even excessively— by humans, beasts of burden, and wild creatures to drink, and bathe. Lower class or impoverished human travelers who could only afford to travel on foot would have depended on it. ² In addition to frequency of use and potential crowding, the water would have been contaminated by roadside runoff—excrement from beasts of burden as well as human waste, runoff from the road, from the minerals and goods that were carried along the road, and by particles from worn wheels, horseshoes, or other articles of conveyance.

This water was readily accessible in a highly arid desert region, alongside a roadway that undoubtedly was important for commerce and political administration—if not exertion of military force (v. 26). From an ecological perspective, whether this water was an intermittent or seasonal spring, a seep, or a temporary pooling of water, it had a direct impact on the creaturely life around it. As Water Protectors today remind us, “Water is life!” ³ This would be an especially critical reality in a desert.

A “Drag Show”

It is also crucial to reflect on the Ethiopian eunuch—a queer body—within this story. Biblical scholar Sean Burke’s queer reading of the Ethiopian eunuch is especially insightful. Burke encapsulates the disruptive and queering dimensions of this passage, framing it as a “drag show.” He writes, “What makes this drag show subversive is that the answers are ambiguous. The Ethiopian eunuch’s performance reveals that sex, gender, and sexuality (along with other identities) are unstable, contingent social constructions rather than stable, natural essences, thus undermining their use as a basis for exclusion.” ⁴ Burke demonstrates how the ambiguities of this text were rhetorically intended to disrupt the expectations or perceptions of those who received it. ⁵ Burke writes:

Here is the crisis in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. The audience knows that there are many reasons to prevent the eunuch from being baptized. He threatens masculinity itself. In the language of the Jewish discourses, he transgresses the divinely sanctioned boundary between the categories of male and female. His testicles have been crushed or removed. He may be either the subject or the object of gender-deviant sexual activity. It is not possible to determine his religious identity. Indeed, all the ambiguities in the eunuch’s identifications provide reasons to prevent him from being baptized. ⁶

While a preacher may be limited in how deeply they can delve into the creation and reception of this biblical text within a sermon, there are insights from Burke’s work that could be included. The eunuch is intended within the biblical text to be a prophetic and disruptive figure. The eunuch’s question— “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (8:36) —was intended to invite reflection upon the social realities that restrict baptism. The entire passage was intended to function in the life of the reader or listener to invite them into disruption of the hierarchies of identity, binaries, and systems of power that dehumanized and marginalized the eunuch’s body.

Holy Baptism

The more I reflect on this passage, the more fitting it seems that the disruptive, prophetic “drag show” of Acts 8:26–40 utilized roadside water in a holy ritual. This water in this story is highly ambiguous, and it can be interpreted within our contemporary context as heightening the subversiveness of the “drag show,” functioning to tease out biases, norms, or boundaries that have been imposed on the ritual and ritual elements of holy baptism and the holy people who celebrate it. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch invites us to “revue” baptism in view of the roadside water and their queer body. This story has the disruptive potential to reveal expansive horizons of meaning and possibility.

The most crucial and obvious dimension is related to who is allowed to be baptized, and who is allowed to baptize others. Many Christian churches around the world are excluding LGBTQ+ persons and have proven to be harmful places for them. I hear the Ethiopian eunuch in this text, with their sexual, gender, racial, and class ambiguity at the fore saying, “Yes! And why can’t I be baptized?!” The simple answer within the text is that there is no reason why not. In addition to the eunuch’s question, I ask, “Why can’t I baptize others?” Here I am referring to the still too frequently controversial issue of LGBTQ+ ordination. While we do not know if the eunuch eventually baptized other persons, we do know that early Christian tradition tells us that the eunuch became an influential preacher in the shaping of Ethiopian Christianity. ⁷

This story also has the potential to disrupt our notions of water and baptism. This passage records baptism in ambiguous water. The baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch may have taken place in a roadside pool, jostling with animals and fellow travelers amidst the tangible markers of frequent human and animal use. This egalitarian liquid setting seems fitting with the context of Burke’s “drag show.” There is an expansive, accessible, public, and perhaps even egalitarian dimension to baptism in this context. Here the holy ritual is not set apart, taking place within the confines of a liturgy, a dignified public place, or a private household. It is in the desert. Beside a road. Amidst fellow travelers. In water that few might think of as holy, but upon which all relied for life. Even this unexpected water is life, and it is holy!

In the anticipated Easter season of resurrection joy and hope and amidst ecclesial and social realities of schism, harm, and backlash toward LGBTQ+ persons, this passage offers an opportunity to expand our awareness that all water is holy, and all people are holy.