Wasted

 

Daily Office Reading 7-1-2021 (Year One)

 

Acts 8:26-40

²⁶ An angel of Adonai said to Philip, “Get up, and go southward on the road that goes down from Yerushalayim to ‘Azah, the desert road.” 

 

Emergent phrase: “a desert place” (Mounce)

 

“This            is            a desert place.”  (Mounce) (ESV)

(houtos)    (eimi)         (erēmos)

 

“This is a desert road” (RSV)

“which is desert.” (KJV)

“which is waste.” (GNV)

 

I’m just about convinced that I need to learn to read Biblical Greek!

(I’m also nearly certain that it’s necessary for me to explain, as much as is possible, my “method” of doing Lectio Divina, but that will have to be in a separate post.)

The word “erēmos” means lone; bereft; waste; empty; uninhabited.

Besides the weird bit about Philip being “snatched away” by the Spirit (which I decided not to get into) the only other thing that struck me was the distinct emphasis on the “desert road.” The Greek doesn’t say “road” in the second instance, though, it just says ‘erēmos’. While I was looking it up, I suddenly realized that the meaning of the word “desert” has changed a lot from what it used to mean. Now, with our modern education about biospheres and ecosystems, we think of a desert as “any large, extremely dry area of land with sparse vegetation.” But that’s not what the Greek word means. They defined a desert in terms of people. An erēmos was an abandoned, lonely place; a deserted place. It was not a nice place; it was a place that made people feel uneasy and anxious. Most often, it’s translated as “the wilderness.”

‘Erēmos’ is also the root of the English words ‘eremite’ and ‘eremitical’ which refer to hermits and hermit-like inclinations. “Ermit” is equivalent to “Hermit”— with a bit of an accent.

I’m officially a hermit; appointed by my Abbot and Abbess to keep a hermitage of the Lindisfarne Community. My hermitage is called The Waystead, and it’s noteworthy that people often think that I’m saying “Wasted.” I don’t think that’s entirely a coincidence, either.

There’s also a Zen trope— “Zen is useless.”  So here I am, wasting time in the wasteland.

The Lectio Divina aspect of all this emerges from the story itself:

An angel— yup, a real honest-to-goodness angel— went out of the way to speak to Philip to tell him to get up and hit the road— the scary, lonely road— and head south. The angel didn’t tell him why. Along this deserted, uncanny road Philip found an important person just sitting there in a fancy carriage, reading from a book that they didn’t understand. This person was so important that the chronicler felt it necessary to give all the details: this was the Queen of Ethiopia’s money man, and he’s reading the book of the prophet Isaiah.  Wow! Then the breath of God tickled Philip’s ear and said, “Go over there and get right next to that carriage!” and Philip ran over there. The text specifically says, “ran” and I wondered why. I figured  it was probably to make sure that he got past the security detail. I doubt very much if this royal official drove his own carriage, or had just sashayed off into the hinterland all by himself without anybody to watch his back. So, Philip bounces past the bodyguards and gets close enough to hear the banker mouthing the words of Isaiah out loud from a book. Philip asks him, “Do you have any idea what you are reading?” (Now, here’s another thing. I wasn’t able to confirm this, but I think it’s a pretty good guess that copies of the Tanakh weren’t likely to be carried around like summer reading by just anybody. I suspect the copy the eunuch was reading from had cost him a pretty penny.) The eunuch says, “How can I understand it unless somebody teaches me?” and he invites Philip to climb up and sit with him. Here’s where we find out the details:

“Now the portion of the Tanakh that he was reading was this:”

“He was like a sheep led to be slaughtered;
like a lamb silent before the shearer, he does not open his mouth.
He was humiliated and denied justice.
Who will tell about his descendants,
since his life has been taken from the earth?”

I don’t know if there’s any special or significant meaning to individual particulars of the story, but what I do know is that once I’ve read the story several times, a phrase will usually ‘emerge’ for me. This ‘emergent phrase’ becomes the axle for the wheel of my contemplation.

Other commentaries focused on the characters. My hunch told me to focus on the place.

Meetings in the wasteland are always crucial. It depends on how remote and deserted a place is; how eerily the wind slides over your skin; how the dust devils and the heat haze get behind your eyes; how the rippling mirage on the horizon slides into your gut— the more lonesome and eerie it is, the more fateful any meeting becomes.

 

Out in the hinterland, every detail is crucial.

 

Take nothing for granted.

Peer under things.

Squint past the glare.

 

Every patch of shade is a resting-place.

Every gully carries a risk of sudden flood.

Every switchback heading into the hills is another turn of fortune.

 

Small sounds in the enormous silence,

Subtle movement in the corner of your eye,

Distant landmarks wavering in the burning air—

 

None of them point to anything in particular.

 

When you are alone, they mean something.

Will they mean anything to a chance met stranger?

 

Not unless you both go on alone.