A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation
the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
25th April 2021
Acts 8.26-39
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/philip-and-the-ethiopian-eunuch
I’ve been reflecting the this week, in the light of our passage for this morning, on the question of how discernment works? How do we know what God’s will for our lives actually is? Either at a meta level, or in the day to day minutiae of our minutes and hours.
One way of framing this is to as the question of whether it
is it realistic, or appropriate, for us to view God as the micro-manager of our
lives?
And certainly, one way of reading our story for this morning
from the book of Acts, of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, might tend us
towards seeing it this way.
Here we have Philip, one of the original deacons appointed
along with Stephen, seeming to be going from place to place entirely at the
whim and direction of the divine.
At first an angel tells him which road to take, and then the
Holy Spirit tells him who to speak to, and then at the end of the story he is
whisked away by divine intervention to go and, presumably, convert and baptise
someone else, somewhere else.
It reads like a kind of idealised life of itinerant
evangelism, following wherever the wind of the Spirit blows, somewhat irresponsibly
converting people at random, and baptising them in roadside puddles.
It’s enough to make those of us who live more settled, structured,
and dare I say responsible lives feel rather inadequate!
I’ve known plenty of Christians over the years who have
taken the view that each moment of our lives should be directed by God, and
that God has a plan for each moment, for each chance encounter, for each
conversation, each relationship.
A mundane trip to the shops becomes an exciting opportunity
for evangelism, and success is measured by the number of conversions achieved
on the way home!
And I guess my question in all this, is whether this reading
of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian Eunuch is actually doing justice to thee
story as Luke tells it in the book of Acts, and whether there might be a more
helpful, and less high-pressure-sales-technique, way of hearing this story?
So I wonder if a way into hearing this differently is to
start, not with Philip (although we’ll come back to him), but with the
Ethiopian Eunuch. There are a few things Luke tells us about him that it’s
important for us not to miss.
Firstly, he’s an Ethiopian, which means he’s probably got
black African skin colouring, as opposed to Philip and the other Jewish early
disciples who would have looked Middle-Eastern in appearance.
We can’t read our more contemporary experiences of racism
back into this story, as so much of what we encounter as racism against black
ethnicities owes its origins to the evils and legacy of the transatlantic slave
trade; but neither is his ethnicity irrelevant.
The book of Zephaniah (3.10) tells of Jews scattering to
Ethiopia in exile after the Babylonian conquest of Israel, some 600 years
before the time we are reading about this morning.
So it is quite likely that this man is both ethnically
Ethiopian and also Jewish; and a Jew with African skin in the first century would
have been unusual, but not unheard of. It would have marked him as a potential outsider
on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, someone who would have drawn attention; as Luke
demonstrates by drawing our attention
to it.
Secondly, he is a eunuch. Luke certainly doesn’t want us to miss
this detail, as he uses the word five times in this relatively short story. By
comparison, the only other time the word appears anywhere else in the New
Testament is in a saying of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (19.12).
Eunuchs are men who have been castrated before they reach puberty,
and as such they have distinctive physical characteristics. Their voice doesn’t
break, so they keep their high child’s voice into adulthood. Famously, this
aspect of being a eunuch led a continuation of the practice into comparatively
recent times, with young boys showing excellence in singing ability being
castrated to become Castrato, a male singing voice capable of singing in the female
vocal ranges. Castrato were created for both church and opera use, and the
practice wasn’t outlawed until, astonishing, the late nineteenth century,
meaning recordings exist of them performing.
But there are other physical changes that the practice
induces in eunuchs, including long limbs, short stature, and the inability to
grow a beard, something that would have been particularly noticeable in the
ancient world when bears were the norm, as opposed to today when so many men
remain clean shaven.
All this meant that, in addition to his skin colour, he had
further physical characteristics that marked him out as unusual, marginalised.
And, of course, there was one further result of being a
eunuch that I haven’t yet mentioned, which is that he would have been deemed ‘safe’
from a female perspective. There was no possibility of him fathering a child
with someone, which was why he was able to be a high ranking official within
the court of the Ethiopian queen.
Families looking to advance themselves financially and socially
would sometimes in antiquity volunteer one of their male children to become a
eunuch which, combined with an excellent education, could open the doors to some
of the highest offices in the land.
Interestingly, it wasn’t unheard of for eunuchs to marry and
adopt children, so a family could do very well out of this, and it certainly
seems as though this is the case with our Ethiopian eunuch on the road to
Jerusalem: he is part of the queen’s court, and in charge of her entire
treasury.
But as he made his journey to the Jerusalem Temple for
worship, he would have known that there was a further difficulty awaiting him.
The part of the temple where men worshipped would have been
off-limits to him, because in common with many ancient cultures, the Deuteronomic
purity laws forbade the entry of eunuchs into the worshipping assembly (Deut.
23.1).
He would have had to stay in the open temple court with the
gentiles and the women, rather than entering the heart of the temple complex
with the other men.
So here we have this complex person: He is both man, and not
man; he is both at the centre of society, and on the margins; he is wealthy and
powerful, but excluded and othered; he is devout and seeking God, but in a religious
culture that deems him unacceptable to God.
And here we come to my first challenge for us, this morning.
There are many people
in our world whose bodies tell complicated stories. From minority ethnicity, to
non-binary gender, to diverse sexuality, to the plain old patriarchal
oppression of women.
And yet God called Philip to go to the Ethiopian Eunuch, to
tell him that he is absolutely included in the story of God’s love, made known through
the life of Jesus, and to baptise him as a symbol and sign of his acceptance
and belonging.
So, this morning, who are you in this story?
Are you Philip, called to go, courageously and at personal
cost to your own power and privilege, to reach out to those whom others would exclude,
to proclaim the gospel of God’s absolute love in Christ Jesus?
Or are you the Ethiopian Eunuch, tired of being excluded,
longing to find embrace in the loving arms of God’s people? Longing for release
from the narratives of shame that write themselves onto your body and into your
soul?
I’m planning a baptismal service for later in the year, and if
you are finding this morning that the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch is
ringing true in your life, and if you’ve not been baptised yet, then maybe now
is the time to do so. Maybe this can be the next step in your journey of
discovering your absolute value to God, and your place in God’s people. As the
Eunuch said to Philip, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being
baptised?’ (8.36)
Anyway, let’s get back to our story.
Philip went over to the Ethiopian, and found him reading
from the servant song of Isaiah (53.7-8), where the prophet reflects on the
suffering of Israel in exile, using language that surely resonated with aspects
of the Ethiopian’s own experience of the world: afflicted, maimed, done-unto,
cut-off, stricken, humiliated, and denied justice.
And the Ethiopian sees himself reflected in Isaiah’s lament,
and asks Philip whether this ancient text from the time of the Jewish
Babylonian exile, might also have an application beyond its original historical
context?
Can this speak to him, as well as to Israel of old?
It’s also surely significant that just a few paragraphs
later in Isaiah’s song of the suffering servant, he offers a vision of a new
world, where those who are excluded in this world find acceptance and welcome
from God and in God’s people.
Isaiah 56 specifically names eunuchs, foreigners, and the
outcast of Israel as those whom God will gather joyfully to his holy mountain
and his house of prayer, which is of course a reference to the very temple that
the Ethiopian Eunuch could not currently enter.
Isaiah says, in 56.7, ‘My house shall be called a house of
prayer for all peoples.’ This Ethiopian Eunuch is longing to belong, longing to
find himself at home with God and God’s people.
And Philip opens the scripture to him: Yes, this ancient
passage spoke first to Israel’s suffering in exile in Babylon; and yes, it
speaks to the Eunuch’s personal situation; but it also speaks to the story of
Jesus, in whom God has drawn near to those who are far off, inviting all
peoples, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or social standing, to
take their place in the house of God.
Jesus was himself the victim of injustice, and through Jesus
God enters the lives of all those who are cut-off, restoring them to fullness of
life.
And then, after a quick roadside baptism, Philip is off
again.
This isn’t a story of careful long term pastoral care and
support, it is a story of a moment of encounter, transformation, and inclusion.
We don’t get to know the next step in the Ethiopian Eunuch’s
life, although later traditions claim that he returned to Ethiopia and founded
the Ethiopic church.
And we only know a little bit more about Philip, who crops
up again later in the book of Acts where he is described as Philip the
Evangelist, with four unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophecy (21.8-9).
But as we reflect on Philip, this impulsive itinerant evangelist, the challenge I hear, that I want to off for us as I conclude this morning, is not, ‘how can I be more irresponsible for Jesus?’; nor is it ‘how can I hear Jesus directing each moment of my day?’
But rather is, ‘can I, can we, like Philip, and like Paul (that other early Jewish convert to Christianity), grasp how wide and how long, and how high and how deep, is the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge?’ (Ephesians 3.18-19).
Can we embrace and extend a gospel for all peoples, where
all are valued, all are loved, and all are welcomed?
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