Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

A sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation

the online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

25^th April 2021

Rembrandt, The Baptism of the Eunuch, c. 1626.

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?