Difference between revisions of "Sermon for April 19th, 2020"

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Acts 8:26-40

26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27 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 28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32 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. 33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.”

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36 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?” 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip[i] baptized him. 39 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. 40 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.

Jesus on the Road to Gaza

We're right in the middle of a three-part sermon series about encounters with Jesus on the road. Having just listened to the scripture passage, you might be thinking, wait a minute--Jesus isn't even in this story! It's about the encounter between Philip (a leader in the early church), and an Ethiopian eunuch. How is this an encounter with Jesus? In each of the three stories we're considering, the characters in question encounter Jesus in a different form. In last week's story, two disciples walk, talk, and share a meal with a very "embodied" Jesus on the road to Emmaus. In next week's story, Jesus appears in a vision from the heavens to the Apostle Paul. But in this week's story, it's a little more subtle: Jesus, who is described by the Bible as the "Word of God made flesh" appears in written form, through the ancient scriptures of Isaiah, and also in spoken or shared form through the words of Philip.

My friend, Helen Edwards, who is also one of our church leaders, has shared the story of how one day, as a young girl, Jesus appeared to her in visible form a forest path in her native Switzerland. My mother has often shared stories of God speaking to her in a dream or a vision. I've never been fortunate enough to have had an encounter like either of those, but I can count many times when I have felt the real and tangible presence of Christ when studying the Bible, or in conversation with another person. I think it's good to remember (and see in the scriptures) that all of these are legitimate, life transforming ways that we can encounter Jesus on our own roads, on our own spiritual journeys. I think it's also good to remember that sometimes we are called to actually BE the representation of God's word in the life of another person, often even a complete stranger.

That stranger, in today's story is the Ethiopian eunuch. What do we know about him? Well, just from verses 27 and 28 alone, quite a bit. First, he's an Ethiopian. In the Bible, that's not so much a nationality as it is a broad term to refer to any of the dark-skinned people who lived south of Egypt. In the Jewish and Greek-speaking world, he is a minority. Second, in his home country, he's a pretty big deal. He's a high-ranking official in the court of the Ethiopian queen. He travels by chariot, AND he has in his possession a scroll from the book of Isaiah, two valuable things that would only be available to a person of considerable wealth and power. Third, he's a eunuch. In the ancient world (and more recently, in Game of Thrones) a eunuch is someone who lacks reproductive genitalia. This can happen in a number of different ways, as Jesus mentions to his disciples in Matthew 19, when he says that "there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." Several ancient texts outside the Bible refer to "men, women, and eunuchs," using the term as a catch-all for individuals who didn't fit neatly into the primary gender boxes of the day.

The Ethiopian eunuch in our story today is referred to five times simply as "the eunuch" and never by name. Clearly, the writer of Acts wants to emphasize that aspect of his story, and for good reason.