April 28, 2024, What Is to Prevent It? Acts 8:26-40 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ April 28, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

Today we get to read our story. St. Philip doesn’t get a lot of air time in the Bible, But he does get a starring role in one of the most interesting and colorful stories in the whole book of Acts, which is full of interesting and colorful stories. Philip is one of the first deacons, appointed to care for the needs of the widows, who were some of the poorest and most helpless people in that time and place. We can assume that the Deacons took good care of the widows, but God seems to have had even more in mind for these first men ordained in the church. One of the Deacons, Stephen, was a powerful preacher, and became the first Christian martyr, stoned to death for proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. But God sent Philip out to spread the good news far and wide.

First, it’s impossible not to take note that this story happens on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza, which is a place of unspeakable suffering and violence in our time. As we think about this story, which is a story of good news, we should keep in mind the suffering of the people of Gaza and their great need for comfort and for mercy, for healing and for peace. Please pray with me: O God, we remember this day all those who find themselves thrust into war, especially the innocent: children, women, the elderly and sick; We pray for light in the darkness, and hope amid despair. We pray for an end to retaliation and hatred. Let there be peace. And let it begin with us. Amen.

Way back in the earliest days of the Church, God spoke to his new Deacon, Philip, and told him to get on the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza and head south. And as Philip traveled, he saw a chariot, also heading south, and God told him to go catch up with it and strike up a conversation. And Philip did just what God told him to do. He ran up to the chariot. And in the chariot was a person, strange in appearance to Philip’s eyes. He was reading aloud to himself from a scroll. And Philip recognized the words; that they were from the writings of the prophet Isaiah.

But first we need to know a little bit about the person in the chariot. Luke tells us that he was an Ethiopian eunuch, who held a high position in the court of the Candace, who was the queen. First of all, it’s helpful to know that the word that is translated “Ethiopian” here doesn’t refer to the nation of Ethiopia that we know. It means literally “burnt face” and the Greeks used it broadly to refer to all people with dark skin. The kingdom the eunuch lived in was actually called Kush, and its capital city was Meroe. Kush was located directly south of Egypt, along the Nile River, where the nation of Sudan is now. The Candace was a title, not the name “Candace,” and it means she was the queen mother, because royalty in Kush was matrilineal, the royal line passed down from the mother, not the father.

The eunuch would have been strange among the people of Jerusalem, first of all because he was darker-skinned than the Jews of Israel and the surrounding area, but even more, he was strange, both in Jerusalem and at home, because he was a eunuch. It is likely that he was a slave, castrated as a little child, for the purpose of serving the queen. He would have had no say in the matter. Eunuchs were often thought to be more trustworthy than men as servants, because they were less of a threat. The body of a eunuch didn’t produce testosterone, so their voices never changed; as an adult the eunuch’s voice would have still sounded like a boy’s voice. He wouldn’t have grown any facial hair. His muscles wouldn’t have developed like a man’s. His body would always be softer, his bones weaker, and more fragile. He might have been less energetic than a man. He was probably more prone to depression.

But the truly remarkable thing about this eunuch was that he worshiped the God of Israel. There were missionaries among the Jews in those days, and the eunuch had somehow heard of the Hebrew God, and come to believe in him. And, he had high enough standing as the queen’s treasurer that he was allowed to make the long trip from Meroe to Jerusalem to worship.

But as a eunuch he wouldn’t have been allowed to worship in the Temple itself. He would have had to stand in the Court of the Gentiles outside the Temple with the others who weren’t considered worthy to enter, in accordance with the Law of Moses. The Law commanded that “none of your offspring who has a blemish may approach to offer the bread of his God.” A eunuch, whether it was because of some birth defect, or by the deliberate hand of man, was imperfect, was blemished, and couldn’t worship in the Temple, just as an animal with any kind of defect could not be offered in sacrifice. It was a sign, a symbol of the perfection that belongs to God, and the perfection God asked of his people. The eunuch was banned from entering the Temple, and yet, he made the long journey to Jerusalem to worship God.

And as he rode along on his way home from Jerusalem, he was pondering these words from Isaiah:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”

Luke doesn’t tell us why that particular passage had captured his attention. But it may have been that he could identify with the one who was being described, someone whose life had been circumscribed by his status, knowing the humiliation always of being different, of being less than free men. The eunuch knew what it was to be denied justice. No matter how much power and wealth and authority were in his hands, he would always be isolated from other people – never able to enter the Temple of the God he loved, never able to know the love of a family, never treated as fully human.

And as he pondered, Philip appeared, running alongside the chariot. And the eunuch invited Philip to come up and sit beside him, so he could explain who it was that the prophet was writing about. It is one of the frustrating things about the Bible, I think, that we so often hear only one side of a conversation. Here we don’t get to hear anything that Philip has to say, except that Luke tells us, “starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.”

It’s like the scene where Jesus is talking to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus begins at the beginning and explains how it all worked together to lead up to that very moment, when they were face to face with him late in the afternoon on that first Easter Day. It seems that you can start anywhere in God’s word and it always leads to the good news about Jesus. I believe that is true. And here the message that Philip brought was like cool water to a person who had been wandering in the desert, desperately and hopelessly thirsty, for as long as he could remember. And God, in his grace and kindness, saw to it that just at that moment, they came upon some water, flowing in the midst of that wilderness.

And here a funny thing happens in the Bible. If you were to look at this passage in most Bibles, you’d see that right after verse 36 you have verse 38. You might wonder what happened to verse 37. Good question. Because what happened is that later theologians felt a little uncomfortable with the story. Philip opens the Scripture to the eunuch; he suddenly sees the grace of God, open even to somebody like himself, strange and imperfect as he was. He is filled with overwhelming joy. And he says to Philip: “Look! There is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” And the answer, of course, is “Nothing!” There was nothing to prevent it: not his mutilated body, not his skin or his nationality or his lack of acceptance into the Temple. There was the good news. There was water. And there was nothing at all to prevent him from being baptized.

But, of course, in some later manuscript, somewhere down the line, some careful cleric slipped in verse 37, which answers the eunuch’s question, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” Verse 37, which you might find in your footnotes, goes like this: “And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” And then there is verse 38, and he is baptized, and that is all ok, because clearly the eunuch had come to believe in Jesus Christ with all his heart. But the reason it is an unfortunate addition (which is also the very reason that it was added) is that it insists that, though the good news of God’s grace had certainly come to this eunuch, yet there must be something required of him, some formula of faith at the very least. It couldn’t be that easy. It couldn’t be that free.

But verse 37 is not part of the original story, which goes happily from verse 36 to verse 38, where the eunuch ran to the water in great excitement, his joy as childlike as his eunuch’s voice. He understood that the one and only perfect, unblemished sacrifice had been offered up on his behalf – just like the one, perfect, unblemished sacrifice has been offered up on our behalf. Because we are all of us just as imperfect as the eunuch; each and every one of us has been damaged in some way. None of us is worthy, in and of ourselves, to enter into the perfect courts of God – until we hear the good news of God in Jesus Christ, who came in the great love of the Father to make us worthy. God sent Philip to bring that good news to his beloved child, who once was only a eunuch in the queen’s court. He ran freely into the arms of Jesus Christ, and there was nothing to prevent it. +