OK, it’s time
for another confession. I am a History
channel geek. While I was working on my
thesis I watched a whole series of shows about people who were alone and
afraid. It must be true that misery
loves company. Yep, they had a whole
week featuring people who felt abandoned and forgotten. One show was about Sir Wilfred Grenfell who
was a medical missionary along the frozen
Grenfell remained calm, but realistic. But late the next morning, though he had
lost his glasses in the initial plunge and was somewhat blind from the glare of
the sun on ice and water, he thought he spied the glint of an oar in the
distance. Indeed, five men in a boat were risking their lives in the dangerous
icy waters to rescue him. It was, to say
the least, an unlikely rescue. However, a fisherman had noticed something
strange far out to sea, and took the news to the one man on that stretch of the
coast who had a rusty old telescope. This man searched the expanse for hours,
and at last spied the lost missionary drifting on his ice floe. He alerted the
people in a nearby village, who set lookout posts and began to mount a rescue.
Grenfell had thought himself lost forever …without a trace … when
all the while there were many eyes watching from the shore.
What our reading from the Book of Acts offers us today is the word that when we
feel alone and lost, the eyes of God are still upon us. And God sends to us the
opportunity of rescue. And one way God rescues us is with the opportunity to
rescue others. The author of Acts gives us a scene with two characters out on a
desert road. Who is saved and who is lost here? And who are we supposed to
identify with in this story? It might not be as clear as you think.
An Ethiopian eunuch parks his chariot at a rest stop. He is on his way home
after going up to
You see, God's law says in Deuteronomy 23:1 that no eunuch may ever be a part
of the Divine assembly. So he is out. He can never be in. The Bible tells us
so! That's a hard word, "never." It is so final, so absolute. He
cannot change who he is. And he cannot change God's law. Who can? Not you or
me, oh no. Only God can change God's law. And that's exactly what God does.
Why does the eunuch read the Isaiah scroll? Perhaps because of the prophecy of
Isaiah 56:3-7:
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, "The Lord will
surely separate me from his people"; and do not let the eunuch say,
"I am just a dry tree." For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who
keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please
me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a
monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an
everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join
themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and
to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do
not profane it, and hold fast my covenant-- these I will bring to my holy
mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and
their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a
house of prayer for all peoples.
An amazing passage, and it was written in a time of exile when the
prophet lived with his people among the very foreigners who had destroyed their
The other character in this story, Philip, is a leader of the early Christian
community. He has already been led by
God to do some risky things. He has been forced to leave
Philip goes out to the place where he is led and finds the eunuch reading the
Isaiah scroll, a text about someone who suffers for the sake of others.
"Do you understand what you are reading?" he asks. It’s a
really good question, and one we should ask of ourselves. Can we ever claim to
always fully understand the scripture? This
very story shows us why we can never dare to think we understand the
Bible so well that we would exclude any people from their place among God's
people. The eunuch replies: "How can I understand unless someone explains
it to me?" So Philip tells the eunuch about Jesus, the Messiah, and what
God has done through him.
Then comes the critical moment, and the eunuch has a question of his own.
"Look, here is some water. What is to prevent me from being
baptized?" Isn't that a great question? I mean, usually, what prevents
people from being baptized is their own fear or embarrassment or doubt…
their fear of being wrong … embarrassment about the public declaration of
faith they might not live up to … and doubt, not only about God, but
about themselves. Can they live up to such a high calling as being a Christian?
Well, the answer is no, of course. But they can claim
the grace. They can begin the journey and trust its good end to God's hands. We
don’t follow Jesus because we understand everything and already have a
perfect faith. Like the disciples of old, we follow Jesus in order to
understand. Faith and understanding grow with the journey.
Clearly in this case, though, the eunuch wants to be baptized. He's not the one
preventing his baptism. He yearns to be part of the new people of God. But can
he be? After all, Philip is a Jew who believes in Jesus, but he is a Jew and
God's law says the eunuch is out. We don't want, God doesn't want, any of his
kind in the congregation.
And so it goes, many people are prevented from being baptized, not because they
won't, but because the church won't have them. Now I could tell you some sad
stories about other churches and criticize them for excluding Christ's beloved
from their community. But I'm not preaching to them. I'm preaching to you. Whom
do we exclude? What state of being do we reject in God's name? What about those
who have ideas different from our own? What prevents us from telling certain
people the good news so they can be baptized into the grace and love of God?
Well Philip baptizes the eunuch. It sets a dangerous precedent. It changes the
law of God about who's in and who's out. The tiniest hole in the dike is opened
and in the very next chapter the dam breaks loose so that even a gentile, even
a Roman, even a Roman soldier is included in the community of the beloved. It's
scandalous and it’s God's doing…it’s
God’s will.
The eunuch is rescued in this story from his isolation, from his exclusion. But
Philip and the church are rescued, too, from their narrowness, from their
self-righteous judgments, from their misunderstanding of grace. The church was
awfully so close to being just a new version of the scribes and Pharisees'
religion who appointed themselves the gatekeepers of grace deciding who's in
and who's out. And sadly, a lot of the church has become just exactly that, to
the point that I want to ask them Philip's question about the Bible: Do you
understand what you are reading? Grace has no gatekeepers because grace has no
gates. The only rule about grace is, do you accept it or don't you?
We are the eunuch in this story because there is something about every one of
us which would exclude us if it weren't for the radical, scandalous grace of
God. And we are Philip in this story
because we have been included in that limitless grace, and to be included is to
be called to share this grace with others, to forgive as we have been forgiven,
to love as we have been loved, to include as we have been included. Like
Philip, we are called to become encouragers of faith, to nurture and bless the
spirit of everyone - the Spirit in everyone - we meet.
This is our mission and the old word for it is "evangelism," which
means simply, sharing the good news. Don't let this word scare you. It is not
the call to judge everyone and tell them they're going to hell unless they
believe what you believe. It is not the call to be arrogant, intrusive,
manipulative, or self-important or to target certain groups for religious
extinction through spiritual imperialism. Rather it is the call to grow in our
faith by sharing our faith in word and deed, to invite people and leave them
the choice, but to include them in the grace of Christ by including them in our
own good graces. Philip learned as much as the eunuch in this encounter. He
would have been less - the church would have been less - if this meeting had not
taken place and Philip had not shared the blessing he had received from God.
My friends, here is the Bible in a nutshell: when we think we are alone, we are
not. The eye of God beholds us. When we think we are lost, we are not. God
reaches out to rescue us. God did this by sending someone named Jesus, does
this still by sending someone in Jesus' name. And we are saved by grace, by
receiving it, and by sharing it, by being the someone
God sends to bless another life. You have been blessed. You are called to
bless.
May we pray?
Thank you for including each of us among your children and in your family,
dear God. Thank you for the people you have sent into our lives to bless us
with your love and offer us the invitation to be part of the ministry of blessing
in the world. So show us how to bless. We already know whom you wish us to
bless - everybody, everybody, in Jesus' name. Amen.
Mary Anne Biggs, Pastor
Nekoosa United
Nekoosa