Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
“The Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go
over and join the chariot.’ So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah
the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘How
can I unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to come up and sit with
him.”
Last week, I had a doctor’s
appointment in Austin. The doctor’s office is right across the street from the
new office of the Texas District of the LCMS. As I was standing in line to
check in, looking out the windows of the lobby, I could see through the front
windows of the District office and into the chapel and there, filling the south
wall of the chapel, was a massive stained glass window, floor-to-ceiling.
Impressive in size, it’s a brilliant display of bright colors. At the top,
center is a brass cross. Surrounding the brass cross is a dazzling cross in
yellow glass that fills the window, side-to-side, the top quadrants moving into
oranges and reds, and the bottom quadrants moving into greens, blues, and
purples. That morning, it was overcast – like it’s been here most of last week –
but even so, the brass and glass crosses were glowing with radiant light, practically
speaking for itself: “We preach Christ crucified.”
In front of me were two ladies and I quickly realized they were talking about that stained glass window, its brilliance, its brightness, its beauty. But, I wondered if they understood what the brilliance, brightness and beauty was conveying? Like so many people with crosses in their homes, was the window merely a piece of art to them, or did they see it as part of a Christian confession that Jesus is Lord? Were they secularists, noticing a feature of a building contrasting with the brick walls of the office, or were they Christians, seeing not just a window through a window, but the proclamation that that Christ is risen, risen indeed, and that Easter is a present-tense reality, that because He lives, we shall too live?
I have to admit, I was excited –
not because they noticed “our” District office building and window, but because
I was seeing an opportunity to speak, to use that window as an entrée into a
conversation about what the window, what the cross means.
That is what I want you to you think
of this morning: the wonder that our resurrected Lord uses human beings and
human conversation to share the Good News of Jesus.
There is much of the Divine that
is involved in Philip and the Eunuch – don’t get me wrong. The angel leads
Philip into the desert, there is a curious traveler, a handy scroll of Isaiah (that
the man had a personal copy of Isaiah shows that he is a serious worshipper,
well-connected, and wealthy to have such a luxury), the Spirit of God tells
Philip to run up to the chariot. This is no mere happenstance, a serendipitous meet-cute
of a Hellenistic Jew with an Ethopian. God is so intricately involved that even
the very passage of Scripture being read is used as an entrée for the
conversation to begin. But that is the point: that God is involved in putting
His people in places and at times where conversations in God’s Word can take
place.
The unnamed eunuch was from
Ethopia, part of the Roman world, foreign, exotic, interesting. There was a large,
healthy Jewish community in part of Ethopia, but how this man came to know
Yahweh is unknown. Physically, presumably, he was a man of black skin but, more
than that, he was a eunuch. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship, but his act of
worship, however sincere his faith may have been, was incomplete. As a
foreigner, as a man who was made unable to procreate, as a non-Jew, he was
banned from entering further into the Temple than the outer courtyard. He would
not be able to hear the prayers of the people, to offer sacrifice, to receive
the blessing of God upon his ears. In every sense of the word, the eunuch was
an outsider and no one or nothing could make him part of the people of God.
You can imagine his mixed emotions
journeying home. On the one hand, he was able to go to the Temple, and even
from the outer courtyard, he could worship, albeit in a limited aspect. Somehow
he acquired a scroll – something that his status and economic privilege allowed
him to get. He was reading aloud – that was actually a quite common practice
among people in the ancient world, even noted in Psalm one, “Upon your Law I
meditate, literally “murmur,” day and night.”
The passage he was reading was
from Isaiah 53, part of the Suffering Servant song that we visited during our
Lenten services this spring. And, much like modern readers of the ancient
prophet, he struggled with what Isaiah had written. Was this about Isaiah, or
was it about someone else? It is sometimes hard to tell.
That was the question he asked Philip
when Philip, led by the Spirit of God, ran up to and alongside the chariot. Philip
was one of the seven named earlier in Acts, not the same Philip who was one of
the Twelve chosen by Jesus. We know very little about him. He had a Greek name,
so we might assume that he was a Hellenistic (that is, Greek) Jew. That also
fits, because he was selected by the disciples to help with the distribution of
food to fellow Greek-speaking widows and orphans. (Among the other seven was
Stephen, whom we are probably more familiar with.)
You have heard me say many times
that there are certain narratives in the Bible where I was a fly on the wall.
This is one of those moments. Can you imagine the Bible study that took place
as Philip led the eunuch into the Scriptures? I wish a court reporter was
along, taking dictation of how Philip pointed the man to Jesus as the
fulfillment of the Law, the perfect Lamb of God for whom justice was denied so
that forgiveness of sins could be given to all who believe. Where did Philip
begin? Where did he end?
I have to wonder, especially, if
Philip made this wonderfully personal by rolling the scroll three chapters
later where Christ’s work is specifically applied to men, like his host: “Let
no foreigner who has bound himself to the Lord say, ‘the Lord will surely
exclude me from his people.’ And let no eunuch complain, ‘I am only a dry tree.’”
In Christ, even eunuchs are made whole in relationship with God. I can imagine
the eunuch’s eyes opening, his hand pointing to himself, begging Philip with an
unasked question, “IS this for me?” And, then I can imagine Philip nodding,
reading further, delivering Jesus to this man: “For this is what the Lord says: ‘To the
eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my
covenant — to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a
name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that
will not be cut off.’”
When you tell a story like that
of God’s people, with Jesus as the beating heart and center of all salvation
for all people, including people like him who had been both physically and spiritually
cut off, so that people realize Christ is for them and not against them, it is
no wonder that he wanted to share both in the death and resurrection of Jesus
with baptism.
It was an encounter of two people,
so seemingly different, that by rights, they had no business being together.
But, by the working of the Lord, God brought together two people, united in
conversation in the Word, and from that Word, shared and spoken, the seed of
faith blossomed into an incredible tree. The stranger now belongs to the people
of God and, from all historical accounts, goes on to share the story of Jesus
with his kinfolk in Ethiopia. The Christian church in that country has a long
history that they trace back to this very encounter.
I have to wonder – no where does
the text say this, so I am on slippery ground here – if when Philip returned to
Jerusalem some time later, he did so with the report, “You guys aren’t going to
believe what happened to me on the road down to Ethopia a few weeks ago. I met
this guy who was a eunuch…”
Like I said, I know there is much
in this story that is etherial and spiritual, but to me, the most amazing part
is that God uses Philip and human words and conversation, and God works through
that to spread the Good News of Jesus. That Good News isn’t just for for the
people of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, but also for people in Ethiopia and the
ends of the earth, including Austin.
I didn’t have the opportunity to
speak to those women last week. I was just getting ready to interrupt when they
were called to a check-in window and, a moment later, I was called to another
one. The Lord didn’t give me an opening to talk with them about that window,
the cross, or Jesus. I pray that they were Christian women, or if not, that the
cross inspired them to ask someone else “What’s with the cross?” And I pray that
the Lord keeps my ears open, and yours, too, that perhaps we might have a
Philip moment ourselves, with a neighbor who asks where you go every Sunday
morning, with a fellow shopper at the store who comments on the cross on your
purse, with a contractor who notices your Bible on the side-table in the living
room, with a fellow diner who hears you pray before eating, and when they ask “who
are you talking about,” you can say, “Can I sit down with you for a bit?” And, with
a deep breath of prayer for the Spirit’s guidance, you open your mouth, and beginning
with a Scripture, you tell him or her about the Good News of Jesus.
Amen.
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