April 21, 2013Life Goes On
2. Water Relations
Preface to the Word
Last week I began a sermon series called “Life Goes On.” It’s based on the premise that God’s victory of life over death did not stop with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that the power of resurrection also caught the early disciples in its wake and turned their world (and consequently our world) upside down. Easter keeps happening. In Christ… life goes on.
So we are looking at some remarkable stories from a book in the New Testament called“The Acts of the Apostles,” the second book written by the same author of The Gospel According to Luke. In the Book of Acts we can see the dawning of Easter in the lives and experiences of those who formed the early Christian church. These pioneers of the faith are our spiritual ancestors who were led into new life by the Holy Spirit. In fact, it has been said that this book could just as well be called“The Acts of the Holy Spirit.”
This week’s story comes from the eighth chapter. To put it into context, I need to explain that the fledging Christian Church was growing, and the growth was causing problems of its own! Jews who lived in the Greek culture were called “Hellenists” and it appeared to them that their widows were getting shortchanged on the food distribution. They felt that the Hebrew widows were getting special treatment. The apostles realized that this was a management issue and that they simply couldn’t handle all the demands of the emerging community. So they told the people to select “seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom,” and these seven were appointed as special helpers known as deacons. It’s interesting that those who were selected had Greek names! Two of these deacons stand out and get a lot of press in Acts – Stephen (who ends up getting stoned to death) and Philip.
When Stephen is killed, the disciples scatter because a Pharisee named Saul made it his personal mission to wipe out this new sect of Jesus. Deacon Philip ends up in the land of Samaria and makes a lot of converts there. This is where our story from chapter 8 begins today. You’ll notice that the opening words are these: “Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip…”
Whenever angels appear in the Book of Act of Acts something important is about to happen; a move is about to be made… a move so big that an angel must be sent to take charge! Philipis in Samaria preaching the gospel with great effectiveness. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and told him to get up and go to the road that runs south from Jerusalem to Gaza.
Something important is about to happen. A move is about to be made… a move so big that an angel is sent to take charge. And what we are going to find out is that the move being made by God is a move toward an “outsider,”an African of uncertain origin and orientation. And like a soft echo in the background, we can hear Jesus’ words spoken in the first chapter of Acts, words that set the agenda for his fledgling church:
“...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (1:8).
By the end of this story there is a man, an “outsider,” a eunuch from Ethiopia, someone from “the end of the earth”getting baptized into the family of Christ!
Scripture Reading: Acts 8:26-40
SermonI.
- Obeying the Spirit, Philip finds himself walking along the desert road when a wagon passes him heading south. It's an impressive carriage with the royal seal of the Ethiopian government. In back, a well-dressed black man is reading aloudfrom the Book of Isaiah. Reading aloud was the common practice in ancient times and was especially necessary since words were strung together on a manuscript without spacing or punctuation.
- The man is a senior official in the court of the Candace, the reigning queen of Ethiopia. (By the way, Candace isn’t her name; it’s her title in the same way that “Pharaoh” was the title of the ruler of Egypt.) This senior official is the cabinet minister of finance, the state treasurer, and therefore an important man. Luke does not identify the eunuch as either a proselyte – a Gentile convert to Judaism, or a “God-fearer” – a Gentile adherent to the Jewish monotheism, ethic and piety. Luke presents him only as pious according to the Jewish faith. He had come to Jerusalem to worship, probably on a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to the Temple, and now he was on his way home again. The “Ethiopia” he was going to was what we call Sudan today, south of Egypt, and so the road from Jerusalem to Gaza was the road home.
- The other important thing to know about this Ethiopian is that he was aeunuch.I don’t know if there are any societies today that still do this, but it was a fairly common practice in ancient times. I researched the word “eunuch” on Wikipedia and I am going to take a few moments to share what I found because this is important to understanding this story from Acts…
A eunuch is a man who (by the common definition of the term) may have been castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences. Less commonly, in translations of ancient texts, "eunuch" may refer to a man who is not castrated but who is impotent, celibate, or otherwise not inclined to marry and procreate. Most eunuchs who are castrated before puberty are not sexual.
Castration was typically carried out on the soon-to-be eunuch without his consent in order that he might perform a specific social function; this was common in many societies. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 21st century BC. Over the millennia since, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures: courtiers or equivalent domestics, treble singers, religious specialists, government officials and guardians of women or harem servants.
Eunuchs would probably be servants or slaves who, because of their function, had been castrated, usually in order to make them reliable servants of a royal court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence. Seemingly lowly domestic functions—such as making the ruler's bed, bathing him, cutting his hair, carrying him in his litter, or even relaying messages—could in theory give a eunuch "the ruler's ear" and impart de facto power on the formally humble but trusted servant. Eunuchs supposedly did not generally have loyalties to the military, the aristocracy, nor to a family of their own (having neither offspring nor in-laws, at the very least), and were thus seen as more trustworthy and less interested in establishing a private 'dynasty'. Because their condition usually lowered their social status, they could also be easily replaced or killed without repercussion. In cultures that had both harems and eunuchs, eunuchs were sometimes used as harem servants.
- Now, an ordinary person like Philip wouldn't normally approach an official of such rank. It's just that as the carriage is rumbling by Philip overhears the stranger reading out loud the Greek translation of Isaiah 53:
“He was like a lamb led to the slaughter, like a sheep before its shearers is dumb. He didn't open his mouth. Justice was denied him. He has been cut off from the land of the living. Who is going to declare his posterity?”
Who is going to declare his posterity?
He will never have any posterity because he has been “cut off.”
He is without generation....
Who is this passage referring to?
- Philip asks the Ethiopian if he understands what he is reading and the eunuch confesses that he can't understand it unless someone helps him. As Philip climbs into the carriage, the eunuch's first question is; “Who is that?” Who is this passage referring to? Is the prophet talking about himself or somebody else?”
- Fred Craddock, in his reflection on this passage, asks, “Why is this man so interested in this obscure, though beautiful passage from Isaiah?” He then goes on to write:“I'll tell you why he is interested. He is a eunuch. The scripture says quite plainly, as plain as the nose on your face, in Deuteronomy 21, “The eunuch shall not have a place in the congregation of the family of God.”Period.
There shall be no place in God's family for a eunuch. Why? Because family was everything in those times. It was all family oriented. This eunuch will never have a family. This sexless person, by accident, or choice, or royal decree, will never have a family. All through Scripture children are praised as a reward of God, a sign of divine favor. But this eunuch will never have children, will never have a family, and therefore will have no place in the family of God. He can never enter the Temple and praise God with the rest of us who have been blessed by God with family. Family is the way everything got ordered and fixed. Your family gave you your identity and your name, your place in human society and God's society.
- So this eunuch is reading this passage from Isaiah. Who is this who is cut off, he wants to know; cut off from the land of the living, without posterity and therefore without a future? Who is this? Is this the prophet or is this someone else?
- You have to wonder if the eunuch and the deacon continued reading Isaiah for a couple more chapters. Did Philip have the chance to point out to the eunuch Isaiah’s words three chapters later in chapter 56?
“The days will come when the foreigner will no longer say:‘The Lord will separate me from his people.’ The days will come when the eunuch will no longer say, ‘I am just a dry stick.’ The days will come when the eunuch who loves me and my house and my covenant shall have a name written in my house and my covenant which shall be better than a thousand sons and daughters and will be remembered forever.” (Isa 56:3-5)
- This man had been up to the temple, up to Jerusalem foraging around in the Bible trying to find his own name. He has been up to Jerusalem, but they won't let him in. The Bible says clearly, “Don't let him in.”
Fred Craddock, in a helpful way, asks, “Why would anybody go to church and be made to stand outside; keep going to worship where you are not welcome; stand, all during the service, peering in, trying to get a hint of the music, hoping to hear just a snippet of the prayers? Standing on the outside, excluded, asking people in the crowds as they depart, “Was the sermon good today? What did the preacher say? What was the anthem by the choir?”
Have you ever been to church or been listening to Scripture, and had to stand outside?
- Talking to a stranger in the back of a carriage on a wilderness road, the Ethiopian eunuch has at last found a place in the Bible that offers hope. He reads of a “silent one” led to the slaughter. Justice was denied him. He had been cut off from the land of the living.
“Who is this?” he asks Philip.
And once again, like the story Luke told at the end of his Gospel about the eyes of the disciples being opened on the road to Emmaus, Philip tells the eunuch about Jesus of Nazareth. He was cut off. He had no family, no issue, and yet... he created the largest family in the world.
- Whenever angels appear in the Book of Acts something important is about to happen; a move is about to be made… a move so big that an angel must be sent to take charge. Here, a foreigner and a eunuch is about to become, by God's grace, a member of the family of God!
- In the church's ancient rituals for baptism there was a point in the service where the one being baptized was “christened.” (Some people still refer to baptism as christening). In christening a person was given their “Christian name” as sign that a new identity was being given through baptism, as sign of entrance into the family of Christ.
Touched by the good news, the eunuch wanted to become a part of Christ's family. He hungered for that identity. He wanted the name “Christian.” He saw some water –water in the desert – and so used to being treated as an outsider, so used to being left out, so used to being cut off, he wonders out loud, “Is there anything to prevent me from being baptized?”
And right there, in the desert, a white man and a black man, a Jew and an Ethiopian, Philip baptized the eunuch and they become brothers in Jesus Christ, relatives through water and the Spirit.
- What's interesting is that when the baptism is accomplished, while they are still in the water, the Spirit snatches Philip away and places him on the way to Caesarea, where he continues his preaching to all who would hear. It appears that the new convert doesn't even look around for his teacher. Instead, he simply goes on his way with a heart filled with joy!
We don't know what happens to him, but we do know that the Spirit is planted in his heart and we can assume that the seed grows into a harvest in his home in far away Ethiopia. Like the rippled rings that move out from where a pebble is dropped in the water, so the gospel of Jesus Christ moved out from Jerusalem, through Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, creating a family through water and the Spirit and filling hearts with joy.
Eventually, it even reached Roseburg, Oregon. Who would have figured?