P a g e 1 Pastor Kevin Clark July 5 & 6, 2014 1 st Lutheran Church, Manhattan KS Scripture: Acts 8:26-40 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.) 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 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 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. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 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?" He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 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. 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.
P a g e 2 Sermon: Today s lesson is about a church volunteer who gets way more than he bargained for when he signs up to help with the congregation s food ministry! Often in today s church, we are tempted to think that the real ministry, the important ministry belongs to the Pastor, and the rest of us are more like worker bees, who set up chairs and tables, and prepare food. But you are much more than a worker bee! Everything you do in service to God and neighbor, whether here in the church, or outside in the world, is real ministry, important ministry! And what s more, God does not so clearly distinguish between the ministry of the Pastor and everyone else, as we see in today s reading. In the early church in today s lesson, the twelve apostles functioned much like pastors in today s church. They devoted themselves to prayer and serving the word, which most likely means both studying the scriptures, and the publicly proclaiming the good news about Jesus. Philip, whom we read about today, was not one of the twelve apostles. He was a member of the Jerusalem church, who like Stephen, had been chosen to organize the congregation s feeding program but through the Holy Spirit, he gets way more than he bargained for! I truly doubt that if you had asked Philip when he was chosen to help with the daily distribution of food, that he would have had the faintest idea that he would end up in the middle of nowhere on a wilderness road jogging along next to a chariot listening to an Ethiopian eunuch reading aloud from the Jewish scriptures, let alone that he would end up baptizing the man a short time later and then being snatched away by the Holy Spirit to find himself in an entirely new location! And how was it that Philip went from serving on the food ministry team in Jerusalem to baptizing foreign officials in wilderness ponds? Those of you who were here last week heard how Philip and Stephen, and five other men were chosen by the church in Jerusalem to head up the congregation s feeding ministry. After the members of the food ministry team were chosen, the apostles prayed for them and laid their hands on them as sort of a commissioning service. Shortly afterwards, Stephen, as last week s scripture reading says, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. Some men from the Synagogue of the Freedmen tried to argue against him, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit
P a g e 3 with which he spoke. So they had Stephen arrested and brought before the council. And all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like that of an angel. Well, that was a nice ending to last week s Bible reading. But what we did not read, and what took place in the chapter-and-a-half between last week s reading and today s reading, is this. At Stephen s trial, he gave an amazing sermon describing God s saving work in Israel, starting with Abraham and ending with Jesus. But at the conclusion of his sermon, Stephen accused the Jewish council of being betrayers of God and murderers of the Messiah! When they heard this, they drug Stephen out of the city and executed him by stoning him to death. And this event, triggered such a severe persecution of the early Christian church in Jerusalem, that all (the believers) except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria! And so it was with a seeming disaster that Stephen and Philip s short terms on the food committee came abruptly to an end, and Philip found himself out in the country wondering what was next. And that is precisely when God started doing truly amazing things through Philip. Now, comparing the persecution of the Jerusalem church, where many of its leaders were killed or imprisoned, to today s situation at First Lutheran Church of Manhattan may seem a little extreme. However, some may be tempted to see Pastor Wiens retirement as a setback for the church, and to see this sometimes chaotic transition as a time when not much ministry will be done by the congregation. But that is not necessarily so! It is good for a church to be without a pastor from time to time, because when a congregation is without a pastor, ordinary people begin to ask, Who is going to do this, and who is going to do that? And more and more people begin to answer those questions with, Well, maybe me??!!! So often in the church, we like to get things neat and orderly, but the Holy Spirit is always messing things up! Just when us humans think we have it all down pat, the Holy Spirit jumps in and causes us to ask all sorts of questions questions like, What does God really want me to do? What does God really want us as a congregation to do? Who is welcome here? Who is on the inside, and who is on the outside?
P a g e 4 Which brings me to the other amazing part about today s Bible story. We ve already talked about how, even in the midst of the seemingly disastrous persecution of the Jerusalem church, God worked through a church volunteer like Philip, part of the congregation s food ministry team, to bring an important official in the Ethiopian government to faith in Christ. But we have not talked about the other man in this story, the Ethiopian eunuch. While the details of this man s story are somewhat graphic, they are necessary to understanding the importance of this story to our Christian faith. It was a common practice in many cultures during Biblical times for high government officials, who were essentially servants of a king or queen, to be surgically sterilized. The term for such a sterilized servant was eunuch. The possible reasons for this custom are many, but one important reason was likely the issue of trust. Eunuchs, for instance were often put in charge of a king s harem. Eunuchs were also often trusted to be alone in a queen s presence to discuss important and private matters. Such was very likely the case with the Ethiopian eunuch who was in charge of the entire treasury of the Candice, or Queen, of Ethiopia. That such a man had been in Jerusalem to worship is extraordinary, not only because he is a foreigner (perhaps about to become the first African convert to Christianity), but also because he was a eunuch. As such, he would have been explicitly excluded from the religious assembly of Jews. Deuteronomy 23:1 says, No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. The Bible itself forbids this man to be part of the Church! But the Holy Spirit overrides even the scripture! For Christians who think that a single verse of the Bible is enough to prove their point, think again! In Isaiah 56:3-5, the prophet proclaims that a day is coming when law from Deuteronomy will no longer hold sway. He says, 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.
P a g e 5 And here, in the eight chapter of Acts, this prophecy is fulfilled! Led by the Holy Spirit, Philip ignores Deuteronomy 23:1, and explains the entire gospel of Jesus Christ as they ride along in the chariot together! When they pass by a pool of water, the eunuch says, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" Here, Philip s silence, or perhaps his actions, speak louder than words. Nothing! Nothing is preventing the eunuch from being baptized! Philip goes down into the water and baptizes him, and the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing! As we have just celebrated the independence of our nation, a nation which promises liberty and justice for all, we must recognize that some of the ugliest times in our nation s history, have been when we have tried to define who does not belong, those for whom liberty and justice will be denied. It has happened with Africans, Irish, Italians, Chinese, and Arabs, and nearly every immigrant group which has come to this country since Plymouth Rock, not to mention the Native Americans who preceded the Pilgrims by centuries! It is our human nature to exclude and divide! And the same thing is true of the church! From the writing of Deuteronomy, to the time of Christ, and to this very day, those who consider themselves insiders in the kingdom of God have spent far more time and energy defining who is on the outside and who should be on the outside than we have in welcoming the stranger, the foreigner, and the eunuch all the outsiders into the Church in the name of Christ! So today, we read the amazing story of how Philip, by the power of Christ and the leading of the Holy Spirit, welcomes this black, gentile, foreigner, eunuch into the family of God through baptism, and how even Holy Scripture itself cannot stand in the way of God s miraculous, inclusive love in Jesus Christ! May we today, in this place, even us ordinary church volunteers, by the power of Jesus Christ and the leading of the Holy Spirit, be moved to go places we never imagined, and welcome people we may even feel justified to exclude, into the miraculous kingdom of God in Christ. Amen! Come, Holy Spirit!