“Doors Wide-Open”
Acts 8:26-40
Last Sunday was Pentecost and we are told that 3,000 people joined the brand-new Church that day, and the numbers kept growing and growing and growing.
And the Book of Acts is the story of the early Church and how it evolved from there.
It’s an amazingly exciting adventure.
And in it we get a very intriguing picture of a group of people—folks just like you and me—who are continually being changed and formed and transformed in their understanding of God and one another.
And one of the things that stands out most is that even though the Church is born on Pentecost, the Church is not finished on Pentecost.
It is a work of God, always under construction—all the way to today.
It’s always changing.
It’s growing, it’s moving, it’s fluid.
And it’s not that God changes, it just that our understanding of God and God’s ways change and develop the more and longer we live in Him, learn from Him and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
The gift of salvation—the Gift of God’s Holy Spirit is an ongoing gift, it’s not just a one-time event, and the Church is constantly changing accordingly.
And Philip found this out up close and personal in our Scripture Passage for this morning as he is the first one, besides Jesus, to spread the Gospel beyond the bounds of traditional Judaism.
You see, the first Christians were Jews.
And when they accepted Christ as Lord, Savior and Messiah—they still considered themselves Jews.
And they didn’t yet know that God’s salvation is for all people: Jew, Gentile—you name it!
They didn’t understand that God doesn’t play favorites.
So, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
And so, Philip does what he is told.
And then, the Holy Spirit speaks to Philip: “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”
Inside the chariot is an “Ethiopian eunuch” reading the book of Isaiah the prophet.
A eunuch was a castrated male servant considered to be safe to serve the women of a royal household.
Despite this, eunuchs were stereotyped as being sexually immoral people.
Even though they had had nothing to do with being castrated, they were outcastes and considered to be freaks.
And according to Deuteronomy 23:1 “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord.”
And according to Leviticus Chapter 21, eunuchs, along with “the blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no [person] with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores” or any other “defect” is allowed to come near God’s sanctuary.
These people were considered to be sinners and outsiders.
Remember how, over and over again, in the Gospels Jesus is chastised by the religious leaders for eating, hanging out with and making friends with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners?
Who do you suppose the “sinners” are?
Many of them are the people with defects.
They are the eunuchs, the blind, the disabled, the disfigured, the deformed, hunchbacks and the like.
People thought they had done something bad to deserve that condition—therefore, God was punishing them and they were considered “sinners” and “less than.”
Jesus knew better.
And in the Book of Acts, Jesus’ brand-new Church was beginning to learn this too.
And we all continue to learn.
None of us know everything there is to know about God and how we are to live as Christ’s Church.
As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.
Now I know in part: then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
I find that exciting, do you?
As the Church of Jesus Christ, we are on a journey--a journey of learning more and more about the living, loving eternal God and how we are to treat those around us.
The Ethiopian Eunuch had been an outcast his entire life.
He’d been looked down on, sneered at, made fun of and shut out of God’s sanctuary.
And here he is riding in a chariot, down a deserted road and he’s reading Scripture.
And the Scripture he is reading is Isaiah 53:7-8 which refers to someone who has been shorn or cut.
The Book of Isaiah had been a book of hope and promise for eunuchs, the poor, the sick, the lame, the outcast.
It prophesys about a time when the Messiah comes, and the eunuchs and other outsiders will be set free to fully participate in the life of the community and the assembly of God.
We are told that “when Philip ran up to the chariot” he heard the [eunuch] reading.
In the ancient world, people read out loud.
It wasn’t until 300 or 400 A.D. that people started reading silently due to the advent of monasteries.
So, Philip hears the Eunuch reading the words from Isaiah: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.”
And the Eunuch asked Philip: “Tell me please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”
I think the Eunuch is asking Philip: “Is this only about Isaiah and his situation, or is this passage about me as well?
Is it a word from God for someone else, or is this God’s Word for me?”
Have you ever wondered anything like that?
When the Bible tells us that “God so loved the world,” have you ever wondered if that includes you?
As a Eunuch, he knew full well about humiliation and being deprived of justice.
It sounded so much like his own situation that it felt like God was speaking of him.
You know, the Word of God is never just a Word about “back then.”
It is always a word to us, to this moment, to our circumstances as well.
And so, yes, Isaiah was speaking to the Eunuch’s own personal experience of being an outcast, deprived of justice.
And Philip told him about Jesus, Who Himself was like “a sheep led to the slaughter” and Who Himself was humiliated and denied justice.
Have you ever been humiliated?
Have you ever been denied justice?
Have you ever felt like an outcast?
If so, Jesus can relate to you.
He has been there.
When on earth, Jesus identified with the poor, the lowly, the outcast, the freaks.
He sought to lift people up and out of their distress by filling them with the confidence which comes from being loved unconditionally, from being embraced and accepted warts, deformities, defects and all!
That is the kind of God we have.
And this is the kind of people we are to be: loving, accepting, open to all.
The first Christians were just starting to learn about this as they began to rub their eyes as they were awakened by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Philip told the Eunuch “the good news about Jesus.”
“And as they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?’”
Wow.
Talk about the place where the rubber meets the road.
It’s one thing to tell this guy about Jesus.
It’s quite another to accept him as a brother—an equal!
All his life Philip had been taught that eunuchs were in violation of the purity code.
All his life he had been taught that only the Jews were God’s Chosen race and heirs according to the promise.
“Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”
Well, Philip could think of a lot reasons why.
The Eunuch belonged to the wrong nation, held the wrong job and had the wrong anatomy.
But in the face of this, Philip heard the voice of the Holy Spirit give a different answer to the Eunuch’s question.
“Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” asked the Eunuch.
“There is no reason why you shouldn’t be baptized,” whispered the Holy Spirit.
The chariot stopped.
“Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him…”
And the oppressive walls of prejudice and ignorance started tumbling down.
Another person who felt humiliated and lost had been found!
And the Holy Spirit was telling Philip, the Ethiopian Eunuch and you and even me that the doors to the Kingdom of God are wide open for all who will come.
And isn’t this good news for the teenager who is ostracized by his or her peers and struggles to fit in at school?
Isn’t this good news for the person who has always felt like an outsider?
Isn’t this good news for the drug addict and the alcoholic?
Isn’t this good news for the poor, the sick, the disabled, the disfigured, the sad, the lonely, the depressed?
Isn’t this good news for the immigrant, the prisoner, the captive, the lost, the least?
Isn’t this good news for the person who feels too sinful, too unworthy?
Isn’t this good news for those who live in the homes surrounding this church building?
Isn’t this good news for the people who will someday receive food from the Red Bank Community Food Pantry?
Isn’t this good news for you?
I know it is good news for me!
And let’s not forget it, as we mingle with our fellow human beings—no matter what they look like, no matter their socio-economic status, no matter where they come from or what they have done--all people have been created in the image of God and therefore have sacred worth, are loved beyond measure and are persons for whom Jesus died!
We are to remember this, and treat one another accordingly.
I know it’s a hard lesson to learn.
But I really, really want to learn it.
The Ethiopian Eunuch was still a Eunuch after hearing and accepting the love of Jesus Christ.
But, he was, none the less, a changed man, as he went on his way—rejoicing!!!
He had learned to love and accept himself because God had accepted him.
Christian tradition tells us that this fellow went home and shared his new-found faith and that the Ethiopian Coptic Church can be traced back to him, and thus to this experience of understanding God in a new and radical way.
The Ethiopian Eunuch asked:
“Who is the Scripture talking about?
Is it talking about me?
Am I included?
Am I loved?
Will the Church accept me?”
Do we know anyone who is wondering these very same things?
If so, what is the Holy Spirit calling us to do about it?
And will we do it?
Amen.
