“Is God’s Church for Everyone?”
Acts 8:26-40
When I was a brand-new Christian a friend of mine and I were doing some street witnessing.
What I mean by that is we were meeting strangers on the street and asking them if they knew Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
We were 18 years old and we were on fire.
At one point we struck up a conversation with a small group of homeless guys.
One of the men, who was bleeding because someone had thrown a bottle at him, said, “I used to want to be a Methodist Minister, but then I went off to Vietnam (this was in the mid-1980s that we were doing this).”
I said to the guy, “You can still do that.
You can still go back to the church.”
And he said something I couldn’t comprehend.
He said, “I wouldn’t be welcome there.”
I think there are a lot of folks in our world, in our communities who feel as if they wouldn’t be welcome in our church.
It could be that they don’t think they fit into the right socio-economic class.
Maybe they don’t think we would approve of their tattoos.
Perhaps, they have had bad experiences with churches in the past and think they will be judged.
Maybe they think they have too many questions about faith, or they are too unsure…
…and they think we will expect them think exactly the same way we do.
There are a lot of reasons people aren’t coming to church.
According to a Washington Post article that came out last month, more people have left the church in the last 25 years than all the new people who became Christians from the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and the Billy Graham Crusades combined.
Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the United States, researchers say, even as faith continues to dominate American politics.
And this might be one of the problems.
About a quarter of younger adults who have dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on politics.
For many, Christianity has come to be thought of as affiliated with only one certain political party, but should it be affiliated with any political party?
People perceive some churches to be more interested in the American political landscape than loving God and loving neighbor.
In a recent Pew survey about quitting church a third of people over 65 years of age who stopped attending did so because they didn’t feel welcome.
According to a woman named Robenna Redl, who is black and has two biracial children, “The church became increasingly antagonistic towards ‘others,’ and not attuned to the fact that I am the other.”
The City of Red Bank is booming.
We have become the new North Shore, with young families who want to live close to downtown clamoring to live here.
The fact that our Preschool which is full with a waiting list is a testament to this.
But I have found it difficult to get these new people interested in coming to church.
Why is this?
Do they lump us in with churches that are very political in nature?
Do they think we might be judgmental and hypocritical?—another reason many non-churched folks say they stay home or do something else on Sunday mornings.
Do they think we won’t accept them?
What is it?
Our Scripture Lesson for today is one of Radical Christian Inclusion, and I think it’s an important text for us to study while trying to navigate the changing perception outsiders have about God’s Church.
(pause)
Phillip was one of the seven Greek-speaking Jewish Christians who had been appointed by the Twelve Apostles to take care of the needs of others, especially widows, in the Greek-speaking part of the Church.
He is also known as Phillip the Evangelist, and had four daughters who were considered to be prophets in the early Christian Community.
He was a man who listened to the Holy Spirit of God and wasn’t afraid to take risks for the Gospel.
We are told that an angel of the Lord directed Phillip to change his travel plans, and “Go south to the road—the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”
Phillip followed the directions and came upon an Ethiopian man who was on his way home from Jerusalem.
The man was a eunuch and an official responsible for the entire treasury of the queen of Ethiopia.
The fact that the man was a eunuch seems to be particularly important to the author of Acts since he mentions it five times in this short passage.
A eunuch is a castrated male.
And this Ethiopian Eunuch had most likely been castrated so that no one had to worry about him being a servant of a female in a royal household.
Despite this, eunuchs carried around the stigma of being stereotyped as sexual deviants even though they had had nothing to do with the decision to be castrated.
They were outcastes who were made fun of and left on the margins.
They also were not allowed to take part in Temple activities.
According to Deuteronomy 23:1, “No one who has been emasculated (or castrated) by crushing or cutting [of the genitals] are allowed to 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 unclean.
Remember how, over and over again, in the Gospels Jesus is chastised by the religious leaders for eating, hanging out with, accepting, and making friends with prostitutes, tax collectors, and sinners?
We know who the tax collectors and prostitutes are, but who do you suppose are the people referred to as “sinners”?
Many of them are the people with defects that would keep them out of the assembly of the Lord, like this Ethiopian Eunuch in our story for this morning.
So, what had the eunuch been doing in Jerusalem?
We are told that “he had come to worship.”
He had come to worship in the Temple but had been told to “hit the road,” to “get out,” because we don’t want “your kind” around here.
This tells us that he was drawn to God, even though he had been shut out of the worship services.
He was seeking to fill that God-shaped Void in his life that nothing but Jesus can fill.
One thing I have learned from combing through surveys and statistics is that even though Church attendance is dropping like a rock, people still want to have a relationship with God.
And so, we might want to ask ourselves…
…Is there anything we are doing that is getting in their way?
The Ethiopian Eunuch went to Jerusalem in search of God and even though he had been rejected by the religious leaders, his quest continued.
And so, we find him riding in a chariot reading Scripture.
And the Scripture he is reading is Isaiah 53:7-8.
The Book of Isaiah had been a book of hope and promise for eunuchs, the poor, the outsiders, the outcasts, and the unwanted.
We are told that when Phillip ran up to the chariot he heard the eunuch reading, and that is because in the ancient world people read out loud—even when they were by themselves.
It wasn’t until 300 or 400 A.D. that people started reading silently due to the advent of monasteries where you had to take a vow of silence.
Phillip hears the eunuch read 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.
Who can speak of his descendants?
For his life was taken from the earth.
In his humiliation, he was deprived of justice.”
Well, to the eunuch’s ears, this sounds like him!
So, he asks Phillip, “Tell me please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?”
In other words, “Is this only about Isaiah and his situation, or is this passage for me as well?”
Have you ever wondered something like that?
When John tells us: “God so loved the world,” have you ever wondered if that includes you?
As a eunuch, he knew full well about humiliation and self-hatred.
Folks had treated him so badly that he must have wondered if God loved him or if he was lovable at all.
And so, this castrated man is reading these words, but that isn’t all there is to this great passage.
Isaiah 53:12 says, “I will give him a share with the great…”
Hold it. “I will give him a share with the great”????
This hopeless man who is returning from a Temple that wouldn’t let him in…
…this human being who is so thirsty for God…
…sees hope in this passage of Scripture.
Perhaps God has a heart for outcasts like him, a good plan.
In Isaiah 56:4 it says, “The Lord says: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath…” they will be given “a name better than sons and daughters.”
He must have wondered “When is this going to happen?”
It sounded too good to be true.
Through, Whom would this happen?
So, the eunuch asked Phillip to explain it to him.
And when Phillip told him that this passage was “fulfilled in his hearing” through Jesus Christ it was better news than the eunuch could ever have imagined.
“As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is some water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?”
Baptism is the initiation into the church of Jesus Christ.
Phillip might have paused and wondered, “Gee, is there any reason he shouldn’t be baptized?”
And then, he remembered that when Christ died the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, symbolizing Christ’s opening the way directly to God!
He remembered that Jesus had instructed him and the others to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
He remembered that Jesus’ ministry was to the least, the lost, the marginalized.
And the Holy Spirit spoke to Him, “There is nothing to keep him from being baptized. There is nothing to keep him from becoming a member of Christ’s Church!”
Unlike all the other doors that had been closed in this eunuch’s face—the door to the Kingdom of Heaven is wide open.
And so, the chariot stopped.
“Then both Phillip and the eunuch went down into the water and Phillip baptized him…”
And the oppressive walls of prejudice and ignorance started crumbling down.
Another human being who had been humiliated and left out had been found!
And isn’t this good news for the people moving into Red Bank who have experienced rejection from Churches?
Isn’t this good news for those who don’t think they are good enough to be here this morning?
Isn’t this good news for those who think we will judge them if they come?
Of course, it’s only good news, as it relates to Red Bank United Methodist Church, if we believe it, if we live it, if we do, indeed, welcome all!!!
Like Phillip, will we listen to the Holy Spirit?
Will we practice radical hospitality and inclusion?
Will we truly be the light of the world and the salt of the earth for the people of this community?
Will many come to faith in Christ through our humble obedience to God’s Word?
Will they know we are Christians by our love?
And through this, will they find hope in a world of despair, salvation in a world of death, and peace in a world of war and division?
I believe and have faith that they will.
Praise God!
In Jesus’ name and for His sake.
Amen.
