So this morning, I’m going to tell you a story… a true story… a story about a coffee machine… specifically, the coffee machine that my partner and I have in in our flat! This coffee machine (a Tassimo)—so not that dissimilar to something like a Nespresso—was already in the flat when we moved in, and since it seemed easy enough to use upon acquiring the appropriate pods for it, we have made a habit of using it.
But one fateful day (about a month ago), when I went to put a pod thing into the machine and press down on the button for it to start to dispense me my much needed mid-afternoon coffee… it wouldn’t start! It wasn’t working! No sweet awakening bean juice would flow forth! And on top of that, rather than the button illuminating its normal orange light, it was illuminating red! Clearly a problem was at hand…
And so, as is usual when it comes to learning how to use a piece of equipment, I turned to the user manual. But, to my horror, it had no words! Just those little pictograms things that user manuals sometimes have, which, to my (then) under-caffeinated brain, were utterly intelligible! I just wanted to understand what the button being red meant, and so, in order for coffee to be obtained, I was clearly going to need help.
And thankfully, help was at hand in the form of my partner (and his awake enough brain) for the understanding of these instructional pictograms! He was able to come along side me and walk me though the fact that the light being red meant that the coffee machine needed descaling. And as a result, coffee was then (shortly thereafter) flowing forth from the machine once more.
I tell you all this fateful of tale of our coffee machine, because I really doubt that any of us here haven’t had a moment in our lives where we just never would have gotten something or learned the thing we needed to learn without someone else coming alongside us and showing us. Comprehension of things seemingly as basic as the instruction manual of a coffee machine can sometimes be just out of reach without the help of someone else.
And if we humans can struggle with the comprehension of a coffee machine’s instruction manual, then certainly we are going to struggle with the comprehension of matters of the spiritual… matters of religion… matters of God… even with a pretty solid instruction manual (also known as the Bible). Even though we have words on a page, it is often really hard to know what message (or what moral) we are meant to take away from said words on the page without the help of others.
Indeed, today’s story is sort of meta in that regard, because it is the story of Saint Philip and the Ethiopian from the Book of Acts in the New Testament. I say it's meta, because it's a passage from the Bible talking about how someone needed help from someone else to understand a passage from the Bible.
The latter half of Acts chapter 8 talks about how in the period of time shortly after Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, Saint Philip (one of Christ’s original disciples from His time on earth) is prodded by God to walk down the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. And, because Philip followed this prodding, he comes across an Ethiopian gentleman, sat in his carriage, attempting to read a section from the scroll of Isaiah—Isaiah being one of the prophetic books of the Bible’s Old Testament.
So Philip goes up to the Ethiopian and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”. And the Ethiopian’s response?… "How can I, unless someone instructs me?” He needed help to understand, and so he asked Philip to come up into the carriage and sit with him so that he could learn.
In a sense, isn’t what we’re doing here today in church really just like what Saint Philip and the Ethiopian did 2000 years ago on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza? Isn’t one of the reasons (perhaps the main reason) we even come along on to church on a Sunday morning so that we can learn (or be reminded) of what the key take-away messages and morals are from the pages of the Bible?
If Philip hadn’t been around to help the Ethiopian in comprehending the prophetic words of Isaiah that day, the Ethiopian wouldn’t have known that when Isaiah speaks of how the “Suffering Servant” would be led like a “lamb to the slaughter” (and would be, like a sheep, “silent before its shearers”), Isaiah was speaking of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice on the cross. Isaiah was speaking of God’s ultimate act of love for humanity.
Through Philip and his work of showing (what we often call “Evangelisation”), the beauty and the light of God was able to shine out of the text and become relevant to the life of the Ethiopian. And because of this, the end of Acts chapter 8 says that the Ethiopian got out of his carriage and asked Philip to baptise him; that’s how key this moment of comprehension was in the Ethiopian’s life.
So, just like how Saint Philip, as one of Christ’s original followers, had the task of illuminating meaning—of bringing to life the text so that it could provide necessary understanding on matters of the spiritual—so too do we, as Christ’s followers in the 21st century. What comprehension we receive in here, let us go forth and let it shine out there. If it has the ability impact us (and the Ethiopian) to such a degree, then it probably as the ability to impact others to such a degree, too… doesn’t it?
