An angel of the Lord sends Philip chasing after a chariot. A eunuch from Ethiopia is reading the Prophet Isaiah. He reads about Jesus but doesn’t know that. Then he comes to some water and is baptized. The Gospel is a messy business, isn’t it?
We don’t like it messy. We prefer our life with God to be organized our way, because that’s how we like it. That’s what we like, just like Adam and Eve in the garden, wanting to be like God. And so we organize, trying to make God’s messy ways fit our ideas of how we want everything to work.
Yes, we find how disorganized everything looks in the book of Acts to be disturbing. What happens doesn’t fit our tidy, clean categories. The Apostles were going here, there, and everywhere. The people scattered from persecution–telling others of Jesus the Messiah. No one was marching in goosestep. You can tell the first Christians weren’t Germans.
Philip, whom the Church inJerusalemhad earlier installed as a deacon, was off wandering around theGazawilderness at an angel of the Lord’s direction. Why bother waiting on tables and looking after the Greek-speaking widows? Is this any way to run a church?
We wouldn’t have organized events that way. We would’ve had boards and committees. We’d have a voters’ meeting. But here, an angel of the Lord says to Philip, “Get up and go.” So, he gets up and goes south from Jerusalem to Gaza.
As Philip is walking, a chariot goes by carrying a man from Ethiopia. He’s a court official of the queen, in charge of her treasury. He’s a eunuch, which makes him a double outsider in Jerusalem. He’s not only a Gentile, but he also has a particular part of his anatomy removed.
Based on the Old Covenant, the eunuch would have no chance of entering the court of the Temple to offer his sacrifices. He’s standing on the outside looking in, barred from worship, and relegated to the Court of the Gentiles, listening from afar. The Old Covenant shouted, “This isn’t for you; after all, you’re a Gentile and a eunuch!”
But God is at work in His seemingly messy ways. Yes, this man is an outsider and on the fringes. Yes, he sat in the court of the Gentiles, trying to listen to the liturgy, hymns, and readings. He’s also a man of wealth; after all, he owns a scroll of Isaiah. Those scrolls weren’t cheap. You had to hire someone to make a copy, by hand.
The eunuch’s chariot is going down the road, returning toEthiopia. He’s reading aloud from the Isaiah scroll, which was how people read back then. To meditate on a text meant for it be to read it aloud, so your ears would hear it. That’s because reading aloud involves more of you than reading silently. After all, meditating is to involve the whole person, not just the brain. And so someone read out loud.
So, the eunuch read:
Like a sheep, he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he didn’t 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.
The eunuch wondered, “Of whom is this prophet speaking? Who is this one who is silent before his accusers? Who is this one who was denied justice? Who is this one who has no descendants?” That reminded him of himself: A eunuch with no descendants. He wondered, “Is this person the prophet or someone else?”
Just then Philip happened to be walking by, and the Spirit nudged him to run over to this chariot and hop on board. And so, two strangers meet in the desert. The Spirit brings two, wildly different men together around the text of Isaiah, in a chariot, in the Gaza wilderness.
Philip asks, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” The Eunuch responds, “How can I, unless someone guides me.” And so in that moving chariot, we find a congregation has gathered. Two or three gathered around the Word, and there the Spirit is, there the Lord is, there the Church is.
God didn’t create us to live isolated and alone. He does not call us to believe alone. The Scriptures are a community book, not a private one. The eunuch owned a scroll of Isaiah. But the scroll was first meant to be read within a community context, heard and understood together. What a mistake we make when we think that having a Bible is all there is to it! God’s holy Scriptures create a community–preacher and hearers. And in the middle of it all is Jesus, the heart and center of the Scriptures.
The eunuch knew what the words meant. He could read Greek. The sentences were clear enough. But what he didn’t know, and couldn’t know on his own, was the subject of what he read. Who was the subject, Isaiah or someone else?
“Then Philip opened his mouth and proclaimed the good news of Jesus, starting from that Scripture.” Jesus is the center of Scripture, no matter where you open it: The Torah, the Prophets, the Apocrypha, or the New Testament. Philip could have started anywhere, but he started where the Ethiopian was reading.
In the scroll of Isaiah was the Servant of the Lord who suffers for the sins of the people. “He was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. On him, was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds, we are healed.” Philip opened his mouth and proclaimed Jesus from the Scriptures.
That’s how it works. It’s that simple. Philip opened his mouth. You have to open your mouth if anything is going to come out. He opened his mouth and proclaimed Jesus to the eunuch from that passage on the suffering Servant. After all, it’s Jesus’ forgiveness, redemption, life, and salvation.
“For [Jesus] carried the sin of the many and interceded for those who rebelled.” That was life changing for the Ethiopian. He was no longer relegated to the outside. This suffering Servant, named Jesus, who was so much like the Ethiopian that he could almost see himself, died and rose to bring that Ethiopian eunuch into a kingdom that once excluded him. The outsider was now in.
It’s the same for you. You were once not a people, but now you are the people of God. You, who were notIsrael, are now God’s chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s treasured possession. In Jesus, you who were on the outside are now on the inside.
And now there’s more life-changing news. There was water in the wilderness. It could have been that stream in the valley of Elah, where David picked up stones, preparing himself to battle Goliath. It could have been a spring that sprang up like living water. Either way, there was water in that wilderness. And somewhere along the way, Philip must have told the eunuch what Peter preached at Pentecost: Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sin. For the eunuch saw that water in the wilderness and said, “Look, there’s water. What prevents me from being baptized?”
That’s what evangelism looks like. Christian evangelism leads someone to Christian baptism. That’s what Scripture shows us repeatedly. Scripture doesn’t show evangelism leading to altar calls, invitations, or the sinner’s prayer. Those are the traditions of men. No, Scripture shows evangelism leading to baptism.
So, Philip baptizes the eunuch. For him, that water was his Red Sea, his Jordan River, his burial and resurrection with Christ, his washing of regeneration and renewal, his rebirth of water and Spirit, and his clothing with Christ. Then, the eunuch returned to Ethiopia, a new man, to the court of Candace, to his vocation as treasurer. But he returned as a Christian, a baptized believer in Jesus.
As for Philip, no sooner was the Ethiopian baptized then Philip disappeared, only to reappear at Azotus. The Old Testament called that town, “Ashdod,” which was one of the five Philistine cities. In verse 40, we find Philip inCaesarea, which is where he still lived some 20 years later.
There is water in your wilderness, as well: Baptismal water and the Word. Those are the raw materials of the Spirit’s working. You’ve heard that Word, as well, the same Word that Philip proclaimed and the Ethiopian heard. You’ve been baptized with the same baptism, which joins you as a living branch to the Vine, Jesus.
Your Gaza road may be messy, as well. For God’s ways often seem disheveled and disorganized, like our new building going up. It may seem chaotic, but the builders know what they are doing. And that’s how God and the Gospel work. It may seem disorganized, but it’s not: It’s the Word of God, baptismal water, and the Spirit of God calling, enlightening, gathering, and keeping us in the one, true faith.
And there will be chariots for you to chase after, as well. For you never know when and where the Spirit will blow. You never know when it will be your time to speak Jesus into the ears of someone who asks you, “What does this mean?” As you have heard, so you speak. Open your mouth and confess Jesus to the outsider, to the one seeking the Truth, to the one asking. Tell him, tell her, about Jesus.
It is a gloriously messy Gospel. Don’t try to organize it; just believe it, live it, and speak it. Amen.
