Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

They were a people from Indiana in the early 1990s. They were a congregation on the outskirts of Indianapolis and the Ku Klux Klan (the KKK) still had some influence there. But it was that Sunday; the Sunday when a man squeezed through those church doors just as worship had begun that stirred the controversy. As worship ended the chair of the board came to the microphone and said, “We are calling an emergency board meeting right after coffee time.”

So the board members gather and the pastor arrives at the meeting and the question arises, “How do we make sure that a person like this never comes through the doors of our church again? This can never happen again.”

Now, one would think that in the 1980s or 1990s that the problem would be that some ragged and smelly homeless man had the audacity to shed his scepticism about the church and come to worship with the Christians, or one might think that some delinquent had escaped the state penitentiary and ended up at the church for worship. But no folks, that’s not what happened. We found out what happened with the first question,
“How can we make sure a black man never comes into the house of the Lord again?”

When the pastor heard this he was irate. Sure, he knew the congregation, but he never believed that they would go this far. And God, why was God stirring up trouble in his ministry with this congregation. I mean the pastor had great plans for this congregation and had been doing great work among the people. Why was God stirring up trouble?

As I said before, the pastor was irate, but the board gave him no opportunity to speak, and so he listened in at the meeting and went home that Sunday afternoon deeply broken and confused.

The next Sunday the pastor preached what we might call a prophetic sermon about inclusion using Paul’s words:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Well this just widened the chasm of enmity between the board and the pastor. But the pastor went home that afternoon after church and had a nice afternoon nap.

When the pastor woke up he heard the squeal of tires and rushed out to the living room window to see a pickup truck accelerating away into the distance. He then turned and noticed it. Sitting right in the center of his front lawn was a large, flaming cross compliments of the remnants of the local KKK group, whose mandate is to disturb and destroy any person who isn’t white.

Now, the pastor thought to himself, if I don’t do anything about this I lose. But if I do something about this I will still lose. So he got an idea stuck in his head.

The pastor headed to his kitchen and grabbed a couple of skewers. He then turned to the freezer and grabbed a couple of hot dogs. He then proceeded to the front of his lawn and stuck a hot dog onto his first skewer and had a nice wiener roast.

The pastor was gone from that church by the end of the year.

I remember that day that the disciples were in that room after they had invited Matthias to replace Judas.

Sometime after that they found themselves in a house doing church stuff. All of a sudden the howling of a violent wind came, fire appeared, people began talking funny, and, as the Bible says, “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4).

In Jerusalem were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven and though the disciples were all from Galilee the crowd of Jews heard them speaking in their own mother tongues. These Jews from around the world were amazed. God was stirring things up, making things a little hectic, and just like usual the people who were noticing the Christians made fun of them. “There are those Christians again making fools of themselves with too much wine – they’re drunk!”

Peter denies the charges, “We’re not drunk yet! It’s only 9am!” Then Peter prophesied.

I mean, folks, with the hectic pace of the Holy Spirit there’s a reason why the pews in this church are bolted to the floor. We can sit around quietly listening to God, but when God pours out the Holy Spirit be careful because things are gonna get uncomfortably uncontrollable. If you know when the Holy Spirit is gonna show up then you can take time to throw your seat belt on before the roof is thrown off the building and people are chattering away in ridiculous lingo.

Peter prophesied to the crowd that day using the Prophet Joel’s words and said something like this:

God says that in the last days I will pour out my Spirit on all people – children, teenagers, young adults – some will see visions and others will dream dreams. I will pour out my Spirit on men and women and they will prophesy.

And so after Peter’s long-winded sermon that day the Holy Spirit was poured out and we hear these words:

Those who accepted [Peter’s] message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to [the church] that day.

The Book of Acts is the sequel to the Gospel of Luke and where Luke’s Gospel tells about the ministry of Jesus Christ, his death, and resurrection, the Book of Acts tells of the Ascension of Christ into the heavens and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the world. When the Holy Spirit comes, beware. When we worship this Triune God remember that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Jesus Christ and therefore is just as tenacious as Jesus Christ about the Father’s mission in this world.

Our big problem as the Church today is that we want to domesticate God by having controlled services, talking about building projects that we can control, and setting forth policies and red-tape that really just undermine the untameable Holy Spirit. But remember Jesus who saw all of the red tape and healed often on the Sabbath day – the day it was illegal to do any work. That was Jesus’ annoyance with the religious establishment of his day – too much red tape.

Most of our decisions these days forget God – they are about us leading ourselves to what we want. We like to follow people who know the right techniques, and we like to listen to the words of the experts because they know the tricks and gimmicks that can solve our problems. Actually, in many ways, these tricks and gimmicks play the role of God. We want them to solve our problems and to get us through the tough times, but does that get us any closer to the heart of God? The problem with the Triune God that we worship is that God doesn’t seem to solve our problems, but only adds to them.

Remember Philip who had spent his time in Samaria preaching the Gospel and performing miracles in the name of Jesus Christ, and further had drawn in Simon Magus, a man who had practiced sorcery and amazed the crowds. Philip had spent time in enemy territory, you know the whole Jewish/Samaritan hostility thing – they were both each others’ worst enemies.

In Jerusalem were the beginnings of a church – the Jesus movement – that was in the midst of debate about the allowance of non-Jewish (or Gentile) converts to the grassroots movement for Christ – it was called The Way. You are the descendants of that first Holy Spirit movement – sure we call you the Church, but we might just as well call this thing we’re doing in the name of Jesus Christ The Way.

So while the Jerusalem church was struggling to articulate how Gentile, non-Jewish converts would function in the Church, and whether they would have to take up the old Jewish custom of observing the Law, including the hot-topic debate of the day, male circumcision, Philip was on his way, led by the Holy Spirit to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth – into the lands of those who weren’t so friendly with Jews, or whose inclusion into Christ’s summoned gathering would cause enmity.

Philip is told by an angel to go down a certain road, and does so not knowing what to find. On his way he comes across a royal chariot from Ethiopia, and who does he find in the chariot, but the Queen’s own high official – a eunuch. The eunuch reads the scroll of Isaiah and asks, “Who is the prophet talking about?” This gives Philip the opportunity to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. When they came to some water the eunuch points toward it and says, “Look, here is water. Why shouldn’t I be baptized?” So Philip baptized the unnamed eunuch and the Bible says that the Holy Spirit then snatched Philip away.

Philip baptized a eunuch. I often wonder what the ancient Church made of this since the old Jewish Law says this:
No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of YHWH. (Deut. 23:1)

I find this so interesting because the first time I had heard this story after I had entered the seminary was from the perspective of a transgendered woman – a woman who had been born a man. She had reflected on the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch as a story of how far-reaching God’s summoning, God’s calling out to us, God’s yearning for us, goes.

The reality is, however, I don’t know what to say to you, except that you will know when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, because the Holy Spirit doesn’t dink around looking for the quiet places to mellow out the soul. The Holy Spirit throws roofs off of buildings, blows violently, breathes through people, causes them to act funny and talk funny – even to the point that the world thinks that those consumed by the Spirit are drunk!!! The Holy Spirit gives pastors, like the one in my first story, the audacity to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ even when the people don’t want to hear it. If you are ever getting warning that the Holy Spirit is coming, please, put on your seatbelt. Buckle up, because even though we began worshipping the Triune God at 9:30 (11), if the Holy Spirit invades this place we really don’t know where we will be, or this building will be by 10:30 (noon).

When the film The Passion of the Christ came out I went to the local Sarnia Famous Players’ theatre with my buddy Dan and we got in a long line to wait to get in to show the film. They weren’t gonna show the film in Sarnia until the evangelical community in Sarnia rallied for its showing. Anyway, we were in there waiting to see the film when the woman ahead of us in line begins chatting to her friend, “This movie is gonna be spectacular, I was watching a TV documentary about how they made it and some of the effects they use in the film and saw some of the actors talk about how God had led them to be a part of this film. I just wonder what’s gonna happen in this film.” That’s when Dan taps the woman in front of us on the shoulder chimes in, “Ahhh, honey, he dies in the end!” We all had a good chuckle and began to chat until they let us in to see the film. It was definitely unlike any film I have ever seen. People went into that film with huge bags of popcorn and massive buckets of 7Up, and after seeing the most violent film I have ever watched I recall getting up and realizing that every bag of popcorn that anyone had brought in was just as full as when we’d just begun. Let me tell you folks one thing though – My buddy Dan got one thing wrong. Jesus doesn’t die in the end – the story just doesn’t end that way. By the power of God, Jesus is raised to new life and pours out the Holy Spirit on his Church – his summoned gathering of people.

The Holy Spirit calls people like Philip to take the Gospel to people like an Ethiopian eunuch – even though all the big players in the Church at the time don’t like it.

The Holy Spirit is also here, in this place. What are you gonna do folks? Are you gonna sit around trying to center yourselves so that the Holy Spirit can make you more spiritual, or will you surrender, and jump into the chariot when the Spirit says, “JUMP!” Amen.