This sermon was preach at chapel at Grand View University on October 13, 2015, and is based on the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40.
It’s
Global Vision Week at Grand View University, so it’s appropriate to consider
how that vision moves us to think beyond the limits of borders and boundaries.
What links us? How do we work together? How might our differences actually bind
us one to another rather than separate us? The passage from Acts we just read
together goes after those very questions as we enter into an encounter in
border lands and meet a guy, who through no fault of his own, has found himself
on the wrong side of some very strict boundaries.
The book
of Acts is the second of a two-volume work. Both Acts and its partner book, the
gospel of Luke, are careful to mark out geography. When you’re reading them you
always know where you are, whether within the borders of Judea where Jewish
religious laws and demands for purity are at play or outside Judea where you’re
sure to meet up with someone impure, strange, foreign, or undocumented person.
Our story today takes place right on the line between what a good Jew like Philip
would think of as territory of good people and territory of dangerous, unclean
sinners.
Even
Philip’s presence down in Gaza between Judea and Egypt was an interruption and
marks a crossing of boundaries for him. He’d been doing the Lord’s work
preaching way up north and having some success. But both an angel and God’s
Spirit drew him down to this netherworld between clean and unclean, Jew and
pagan, righteous and unrighteous.
There in
front of him was a chariot. It was no plain two-wheeled cart pulled by a mule.
No, this was clearly the vehicle of someone important: fine horses, emblazoned
with gold, and wheels that were true and so obviously crafted by the best of
wheelwrights. The chariot’s driver was a servant of the Queen of Ethiopia, a
position of high responsibility. He had to guard the queen’s treasury and
account for every last gold coin.
The
Ethiopian’s personal ethics weren’t the only thing that made him a trustworthy
man to serve as treasurer. When he was a boy, they also made sure that he’d be even
more trustworthy by slicing open his junk and removing his testicles. The fancy
word for that is castration, and a guy that’s had that happen to him is a
eunuch.
During my
college days, there was a bar in my university’s town that set itself apart
from other drinking joints by advertising itself as a place to play pool. There
were around twenty pool tables there, and shooting pool was how you occupied
you time while drinking your bad Miller Lite’s. The bar’s ads in our school
newspaper had an interesting tag line that read, “You gotta have balls to shoot
here.” That was not true of the Ethiopian treasury. A fully-equipped package
wasn’t going to help you keep your job in the queen’s counting house, because
you’d always stand the chance your sexual drives would result in some sexual
impropriety for which you could be blackmailed. And then there would go the
realm’s fiscal security.
When
Philip met the eunuch, the charioteer was heading back home to Ethiopia from
Jerusalem, the capital city of Judea and the holy city of the Jews. That’s
where the Jewish Temple was, and the Ethiopian had gone there to worship and
make some offering at the Temple. But when he got there he basically heard the
same line tossed out by my college pool joint: “You gotta have balls to shoot
here.” The officials there knew it as soon as he opened his mouth to ask a
question and they heard his high voice that never changed at puberty due to a
lack of testosterone. The law in Deuteronomy was clear on this count: “No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the
assembly of the Lord.”
So this
faithful man was on his way home rejected by the officials of the foreign faith
he’d risked everything to take on. A black Jewish man from the upper reaches of
the Nile would have been a huge anomaly. And here he was in front of Philip, digging
into the scriptures and refusing to let the rejection keep him from the God
he’d come to trust. As the chariot wheels rolled, he had his hands on a scroll
of the prophet Isaiah. Right then Philip knew everything he needed to know: The
guy was castrated and, thus, unclean. But he was also open to what God is up
to, just like the people who’d heard Philip’s preaching up north and come to
faith before.
The
Ethiopian asked Philip to help him understand what he read. It’s like faith
always happens. Although we may have some inkling of God’s existence, what’s
really needed is a proclaimer of the gospel. It’s what Paul says in Romans,
“Faith comes by hearing.” The Ethiopian needed a preacher to proclaim to him
who Jesus is.” The angel and the Spirit seem to have known a castrated
treasurer would be kept from worshiping and would need to hear the gospel, and
they’d sent Philip to Gaza.
Hearing
everything Philip had told him about Jesus, now our African castrato knew
everything he needed to know. Jesus was for him, as unlikely as it seemed.
Jesus had died and was resurrected so he might have Christ’s benefits. But
there was one thing he didn’t know. He’d been told in Jerusalem that a man who
shows up to worship but isn’t the complete package needn’t bother. The
Ethiopian knew that at least two things prevented him from entering the Temple,
or at least the lack of two things did.
So he
asked Philip, “Here’s some water. What is there to prevent me from being
baptized?” It’s as if he expected Philip to say, “Well, I can tell by your high
voice that you’re testicularly-impaired. You have to have balls to shoot here.”
But the Ethiopian discovers to his great surprise and joy that, when it comes
to salvation, our God discards his divine playbook, throws out all the rules
about who’s supposed to be in and who’s supposed to be out. In Christ, God
breaks his own law to claim people like the eunuch who have no hope.
The
Ethiopian who carried the equivalent of an empty grocery bag with him at all
times found himself filled with new life. Not only was his emptiness and lack
no longer an impediment. It actually became a gift. This guy couldn’t depend on
being whole and in tact on his own terms or with his own power. He knew it was
nuts to expect anything but rejection, but he was brought in and considered
whole on account of what Christ, the lamb slaughtered, did for him.
If you were to do what AA calls a fearless and searching moral inventory, you’d surely come
across something in you that prevents you from that full and abundant life God
promises you. It might be some sin, some lack of talent or drive, a low
mid-term grade, or even an inability to assent to the proposition that God
actually exists. But our reading declares the end of all that rule-keeping,
record-bolstering, accounting of unclean versus clean, righteous versus
unrighteous, in versus out.
Instead
what you have is a God who respects no borders or boundaries and who seeks out
those who haven’t got the cojones to
make it on their own. This is a God who says to you, “There’s a font, and there’s
nothing to prevent you from being baptized. Here’s my only-begotten Son.
There’s nothing to prevent you from enjoying the gifts of salvation, mercy, and
eternal life that he has to give you.”
If you
haven’t got that, I know a pastor who’s ready to have a conversation with you.
What’s more, for those of you who already claim those gifts, our passage from
Acts is a bid to open your eyes to begin looking at those around you in this
world in a way that takes you beyond your own borders and boundaries and see
them as your neighbors. It calls you to listen for those who are on the outside
and welcome them in as your own, even as God brought in an Ethiopian eunuch who
had no business expecting anything good from God.
And if
you’re scandalized or offended by all this talk of genitalia, certain that I’ve
crossed a line and spoken of something unfitting for a church pulpit, now you’ve
landed on something important. And there’s a word for you as well. For our Lord
who knew no sin became sin for us. Jesus
himself was accused and tried, crucified and died, all because the proper religious
people who knew what the boundaries of propriety were regarded our Lord as
having crossed the line. Oh, my friends, be not offended, but be glad and
grateful that Christ made himself an offense, so that he could take on your
sin. If God-in-the-flesh does not scandalously break the borders of propriety
and polite spiritual company, then we’re all to be pitied and the Spirit has
been rendered impotent.
The truth
is that God will brook no boundaries when it comes to seeking you out and
claiming you. You don’t need testicles or anything else to be in: no grades, no
record of yardage on the football field, no high RBI numbers, no national
championship. The only thing needed is nothing. The eunuch had nothing in a
certain bodily location, but God filled him full of every good thing. And those
things are yours as well. Amen.
