Borders, Boundaries, and the Ethiopian Eunuch

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.