Here Is Water

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May 3, 2015

Acts 8:26-40

²⁶Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) ²⁷So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury.

He had come to Jerusalem to worship ²⁸and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. ²⁹Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” ³⁰So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

³¹He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. ³²Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: 
     

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, 
          

and like a lamb silent before its shearer, 
               

so he does not open his mouth.


³³In his humiliation justice was denied him. 
          

Who can describe his generation? 
               

For his life is taken away from the earth.” 


³⁴The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” ³⁵Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.

³⁶As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” [³⁷And Phillip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.”

And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”]

³⁸He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. ³⁹When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. ⁴⁰But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Sermon: “Here Is Water”

You never really know it when you’re whole life is about to change.  You wake up just like always, go about your usual routine, and yet, all the while, something is shifting in the fabric of the world to bring you to the exact right place at the exact right time.  Some might call that chance.  Dreamers might call it fate.  I call it God.

Oh, but I haven’t said who I am, have I?  In your holy book, I’m called the Ethiopian eunuch.  But I have a name, it’s Simeon.  I’d prefer that you call me by my name and not my label.  I’d never refer to someone as Old Greyhead or Short Lady, so I’m not sure why I’ve always been known by my physical attributes. 

But I suppose that’s part of the life of a eunuch.  Everyone thinks about your physical attributes (or lack thereof) first.  I was made a eunuch at a young age and groomed to be a servant of royalty.  I moved up through the ranks to eventually become a court official of Queen Candace, in charge of her whole treasury.  Queens liked having eunuchs for their advisors – less scandals that way, you see.  That role brought me great wealth.  It did not bring great happiness.

How does that Beatles song go again?  “Can’t buy me love, love…”  Ah, yes.  How very true.  Are you surprised I’m a Beatles fan?  Oh, I’m full of surprises.  You’ll see.

As I was saying, all of my wealth couldn’t make me feel loved.  Romantic love was out of the question, but even just friendship proved difficult.  We eunuchs were seen as ritually impure by Jews because we’d been mutilated, even though we never did have a say in the matter.  So, I was an outsider, distracted by my wealth, but deeply wounded.

Until that day – that one day that changed it all.  Like I said, I had no idea my life was about to change.  I was heading home from Jerusalem, and found myself on the wilderness road between there and Gaza.  I was doing a little light reading on the chariot, something I’d picked up in Jerusalem.  It was prophecy from Isaiah. 

Who has believed what we have heard?
  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For he grew up before him like a young plant,
 and like a root out of dry ground; 
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
 nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by others;
  a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
 and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Goodness, it sounded like my personal memoir.  How depressing!  Just as I was thinking this poor fellow Isaiah described must have certainly been a eunuch like me, the strangest thing happened.  A man approached me – there in the middle of nowhere!  I didn’t even see him coming because I was so engrossed in my reading. 

He asked a question that read my mind, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” I didn’t.  He asked if I wanted him to help me understand.  I did.  The fella’s name was Philip, and I could tell he was a Jew just as he could tell I was an Ethiopian eunuch.

He didn’t seem too bothered to be hanging out with a eunuch.  He read more of Isaiah to me:

Surely he has borne our infirmities
 and carried our diseases;
 yet we accounted him stricken,
  struck down by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions,
  crushed for our iniquities;
 upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
  and by his bruises we are healed. 

I asked this stranger who Isaiah was speaking of – whether himself or someone else.  And then he told me the story that changed my life.  He told me that Isaiah was talking about a Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.  And then he told me that Jesus was God.  That God bore our infirmities, that God carried our afflictions, that God was wounded for our wounds, making us whole by giving God’s body, healing us by God’s own hurts. 

It seemed pretty impossible for me to believe that God would want to take on my disfigurement, my imperfection, my wounds.  It seemed even more impossible that God doing so would bring me any sort of healing.  I mean, if you take a friend with you to the doctor, the doctor doesn’t treat your friend to bring you healing; you have to be treated yourself.  Healing isn’t transferrable.  At least that’s what I thought.  I learned otherwise that day.

As I heard those words from this stranger Philip, I felt something welling up in me.  Skeptics might call it indigestion.  Mystics might call it an awakening.  I call it the Spirit of God.  I suddenly wanted to be a part of this community who followed this Wounded Healer.  I saw water, and before I even knew what I was saying I said, “Look!  Here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Here is water.  The three words that changed my life that day.  On life-changing days, you see, even the simplest of things speak with profound truth.  All nonessentials melt away until you see the one path you have to take.

But those “nonessentials” were pretty significant.  I asked Philip, “what is to prevent me from being baptized?” 

Oh, there were lots of nonessentials on that list.  First, I was a eunuch, ritually unclean.  Leviticus and Deuteronomy prohibited me taking part in any religious ritual.  Second, I was a Gentile, and as far as I knew, only Jews had ever been baptized in Jesus’ name.  Third, my skin was dark and Philip’s was light.  This was a cause for division in my time, and I have a feeling it’s the same in yours.  And finally, to baptize me, Philip would have to get into those waters too and become ritually unclean by my impurity.  Nonessentials?  Sure.  But big issues to overcome nonetheless.

Phillip sat there for a moment, quietly.  And while I prepared myself to be shunned once more, for him to as politely as possible excuse himself from my chariot, he did the opposite.  “If you believe with all your heart, you may,” he said. 

Suddenly, it didn’t matter that my skin was darker than his.  It didn’t matter that I was a eunuch.  It didn’t matter that I was a Gentile.  What mattered was my heart. 

And as Philip and I went into those warm waters, I felt all of those “nonessentials” melt away.  We were not separated by culture, wealth, religion or our bodies.  We shared the same human heart.

I realized in those waters that healing can be shared.  That if God really did take on the wounds of this world – and still does – then there is hope that we can stop wounding each other.  There is hope that in those waters of baptism, all the nonessentials will be washed away.  There is hope that we can find wholeness and this world can find peace.

Here is water.  Three words, that’s all it took.

As I look at the world today, I, Simeon, see a desperate need for those words. 

Where people continue to be divided by the color of their skin, into categories of clean and unclean, of wealth and poverty, someone needs to say, “here is water.”

Where all the unrealized dreams of adults are heaped upon our young people until they are pressured to constantly perform, constantly be active, constantly do, someone needs to say, “here is water.”

Where the church I was baptized into aligns itself along the exact same dividing lines of politics and theology, someone needs to say, “here is water.”

Where people face illness – both those you can see and those you can’t – and are shunned for it because it makes us uncomfortable, someone needs to say, “here is water.”

Where there is water, all of the nonessentials wash away by God’s Spirit. 

Where there is water, there is belonging and healing. 

Where there is water, there is hope that God bore our wounds so we can stop wounding each other.

Where there is water, lives and communities can be changed, just like mine was. 

Here is water.  Alleluia!  Amen.