"Snatched by the Spirit"

May 6, 2012

NEW TESTAMENT READING 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 the 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.


³³  In 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.

The word of the Lord…

SERMON: “Snatched by the Spirit”

The best conversations begin with questions.  Last week my sister told me that my four-year-old niece Natalie asked her, with all the solemnity of a deep-thinking scientist, “Mama, what color is thunder?”  Choosing whimsy over boring facts, my sister Ashley replied, “Purple.”  Natalie continued questioning, “But is it always purple?  What color is it when it begins, and what color is it when it ends?”

 My sister wound up listing all the colors of the rainbow, and only then was my niece satisfied enough to stop asking questions about thunder.

I distinctly remember being a child on a long Texas road trip with my parents and, while they were trapped in the car, asking them a doozy of a question out of the blue.  After dozing as much as I could, I grew restless, sat up and poked my head through the space between their front seats and asked: “Who made God?”  I can’t remember their answer but I do know that, like my niece Natalie, each answer brought another peppering of questions from me.

Our text from Acts this morning is best understood through the four questions asked within it: one from Philip that begins the conversation and conversion and three from the Ethiopian eunuch.

Let’s start with Phil, shall we?  Now, it’s important to recognize that this is not the Philip who was one of Jesus’ twelve apostles.  This Phil served in a different way: he was a deacon in the very first church in Jerusalem, who served the disciples and other followers by basically waiting tables (without tips). 

But, as the persecution of the early church intensified, they separated for a bit and went their own ways to spread the good news farther (and not be such a centralized target for the Romans).  Thus commenced a deadly game of hide and seek, as followers like Philip went from town to town, sharing the good news of Jesus and then high-geared it out of town before the soldiers caught up with them. 

Some weren’t lucky enough to get out of town in time, but Philip really found his calling here.  He converted a whole city of Samarians and became something of a Billy Graham.  The waiter had come a long way!  And then, just as he was feeling especially confident and competent, the Spirit decided to throw a wrench in his plans.  He went from preaching to large cities to a lonely wilderness road to Gaza. 

And the only person he saw to talk to there was some eunuch.  Being used to looking at but not really seeing eunuchs, he assumed there must be someone else he was meant to speak with.  But that dark-skinned Ethiopian eunuch was apparently worth as much effort as those whole cities who turned to God. 

The Spirit snatched him, telling Philip to “go over to this chariot and join it.”  Or in the Greek, “Phil, go glue yourself to that chariot.”  This was no simple, “go say good morning.”  There was no avoiding this eunuch for Philip.  And so he sprinted over and saw the eunuch reading the scripture that he could never hear in worship because he was always excluded.  Philip’s question to him isn’t exactly warm, but it does get to the point:

“Do you understand what you’re reading?”

Our unnamed eunuch was reading a complicated a passage from Isaiah and most certainly did not understand it.  But like my niece Natalie, like me in the car as a child, Philip’s question prompted more questions, as the eunuch retorted,

“How can I, unless someone someone guides me?”

The proselytizing Phil was silenced by that question for a moment.  The eunuch certainly had a right to ask that question, and his voice no doubt betrayed his hurt and anger as he asked it. 

You see, eunuchs didn’t really fit anywhere: they were excluded from being Jews (even if they were born into a Jewish family) because they were seen as somehow not “manly” enough.  And we all know what was taken from them at an early age, forever labeling them as non-gendered outcasts.  They were often called upon to serve Queens, because they posed no threat of unwanted advances or indiscretions.  Paid very well to maintain the financial affairs of the Queen of the Ethiopians, this was a wealthy eunuch. 

His attractive dark skin was enrobed in silk and his fingers bore the weight of invaluable jewels.  But he may as well have been a kazoo player in an orchestra for all the good it did him.  His wealth wouldn’t buy him respect, his jewels won’t grant him inclusion in the religion he’s so curious about, his opulent dress won’t make him ever seem desirable by another.   

Philip knows all this, and so probably breathes a little sigh of relief as the eunuch doesn’t make him answer that difficult question and instead invites him to sit down next to him on that gilded chariot.   Smoothing over the awkward, culturally-complicated moment, the eunuch poses another question, this time about the Isaiah passage he’s reading:

“About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?”

Now Phil’s back in the comfortable territory of talking about scripture and explains that the passage is describing a messiah who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, who was denied justice and whose life was taken.  He goes on to explain that this messiah is Jesus.

After a lengthy conversation about the good news of Jesus, the eunuch found something stirring within him, something he’s never known in his wealthy, weary life: belonging.  Having heard about all these Christian baptisms, he saw water (in the desert of all places!) and, not wanting his only encounter with Jesus to be one measly chariot ride, he asked the final, heart-wrenching question of our story:

“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

If the eunuch’s first question hinted at his pain at being excluded, this one pushed all that pain and frustration to the surface.  For both Phil and the eunuch knew what prevented him from being baptized: the law from Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for one, that says that no man whose been mutilated can be included in the assembly of the people in worship. 

His baptism would not only be the first baptism of a eunuch in history, it would be the first baptism of a non-Israelite.  Then, there’s the cultural custom of shunning eunuchs, giving them their proper place in society and firmly keeping them there.   What’s to prevent him from being baptized?  Plenty, that’s what.

But nonetheless, Philip stopped his preaching and led that eunuch into the mysterious water of a desert and while two men separated by culture, religion and body went into that water, two brothers in Christ emerged.  Immediately, Phil was snatched by the Spirit and the eunuch was left alone, sopping wet and rejoicing that he finally, finally belonged.  And tradition says that he went on to be the first Christian missionary to Africa.

All because of those four questions.  All because both Phil and the eunuch allowed themselves to be snatched by the Spirit the whole time: sitting by who they shouldn’t, sharing the good news that transcends all barriers and bearing one another’s questions on that wilderness road. 

Certainty is a comforting thing.  But questions are where we discover transformation and healing.  Questions of why we allow our cultural customs or religious habits to dictate our actions more than our faith.  Questions of why we keep the good news of Christ to ourselves.  Questions of how God is calling us to be snatched by the Spirit: even if it means travelling a wilderness road alongside unlikely companions. 

What color is the thunder?  I wish I knew.  But more than the wish for that answer, I wish that my niece – that all of us – would never cease asking questions, for in them we move closer into authentic community with one another and deeper into our understanding of God. 

Thanks be to the God who fills us with a holy curiosity, the Savior who can bring belonging no matter what divides us, and the Spirit who snatches us still, never letting us go.  Alleluia!  Amen.