Easter 5
Sermon preached by the Reverend Anna Matthews
The book of Acts is part two of Luke’s narrative. His gospel tells the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Acts tells what happens next: the story after the ascension, as the Spirit descends on the apostles, and they discover the life and power of Jesus at work in them. And despite being called the Acts of the apostles, the central character in this book of the bible is not Peter or Paul, however much prominence they have in the narrative, or any of the rest of the Twelve. It’s the one who does the sending (which is what apostolic means): the Holy Spirit of God.
Time and again, it’s the Holy Spirit who takes the initiative. The apostles don’t sit around developing mission strategies and five year vision statements. They are caught up in the activity of the Spirit, from the first moment that the Spirit descends as they’re gathered together, rattling the doors and windows and propelling them out into the streets, to the ways they find the Spirit empowering them in teaching and preaching and healing.
Today, we hear the story of the Spirit leading the fledgling church across a new frontier. Scattered by persecution in Jerusalem, the apostles take the message of the gospel from place to place. And Philip ends up in Samaria. In John’s Gospel Jesus had made a Samaritan woman the first preacher of the good news (John 4). He used the example of the Good Samaritan to rebuke Israel’s leaders (Luke 10.25ff). But there was deep-seated cultural and religious hostility between Jews and Samaritans, and until now, the early church had been Jewish. In Philip’s preaching the Spirit extends its borders, joining to the body of disciples the despised Samaritans.
But the Spirit is not done. In a passage reminiscent of the Old Testament stories of Elijah appearing and disappearing according to the will of God – a passage designed to show that the initiative is the Holy Spirit’s, not Philip’s, Philip is plucked from Samaria and deposited on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, where we find him running after a chariot.
In the chariot is an Ethiopian eunuch, a high-ranking court official of the Ethiopian queen, reading from the prophet Isaiah as he returns from worshipping in Jerusalem.
This is the person to whom the Spirit brings Philip. To a person of colour, a foreigner, belonging to a sexual and gender minority, and, despite his high rank and education, very probably a slave.
Eunuchs were forbidden from participating in temple rituals according to the Jewish Law (eg Deuteronomy 23.1). There was a boundary in place that excluded them, just as boundaries both physical and legal kept women and gentiles in their place. They were outsiders to the fullness of the covenant, consigned to a position at the margins.
So it’s a transgressive act for the Spirit to bring Philip to the Gaza road at this particular time as the eunuch is travelling away from Jerusalem, and away from the temple as place of worship and place of divine presence. But God wants this Ethiopian eunuch and sends Philip to communicate this divine desire. Barriers are being broken down by the action of God. As Paul will write later, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3.28).
And how did Paul come to know this? Paul, who was the one responsible for the persecution that scattered the apostles to start with. He learnt it because this is what the Spirit taught the church, by joining people together into one body across divides of nationality, status and gender.
‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asks the Ethiopian eunuch who is reading from the prophet Isaiah. Do you understand the scriptures? And Paul would have said yes: he was a well-trained Pharisee, a teacher of the law, schooled and formed in its content and interpretation. He understood what he was reading. But the Spirit, through the persons of the Ethiopian eunuch, the gentile Cornelius, and others, was teaching the church a deeper understanding. A couple of chapters on from the passage the Ethiopian is reading, Isaiah says
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say,
‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’;
and do not let the eunuch say,
‘I am just a dry tree.’
For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 56.3-5)
The action of the Spirit in showing God’s desire for the Ethiopian eunuch prompts a re-engagement with the Scriptures. Here, we see Isaiah’s prophecy fulfilled. God is doing a new thing, but its promise was there all along. How can I understand the scriptures unless someone guides me? says the eunuch. We don’t read the scriptures in isolation. The eunuch needs Philip, and the apostolic testimony to Jesus Christ. And Philip needs the eunuch, because the eunuch helps him to a deeper understanding of the promises and purposes of God.
The eunuch is reading about the suffering servant in Isaiah, the sheep that is led to the slaughter. ‘About whom does the prophet say this’, asks the eunuch, ‘about himself or about someone else?’
All faithful Jews, and God-fearers like this Ethiopian, knew that the scriptures promised a Messiah. But no one had expected a Messiah who would be crucified, and on the third day rise again. As Jesus had done with the disciples on the Emmaus road, the early church had been thrown back into the scriptures, to re-read them in the light of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in passages like this one from Isaiah the disciples found a way of understanding the presence of God in the midst of pain and humiliation, a way to understand the cross as the place of reconciliation and victory, and a way of confessing faith in a crucified Messiah.
Crucifixion put you outside the covenant: it was a cursed form of death. But in the death and resurrection of Jesus, as in the leading of the Spirit, God redraws boundaries. In the life and death of Jesus God goes to the outside, drawing into relationship those who had been excluded. In the leading of the Spirit, Philip is sent to the Ethiopian eunuch who is being drawn into Christ’s body. There’s nothing grudging about this redrawing of the bounds of kinship: in fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy the eunuch is not simply tolerated, nor told that he can be accepted only if he conforms to a particular set of norms, but given a name better than sons and daughters.
‘What is to prevent me from being baptized’ asks the eunuch. There is a wonderful immediacy and urgency to what happens next. He’s not enrolled on an Alpha course. He doesn’t have to have a 10 week teaching programme with Philip. Philip doesn’t go back to the apostles and engage in a programme of shared conversations or the commissioning of reports. Instead, the chariot stops next to a pool of water and the eunuch is baptized. God’s desire for him has awakened in him an answering desire for God. The body of Christ gains a new member; Philip and the eunuch are made siblings in Christ.
And still the eunuch’s question is posed to the church by those who have found themselves on the outside or been pushed there, on the grounds of race or class or disability or gender or sexuality: ‘what is to prevent me from being baptized?’
Nothing. Obedience to the Spirit demands it. For the leading of the Spirit doesn’t come to a halt at the end of the book of Acts. It goes on, in every place and generation, transgressing boundaries, drawing people together into communion in the broken and glorified body of Christ, and leading us all more fully into recognising and responding to God’s love and desire for all his children.