God Has Left the Building: Acts 8:26-38 Philip and the Ethiopian

read the story here 

This story has two memorable characters.

Philip, who is not the disciple called Philip we know from the gospels. He was one of those set aside not to preach the word, but to wait on tables. When he felt danger pressing on him in Jerusalem he fled to other parts. He is led in this story by angels and the Spirit. And even though his vocation is to tend tables, he apparently knows God’s story well and senses how to effectively share it.

 Also a key character is the Ethiopian eunuch. He is a complex character. He is well-placed in Ethiopia, in charge of the treasury. He has a chariot at his command with another as its driver. (So he is not driving while reading a text, whew!) He is able to leave home and travel by chariot well over 2000 miles round trip. (Good thing he brought a book). He has access to a scroll of Isaiah (not a common possession) and can read it. But most often in the passage he is described as a eunuch. So while the things at his command point toward a bright future, that future ends with him.

 The odds of these two meeting are tiny. But they do because God is guiding the process with the help of angels and the Spirit.

The eunuch (don’t you wish we knew his name?) is engaging in God’s story on the scroll that rests open on his lap. He is reading the scroll aloud–this appears to be the most common way that people read even when alone. The sound of the words mattered, not just the ideas they carried.

This eunuch (I really wish I knew his name; who wants to be known for what they lack?) invites the dusty traveler Philip into his chariot and begins to raise questions about Isaiah’s prophetic poetry (Isaiah 53:7-8). He reads about one who has been humiliated and denied justice. He wonders the identity of the man who has suffered thus.

Perhaps this description caught his ear because he has known the injustice of a humiliation he most likely did not choose for himself.  He finds his own story within the story of God’s favor.

Philip apparently knew how to build on this. He begins with the passage that resonates with the man and then moves out in wider and wider circles exploring the good news of Jesus and the God whom he served.

So effective is Philip’s proclamation that at the first sign of an oasis in the desert, the eunuch wants to wade in the water. He has seen how his life and humiliation are held within the life and love of Jesus. So he is ready to allow Jesus to become a defining story that holds his whole life.

While the Ethiopian will not have biological descendants to tell his story, he has those of us who are his spiritual descendants.  And almost two thousand years later we keep alive the memory of this first follower of Jesus.

Within the Ethiopian church, the tradition holds that this man brought the gospel to his land where the community who heard his message preserved it without break to this very day.

 

Where have you found your story in God’s story?

Who has explained to you your story and God’s story in ways that changed your life?

Whose Philip will you be?

(Pastor Phil will preach on this story August 2, 2020)