“Whisper from the Wings”        Dr. Julie Adkins

                Text: Acts 8:26-40

 

SERMON

 

You know, the book of Acts

            is full of wonderful stories.

Some of them, so strange

            that they seem like fairy tales or legends,

                        not at all like a history of the early church.

Miraculous healings,

            mass conversions,

                        long journeys with multiple adventures,

                        and shipwrecks and other narrow escapes.

Then there are other stories

            which seem a little more normal, perhaps.

Things which have parallels in our own lives:

            tense courtroom scenes,

                        squabbles within the church,

                                    a young man falling asleep during a sermon …

The story we heard a few minutes ago,

            about Philip and the Ethiopian,

                        seems to fall more into that second category.

Not that we see chariots every day,

            or have baptisms alongside the road –

But at least, our story shows us normal people

            doing fairly normal, common things.

Making a journey is not

            a particularly strange thing to do.

Talking about Jesus may not be something we do every day,

            but if a stranger asked us about him,

                        surely we would try to answer.

And baptism seems

            a natural enough conclusion to the story.

A person professes faith in Jesus Christ for the first time,

            and he or she is baptized.

Nothing weird about that.

No, we have to look behind the scenes

            to find what is unusual about this story.

  

The scene opens on a desert road,

            between Jerusalem and Gaza.

An Ethiopian is traveling –

            a high government official, in charge of the queen’s treasury –

                        and he is returning from Jerusalem,

                                    where he went to worship.

Think about that: an Ethiopian,

            that is, someone with black skin;

who has been to Jerusalem to worship,

                        that is, a Jew.

Now, how many Black Jews do you know today?

I promise you,

            it wasn’t a real common thing then, either!

So that’s more than a little unusual.

  

And then, also, the man is a eunuch.

That has to have raised

            at least a quick question in Philip’s mind.

Because a eunuch was not allowed

            to participate fully in the Jewish faith.

To help you make sense of that,

            let me describe for you the layout of the Jerusalem Temple.

There was the Temple building itself –

            actually, the Second Temple;

            remember, the first was destroyed by the Babylonians in the 6^th century B.C.

Then, in front of the Temple, outdoors, there was a courtyard;

            with a wall around it and a gate into it.

Then, of course, there was “outside.”

If you were a non-Jew,

            like if you were one of the Roman soldiers, let’s say –

                        you weren’t even allowed inside the courtyard,

                        much less into the Temple itself.

In fact, only Jewish men were permitted inside the Temple building.

Jewish women could come into the courtyard,

            but not the Temple itself.

Same thing for the group called “God-fearers” –

            these were men who had accepted Jewish teaching

                        and lived by the Torah, the Law,

            but who couldn’t quite bring themselves, as adults,

                        to be circumcised.

They could enter the courtyard, but not the Temple.

And the same was true for eunuchs, who, I guess,

            were perceived as being sort of like women!

Anyway, only Jewish men

            could fully participate in Temple worship and rituals.

So it must have occurred to Philip,

            if only briefly,

                        “if this man can’t completely be a Jews,

                          can he completely become a Christian

                                    if I baptize him?”

Remember that this was before Peter and Paul

            began baptizing Gentiles.

Fortunately, Philip didn’t stop

            to write a long theological treatise

                        on the nature and meaning of baptism

He went down into the water with the man,

            and baptized him,

                        and left the details up to God.

But it was an unusual thing to do

            at that point in time.

To accept and to baptize as a Christian

            a person who was not completely included

                        by the Jewish faith and the Jewish law.

  

So that’s two unusual things we find

            when we dig into the story just a little bit.

There’s also another pretty big thing,

            that’s interesting, and turns out to be unusual,

                        but to find it, we have to look away from center stage.

Philip and the Ethiopian seem to be

            the central figures in the story:

                        journeying, asking, teaching, learning, baptizing.

But notice what’s been going on offstage:

Verse 26,

            “An angel of the Lord said to Philip,

                        ‘Go south to that desert road between Jerusalem and Gaza.’”

Verse 29,

            the Spirit said to Philip,

                        “Go over to this chariot and join it.”

God is orchestrating this whole scene!

God is off in the wings, prompting Philip,

            giving him directions about where to go,

                        what to do, what to say.

Now, most of us would agree that

            God has some control in our lives,

                        and the God offers us direction at times.

But here, we have God

            micromanaging the whole story line!

Even to the point of providing

            water deep enough for a baptism

                        alongside of a road in the middle of the desert!

Did you catch that?

Weird thing #3.

An angel, speaking for God,

            arranges for Philip to be on the road

                        as the Ethiopian passes by, reading the book of Isaiah.

The Spirit, who is God,

            tells Philip to go talk to that man.

It’s almost as if God is the divine puppeteer,

            pulling string to make the characters onstage

                        do certain things.

But not quite, because Philip always

            has the option of saying no,

                        unlike a puppet.

  

God is the driving force in this story.

Sort of like a prompter,

            coaching Philip on what to say next;

sort of like a scriptwriter,

            putting the right words in his mouth;

sort of like a stage manager,

insuring that everything is in place

            for the scene to run smoothly;

or even like a director, or a producer,

            who makes the whole thing possible in the first place.

Now of course, God is pretty much

            the main character of the whole Bible!

That’s pretty obvious.

But there are many occasions and stories

            where God takes a kind of hands-off approach,

                        and chooses not to interfere.

And the Bible is full of times

            when human beings, or groups of human beings,

                        or sometimes the entire human race,

            get ourselves into incredible muddles and troubles,

                        because we tried to “go it on our own,” without God,

                                    and found that we couldn’t get anywhere.

There are times, then and now,

            when God gives us free rein.

And we have the opportunity to go out and do good,

            or, as often happens, to mess up royally.

  

But in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian,

            God is closely managing the details.

We might wonder why.

Why is this scene so important

            that God feels the need to orchestrate it so carefully?

  

I think it has to do with

            those unusual aspects we noticed at the first.

Even supposing that Philip

was on that desert road for reasons of his own,

            without divine prompting,

do you imagine he would have

            struck up a conversation with an Ethiopian in a chariot

                        all on his own?

How could he have guessed

            that the man was a Jew,

                        and not from some unfamiliar African religion?

How would he have ever discovered

            that the man was reading Isaiah,

                        and searching for answers?

In all likelihood,

            this encounter would have never taken place

                        if left only up to the two principal human characters.

And for some reason,

            it was important enough to God that this happen,

                        that God was willing to get deeply involved in order to insure it.

  

Why?

Because Philip and his colleagues needed to learn,

            that the gospel was not just for people like them.

It was for people with skin of a different color;

            it was for people who weren’t necessarily deemed “acceptable”

                        by their old-time religion.

Anyone willing to hear and accept the good news of Jesus Christ

            could be baptized,

                        and could be a Christian.

 

 And I think that every now and then,

            we need to be reminded of that, too.

It seems so much easier

            to reach out to folks who are “like us.”

Whereas the whisper from offstage

            may be telling us to branch out.

  

Indeed, perhaps we should expect that

            when we do hear those promptings from God,

                        they will probably be telling us to do something surprising.

If it weren’t unusual, God wouldn’t need to tell us!

            We’d figure it our for ourselves!

But sometimes we need direction,

            everything from a subtle hint to a swift kick.

And that is where we need to stay open

            to the voice of the Spirit.

Whispering from the wings,

            asking us to go where we wouldn’t have gone on our own,

                        to look where we haven’t looked before,

                                    to see and to do things in a new way.

May our ears be open.

Amen.

 

© 2003 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)