Guess Who's Coming to Worship
Scripture Reading: Acts 8:26-40
When I was in my second year of seminary, I was one of four co-leaders of a new intentionally multicultural ministry. We called ourselves One Table Fellowship, a name we chose to reflect that everyone, regardless of where they come from, is invited to gather around the table of Jesus Christ. “Multicultural” wasn’t simply our aspiration, it was in our DNA. We were a veritable United Nations of diversity in terms of gender—two men and two women; race—white, Black, Asian, and Hispanic; and denominational background—Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Baptist, including two of us who were once Roman Catholic.
We envisioned drawing a congregation that was much like ourselves—young (at 40 years old, I was the oldest by at least 10 years), racially diverse, and open to multiple perspectives. What we got was Gary. Attendance at our worship services rarely snuck into double digits, but Gary was there virtually every Sunday. He had been referred to us by his doctor, who was a member of the parent church that was supporting our ministry and who felt that Gary needed to hear the gospel.
Gary lived alone in a dingy apartment that smelled of cigarettes and cat hair. Appearing older than his 50 or so years, he walked with a limp and had numerous health issues that prevented him from working. His only income was his monthly Social Security check, which he liked to spend on the horses (not raising, betting). Gary’s life was one of seemingly endless needs: money, rides, errands, and more. He had self-destructive habits. He told inappropriate jokes. He could try your patience. And yet he was our most faithful attendee. He was the one whom God led to our door.
It isn’t until the church begins to undergo persecution, led in part by an especially zealous Pharisee named Saul, that Christianity begins to spread beyond the walls of the holy city.
One Table Fellowship lasted only about a year before the four of us called it quits. There simply wasn’t enough time in the day to nurture a fledgling ministry alongside the demands of school, internships, and part-time jobs. As I look back now some 12 years later, although the ministry never became what we had hoped it would be, it just might have been what we needed it to be. We needed to learn—or at least I did—that our vision of the church was too narrow. We were expecting young, active professionals of diverse backgrounds, but what we got was Gary, a sickly, middle-aged white man from New Jersey.
The early church faced a similar situation. The evangelism of the disciples tended to focus on Jewish men like themselves, so much so that Christianity began not as a distinct religion but as a movement within Judaism. The earliest Christians were virtually all Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Not to mention that with Jesus having been crucified and then raised from the dead in Jerusalem, the Jewish capital became the center of the early Christian movement.
But it was the risen Jesus who had instructed the disciples to proclaim forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations. Jerusalem would be the starting point, even serving as a base, but the point was for the disciples to fan out and spread the gospel far and wide.
And yet the disciples don’t show all that much interest in leaving their familiar surroundings. It isn’t until the church begins to undergo persecution, led in part by an especially zealous Pharisee named Saul, that Christianity begins to spread beyond the walls of the holy city. After the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, which Saul enthusiastically approved of, we’re told that “That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1).
Among those who are scattered is Philip. This is not the Philip who was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, but another Phillip whom the early church called “Philip the Evangelist.” He had been commissioned as an evangelist at the same time as Stephen.
Philip is led by God to make for Gaza (yes, the very same Gaza that is so much in the news these days). Verse 26 reads, “Then 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.’” The writer of Acts then adds in parentheses, “This is a wilderness road.”
Taking a wilderness road, Philip will find himself off the beaten path. As adventure stories and fairy tales teach us, you never know who or what you’ll encounter off the beaten path out in the wilderness! Lions, tigers, bears, and, oh my!…even eunuchs!
For those unfamiliar, a eunuch is a castrated male. Because they could not procreate and therefore could not create a rival to the throne, eunuchs often served in royal courts. That’s the case with this Ethiopian eunuch who also happens to be traveling on the wilderness road. He serves as a court official to the Ethiopian queen. He’s a pretty important fellow, in fact. He’s in charge of her entire treasury, which explains why he’s riding in style in a chariot rather than on horseback.
He’s on his way home from Jerusalem where he had been worshiping at the temple. That might seem odd on its face. I mean, he’s clearly not from the area and probably not Jewish. However, while access to the inner courts of the temple was restricted to Jews, the temple did have an outer court in which non-Jews were allowed to gather. These non-Jews who were drawn to Judaism but who were not converts were referred to as “God-fearers.”
To put it in today’s terms, such people might identify as “spiritual but not religious.” Spiritual in that they are open to the idea or have a vague notion of a higher power but without any particular religious commitment. They may not attend church, but they are seeking meaning and purpose beyond their material needs. According to the Pew Research Center, the “spiritual but not religious” represent about one in every five Americans.
When I was a churchgoer but before I had become a pastor, I didn’t think much of such people. I found the whole concept of “spiritual but not religious” to be intellectually lazy. Either believe in God or don’t! Get off the fence, already! That was my attitude. I had more respect for the committed atheist than the wishy-washy agnostic. To be honest, I still do. But now that I serve the church as a pastor, the fact that there are so many people outside of the church who are longing for meaning and are therefore at least somewhat open to the gospel I find encouraging.
I don’t know whether Philip was similarly encouraged by the thought of sharing the gospel with a spiritually curious Ethiopian eunuch, but verse 29 makes clear that the Holy Spirit prompts him to do just that. Just as Philip had been prompted to “get up and go” to Gaza, so too Philip is told to go over to the eunuch’s chariot and join it. God seems very much to want to bring this outsider into the fold.
This, again, is curious on its face because the Old Testament specifically forbids eunuchs from becoming part of the community. Deuteronomy 23:1, which I know you can all cite from memory, clearly states, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” (This is the Word of the Lord.)
Perhaps the eunuch is unaware that he is excluded, cut off in more ways than one. After all, he is not reading the law but the prophet Isaiah. And he’s having difficulty understanding even that. And so he invites Philip into his chariot to explain the passage.
But the truth of the matter is that we were all outsiders—all of us—because sin had estranged us from fellowship with God.
Picture the scene. You have this elegantly dressed Ethiopian court official in his fancy BMW 7 series chariot, and Philip, a Greek-speaking follower of Christ from Jerusalem, sitting down together to have Bible study in the middle of the wilderness! If only more of our churches looked like that! It would certainly make for interesting coffee hours.
In all seriousness, this scene is a microcosm of the church writ large—insiders and outsiders gathered together by the grace of God. Now, many of you are lifelong Christians, which is to say, insiders, and so you may identify more with Philip. Philip, as I mentioned earlier, was known as the evangelist, but he could just as well be Philip the elder or Philip the deacon. He is someone who speaks the language of the church and who knows the traditions. In worship he knows when to sit and when to stand. He knows the melodies of all the hymns. He knows what a “quorum” is. I imagine that many of us can identify with Philip.
But maybe this Ethiopian outsider is not so much a stranger to you either. We tend to think that everyone is on firmer footing than we are when it comes to fitting in. And because we’re all sinners, we can be tempted to think that something we’ve done or that was done to us has excluded us from God’s favor and fellowship. That can certainly be the case for anyone who has been hurt by the church or made to feel unwelcome. Maybe you’ve felt like an outsider peering through the windows of a grace that seems out of reach.
If you haven’t felt this way yourself, then I bet you know someone who has. But the truth of the matter is that we were all outsiders—all of us—because sin had estranged us from fellowship with God. It’s only the forgiveness of sins that we’ve received through Jesus Christ that has dragged us into God’s fold and made us insiders. And those whom God has brought in will never be cut off.
And speaking of being cut off, I’m going to close with one more word about eunuchs. The passage from Isaiah that the Ethiopian eunuch was reading was from chapter 53. Had he continued reading just a bit more, he could have read the following in chapter 56:
3 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.”
4 For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
5 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 (Isa. 56:3-5).