Fifth Sunday in Easter LCMS 3 Year B, 2021

Fifth Sunday in Easter LCMS 3 Year B, 2021

Lee Manor Owen Sound

Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:1-21

Do you understand what you’re reading?

Imagine if you will, that you’re travelling, perhaps on a plane or a boat, or even a train. And you sit down next to another person travelling with you. And you turn to this person and strike up a conversation with them. It turns out that this person belongs to a particular group of people. A group of people that those both in the church and outside the church consider as one generally “not welcome” to join the worshipping community of Christians. Whatever that community is, I’ll leave up to your own imagination, perhaps a persecutor of Christians, perhaps a prostitute, you get the idea. But you find out, that this person, who belongs to this group, is actually on their way to a church gathering. They’ve not been invited, but they’re nevertheless going to go, because they want to worship the Lord, they want to hear the gospel of their salvation, and they want to be numbered among His people. What would you think? What would you feel?

Our reading in Acts this morning presents us with a very similar picture between Philip the Deacon and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

This story centres around the Eunuch. A royal Eunuch, a state official of Ethiopia. Generally entrusted with serving a Queen or a princess, and often trusted with other governmental matters of state. An important man in his own right. In Ethiopia, a man of power. But by many, considered less-than-a man. In Jerusalem the perception of this man was even worse. To begin with, this man was a gentile. Gentiles could not enter the same temple space that the Jews inhabited. It was to say, you could come this far but no further, you can believe as we do, but never be one of us. Moreover, this man was a Eunuch. Eunuch’s, and other people with similar disfigurements could not enter the temple at all. And yet, why did this man go to Jerusalem? To worship! He went to a place where, by cultural and Scriptural mandate he would not be welcomed into the worshipping community with everybody else, and yet against reason he went anyway. A picture akin to an individual explicitly not being invited to a party, but they want to go so bad that they just stand outside across the street and look on at everybody else having fun. That is what this man did. And on his way back, after likely feeling unworthy just having come off of his trip to a place where he was utterly unaccepted, what was he reading? The Scriptures of those people who wouldn’t accept him. The Scriptures which in themselves, contained prohibitions against his being accepted. Again, against reason, this man hoped for and longed for an audience from the God who deemed him unworthy to worship him, similar to the Canaanite woman who approaches Jesus in the gospels and asks Him to heal her daughter who was possessed by Demons, and Christ says, but woman, I was sent to minister to the Jews, it isn’t right to give the children’s food to the dogs. But in faith, against reason, against even the words of Christ in that moment, she said but Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table. And by this faith, great faith, Jesus calls it, a faith against all odds, a faith in something not even offered to her, Jesus say’s that her daughter had been healed. As if, the individual not invited to that party, standing across the street and watching everybody else have fun, would be seen by the host, and welcomed in despite the original prohibition against them.

And just what did Philip do when he saw this man, having come from Jerusalem where he was utterly unwelcomed, reading the Scriptures of the people and the God who had not welcomed him? He said to him, do you understand what you’re reading? Philip didn’t take any time to be shocked, to ask him how he was doing emotionally after his trip to Jerusalem where he was excluded from the group he so longed to be apart of. Philip wanted to know one thing only, do you understand the gospel of Jesus Christ?

God has said no to you. He has said no to your sins, that which you’ve done. And He has said no to your lack of love, that which you’ve left undone. He says no to you as a person, a broken sinner, unworthy to even worship Him. But He says yes to you in His Christ. He does not say that you, as you are, may enter into the temple courts and worship me. He says you, in Christ, are my temple, in which I dwell. He does not say that you as you are may enter into the party as a guest, but He says, in Christ, this is your party.

Perhaps one would say to the person in the publicly shameful sin, or a perceived unworthiness of their person that they need to do more, they need to change, they need to be different and then, then God could love them. But what does our Lord say in John 15 as we read this morning? If you abide in me, then, then you will bear much fruit. The Lord does not ask you to do anything to become worthy of fellowship with Him, rather He says if you abide in me, then, I will produce fruit in you. The LOVE of God, which we read about in 1 John 4, does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it. It is not a worthiness that grants us God’s love, but God’s love, which makes us worthy to worship Him. He bids you to come in spite of who you are and what you do, in faith, that you will be excepted not because of who you are, but because of who He is, and not because of what you do, but because of what He’s done for you.

In Christ all things are yes and Amen, and as Paul says in Galatians 3:27, all who have been baptized have put on Christ. And that was exactly what the Eunuch did after hearing what was given to Him in Christ. He put on His yes, and He said Amen. Brothers and Sisters, whether you are baptized or unbaptized, Baptized last week or 60 years ago, Baptism is for you today, Christ is for your today, and yesterday, and tomorrow, and forever. Be Baptized, put on Christ, receive your yes, and let your life be lived to the tune of “Amen.”