Unless Someone Guides Me

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Acts 8

26 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.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:

“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,

and like a lamb silent before its shearer,

so he does not open his mouth.

33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.

Who can describe his generation?

For his life is taken away from the earth.”

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”,* 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction: Matthew 25 and Q and A

Matthew 25

We are continuing today with our series on the 7 marks of a vital congregation.

This comes right from our commitment to be a Matthew 25 congregation, which has three main focuses:

Building vital congregations

Dismantling Structural Racism

Eradicating Systemic Poverty

Some folks have wondered what building congregational vitality has to do with our being a Matthew 25 church, and there are two things to say there:

Firstly, a less than vital congregation is going to struggle to do anything to address Structural Racism or Systemic Poverty.

But as I think we’ll find out today, the marks of a vital congregation have more to do with Poverty and Racism than we might originally have thought.

Q and A

When I was a youth worker, and I was particularly behind on writing my lessons, I’d offer a Q and A night.

With high school kids

I would pass around note cards just like this one, and any question was fair game.

We tried our best to keep these anonymous, so that the teens could ask whatever they wanted without fear of shame.

Because of where the minds of teenagers are, I think 80% of the questions had to do with sex and sexuality.

But that didn’t bother me, a question is a question.

My favorite, and I can’t tell you how much I wish I had saved this card, was a card that came to me covered in red ink, and somewhere between the blotches was the question:

Do you know how to get sharpie ink out of jeans?

I looked up and saw that the sharpie one of the kids was using exploded, and covered her hands and clothes. It was a mess!

With adults

But then I realized that maybe teenagers aren’t the only ones with questions.

So in the pre-pandemic days, we hosted an event called Doubt Night.

I gathered together some of my favorite pastor friends, suckers who were up to the challenge.

And we would get together in a bar, because I always wanted to end a Bible Study “tip your waiters and waitresses.”

It was the same deal: Cards went around and any question was fair game.

I answered far fewer questions about sex and sharpies, but it turned out that it was essentially the same great back and forth.

At the City Mission

When I was in Washington County, I was asked to come and lead chapel at City Mission.

City Mission is a wonderful organization that provides housing for homeless men and women and helps them get back on their feet.

Chapel is a requirement for the residents there, and so a healthy percentage of those who were there were kind of hostile to the whole experience.

I didn’t have the opportunity to pass cards here, but they were ok with not being anonymous.

In all three situations, the questions were honest, difficult, and personal.

What’s the deal with the trinity?

What’s the Church’s stance on this political issue or that?

Why does it feel like the Church doesn’t want me around?

Hard as they are, we shouldn’t run away from hard questions.

Why is Evangelism Scary?

The answer back has been in large part: I don’t know, but it is.

We’re afraid of being judgmental

There is a version of evangelism, of sharing our faith, that feels like what we’re saying is “My religion can beat up your religion.”

If you don’t get right with Jesus you’re going to hell!

And maybe you’re like me, that even as you are a professed and practicing Christian, you’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of evangelism, and it’s really uncomfortable.

So we don’t want to unleash that on anyone else.

We’re afraid of being rejected

There is a chance that if we reach out to our neighbors with the gospel, that they’ll reject us.

You really go to church? That’s so lame!

We are afraid that perhaps our Christian faith could forever alter the way someone else sees us, and not in a good light.

It’s a heavy topic!

Our faith as Christians is really central to who we are as people.

To talk about that is a really deep and intimate topic, and so talking about it can be tricky.

My librarian Sarah pointed me in the direction of this quote from Jane Austin “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

Our love of Christ in some instances is so deep that we have a difficult and tricky time talking about our faith.

So luckily, our text today points us in the right direction, and I think might be able to alleviate some of our fears.

How does this story make it easier?

Philip is listening to the Spirit

The Wild Goose strikes again!

What I find beautiful about this story is how little of Philip’s own initiative is at play.

He goes south because an angel of the Lord told him to.

He walks up to the chariot because the Spirit told him to.

The same Spirit that inspired the words of scripture that the eunuch is reading inspires Philip to interpret them.

And in kind of a bizarre ending, the Spirit snatches Philip away to the next mission.

Philip didn’t do anything in this story that wasn’t a direct result of the Spirit’s prodding.

And like we said before, Geese are rarely quite, and so too is the Spirit.

If we have our hearts and our ears open, I’m sure we’d hear the Spirit speaking to us too and letting us know where we need to go next with our spreading of the good news.

Philip is and has been a disciple

Philip has been one of Jesus’ disciples from the very beginning.

So there are a few things that ring true for him that help him out here.

He knows his scripture.

But he’s also been to the deep water- He knows what Jesus thinks of him.

That allows him to take risks.

When you know where you stand with the God of the universe, you don’t really have to worry much about where you stand with strangers.

When you know the power of Christ that works within you, failure isn’t really something to be concerned with.

When you know that Jesus is with you, even the scary moments are robbed of their impact.

Philip isn’t afraid of cultural barriers.

There are a lot of cultural barriers here that could have kept Philip away.

Ethiopian

This court official is from a far off land in Ethiopia.

He would have looked different than Philip.

He would have spoken differently than Philip.

He would have behaved differently than Philip.

He was of a different race.

(Ah, see…I told you that would come back around again, right?)

Philip could have done what so many in our culture seem perfectly comfortable doing with folks of a different race.

Ignore him.

Laugh him off.

Denigrate him.

Separate him.

Label him as the “other.”

But Philip won’t let that cultural barrier get in the way.

Eunuch

Eunuchs were, and I’m guessing still are, really misunderstood.

These are men that would have been castrated, probably at a pretty young age.

They would have undergone that for two reasons:

Either they wanted to remain pure, and so they entered into this rather permanent condition of celibacy.

Or, as I’m suspecting might have been the case here, they were castrated when they entered the service of a monarch.

Pretty hard to mess with the King’s wife when you’re a eunuch.

In either event, whichever reason it was, eunuchs were a class of people largely marginalized, humiliated, and ostracized in the culture.

And while we’re at it, Philip was a good Jew, so he would have been familiar with this verse that is likely to make the pastor blush a bit this morning:

Deuteronomy 23:1 ““No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall come into the assembly of the Lord.”

There was a scriptural basis for keeping this person on the outside looking in, specifically because of that person’s sexuality.

Philip could very easily have cited that verse at the eunuch, and went about his merry way.

But Philip won’t let that cultural barrier get in the way.

Philip gets close to the Chariot

The Spirit prompts him in that direction, so he goes.

In fact, he had to run!

I don’t know if I had caught the humor in this in previous times I studied this scripture.

Philip had to have been running next to the chariot, and in between breaths saying “Do…you…under…stand…what…you…are…reading?

Luckily the eunuch is curious, because he wants someone to guide him in this passage he’s studying.

Philip answers the questions that are already there.

The Eunuch is the driver of the questions.

As a preacher, I can tell you the temptation is there when Philip first hears Isaiah being read out loud to jump in right away.

Let me tell you about Isaiah!

Let me give you a quick sermon here about how Isaiah was pointing to Jesus.

Let me tell you the meaning of this Hebrew word you might not know.

Instead, Philip let’s the eunuch ask a question.

Is this about the prophet, or is this about someone else?

Innocent enough question!

But one that would have been easy to miss if Philip had just run away with it.

One again, as a preacher, one of the things that keeps me up at night is the idea that I might be answering questions no one is asking.

If I was working on my car, and someone handed me the owners manual for the law mower in my shed, that would be less than helpful, right?

Every word of that lawn mower manual could be and hopefully is true, but just not the questions I’m working on right now.

Philip evangelizes

When it says “Philip proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus” it’s the Greek word “Euangelion”

Evangelism.

Evangelism is good news.

It’s not about judgement.

It’s not about conversion.

It’s not about membership rolls.

It’s just simply put, good news.

God came to us in Christ

Christ gave us what we could not do for ourselves.

And most important, Christ loves us every single one.

That’s Good News.

Philip isn’t creating any roadblocks.

What is to prevent me?

Lots of things!

He belonged to the wrong nation.

He held the wrong job

He possessed the wrong sexuality, or at least the wrong plumbing.

Philip doesn’t care.

There’s water there, and this guy wants to know Jesus.

Let’s baptize him.

I think so often in the Church we are looking for ways to say no.

Imagine what it would look like if we were looking for ways to say yes?

Are we hitting the mark?

How are we doing with cultural barriers?

We need an honest assessment here.

The barrier of racism

Our culture, whether we’re ready to admit it or not, has a lot of barriers that we still put up about race.

Some of those are unintentional, remnants of our pre-conditioning.

Some of those barriers are sadly extremely intentional, designed to alienate and humiliate.

We need to name racism for what it is, it is a sin.

It is a sin to look down on any of God’s creatures because of the color of their skin.

It is a sin to participate in systems that see others as less than.

It is a sin to pretend that the sin of racism isn’t there.

And the good news is that the sin of racism is like any other sin in the church.

On the other side of confession, there is forgiveness, there is healing, and there is redemption.

We could be the kind of place that focuses on all three.

We could be the kind of place that offers forgiveness to our brothers and sisters for our cultural blind spots.

We could be the kind of place that offers healing to those who have been wounded by racism in the past as well as those who perpetrate it.

And Lord help us, Beulah Presbyterian Church could be the place where redemption is possible, where every tribe, nation, and tongue is not only welcomed, but sought after in this sanctuary.

That is very much only going to happen if we are willing to run alongside the chariots of our black, hispanic, asian, middle eastern, or brothers and sisters of any race.

But you know, we could run with that chariot!

What a beautiful image of the Kingdom!

The barrier of LGBTQ+

This is for sure a longer sermon, and one that I hope and pray you won’t auto fill me on...

But Philip encounters a person who scripture “clearly states” should be ostracized for his sexuality.

And Philip doesn’t care.

He answers the question anyway.

Wherever we stand on the question of folks in the LGBTQ+ community, what we can or can’t affirm, again that’s for another sermon (or a cup of coffee if you’d like).

There are a few things that are universally true though, something that no one has disagree with me on yet:

Folks in the LGBTQ community have been horrendously treated by the church for generations.

Folks in the LGBTQ community have questions, very good, very hard questions, for us in the church.

There are folks in the LGBTQ community are seeking after Jesus.

Folks in the LGBTQ community deserve evangelism, don’t they?

But the only way that’s going to come to pass is if the church is willing to run alongside that chariot.

Whatever personal disagreements we may have, Philip surely had them too.

We need to run alongside that chariot.

Other barriers?

If either of those first two didn’t get you, what other kind of barriers are there culturally?

Gender barriers?

Political barriers?

Religious barriers?

When we create these barriers, when we live as though they are real, we are essentially saying that the Spirit isn’t big enough to cover this person or that person.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Spirit is bigger than any barrier we could ever create.

There are lots of Chariots the Spirit is calling us to run beside.

We need to run beside the chariots of our community and our neighborhood, regardless of the roadblocks.

When I took this job, it wasn’t hard to tell people where Beulah was.

“The big triangle church you can see from the parkway!”

I can’t tell you how hard I dream for a day where we are known less for where we are in the community and known more for who we are in the community.

When people think Beulah I don’t want them to have a building in mind.

I want them to have a people in mind.

And I want them to know that we will always be close enough to hear the questions, and to take them seriously enough to answer them.

We need a new evangelism.

Because in the end, we don’t have to be scared of evangelism.

Evangelism isn’t about judgement, about who’s religion could beat up who’s.

Evangelism isn’t about acceptance or rejection of us as people, or about our reputations.

Evangelism isn’t so heavy that we can’t carry it.

All of that is the old evangelism, a tired exercise that in my mind was never really about Christ at all.

The New Evangelism- Good News

We need a new evangelism that is guided by the Spirit to places we never imagined we’d go.

We need a new evangelism that is wiling to be close enough to the chariots of our world to hear the questions.

We need a new evangelism that is unimpressed by and refuses to abide the cultural barriers of our day, no matter who put them there.

We need a new evangelism that is far more interested in finding a way to say yes than it is in finding a way to say no.

We need a new evangelism that captures the essence of the Gospel: The good news.

May Christ give us strength.