Recharge Bible Study: An end to exclusion

The Full Monty

Acts 8:4–40 To read if you have time to take in the whole story

The Continental Option

Acts 8:26–40 Read this if you only have time for the key episode

One Shot Espresso

Acts 8:36 ‘As they rode along, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look! There’s some water! Why can’t I be baptised?”’

I ran from work, late for the designated train. I rushed on board seconds before it pulled out. Phew. Just made it. I knew that my wife Chrissie would be waiting on the platform in Bath to join the train I had boarded in Bristol, so that we could travel together to London for our weekend away. A complex arrangement, but a workable one. Or it would have been. My heart sank as I heard the conductor announce our arrival time in Plymouth. I had boarded the wrong train. Bristol to London via Taunton is not what you might call ‘a direct route’.

I don’t think the Holy Spirit had anything to do with my mistake, but I wonder if this is how Philip felt? He’d been in on the beginning of a revival in Samaria. Even Peter and John had come down to join him. He was cooking on gas, until the Holy Spirit sent him in exactly the opposite direction: out into the desert. Away from the clamour and crowds, he met a man who was evidently the wrong person to talk to. The Spirit thought otherwise, and urged Phillip to approach him. Was the would-be revivalist thinking of the many good reasons there were not to do so? Here are three.

He was foreign: Actually, beyond foreign. According to historian Frank Snowden, ‘Ethiopians were the yardstick by which antiquity measured coloured peoples.’ Ethiopia was the edge of the known world, as far into the wild as you could get. Phillip’s new friend is the ultimate outsider, an exotic alien as remote from Jewish sensibilities as it is possible to be. If ever there was a symbol of the ‘other’, this is it. The first Christians had hardly begun to explore the idea of ‘God-fearing Gentiles’ being accepted in the church (Acts 10:28), yet here was Philip being sent by God to meet with a complete outsider.

He was a eunuch: It is difficult to capture in modern terms how the castrated were seen in the ancient world. The closest parallel would be the way disabled people are treated in a country which treats disabled people really badly. These men weren’t exactly blamed for their neutered state, but neither were they offered much sympathy. In Israel, they were banned from participation in the shared life of the community. ‘The law’ insisted, somewhat bluntly, that, ‘If a man’s testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.’ (Deuteronomy 23:1, NLT). This seems to be derived from a combination of prejudices – the first because the eunuch is blemished, an imperfect offering, the second because he has no ‘seed’ and cannot therefore share in the propagation of the tribes of Israel. Even with his royal appointment and evident personal wealth, the eunuch would know how people saw him.

He was, for both these reasons, excluded: If Jerusalem’s exotic visitor had not known before his arrival just how he would be received, he would certainly know it now, on his journey home. He had come, we are told, to worship God (verse 27) but he would have been prevented from doing so. Foreigners could not get further into the temple than the court of the Gentiles, and even that would be closed to him if his physical condition were known. The Jewish leaders had long interpreted Deuteronomy 23:1 as a ban on eunuchs entering the temple courts. There is no specific indication in the text that he is leaving Jerusalem dejected, but it is more than possible. His plea to Phillip for someone to explain to him the meaning of the Jewish scriptures (verse 31) is an indication perhaps of just how aware he is of his status as an outsider to the Hebrew world. Whatever spiritual experience he came to Jerusalem to seek, he hasn’t found it.

Universal promises

Two things happen to change the trajectory of this man’s life. The first is that Phillip obeys the Holy Spirit. Does he perhaps remember the words of Jesus that the temple should be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’ (Mark 11:17)? The quote comes from Isaiah, just a few chapters from the passage the Eunuch is reading. ‘Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, “The Lord will never let me be part of his people.”’ Isaiah writes, ‘And don’t let the eunuchs say, “I’m a dried- up tree with no children and no future.”’ (Isaiah 56:3). Why? Because the promises of God will be extended even to these excluded groups. He will give to them ‘a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give’ (Isaiah 56:5). He will ‘fill them with joy ... [and] accept their burnt offerings’ because ‘my temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ (Isaiah 56:7). It is hard to believe these words were not in Phillip’s mind as the Holy Spirit pointed him to a man who had just been refused entry to the temple. Stirred by the possibilities of God’s universal promises, he obeys the call to move beyond his own boundaries and embrace the honest seeker.

The second thing that happens is that the reading of Isaiah melts the heart of the eunuch. He reads aloud the description of the suffering servant (Acts 8:32–33 / Isaiah 53:7–8), asking Philip what the passage might mean. Philip, we are told, explains the ‘good news’ about Jesus – perhaps the news that in Christ those formerly excluded are invited in, that there is a place at the table for all, that for the first time in his life this rejected and dejected man can be on the ‘in’ list not the ‘out’ list. Whatever the precise content of Phillip’s delivery, the result is stark. The Ethiopian sees water and says, ‘What is stopping me from getting baptised right now?’ A man whose whole life has been woven around exclusion realises that nothing stands between him and the blessings of God. No hindrance. No barriers to overcome. No bouncers menacingly checking physique at the door. Grace makes space even for the ‘other’.

No ifs, no buts

The rich symbolism of this encounter makes it so much more than an accidental meeting. Before Peter has dreamed of snacking on scorpions (Acts 10:13), before Cornelius and his household have been swept into the kingdom on a wave of the Spirit’s power (Acts 10:44), before the Apostles themselves have understood the scope of God’s grace (Acts 11:18), before Saul / Paul has even met Jesus (Acts 9:5), Phillip is carried to the very boundary of the kingdom and allowed to look over the wall. All the promises of God will be fulfilled in Jesus. His Spirit will be poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28, Acts 2:17). People of every tribe and tongue will be drawn to him (Genesis 18:18, 22:18, Isaiah 2:3, 55:5, Micah 4:2–3). His story really will go to the ends of the Earth (Acts 1:8). The Holy Spirit has a message for the new-born church, and Philip is his chosen courier. Repeat after me, ‘No one is excluded from the blessings Christ has paid for.’ Though their ethnicity be different from mine. Though their behaviour offend me. Though they may be, in my eyes, incomplete. Though they may be excluded by the man-made rules of my religion. No-one is excluded from the blessings Christ has paid for.

How sad that 20 centuries after Phillip’s wild walkabout we are still struggling with this. Why is so much of the technology of our churches geared towards sorting people? Putting apples in one box and pears in another. Good people. Bad people. Us. Them. The scandal of grace, in whose glaring light the movement we are part of came to birth, is that God does not exclude.

‘If you board the wrong train,’ Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, ‘it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.’ Whether it’s at Taunton or at tolerance, you just have to get off and change trains. Is there a change of direction the Holy Spirit is trying to bring about in our churches?