From the Acts of the Apostles: The eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
I have a confession to make.
I can, sometimes, be a bit of a procrastinator.
There are just so many great things to do—so many great books to read, or music to listen to, or museum shows to see, or movies to watch—and then there are so many things that just have to get done—clothes that need to be washed, rooms that need to be tidied up, sermons that need to be written… I have to confess that sometimes I just put all of it off, thinking I’ll get things done sooner or later, somehow…. Which, it turns out, is not always the best approach.
And so it’s with no small amount of admiration that I hear this story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch from the book of Acts today. If there are any patron saints for procrastinators, I think it must be Philip and this unnamed eunuch—they waste no time.
When an angel of Lord appears to Philip and says, “Get up and go”—“get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down to Gaza”—Philip doesn’t ask any questions; he doesn’t await further instruction or seek clarity about what he’s been told to do, or why. He very simply “got up and went,” Luke tells us.
We learn that the road Philip is sent to is a wilderness road, a desert road. This byway through a treacherous and empty land may remind you of other desert moments—Moses meeting God in the desert of Sinai; Christ being tempted by Satan in the desert. We are outside of the safe confines of the city and town, alone and vulnerable to the elements—we are far from the centers of learning and worship—a liminal space—but nevertheless a space where God brings together these two figures.
The meeting is most unexpected.
We don’t know much about Philip, but we know he was appointed as one of the seven deacons in the Church in Jerusalem, part of the group made sure that food was distributed fairly to widows and others in need of it. Presumably he was, like so many of the earliest followers of Jesus, a fairly ordinary person—a more or less devout Jew, trying to make a life for himself in an economically challenged, socially complex, and politically troubled part of the Roman Empire.
We also don’t know much about the Ethiopian eunuch—we don’t even know his name—but we know enough to see how unlikely and how surprising this chance meeting really is. The eunuch is anything but ordinary. He’s an official in the royal court of Ethiopia, the steward of the queen’s treasury. He’s cosmopolitan, privileged, able to travel all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem in order to worship at the Temple. He probably isn’t Jewish himself—as a eunuch and a foreigner he would already doubly marginalized from what might have been ordinarily accepted within the Jewish community—and yet he was worshipping in Jerusalem, perhaps as a so-called “god-fearer,” a Gentile who sought to worship the God of Israel even as an outsider. As the head of the royal treasury he’s probably educated and likely speaks at least two or three languages—his native Ethiopic and Greek, at least, and perhaps some Aramaic.
When Philip—modest, ordinary Philip—sees this magnificent foreign official, a leader in a wealthy foreign government, mounted in a chariot, on the wilderness road, the Holy Spirit again gives him instruction—“Go over to this chariot and join it.” Philip, again, wastes no time. He runs, not walks, up to the chariot, and hears the eunuch reading from the prophet Isaiah. (It’s an interesting little detail that the eunuch is reading aloud. It was the common practice in the ancient world to read aloud; there’s a famous moment in Augustine’s Confessions, a few centuries after this, when Augustine is amazed when he sees St. Ambrose reading silently! But this detail also tells us that the Ethiopian official is reading probably not in his first language but in a language Philip can understand.)
Philip joins the Ethiopian official in his chariot and they begin to go through this biblical text together. The passage they’re reading from Isaiah is one that we hear on Good Friday—“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.” It’s from a poem that Christians have read, from the very earliest days of the church, as prefiguring Jesus Christ as the servant whose suffering redeems God’s people. But the official doesn’t know this yet! He has to ask Philip, “Who is this prophet talking about? Himself or someone else?”
Maybe he’s heard about this Jesus, this itinerant rabbi who was crucified, the same one whom some people have been saying was raised from the dead. Maybe he’d heard about those events—and maybe he hadn’t. He clearly has a yearning to encounter God, to worship and follow God, to know God—he’s been on essentially a long pilgrimage, and now on his way back he’s still poring over the scriptures. But it’s not until Philip shows up that he can start to put it all together. It’s not until he’s alongside Philip, the two of them seeking God together, that he begins to encounter the Good News of the risen Lord.
And when Philip proclaims this risen Lord to the official, the response is, again, immediate. “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” You’ve told me about Jesus, you’ve told me about the resurrected Christ and how these events promise to bring salvation and restoration to Israel and to the whole of creation—what’s to stop me, here and now, from signing up, from joining the body of Christ, from having my sins washed away? What’s to prevent me?
Philip probably could have found some reasons, some things that would prevent him from baptizing this man. Philip could have said, “Oh, but you’re a Gentile” (it wasn’t clear quite yet that Gentiles were welcome). Philip could have said, “Oh, but you’re a eunuch”—a status that, scripturally, could have kept him from converting. But Philip doesn’t think twice—they go down to the water and Philip baptizes him. The Ethiopian eunuch becomes a member of the body of Christ—the one who asked to be included in included—even before the fledgling church back in Jerusalem has had a chance to work out its rules and regulations, its creeds and formularies, before it’s even started to argue about who can be in and who must be out.
Philip and the Ethiopian official don’t waste any time. “Get up and go,” the angel says. And “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” the eunuch asks.
Where are we in this story? Where do you imagine yourself? Perhaps you’re like Philip, trying to go where God is calling you to go—but not quite sure what will happen when you get there. Perhaps you’re like the Ethiopian official, yearning to meet God, seeking God as best you know how. Maybe you are on a wilderness road, not sure where it is leading.
The good news, friends, is that wherever we find ourselves in this story, God is there to meet us—God has a purpose for us. Even on that wilderness road, God offers the eunuch the grace of holy baptism. Even when we imagine ourselves to be unreachable, not good enough, not worthy of God’s embrace—and even when our human institutions might tell us that we aren’t deserving of God’s love—even then, there is God, the crucified and risen Lord, whose saving love for us invites us even from the wilderness road.
And even on that wilderness road, God gives Philip the chance to share the story—to share the good news of Jesus Christ and the creative, forgiving, healing love that is stronger than death. Even in an unexpected place, with an unexpected person, Philip can share that story. And he does it without hesitating, without second-guessing himself, without worrying about how he’ll be perceived.
Friends, this is evangelism—receiving that good news for what it is, which is nothing more or less than the gift of new and abundant life in Jesus Christ—and sharing that good news with those whom God has put in our paths. Evangelism might be an uncomfortable word for some of us—but it’s what we’re called to—each in our own way. As followers of Jesus Christ we are all called to share the good news—in our words, in our actions, in the joy and hope with which we greet the world, and—yes, in telling the story of God’s magnificent love for us and for creation—the love that became incarnate and laid down its life for us. May we, like Philip, hear God’s invitation—“Get up and go,”—and may we, like the Ethiopian eunuch, ask, “What’s to prevent me?”