Scripture: Acts 8:26-40
Look. Here’s water. What’s to prevent me from being baptized?
When I was a teenager, I began to ask impertinent questions about religion. In this way, I was a pretty typical teenager. Once I approached a church-going relative and asked about Jesus. I was beginning to think there was more to this Jesus person than simply “Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know.” So I asked this relative of mine and he said, “Well, you just gotta love Jesus. If you don’t, you’ll go to hell!”
I don’t blame my relative for not giving me the answer I was looking for. It wasn’t his fault. I could have done a better job of clarifying my question. Still, I learned a valuable lesson that day from my relative who tried to scare me into faith. The lesson was that fear has no place in our faith, and certainly no place in how we communicate that faith to others.
I had a completely different experience when I was a college student. I was studying a Christian commune for a research paper. The people wore funny clothes and had some pretty unusual practices, but once I got past those differences I found that they were just like anyone else.
There was one young man who really impressed me. He’d been married for a few years and had two little kids. He was the single happiest person I’ve ever met, before or since. He was cheerful no matter the news or the weather or a challenge at work. He laughed with sheer joy at everything he faced, even the one really irritating person at the commune. His joy was infectious.
I always smiled when I visited with him, and commented once on his happiness. He laughed and threw his hands up in the air. “Of course I’m happy,” he said. “I am loved by God!. I get to live for all eternity with Christ and with every other person beloved by God. How could I be anything other than happy?”
At that point in my life I didn’t go to church very often. I had no intention of joining the commune, but I did come home after that visit strongly influenced by this joy that I didn’t fully understand. A joy that tugged at my heart, whispering very quietly:
Look. Here’s water. What’s to prevent me from being baptized?
The eunuch is a difficult character. Let’s just get that right out there. But let’s focus less on what makes him a eunuch and more on how he benefits from being one. Eunuchs are trusted political figures. They are well educated. Most are wealthy and powerful. Our Ethiopian eunuch in Acts is exceptionally powerful, wealthy, and educated. He has the freedom to travel and worship, and his eunuch-ness and foreignness don’t seem to be doing him any real harm when it comes to his faith.
He’d spent time at the temple in Jerusalem and knew enough Hebrew to read Isaiah, so he must have had access to a rabbi at some point in life. Probably quite few. There are a lot of reasons the eunuch might have been struggling with the scripture passage in Isaiah. The point I’d like to make here is that God seems to have sent Philip to the eunuch at a time when the latter was most receptive to a new understanding. As the old saying goes, when the student is ready the teacher appears.
Philip wasn’t the most educated person in the world. He probably wasn’t even the most well-spoken or perhaps even the most clean-smelling person in the world. But he’d followed Jesus, he’d witnessed the death and resurrection of Jesus, and he’d seen healings and conversions and outpouring of the Holy Spirit among the community of the faithful. Philip didn’t have to be a scholar. He just had to say what he knew about Jesus.
It really helped that the eunuch was a follower of the Jewish tradition and that Philip came from within it. It helped that the eunuch was active in his faith through study and worship and prayer. These things are important both before and after our commitment to faith. Before baptism, as well as afterwards, study and worship and prayer can prepare the way for joy. But they are not themselves the joy we seek.
Inviting a rustic Jewish pedestrian into his chariot was probably not on the top of the eunuch’s list of things to do that day, but the risk paid off. There must have been something about Philip, something personal and vulnerable and authentic in Philip, as he opened the scriptures to the eunuch. We’re not told what Philip said. Maybe it’s not all that important. But we’re told about the eunuch’s reaction. And it’s full of joy and faith and earnest commitment. He commands his chariot to stop and cries:
Look. Here’s water. What’s to prevent me from being baptized?
After he was baptised, the eunuch went on his way, rejoicing. Just hearing the story of the eunuch, we’re filled with joy, rejoicing with him. Why is that? Because the eunuch understood a passage of Isaiah? I don’t think so, although understanding Isaiah is a commendable accomplishment. Are we filled with joy because the eunuch was baptized? Maybe, but that’s not the whole story. I think we’re filled with infectious joy with and for the eunuch because he – and we – are overwhelmed with God’s love for us. The love we feel when we first take hold of the Good News, the Gospel.
Jesus opened up the old scriptures to his disciples and the disciples in turn opened them to others, like the eunuch. The scriptures open to the good news, the good news which is Christ, which is the Son of God living among us, dying to love us, rising from the dead to save us, and forever living inside us, not only inside each of us individually but most importantly living among us as we make up the Body of Christ.
We need this good news opened up to us over and over, as we do here at this table when we share the body and the blood of our savior. The eunuch’s path is our own path. We prepare ourselves to receive God’s love when we study scripture, or worship together, or attend to our prayers. But if we’re aware and allow the ears of our hearts to be open, we can be surprised by the teachers who come alongside us. Like Philip, they may be verbally challenged people with non-standard hygiene walking along the road as we drive by in our chariots.
And sometimes – sometimes – we find ourselves in a position to open up the good news to fellow travelers as we walk down our wilderness roads. Today I share my joy with you. The joy of the good news of God’s love in his son, our savior, Jesus Christ. And I hope God’s love fills us all when we hear that good news. Fills us and overflows so much that we join the eunuch saying:
Look. Here’s water. What’s to prevent us from being baptized?