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A Community of United Diversity (Ethiopian Eunuch) Acts 8: 26-39 Scott L. Stearman July 18, 10 KBC
William Wilberforce, b. 1759, was a British politician, a philanthropist and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. Five years into his political career he became a committed Christian… he was converted from a tepid lukewarm ambivalence to hot passionate commitment to the person and principles of Jesus. Two years after his conversion he met a group of anti-slave-trade activists. They showed him the chains, the smells, the bloods, the losses, the horrors of the slave trade. He met a former slave, heard the stories, and became convinced that God led him to the cause of abolition. He soon became one of the leading voices calling for the end to the slave trade.
For twenty-six years, often with bad health and very stiff opposition, he headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade. It was a long, arduous and even dangerous struggle until the passage of the Slave Trade Act 1807. His movement was the world’s first grassroots human rights campaign, in which men and women from different social classes and backgrounds volunteered to end the injustices suffered by others.
His campaign eventually led to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which ended slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died three days after hearing that the passage of the Act was assured. Though sadly not a household name today, in 1856, the first black university in America was named Wilberforce University. Frederick Douglass called him the factor “that finally thawed the British heart…”
That’s the true story we saw portrayed a week ago on Wednesday as we gathered to watch the movie: “Amazing Grace.” If you didn’t see it, if you haven’t seen it, do it. It’s one of the better films out there. But here’s the rest of the story. William Wilberforce, the great liberator of slaves, the tireless fighter of injustice, was opposed to the liberation of women. He even didn’t like women’s involvement in the anti-slavery campaign. He believed that women had no place in politics. I quote: “For ladies to meet, to publish, to go from house to house stirring up petitions – these appear to me proceedings unsuited to the female character…” We all have our blind spots, but today I pray our ears are wide open.
Question: How in a world where prejudice reigns so supreme in the hearts and minds of humans, did a small group of Jewish followers of a Jewish rabbi within a few decades grew into a multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-continental movement which has touched every part of our planet. How could this have happened?! How could these Hebrew people, who were as exclusionist as any other race or group, have been transformed to those who embraced a world-wide gospel where even the former Pharisee Paul would come to say: “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, but we are all one in Christ”?
Well this is Luke’s task – to answer this question as he writes the book of Acts. He is seeking to tell the story of the early followers of Jesus and like any historian he can’t write about every moment, but he picks out the great ones… the formative ones… the moments where ideas are shaped, minds are changed, crowds are converted…
Or where an Ethiopian eunuch becomes a follower of the Jewish Messiah.
What a story of barriers broken, of bridges built, of old prejudices being destroyed. What a beautiful story of one person who came to know God’s love and of another person who came to know of the extent of God’s love… for this is not only a story of a saved African, but it is a story of a renovated, motivated, elevated Philip.
There are three marquee actors and one major prop in this story:
1) The man who doesn’t fit in a standard definition of a man (what some today call a sexual minority). The man who is also a pious searcher who doesn’t fit in anyone’s orthodoxy… he was the wrong race to be reading Isaiah and the wrong gender to be in the assembly of God.
2) Philip, who following the Jesus of the well, goes where the standard, where the rules, don’t permit him to go. He’s been taught, by his religion to avoid people like this eunuch.
3) The Spirit, who is unseen and unheard, but who is seen, felt and heard by both the seeker and the evangelist… who brings both towards the truth. Part of Luke’s story is the Spirit. Why the Spirit? Because the letter of the law was clear: Deuteronomy 23:1 “No one who is a eunuch… shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord”
4) The chariot is the prop… they were both on a journey!
A show of hands. How many of you have seen the show: Wicked?
Well for you unacquainted, let you tell you briefly how it goes. The poor wicked witch of the west isn’t really wicked after all. She’s just a misunderstood girl with a bad home life whose skin happens to be green. And who happens to be able to conjure up wings on moneys and turn her true love into straw, but otherwise she’s a perfectly normal gal.
But of course underneath the fantastical elements in the story, the human element is why it’s so very popular. Every one of us knows a bit about what it’s like to be green… or strange, or unpopular, or misunderstood, or out of whack with those around us. This is the human condition… to feel at times as if no one quite gets you, or that most are very different from you… it takes a lot of maturity – or a deep abiding faith in God - to finally get that the differences are part of God’s glory. Your weirdness is God’s gift.
Some of these differences are genetic (the non-wicked witch was born with green skin) and some are chosen and some are chosen for us by others. On your cover I put a picture from this last century of eunuch of the Sultan. As recently as 75 years ago, boys were taken from particular regions of Africa and then brought to Upper Egypt, where they underwent the operation. The mortality rate was high, which meant that those who survived were very valued and very expensive. As you see until recently some were brought to the Sultana in Istanbul.”
Adding insult to literal injury, some religions forbade these men full access. It was against the Hebrew law for the Eunuch to enter into the Assembly of God. This is why the Spirit needs to tell Philip to do what he does. Under the guidance of the Spirit Philip obediently overcomes the tradition of the Old Testament and engages the man in conversation about his reading – and shares Jesus with one who some believed unworthy.
And maybe the Ethiopian believed it himself. Maybe he didn’t think himself worthy… possibly that is why he so readily identified with this suffering servant to was the victim of a cruel world which acted so viciously towards him. This outcast could see in Christ his own outline… And Philip was able to get past whatever prejudice he may have had to share that this vision of Isaiah was incarnated in the person of Jesus.
Luke consistently tells us that correct spiritual understanding is a gift (Acts 8:10; 10:22). We need to pray, as much as ever for that gift today. Our hope for right engagement with others is not in literalism, but in the Spirit’s love.
I grew up hearing this story taught and preached. It seemed as if the emphasis was always on the Ethiopian’s baptism. But that’s only half of the beautiful story. The other half is Philip’s transformation. Luke tells this story to remind us that the early Christians also had a conversion after their conversion … meaning this fits into the same picture that Luke draws in chapter 10 when finally Peter gets it: “I now see that God doesn’t show favoritism.” Luke’s dual message:
1) Even Ethiopian Eunuchs are a part of God’s kingdom.
2) Even Christians need to grow so they might embrace all of God’s children.
I’m going to leave a lot unsaid today… I do that every Sunday. There’s much more to say, learn, understand and discuss about sexual minorities, like this eunuch. There’s more complexity here than can be – or should be – addressed in a sermon with children in the room. But I’ll leave you with two unequivocal statements.
1) There is room in the church to discuss “the issue” but there is no room in the church to discuss the ultimate response of love. We are called to love all. And this loving is not the paternalistic “we’re such delightfully open people that we’ll even love you!” No, this is the kind of love that recognizes Philip needed the Eunuch as much as the Eunuch needed Philip. Our Gentile embrace of the gospel is partly dependant on Philip’s encounter.
2) I paraphrase a fellow CBF pastor who recently said: “even if being a sexual minority doesn’t represent God’s plan A… which of us can claim to be living out God’s plan A?”
I for one know that I’m on plan T, or W… I hope I’m not on plan Z… but I know me enough to not be throwing any stones.
We know more about the world than they did 2,000 years ago. We know it goes around the sun, not visa versa. And we know that people are born with inalterable genetic traits. It is this world, spinning around the sun filled with all kinds of diverse human beings that John was talking about when he said that God so loved…
Without question William Wilberforce would have been very proud of the fact that his work not only prompted abolition in the UK, but helped end slavery in the United States of America. From the perspective of heaven, maybe he finds it ironic that it was a woman who more than any other person besides Abe Lincoln brought it about. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famed author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is likely now smiling with him… looking down on a much better world, but one still in need of those who will listen to the Spirit.
