Delivered May 6, 2012 Video
The
life of faith is a spiritual journey. This is a very well-known analogy; it is
found in Dante’s Divine Comedy to Bunyan’s The Pilgrims Progress. I just
finished reading an excellent book by a Franciscan named Richard Rohr entitled,
“Falling Upwards: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.” He talks about
how spirituality in one’s later years is very different than one’s younger
years. Throughout the book he refers to Homer’s Odyssey, using the journey of
Odysseus as a metaphor for the spiritual life. It is making me want to go back
and read the Odyssey again! The Bible is filled with journeys – physical
journeys and spiritual journeys - Abraham’s journey to the Promised Land, and Jacob’s
journeys eventually to Egypt, and Israel’s forty years of wandering toward the
Land of Canaan. Last week in my sermon I interpreted the 23rd psalm
as a spiritual journey; I entitled my message “The Shepherd’s Journey.” The Gospel account of Jesus’ life is told in
the context of traveling around Galilee and Judea with the turning point being
when Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. Paul’s famous conversion on a trip
to Syria on the Damascus Road was the start of a life of journeying.
Today
we are going to look at a trip on the Road to Gaza in the Book of Acts. Gaza is
in the news regularly because of the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians
and Israelis. Gaza is an area in southwestern Palestine on the Mediterranean
Sea. I visited the area year ago, including Gaza City, and saw a lot of the old
Philistine sites. Gaza today appears to me to be one big refugee camp –
overcrowded and steeped in poverty. It is no surprise to me that it has become
the breeding ground for Islamic radicalism. Today Gaza is a dead end – a large open air
prison - penned in by the ocean and Egypt and the state of Israel. But in the
first century it was a beautiful seaside area on the main road known as the Via
Maris (the Way of the Sea), an ancient trade route that linked Mesopotamia with
Africa. There were two major roads that went through the Holy Land. One was the
Via Maris. The other was known as the King’s Highway which went from Mesopotamia
through Jerusalem to the Red Sea.
The
two men in our story were not on either of the main roads. They were on a side
road. The opening verse of our passage says (in NRSV), “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.” It was not
a paved Roman road like the Via Maris. We would call it a dirt road, but not
like one of our well maintained dirt roads. This was a wilderness road. Think
of it as the Sandwich Notch Road on a bad day.
We
all have our Sandwich Notch Road stories. Personally the first time I saw
Sandwich was in 1981. We were on vacation from Illinois visiting my parents in Wolfeboro. We had spent the day
in the mountains and were taking what looked like a shortcut on the map from
Campton to Sandwich on the way back to Wolfeboro. Jude and I am the boys were crowded
into an old Oldsmobile station wagon, which scraped on the rocks as we slowly bounced
along. It was getting late and half way through the notch we did not know if we
were going to get out of the woods alive. That is a wilderness road. Our two
men in our story were on a wilderness road. The spiritual journey often travels wilderness
roads. If you want a nice smooth superhighway, then I suggest you take the
well-trampled paths of consumer style religion, which you can get on TV and in
the megachurches and in the Christian bestsellers. But if you prefer the rustic
and scenic routes, then the wilderness road is the way for you. These two men
took the road less traveled.
I.
One of the two men on that road was Philip. This is not the apostle Philip, but
one of the seven men mentioned a couple of chapters earlier in the Book of
Acts, who were chosen by the apostles as ministers to serve the church in
Jerusalem. They are traditionally called the first deacons, but the word deacon
simply means servant. Their first job in Acts 6 was to serve tables for the
widows who did not have families to provide for them. They did hands-on serving
of people’s physical needs. That is who Philip was. His road was a road of
service. And it should be for us as well. American Christianity is too much of
a consumer religion with churches marketing a spiritual product and vying with
each other for market share. That is not what Christianity is about. The
spiritual life is about service to people in the name of Christ. It is a road
of service.
It
was hard for the earliest Christians in Jerusalem. But you know what they did?
They turned it into an opportunity. They had to flee Jerusalem because of the
persecution, but they used it as an opportunity to spread the gospel to other
places. Acts 8:4 says that in response to the Great Persecution, “Therefore those who were scattered went
everywhere preaching the word.” Philip was one of those who went. It is a
wonderful example of how we are to approach hardships in life. When bad things
happen, we can whine and complain, get depressed and act like victims and feel
sorry for ourselves, or we can see it was an opportunity. Philip saw
persecution as an opportunity. He went first to Samaria (we are told in chapter
8), and then God called him to take a trip to Gaza.
Our
story says that an angel told Philip to take the wilderness road to Gaza. That
was it; no other explanation. Philip responded with obedience. The spiritual
path is a road of obedience. That is another thing Americans do not like. We
don’t like to be told what to do. Kids don’t like it when their parents tell
them what to do. We do not like it when the government tells us what to do. These
days even employees don’t like it when an employer tells them what to do. This
attitude carries over into our spirituality. We chaff under authority – even
God’s authority. We are a rebellious people. We always have been, as
illustrated in the story of Adam and Eve. They did not like God telling them
they could not eat of that one tree. All the other trees in Eden they could eat
from, but not that one. Therefore that was the one they wanted. That is our
problem. But when God told Philip to go to Gaza, he obeyed. He didn’t know why
he was going to Gaza, but our text says simply, “He arose and went.”
There
on the Road to Gaza his path intersected with another man’s path. Our story
says, “ ‘And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of
great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all
her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28 was
returning. And sitting in his chariot, he was reading Isaiah the prophet. 29 Then the
Spirit said to Philip, “Go near and overtake this chariot.” Philip’s path intersected
with that of the Ethiopian. That the
nature of the spiritual life. Our path intersects with others paths, and that
is where ministry takes place. A lot of people think that churches are about
programs. That we have to have this program or that program, spend money and
hire people, and buy materials. And that is fine to do, but the most important
ministry happens when our everyday lives intersect with other people’s lives.
And we minister spontaneously in those settings. Philip was on a trip to Gaza
and ran into an Ethiopian on the same road and they entered into a
conversation.
II. Let’s look at the Ethiopian now, the other
man on this Road to Gaza. Who was he? Scripture tells us here that he was “a eunuch of great authority under Candace
the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come
to Jerusalem to worship, [and]
was returning.” Many Bible commentators describe him as a
Gentile, and his conversion here is the beginning of Christianity spreading to
non-Jews. My NKJV Study Bible that I use takes this approach; that is why you
can’t always believe the notes in your study Bibles.
This man was probably an Ethiopian Jew. There is
a long history of Jews in Ethiopia. The black Jewish community in Ethiopia
today traces its roots back thousands of years to King Solomon. Their tradition
says that when the Queen of Sheba (the ancient name for Ethiopia) visited King
Solomon in Jerusalem that he seduced her, and that she was expecting a child
when she returned to her homeland. Her son Menelik I became the first emperor
of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Jews even say that
when Jerusalem was endangered that the ark of the covenant was brought to
Ethiopia and is still in one of their temples. Ethiopian Jews were in the news in
the 1980’s and 1990’s when large groups tried to immigrate to Israel under the
Israeli right of return, which guarantees Jews the right of Israeli
citizenship. There was controversy about whether these Africans were really
Jews. It was decided they were, and the Israeli government organized mass
airlifts to bring them to Israel. That controversy is in the news again now as
more Ethiopian Jews want to come to Israeli to escape Islamic persecution.
I think this Ethiopian in our story is a Jew. It
says that he was making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship. A few Gentiles worshipped
the God of Israel, but it was mostly Jews. But this man could not have
participated fully in temple worship because eunuchs were not allowed into the
Court of Israel, so he was marginalized by his religion. Furthermore it says
that he was reading the book of Isaiah in his chariot. This scroll was written
in Hebrew, but only Jews could have read. That is why I think this man was an
Ethiopian Jew. He was rich and powerful. We know he was rich because he had a
copy of a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, which at the time was so expensive that
only synagogues owned scrolls, not private citizens. He probably had purchased
this scroll while in Jerusalem, perhaps even for his Jewish community back
home. He was powerful because he was the Secretary of the Treasury of Ethiopia.
He was a high-ranking government official in charge of all the Queen’s money.
And here comes Philip who runs up to the chariot
and engages him in conversation. Verse 30 “ So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the
prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” We should picture the chariot as stopped.
Philips was not trying to catch up to a running horse pulling a chariot. We
know that because the Ethiopian was
reading. He could not have read a scroll while on a chariot riding on a
wilderness road. Even if he could Philip could not have overheard what he was
saying. This man is taking a break at a rest area under a tree, and he got out
his new scroll of Isaiah which he just purchased and was reading it out loud,
the way books were always read back then. Philip heard him reading and recognized
it as the Book of Isaiah – another clear indication that he was reading in
Hebrew. Philip asked the man if he understood what he was reading. Verse 31
says, “And he said, “How can I, unless
someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him.” Then
Phillip explained the scripture he was reading, that it was a prophecy about
Jesus the Messiah. Actually it says
(NRSV), “35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with
this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.”
This scene
tells us about the importance of scripture. It also tells us that it is not
easy to understand scripture, and that it helps to have someone to guide us in
interpreting and understanding the Bible. I think that is part of the pastor’s
role as preacher and teacher. But it is important for each of us to know enough
about Scripture so if we find ourselves
in the same situation as Philip someday, and someone asks us a question about
the Bible, we don’t have to say, “Wait a minute. I don’t know enough. Let me
get the preacher to answer your questions.”
What if Philip had said to the Ethiopian, “Sorry, I am only a deacon.
Let me get the apostle Peter to answer your questions.” That won’t cut it. It
is important for us to have read enough of scripture, so that if a conversation
turns to spiritual matters that we can say something knowledgeable. We don’t
have to be expert Biblical scholars with all the answers. Philip was not a
rabbi, a scribe, a priest, or an apostle; but he had obviously read the Scriptures
enough to talk intelligently about the prophet Isaiah and other relevant
passages that pointed to Jesus.
Their
conversation obviously went on for some time. They began traveling again as
they talked – the Ethiopian giving Philip a lift to Gaza. Eventually the Ethiopian
decided he wanted to be baptized. “ 36 Now as they went down the road, they came to some
water. And the eunuch said, “See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?” 37 Then Philip said, “If
you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he answered and said, “I believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Philip
immediately baptized him right that at that roadside rest stop. No membership
classes, no meeting with the deacons. They just stopped at an oasis in the
wilderness with a river or brook, and Philip baptized him. “38 So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And
both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.” And then
they parted ways never to see each other again “the eunuch saw him no more.” They
were strangers taking the same road to Gaza. For the Ethiopian it was the
beginning of another journey, a spiritual journey. It says “and he went on his way rejoicing.” The
ancient church historian Eusebius says that this man spread the
gospel in his own country and founded the Ethiopian church. All because two
paths crossed one day on the Road to Gaza. May our paths likewise cross those
who are on a spiritual search, and when it happens may we have something to
say.
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