The Lutheran Hour
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"Rejoicing On the Way"
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Text: Acts 8:28-39
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A reading from Acts 8: Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And Philip rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep He was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opens not His mouth. In His humiliation justice was denied Him. Who can describe His generation? For His life is taken away from the earth.” And the eunuch said to Philip, “About whom, I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?” And he commanded the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.” This is the Word of the Lord.
Sometimes life will take us on unexpected journeys for unforeseen reasons. I do have a sneaking suspicion, however, that none of life’s journeys are truly random nor outside of the sponsorship of the Holy Spirit, which is why we need this eye-opening reading from Acts 8—to help us see the purpose of our pilgrimages.
Meet Philip, one of the two main characters, He lived about 2,000 years ago when the church,
though raw and unrefined according to 21st-century amenities, had a surplus of confidence in its Lord. This Philip was a good news teller, an evangelist, who should not, by the way, be confused with the other Philip, the apostle, directly recruited by Jesus in John 1. This Philip in our reading was a deacon and is commemorated by the church on October 11. He was a church-builder—not in the sense of bricks and mortar, a hammer and nails, and gold-gilded altars, as much as I do appreciate beautiful church buildings8212he was a church-builder in the sense of leading people to profess Jesus as their Savior. How can we be more Philip-like? Connected to Christ? Directed by the Spirit? Protected by the holy angels? When God said get up and go, Philip got up and went! Which is saying something because most of the action in the book of Acts happens outdoors, out on the road, outside of the sacred places with outsiders who often come from different and difficult backgrounds.As Larry Vogel documents for us in his doctoral dissertation, the book of Acts is like nothing else that came before it. It “bursts” forth with a breathtaking and unprecedented “catholic inclusivity.” No other religion went beyond tribal and ethnic affiliations like these forms of early Christianity. “Catholic” here refers to an understanding of mission that’s global, universal, diverse. This Jesus movement radiated into all the world, from the Middle East to Europe, Asia, and Africa. No wonder it was called “The Way” (see Isaiah 40:3). These early Christians went on their way following the One who is the Way. They went way beyond the narrowness that typified most religiosity of that day and of ours.
In the text we’re looking at today, the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip and said: “‘Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is a desert place.” Sometimes the call of God on our lives leads us to a desert place. Or like the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tested. What did Philip do? What did Jesus do? They both got up and went. Sisters, brothers, we need this just get-up-and-go kind of faith, the sort of trust that follows the call even when we don’t know to where, even when we cannot see to what is the outcome. This kind of faith knows that God never deceives us or misleads us or leads us on a road to nowhere. His is not, as the hymnwriter says, “a deathward drift from futile birth,” Luke, the writer of Acts, specializes in telling us how to navigate roads that are like life: long and hard. In the Gospel that goes by his name, chapter 24, Luke reports the story of two heartbroken followers of Jesus on their way to a town called Emmaus. And “they had hoped,”—oh, with all their might, had they hoped—that Jesus would be the One to set them free. But then that hope began to dim, and they grimaced and wept as they went on their way and saw Him crucified on Good Friday. Have you ever walked that kind of path stumbling through the dust of doubt? Sure, on this side of Easter we know in retrospect that there’s more to the story. But as the poet Marianne Moore says, hope isn’t hope “until all ground for hope has vanished.” And these men on the road hadn’t yet experienced the reality of the resurrection, until Jesus revealed Himself to them on the road. And then finally there their hearts burned with joy for the Lord as they broke bread, and they turned from despair to rejoicing.
There is another story on the road reported by Luke here in the next chapter of Acts, chapter 9, the most famous turnaround in Christian history: the infamous Saul from Tarsus, who was a feared torturer of countless Christians and was, himself, one day on his way to Damascus to commit more crimes against Christianity when the resurrected Jesus Christ Himself met him on that road, with power and glory, and literally knocked him off his high horse, changed the entire direction of his life in this life and the next. Just like in today’s reading, where we see Philip who gets up and goes with God, following the Spirit on the road from Jerusalem down to Gaza, an old road in an ancient region very much in the today’s headlines, of course. And while Philip was on his way south, he met the second main character, another man simply described as a “eunuch,” heading northward with his entourage on that same road. And both of these men are under the influence of the Holy Spirit. My friends Dominic and Cassie tell me, that “geographic journeys are often a catalyst for what becomes a spiritual pilgrimage. In travel away from our homeland we may just discover our soul’s true home.”
Luke does not give a name to this eunuch. But St. Irenaeus, who is a dependable source, calls him Simeon Bachos (Bakos). In the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition they remember him and celebrate him simply by the name Bachos. So, rather than merely describing him as an anonymous eunuch, let’s give him the dignity of that name: Bachos. Because too many people are known just by their condition or status or position. Too many are defined by their problem, labelled by their handicap: the homeless guy, the divorcee, the jailbird, the drunk, the guy with the foreign accent. Bachos was a black African. I like to picture him riding elegantly in a canopied chariot, reading eloquently his way through the book of Isaiah, until he gets stuck at a particular Scripture passage, repeating it over and over again. Because it seems like it means something deeper, something with a double meaning. It’s as if you can hear the rustle of the garment of the Spirit, lurking beneath the words on the page. “Who can help me interpret this?” Bachos cries out loud, as he was reading out loud which might seem weird to us, but this was how most people who could read for most of human history would read: out loud.
So Philip heard Bachos pondering this image of a Lamb, a Lamb innocently “led to the slaughter.” And it spoke to Bachos profoundly. “Humiliated,” “denied justice,” “deprived of life,” this was no ordinary lamb, no simple sacrifice. It’s gotta mean something more. “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture”—because we begin with where people are, don’t we?—”he told [Bachos] the good news about Jesus,” about this God who, in the words of St. Peter a bit later in the book of Acts, this “God shows no partiality, but accepts people from every nation.” I imagine that Philip told Bachos about a God who has in the words of the old spiritual “plenty good room,” for all people “whether you’re a sinner or a liar or a backslider,” there’s plenty good room at the Father’s table; there’s plenty good room in the pool of Baptism, even when that water is an outdoor pond on a desert road. “What keeps me from being baptized” Bachos demands to know, “now that I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Lamb of God sacrificed for the sin of the world?”
But Baptism isn’t the end of his or of your journey, my friend. It is the power of God that helps believers to continue in their pilgrimage. As the Large Catechism teaches us: “The Christian life is nothing else than a daily Baptism, begun once and continuing ever after.” Luke tells us that after the Baptism, Bachos went on his way rejoicing. St. Irenaeus tells us that when Bachos went back south to Africa, he not only continued to read the Scripture aloud but he preached out loud about the Way of Jesus. And that gave rise to a powerful African church. In fact, Martin Luther tells us, “And it is a well-known fact that no one has ever demonstrated greater zeal in coming to God than the dear fathers in the deserts of Egypt and Ethiopia.”
We can give thanks to newly baptized Bachos for this. Oh, how we in our day, in our time, need that zeal in the Spirit, that power of God. It seems we are getting less and less interested in our time, in our culture, in investing in one another socially, relationally or spiritually. Our culture seems to be more self-segregated than ever. Maybe it’s due to Covid or perhaps because of working remotely. Or is it the political walls that rise high and divide us, especially in an election year? Or could it be due to the cocoons of technology that isolate us? I mean who hasn’t been frustrated trying to talk with someone who seemed rudely non-responsive until you realized that they had air buds in their ears and didn’t hear a word you said.
If you are a Christian, this journey of dissatisfaction that so many are on represents an opportunity for us to meet them on the road in their desert wilderness: to interact meaningfully with people as if the Spirit wants us to meet them, to get up and go and show them a community in which we love one another—a non-profit corporation called the church where we’re not peddling a product but where forgiveness is our core business. Whatever version of Scripture you use, most of us could use a bit more extroversion in spiritual matters. Gospel means “good news” and this kind of news is necessarily social. Because of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel rustles with an internal dynamism that demands to be externalized, demands to be lived extrovertedly.
Listen to Paul, the transformed tentmaker from Tarsus, he puts it like this: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” And it’s difficult to pass something on to someone when you aren’t in relationship, aren’t on speaking terms, aren’t connected, aren’t connecting meaningfully, aren’t getting up and going.Several months ago, I was preaching on a Sunday morning in Santa Monica and I was led to affirm the baptisms of God’s people: that those who are baptized have been named and claimed in three splashes of water forever. “Raise your hand,” I preached extrovertedly, “if you are baptized!” And I made a clasping motion like grabbing the air with my hand and then said, “Claim those promises every day, God’s promises for you in Baptism.” And then I said, “Raise your hand if you’re not baptized.” And by this point, I had totally left behind the sermon manuscript, and two people raised their hands, so I kept on. “Keep your hand up if you desire to be baptized.” And Jane kept her hand up. Now this surprised me because I thought Jane was already baptized. I mean she attended church every Sunday; she smiled cheerfully; she spoke frequently about her faith in Jesus; she often commented on my sermons, obviously listening and getting the point. So I said, still off script, “You’re not baptized!? What!? Sign up immediately for two years of theological instruction.” No, of course not. I didn’t say that. I said, “We will baptize you today, Jane, immediately after the sermon.”
What prevented Jane from being baptized? “Do you renounce Satan,” I asked her live time. Renounce means to stomp the devil under your feet. “Yes,” she said, “I renounce him.” “Do you believe in God the Father?” “Yes, I believe.” “Do you believe in God the Son?” “Yes, I believe.” And she spoke the Apostle’s Creed. “Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?” “Yes, I believe.” And then we poured the water and there was not a dry eye in the house. And Jane went on her way rejoicing. And this was one of the most joyful impromptu church services I’ve ever had.
If you are baptized, raise your hand, and rejoice in the Lord, today. And if you are not baptized, please find a church today and ask about Jesus and the meaning of Trinitarian Baptism!
For the Lamb who was slain has begun His reign. Alleluia! For our Christ, who once was crucified has arisen and is now glorified. Alleluia! For the mystery that was hidden is now the victory that we’ve been given. His Name is Jesus and He is living! Alleluia! Rejoicing on the way! Amen.
Reflections for May 5, 2024
Title: Rejoicing on the WayMark Eischer: You’re listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, audio on demand, and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Joining us now, here’s Lutheran Hour Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: We’re visiting again with Dr. Jeff Gibbs, a beloved Bible teacher in our church body. Welcome back to the program, Jeff.
Jeff Gibbs: Thank you, Mike, for having me on the program.
Mike Zeigler: We’re still going in the book of Acts. And today I’d like to talk about Israel in Acts. The beginning of the book, you hear the disciples ask this question about Israel: “Is it at this time You’re going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?” And then Chapters 2 and 3, there’s speeches directed to the people of Israel. So let’s talk about Israel: how they play, how the nation plays in the book. And also, I’d like to know what do we need to keep in mind when we hear about Israel today in the news?
Jeff Gibbs: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really great question, and it’s an important one. I want to start by saying that there are a gazillion people who have talked about this. And it needs to be talked about carefully. So I have some thoughts about it, but I just want to acknowledge the complexity of it. I think now, more than ever, it’s something to talk about carefully.
I heard somebody say one time that God will always have an Israel. Why? Because it’s His idea. He thought it was a good idea. And so, of course, the root of the promise goes back to Abraham, which is why the Jews of Jesus’ own day called themselves the “sons of Abraham.” And this is one of the interesting things about the book of Acts, is as you said, it starts with ethnic Jews in Jerusalem and then in synagogues, and so forth. But then these Gentiles start believing, and then the question is, “Well, what does it mean to be Israel?” Okay, now back up to chapter 1. The disciples say, “Lord, will You at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” And I’m not sure, actually, what all they’re asking. But notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “That’s a really stupid question. Haven’t you learned anything?” He doesn’t say that at all. This is the risen Christ. He’s been teaching them for 40 days. They’re getting it, and then you read Acts 2, and oh, they get it. See? So they’re not the same disciples as they were before Good Friday and Easter, right? So Jesus says, “You don’t get to know when things are going to happen.” That’s what He says. “But the Holy Spirit will come and you’ll be My witnesses.” And so I actually think that it’s very parallel to what Paul says in Romans 9-11, where he talks about the rootstock of Israel. And what happens is that some branches that “naturally belong,” they don’t believe in Jesus, so they’re broken off. But wild olive branches that don’t naturally have a place, they get grafted in. Why? Because of faith. Because they believe in Jesus.
And so I think this is what you see in the book of Acts, is that you see Israel being restored, starting with the 12. They’re like the patriarchs, the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel/Jesus. And so they get grafted in. And in many and various ways, Israel still exists today in Jesus/Israel. But see, if a person agrees with that, then you realize, oh, wait, all this other talking …. For instance, I don’t talk about Israel today. I talk about the Israeli nation. It’s a modern nation. It’s not to be equated at all with the Old Testament people of Israel.
Mike Zeigler: So, God’s always going to have His Israel, and Israel now is Jesus, who is also, in an eternal and mysterious way, also God’s Son.
Jeff Gibbs: Yes, both.
Mike Zeigler: So maybe God always has His Israel because God always has a Son.
Jeff Gibbs: Maybe so. I never thought about that.
Mike Zeigler: Well, thank you for helping us make Bible study fun and interesting and engaging, and we’ll keep studying the book of Acts together.
Jeff Gibbs: Sounds like a plan. Good. Thanks, Mike.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“The King of Love My Shepherd Is” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.