“What is to Prevent You?”
By
Rev. Eric Huffman
April 19, 2015
Scripture: Acts 8:26-39
One of the things that drives me as a pastor and as a church planter in this case is that
I fear we’ve come to a place in church history where we as Christians and we as the church
are known more in pop culture and more in the outside world by who we keep out of the
church than we are by who is welcomed in. This in our mind is a tragic misreading of who
we’re supposed to be as Christians. And so it’s been my driving purpose to create churches
and cultures where people who may not have thought they belong with Jesus find out that
they have all along. And that’s what I’ve been doing with my life.
But you know Christians have been arguing about this kind of thing for years. It’s
nothing new. An argument that is as old as the church itself. Who belongs? Who belongs
with God? Who belongs in heaven? And you are all real polite, nice southern Methodists
and nobody’s more generous than southern Methodists. Y’all are thinking, “Well, everyone
belongs, honey.” I get it. But I want to dig deeper. And I want to be honest with each other
here and kind of be honest about our biases and our prejudices when it comes to who we
really think belongs in the church. And with Jesus and in heaven. Who belongs here?
We all, I think, have a line in the sand somewhere. Maybe based on some past
experience with people, or maybe based on politics. Usually though for Christians it’s
based on this book, the Bible. The Bible says what sin is. If somebody’s going to continue
in their sin without saying they’re sorry or trying to change, if they’re just going to keep on
keeping on, we shouldn’t be complicit in that as a church. By accepting them and
pretending that everything’s fine, so that’s where we tend to draw the line with sin or
whatever sins are the ones we want to pay attention to and the ones we don’t we don’t care
that much about. But that’s kind of the way it works usually. And this raises for me some
real concerns. Not just as a pastor and a leader, but as a person who wants to go to heaven
one day. I’m concerned about this metric we’ve established for Christian belonging,
because if unchecked, unrepentant sin is the non-starter; I’m in trouble because I’m a
sinner. I know preachers love to stand up and say, “I’m a sinner!” but I mean it. I am a
sinner! I sin a lot. Every day, at least once a day. I sin, and sometimes I’m not even sorry
for it. Sometimes I’m glad I did it, and I’ll do it again. And sometimes I don’t repent. So
what does that mean for me and my place with Jesus?
Let me give you an example. I love going to the movies. Going to the movies is one
of my favorite things to do. My wife and I have date night every week, and almost always
we go to see a movie together. And so I appreciate everything about the movie-going
experience. Except the concession stand. So I love the movies. I’m a nerd when it comes to
it - by the end of this year I will have seen Jurassic Park 4 and Star Wars 7. Did you all see
the new trailer? Come on, nerds! We played it on a loop in our house this weekend. I’m
serious. But I hate the concession stand.
And part of it goes back to an earlier experience. My first job in high school was a
movie theater. But my real problem with movie theater concession stands is money. Can I
get an Amen? A bag of popcorn costs $8.50. If you haven’t been to the movies lately,
that’s not an exaggeration. A cup of soda – Coke, or whatever you call it in Texas,
everything is Coke – is $7.25. A box of hot tamales is four dollars and something. That’s
over $20.00 for movie snacks. And that’s just for me. Over twenty dollars.
I bought this Bible for $18.95. The eternal Word of the Living God costs less than
stale popcorn, flat Coke, and high fructose corn syrup at the movies. So what do I do?
What do you all think I do? Do I abstain from going to the movie out of protest for their
unfair business practices? Do I abstain? No, let’s get real. No, I don’t abstain. It wouldn’t
be right. Do I go to the movies and make the courageous choice not to stuff anything in my
mouth for two hours while I’m at the movies? Of course not. I don’t have that kind of will
power. No one does. So I find the baggiest pants I own with the deepest pockets, and I put
on my windbreaker with all the Michael Jackson zippers. No matter how hot it is outside –
100 degrees – I’m wearing a windbreaker. And I go to Walgreens ten minutes before the
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movie starts, and I load up. Twenty-ounce Coke, bag of trail mix and a chocolate bar, all
for less than four dollars total. I stuff it into my pockets and I walk into the movie theater
as inconspicuous as possible. Kind of like this. So the plastic wrappings don’t make noise.
And I kind of get a rush from sticking it to the man for a second. Then I go in, and I watch
the movie, and I eat my snacks.
I feel a little like Phil Dunphy who’s a character from “Modern Family” – maybe
you watch that show. You might not. Phil is my favorite character. He does the same thing.
He packs his pockets full of snacks on his way to L.A. Laker games. He says, “Usually I’m
a rule follower, but whenever someone tries to tell me I can’t bring my snacks to their
stadium, let’s just say it makes me a little nuts. Let’s just say I get ruffled. It ruffles me
when some goobers try to tell me I have to spend half my payday on their hot dogs.”
I hate to tell you, there’s no getting around this, I hate to hear it but this is stealing. If
you really think about it, by definition it’s theft. Oh, it hurts to say that. But I’m a thief
when I do this. And I’m not sorry about it.
When Jurassic Park 4 comes out June 12th, you’ll find me at Walgreens with baggy
pants. If you see me there, intervene, stop me. I’m breaking some rule, some law. I’m
sinning. And in that moment I have really no intention of stopping. And look, it’s not like
I’m taking a pen from a bank teller. This has gone on for a long time. I’ve probably been to
the movies a hundred times or more in the last ten years. By my calculations I steal $20
worth of stuff every time I go to the movies and stuff my pants full of snacks. That’s
$2000! One of you comes up to me after the service and says, “Pastor, I have a confession.
I stole $2000. What should I do?” I will tell you, “Go turn yourself in, you thief!”
But here I am, preaching the word. A thief. I thought I was one of the good guys. I
thought I was a man of God in my robe, my stole. I get to talk about the Bible, and I felt
sure that I belonged, but now I don’t know. Based on how we tend to judge these things
I’m not so sure anymore if I really belong.
This kind of questioning about judgment and belonging, drawing the line in the sand,
has been going on and being argued for centuries by Christians. From the very beginning it
was the pressing issue. Who belongs here? Who can be a Christian? The first Christians
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wanted to know, and they were all Jews. Every one of them. The first Christians were
Jewish people because Christianity began as sort of a denomination within Judaism, and so
who do we let in? And if someone who is not a Jew wants to be one of us should we first
require them to become Jewish? And that was how it worked in the first several months
and in the beginnings of the church. You first became a Jewish person, and then you could
say you were a Christian.
It’s not really until Acts chapter 10 – ten chapters into Acts – that Peter starts to get a
notion that we might be more successful doing what Jesus told us to do, sharing the Gospel
with the whole world, baptizing in every nation. If we stopped requiring grown men to be
circumcised and stopped requiring adults to leave all their traditions behind and become
Jews to follow Jesus. And he just starts questioning these things, and he just starts having
conversations with Gentiles, non-Jewish people, who are interested in becoming Christians.
And the church at the time completely lost it.
And so there was this controversy which is what makes the story we just heard in
Acts 8 even more remarkable. Acts 8 happens about the same time the stuff with Peter was
happening, just in a different part of the world. And we have this Philip whom you might
have heard through the Luke series. This is a different Philip. It’s not Philip the Apostle in
this story, it’s a guy known as Philip the Evangelist, and he was one of Stephen’s friends.
Stephen was stoned to death and when that happened all of Stephen’s friends scattered for
fear of being stoned to death, too. Philip the Evangelist goes to Samaria and starts a church
among the Samaritans. Then God comes to Philip and says, “Go. Start running, and I’ll tell
you where to go after you’re finished running.” And he winds up on the wilderness road,
the road from Jerusalem toward Gaza.
And he sees there on the road a chariot. And we’re told that inside that chariot there
is an Ethiopian man who has been in Jerusalem worshipping. He went to Jerusalem to
worship as Jews worship. No one else would go to Jerusalem for that purpose on the week
of Passover except for that reason. I think there might have been two motivations here. One
or the other. The first might be that he was a non-Jewish person who took an interest, an
outside interest in Jewish practices and morality. That was not uncommon during the time.
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The more likely scenario was that because he was an official of the queen of Ethiopia’s
court that he was sent as an emissary. He was on a diplomatic mission to show respect to
the Jewish people on the part of the Ethiopian queen.
Whatever the case, he goes and he’s on his way back home and he’s reading the
prophet Isaiah in the chariot. He’s reading it aloud. Philip is running on foot. I guess he’s
bookin’ it, because the other guy’s in a chariot and they’re side by side. So he’s running as
fast as he can, and he hears this voice reading Isaiah. And they have this great exchange.
Philip ends up inside the eunuch’s chariot.
So here we have Philip this proud Jewish evangelist, and we have this Ethiopian. An
outsider who we’re told is a eunuch. Now, eunuchs historically speaking were young men
who in their infancy or childhood were orphaned. Usually they came from poor families.
And after they were orphaned they would be bought by some royalty or some wealthy
person. And at the age of 8 they would usually undergo the procedure to become a eunuch.
Kind of castration. It’s awful to imagine. It was an operation that happened without
anesthetic or antiseptic. One in four of these boys died during or soon after this procedure.
It’s awful. And the other three-fourths ended up as slaves. Now as they grew up they
became pretty valuable slaves. They weren’t your typical farmhands or whatever, they held
positions of respect and authority. Now that’s because officials trusted them more in
certain settings. For example, if you’re a king in the ancient world then you’ve got a harem
full of beautiful young women. Who would be your first choice to stand guard and protect
your room full of beautiful young women? Are you going to get that strong virile guard
over there, or are you going to ask the eunuch to do it? The eunuchs were often asked to
take care of the harems.
Eunuchs were often required to be food tasters for kings which was Homeland
Security back then. They would taste the food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned, and if
you’re a king who do you want tasting your food? Who would you trust – someone who
has six mouths to feed, depending on you at home? Or someone who has no one and won’t
be missed? Eunuchs were given that job. And in this case this eunuch we are told was over
the treasury of the queen of Ethiopia. It wasn’t just a small country in Africa, it was a large
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region in northeast Africa. And she is the queen, and he is her slave. So he takes care of her
money. Again eunuchs had no competing interests and could be trusted with something
like that important job.
Now, eunuchs were valuable slaves. However, for someone like Philip, eunuchs
presented a problem because by the letter of the law in this book eunuchs do not belong
with God. You can find it multiple times throughout the first five books of the Bible
specifically Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Most clearly in Deut. 23:1 where this book says,
“If any man has been castrated he cannot belong among the people of God. He cannot be
one of us.”
I don’t know why it’s in there. Sometime maybe Dr. Pace will do a sermon series on
Deuteronomy, and you can work it out. But it’s there. And it seems mean and arbitrary. I
trust there was a reason why they put it in there when they did, but that was Philip’s reality
as he’s staring into the eyes of this eunuch in this chariot. And Philip takes the opportunity
after the eunuch asks to tell him the whole story of what this prophet is talking about in
Isaiah. He starts with Isaiah, and he tells the whole story down through the life and
resurrection of Jesus.
And I just want to stop here and ask you to consider the life of Jesus and his
teaching, to hear it with the ears of that eunuch. How would the promise of a Messiah who
bears the scars of shame, the scars of a curse and a punishment that he neither chose for
himself nor deserved, how would that sound to this eunuch?
I want you to hear his voice as they stop the chariot. I want you to listen for his
voice, his testosterone deprived – high pitched voice – say to Philip, “Look, water. What is
to prevent me from being baptized?”
This is not a rhetorical question. He really wants to know if his condition stands in
the way of his belonging with Jesus. Just like his condition has stood in the way of his
belonging everywhere else in his life, every other day he’s lived. “What is to prevent me?”
he says.
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And Philip, God bless him, Philip could have said any number of things. Philip could
have said, “Well, let’s start with the fact that you’re a eunuch and here’s what the Bible
says about that. And I love you but…” Philip could have said, “Well, this thing is really
just for Jewish people and because of who you are and because of what this says… I don’t
really see any way you can be a Jew…so I love you but…” And you all stay with me here
– it’s a little sensitive but Philip could have said, “You look different than the rest of us.
Your skin is different. You’re black. The rest of us aren’t.” Philip could have said – and
this was true – “There are no other black Christians at this time in the church’s history.”
Now to be clear, there were no white Christians at this time in the church’s history either. It
was an olive and brown skinned movement in its infancy. Palestinians and Greeks.
Philip could have played that card very easily. It’s been played before, God knows.
Philip could have said, “I’m sorry, but you’re not like us.” We know that this guy – this
eunuch – becomes the first black Christian because a few chapters later, I’m going to kind
of give it away here, in Acts. 13:1 we find out what this guy’s name was. In Acts 8 he’s not
named. In Acts 13:1 they come back and name him as a leader in the church. His name is
Simeon. And in Acts 13:1, stay with me here, we’re a little over politically correct in our
culture today, but in Acts 13:1, Luke says, his name was “Simeon, the black one. The black
Christian.” That’s not a racist sort of thing. It’s just he was the only one. And that’s how
they knew him, as their brother back then. Acts 13 tells us this.
So Philip had plenty of things he could have said to get out of that particular
situation. Which was, I’m sure tense for him, and rife with uncertainty. He could have said,
“You know, I am so thankful for your interest in baptism today. Would you just take this
card and fill it out. Someone from the office will be in touch with you.” Philip could have
said, “I’m going to take your concerns to the church council back in Jerusalem, and we will
be in touch with our answer.” Philip could have been a Methodist about it and said, “We
are going to form a committee about this. And once our committee does its work and
comes to a decision, we’ll get back with you in no less than nine to twelve months.”
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Philip says nothing. He lets his actions speak for themselves which more Christians
should do more of the time. He lets his actions speak. He gets out of the chariot. He leads
his Ethiopian friend to the water, and he baptizes him there. And the power of the story lies
in our understanding that at that time, just as it is today really, baptism was the only rite of
initiation into the Body of Christ. It was only by being baptized in Jesus’ name that one
became a Christian brother or sister. So these two unlikely brothers emerged from the
water as one family, one Lord.
My favorite part of the story is something that’s not even in the Bible. Church
tradition tells us this. That Simeon wasn’t just your average church-goer. Simeon became a
leader. This eunuch, this reject, this social sort of slave becomes a leader, and he goes to
Africa and begins the evangelization of an entire continent. He is the first missionary to the
continent of Africa. This Simeon, this eunuch, goes and preaches the Gospel in Africa.
Today there are more Christians in Africa than there are people in the United States.
Most experts agree that by 2025 Africa will be the global center of the Christian movement
in the world. By 2025 there will be 633 million Christians on the African continent. The
promise of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. And it all began with one life, one broken man,
sitting in a chariot, wondering if he would ever belong anywhere.
This is the power of the Gospel when we get it. This is the power, and this is what we
should be known for. The power of the Gospel is that our Savior, our Lord, died on death
row as a criminal, on a cross between two thieves. Some of his best friends were
prostitutes, women of the night. The man he chose to reach an entire continent of people,
hundreds of millions, wasn’t some upstanding, well-spoken man with a good family name
and a good reputation. It was a eunuch, who had no one who respected him. Because of
Jesus all these things happened. Because of Jesus I can stand here today, a thief, and preach
the Gospel without the roof caving in or lightening striking me. It’s because of Jesus. Jesus
doesn’t say, “Go figure everything out, and then come find me.” He says, “Let me find
you, and we’ll figure it all out together.”
This is what we should be about. I’ve looked into the wet teary eyes of a middle aged
man who was coming down the aisle to receive communion at The Story several weeks
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back. And as he came down the aisle he came with his arms crossed. And that usually tells
preachers that they don’t want to receive communion. Sometimes people do that because
they’re worried about gluten-free stuff. I wanted him to know we had gluten-free stuff
available, so he wouldn’t get sick.
So I asked him, “Are you sure?” And he leaned in and he said, “Yes, Father! I am
divorced.” I said, “I need to tell you two things. First, of all, don’t ever call me ‘Father’
again. That really freaks me out. Secondly, this is the body of Christ, and it is broken for
you. Take and eat.” And he’s been back every week since, because he really belongs.
I’ve been approached by couples who want to get married in a church in front of God
and their families. And they’re cohabitating, and they can’t find a preacher who’ll do their
wedding, because they’re living in sin. Everyone turns them away. They’re desperate when
they come to me. They say, “I’ll pay you double…” And I tell them, “Don’t pay me
anything. Just let me do your wedding.” And I’ll say, “Between now and then sleep in
separate beds. And come to church every Sunday between now and then, your wedding
day. And I’ll do your wedding, and I’ll be your pastor.” And those people they become the
most committed Christians in the kingdom, because after being rejected again and again
they finally belong.
It’s the power of Jesus, this is what we’re all about. I know there are people here.
You’ve gone through the motions here at church, and I understand how that works
sometimes. You’re really, really wrestling with whether or not you belong with God
because of what you did. Or because of what someone else did to you and the scars they’ve
left. And you’re wondering if you’re worthy. You’re asking the same question, “What is to
prevent me from belonging?” And you mean it. And I just want you to know that the only
answer that Jesus gives is, “Nothing. There’s nothing to prevent you from belonging with
God.” Jesus says, “Bring your burdens. I will bear it. Bring your scars, I will heal them.
Bring your baggage. I will carry it. Come to me, and let’s figure this out.”
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