Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Acts 8:26-40; Psalm 66:1-11; 1 John 3:14-24; John 14:15-21

We know what to expect, don’t we?  It’s Sunday morning, we’ve sung a few hymns, and someone in rather priestly attire is standing in a pulpit. It’s time for the Bible, with all of its rules and regulations, and propriety.  We may not know exactly what we’re going to hear in this morning’s sermon, but we know the basic gist, because we know the books it comes from: God’s going to tell us something – something about Himself, or about how we should live our lives – and we’ll listen: obedient, respectful, unsurprised.

It’s the same way with lots of other books.  A tattered paperback with raised images on the cover and reviews from People magazine proclaiming it the thriller of the year: we don’t expect much from that; just some light entertainment.

A short book with lots of drawings that begins with the words “Once upon a time …” – we recognize a fairy tale, and the most we look for is a moral to the story, never taking the details seriously.

So when the beginning isn’t really the beginning – when we have all kinds of predetermined notions about what we’re going to hear – sometimes we miss the real message. We’re so busy translating the words to fit our preconceptions that it’s almost impossible to be surprised. We make it impossible.

Take today’s reading from Acts for instance: A royal Ethiopian eunuch is reciting an ancient scroll as he drives home from Jerusalem on his chariot, and he just happens to bump into somebody who can interpret the cryptic message for him, and before you know it the eunuch has converted to the stranger’s religion, and they go their separate ways, never to meet again. 

If we came upon a story like that in a trashy novel, we’d chalk it up to the author’s overactive imagination, concluding that nothing like that ever happens in real life.  If in a fairy tale, we’d recognize the basic message that truth is found in unexpected places, and that would be that.

But since this story is in the Bible, we have to believe it really happened. (This is the Bible, after all.)  And precisely because this is the Bible we’re talking about, we’re tempted to view the story through proper, Christian lenses, and somehow we end up convincing ourselves that castrated Ethiopians thundering down country roads in chariots reading aloud from Isaiah are a dime-a-dozen.  Or that it’s just plain obvious that God would choose as the first Gentile convert in the book of Acts a person who was an outsider in pretty much every way: a person of color, who Deuteronomy (23:1) commands “shall not be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” for the sole reason that he was a eunuch; a servant of a foreign queen, who oversaw the royal harem with all of its ritual uncleanness and sexual immorality; and on and on.

Where we should be startled, we are unsurprised; where our preconceptions should be shattered, they remain in place; and where we should see the gospel as revolutionary in the honor and welcome it shows an outcast among outcasts, we somehow manage to see an affirmation of the status quo.

So let’s take a closer look at the story of the Ethiopian eunuch, forgetting for a moment that it comes from a book that we tend to think is so proper and predictable, and instead see it as a story that seems too good to be true.  A fairy tale about a lost soul who finds understanding and acceptance on a desolate road between destinations.  And in the end, when we’ve recovered our sense of surprise that the sobriety of Biblical interpretation long since stole from us, we can let our wonder blossom in the knowledge that it’s not only a story, but a true story at that.  A story with a promise to each of us that salvation lurks right around the corner, in the most unexpected of places, if only we have the eyes to see it, and the curiosity and daring to ask for it.
 

Once upon a time, then, there was a eunuch.  He served the queen of the Ethiopians, both by managing the money and also, presumably, overseeing the harem. For obvious reasons, eunuchs were the perfect choice for that job, as they didn’t have to worry about temptation. But despite having risen to a place of honor and prestige, something was missing in this man’s life.  And so he traveled to Jerusalem, the holy city of Israel, looking for meaning.  But when he got there, he was turned away from the temple, because no eunuchs are allowed there. After the long journey, his hopes were dashed upon the rocks of rules and regulations. He could never be a Jew; he coudn’t worship as the Jews did; all because of something done to him long ago. Something he had no control over.

And so he returned to Ethiopia, and along the way he recited the scroll of Isaiah. In those days, scrolls were precious items, for the paper they were written on was rare and expensive.  In order to make the most of the paper, the scribes who hand-copied each one would use up every blank bit of space, to the point of not even putting spaces between words. Add to that the fact that written Hebrew had no vowels, and you end up with a precious piece of paper crammed with consonants, with no divisions.  The only practical way to read a scroll, then, was to read it aloud, sounding out where one word ended and the next began.

That’s what the eunuch was doing on the trip, which is a little comical, and a little remarkable.  After having been turned away after such a pilgrimage, he still read the Jewish scriptures.  He still wanted to know the God whose followers had just told him to get lost.  Such was the pull of God on his heart.

He zoomed past a stranger on the desolate road, he read a passage about an innocent man who was put to death.  “Justice was denied him,” Isaiah writes.  “Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth.” This man – who, like the eunuch, is never given a name – died childless, with no generations to continue his name after his death – again, like the eunuch.  Perhaps that’s what drew the eunuch to the God of Isaiah: the sense that that God understood him.  Understood what it was like to be rejected, and persecuted.

Just then the stranger asked him, “Do you understand what you’re reading?” And the eunuch’s reply was simple and honest: “How can I, unless someone guides me?”  The eunuch could have pretended to understand, perhaps out of pride, for, after all, he was riding in a royal chariot and oversaw a veritable kingdom, so who was this lone pedestrian to teach him about God?  Or he could have asked Philip for his credentials, as if to say, “Why should I listen to you?  How do I know that you know what you’re talking about?”

But instead the eunuch was honest and admitted his ignorance.  And what better statement of faith can there be than admitting that you don’t understand, and asking for help?  So the eunuch invited Philip into his chariot, and he listened.  He listened to Philip proclaim the Good News, and he learned that Isaiah was talking about Jesus of Nazareth.  Isaiah might just as well have been talking about the eunuch himself, such were the similarities. And so in that in-between place, in the words of a humble stranger, the eunuch came to understand that God not only loves outcasts, God is an outcast Himself. “This is the God I traveled all this way to find, and now I have,” the eunuch was probably thinking to himself.

And then comes perhaps the most miraculous part of the story.  As they hurtled down the road to Ethiopia, the eunuch saw some water by the side of the road.  In that arid land, it probably wasn’t much water. A ditch at best, a big puddle at worst.  The eunuch said to Philip, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  What courage it took to ask the question, especially after he’d just been thrown out of the temple!  And perhaps there was a little angry doubt in the question, as well, as if he was saying to Philip, “You say all the right words. But will your God really accept me?  Will my condition prevent me from being baptized?  You see, I don’t just want to understand. I want to belong.  I don’t just want part of it; I want all of it. That’s what I came so far looking for, and I won’t stop until I find it.”

Without a word, Philip and the eunuch went down to the water.  And in that dirty, meager puddle, Philip baptized him, and, for the first time in his life, the eunuch belonged. But immediately “the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more.” The eunuch had no idea that he was the first gentile to be baptized in the book of Acts, nor that he would go on to be the first Christian missionary to Africa.  He had no sense of his honored place in history.  All he knew was that God loved him and accepted him.  He’d gotten what he’d come for; not where he thought he’d find it – in the official seat of religion. But on a deserted road in the wilderness, from a stranger.  Yet, for all that, he knew he’d found the truth, and he was saved.
 

I’d like to encourage us, most of all, to emulate the Ethiopian eunuch in our lives, especially when it comes to the Bible.  Because he knew the truth when he saw it, and he was ready for grace when it presented itself.  So often, it seems, we think we know where truth is, and all we end up doing is construing what we hear in the “proper places” to be truth, and turning a deaf ear to truth in the improper places where, truth be told, it’s more likely to be found. For if the story of the Ethiopian eunuch has any bearing on our modern world, we have to accept the possibility that we’re at least as likely to hear the truth from the hitchhiker on Route 7 who we pass on the drive home, as from the preacher in this pulpit, at least today; that even if we do hear the truth, it doesn’t matter a whole lot if we don’t live it out and rather testily expect God to uphold His part of the bargain; and, in the end, that even if the people who show us the truth eventually exit our lives, the truth remains in us. 

For Jesus promised that He won’t leave us orphaned; that even though the world can’t see Him, we’ll be able to. We see Him each time we keep his commandments, each time we admit to God that we need help, and each time we risk ourselves to help someone else.  And each time we’re surprised by God. For if we’re never surprised by God, then what we’re calling “God” is really just a predictable creation of our own imaginations; what the Old Testament likes to call an idol.

For God is all about surprise, and surprise is all about change. The very essence of repentance and discipleship and everything else God calls us to is change.  And that call to change shines forth from the pages of the Scriptures, if we have the eyes to see it.

So if you’re looking for a good read that combines plot and character development, the Bible is as good a bet as a dime store novel. And if you’re looking for a little simple wisdom, fairy tales have nothing on the Bible. But don’t come to the Bible looking for safety, or an affirmation of the status quo, because it’s not there.  Only open the Bible when you’re ready to drop whatever you’re doing for the chance to learn who God is, and when you’re ready go jump in the nearest lake if that’s what it takes to be saved.  For the Bible holds the key to salvation, but we have to be willing to ask for it, and be ready for it when we get it.

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