You Have Found What You're Looking For
By The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
May 13, 2012
Text: Acts 8:26-40
Contrary to generally held opinion in our society, Christianity at its very beginning was a highly pluralistic faith in a highly pluralistic world. The earliest Christians exercised their ministry in a culture that was heterogeneous and diverse as any of the cultures in the world at that time, and those who bore witness to the faith in those very earliest days did so in a very disparate and dynamic world. I sometimes think when I listen to modern pundits and philosophers that say we are in the only pluralistic age in history that it is nonsense! You couldn't get more diverse than Israel in the first century. Why? It is because the people of Israel had been exiled in late 500 BC, and forced to live in places and cultures outside of Israel and away from Jerusalem.
In what is known as the Great Diaspora, Jews lived in North Africa, along the coast of the Mediterranean, in Asia, in Persia, and even further to the south. Jews were spread from their homeland and forced to live in other places, even Babylon. Because of that, and because of the fact that by the time Jesus Christ arrived there were so many cultures that had been dominant, from the Greeks to the Romans, the world had become a place of travel and conquest. It became an intersection of nations, and Jerusalem throughout it all was the lynchpin, the place where Jews came together regardless of what their background or their race might have been, Jerusalem was the glue that held the people of God together.
Because the Christian community and because Jesus himself, a Jew, grew up in that environment, because the Passover had become a collecting place for nations all over the world, because it had become a diverse place for people to gather and worship, the Christian community found itself at the very nexus of this cultural change that was taking place in the first century in the Middle East. Christians who spoke Persian and Greek and Roman and Aramaic and Hebrew would come together and they would worship God, and in that context the Christian Gospel emerged.
It emerged with not only the belief that it was to go to those who were already committed to God that they should speak and have fellowship, but even to those who did not. To the Gentile world that was as diverse as anything we could know, the Apostle Paul and some of the earlier disciples, even Philip in our text today, sought to spread the Word of God to Jew and Gentile alike and made no distinction.
I thought about that and about how that is also a reality today. Although we think we live in a new age and a new dynamic, and there is clearly a new dynamic at work, it is not unique. Just recently, I was riding the subway on my way to a Christian college. As I sat on the subway I couldn't help but think that it was as if the whole world was gathering in that car. Almost every imaginable race and language and variety of humanity was present in that car. It was quite overwhelming. I embraced it, and thought, “This is a wonderful thing! It is as if the world has come to us. Toronto is a great city because the world has come to us!” Then, I went to a Christian college. There I attended worship and a lecture, and as I walked into the Lecture Hall, I realized that the community of people with whom I was worshiping was as diverse as the one that I had been sitting with in the subway. Any concept that the Christian faith only has one cultural dimension to it is so completely and utterly wrong! It is almost absurd! The Christians in that room that day in that college represented a great variety of languages and ethnicities and cultures and races. What we had in common was the worship of the Lord, and what brought us together was our common confession in Jesus Christ.
I recognize, however, that there is some dissimilarity between our culture and the one of two thousand years ago. In fact, I am taking part in a conference this summer that is studying Migration, Human Dislocation and the Good News, It is an international conference of those who study missions throughout the world. I am on the planning committee.
The more I engage in conversation about these issues of migration and human displacement and the Good News, it becomes all the more obvious that we live in a world that is constantly changing, with people moving faster than they have ever moved before. The shift is tectonic, almost in the plate of the earth, because people are moving with greater speed and in greater numbers than ever before. While Christianity grew up as a pluralistic culture, it now encounters a more rapidly developing world and culture. I noticed that this week when here at Timothy Eaton Memorial we hosted a gathering of AURA, the Anglican United Refugee Alliance, which is responsible for helping refugees and bringing people to this country, a respected group by government and citizens alike. The issue of the refugee is a major issue in our nation and our world.
It is obvious to me that there is a need to somehow in the midst of all this change and transmigration to share the Good News and the love of God that we find in Jesus Christ. We see this so clearly, almost as an icon, in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. In today's passage, there is this incredible encounter that changed the face of the Church and altered the path of Christianity. We might not realize it now, it might only seem like one story that is told by Luke in the Book of Acts, but it is profound one, and it is a model for us.
It is a model for us this morning in two ways. First of all, it models how we engage and embrace the culture of where we are. The second is that it speaks, I think, to mothers on this Mother's Day. It has something profound to say to those who nurture people and nurture their faith. Let's have a look at the story. We are told by Luke that this all occurred at noon one day on a road south of Jerusalem on the way to Gaza - and we all know how controversial Gaza is these days. It was a dangerous road, a road of robbers, a road of thieves, and on the side of the road stops this man on his chariot. All of sudden, the Holy Spirit seizes Philip, and as one of the followers of Christ, he feels led to go over and speak to this Ethiopian.
You might not realize, but this is a very brave thing to do on both counts, for the Ethiopian and for Philip, because it is the road of robbers and you don't know who you can trust. This is probably the road that Jesus had in mind in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is on this road where robbers come and beat people up, these two men have an encounter that turned out to be loving and kind and reasoned. The Ethiopian eunuch in this story represents to us all those who are genuinely seeking and striving to know about the Christian faith. That is why the Ethiopian is so important. He had an inquiring mind and he was willing to learn from Philip about the Christian faith, to know more about it and to grow because of it. We are told by Luke in Acts that he was in fact the treasurer of the court of Queen Candace of Ethiopia.
There have been some historians who have called into question the historicity of this, but in fact new discoveries from the Meriotic script tells us that there were in fact Queens in Ethiopia at the time and that there were known Queens in Kush, which we now call Ethiopia. As the treasurer of the household of the Queen of Ethiopia, this eunuch, who was made a eunuch in order to be in the court of the Queen, was a man of great knowledge and was very close to power. He was not unused to debate and discussion. He must have been clever to be in charge of the Treasury. Yet Philip comes over to him, and we read that he was reading from the Book of Isaiah, and that he had been in Jerusalem to worship.
What is fascinating about this is that this Ethiopian was a Jew. So even though he was not Semitic in the way that most Jews were in the day, he had definitely become a follower of Yahweh, and he had come to Jerusalem, the place that brings them all together to worship. Ironically, the eunuch wouldn't have been allowed into the inner temple and to the inner court because he was a eunuch, but nevertheless, he came to Jerusalem to worship. He is reading his Bible, and all of a sudden, Philip comes over to him and asks him, “Do you know what you are reading?”
And, the eunuch says, “No. Tell me. Interpret for me what I am reading.”
This Ethiopian represents all the seekers throughout history who have pleaded and asked, “Please interpret for us what this faith that you are talking about means.”
I think in many ways, mothers are like that with their children. I am of the opinion - I might be wrong -that children are inquisitive creatures and I think even in matters of faith want to know more about it. They want to know the stories that make it up. But they also want someone to interpret it for them. When I see children grasping the story, and then understanding what the meaning is, they “get it.” In fact, sometimes they “get it” better than everybody else!
This is Mother's Day, and I often on this day as so many of us do, think back to our own mothers. I remember when I used to go to Church School - Sunday School - there was the assumption by all the teachers that I knew the Bible stories better than anyone else because my father was the minister. It was infuriating! I would go to class and a story would be told and the teacher would lean over and say, “Tell us, Andrew, how does this story end?”
Well, for an eight-year-old kid who was only interested in soccer and cars, I didn't have a clue, and I would just say, “I don't know.” They would think, “This is disgraceful! Clearly by his DNA he should know the entire Bible by rote by eight years old!” But I didn't!
Often, I would learn the stories like everybody else, in Church School. Every single Sunday when I came home after Church School, if it wasn't my father who asked the question, “What did you learn in Church School?” it was my mother! And it was my mother then who took the time with me to interpret what I had studied, to place it in the context of my life and my values and how I lived and what it means and how it reflects on Jesus.
I think that so much of the time when I even sit down and read many of the great stories of the Bible and prepare to preach that it is still my mother's interpretation of those texts that profoundly influences me. So, for you, many of the sermons that have come out of me have come from the interpretation of my mother. If you have a problem with my sermons, you can take it up with her, in heaven! There was an influence there, and a desire to teach and to nurture, and to want me to understand, and I think sometimes in that motherly parenting role you have something profound to do and to say. Do not be ashamed of doing it as mothers, and of the role that you have to play.
I love a story that I read in the wonderful book, The Power Delusion by Tony Campolo. Tony is somebody that I have loved and admired as a Christian writer for a long time. He talks about when he was on the Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania teaching Sociology. They would often have faculty gatherings where they would sit around and have drinks and introduce each other to one another. They would bring their spouses with them. His spouse was a very well educated and knowledgeable woman with great academic credentials, but she had taken some time off to look after the children in her home. She had them very closely to one another, and her life was frenetic.
She would go to these faculty meetings and she would often be asked what she did by members of the faculty and by professionals. She got tired of saying, “Well, I am a mother” because people would often just walk away and the conversation would die. She decided to craft a job description to describe what she did in ways that the academic community could understand, and this was her definition of what she does, I just love it:
I am socializing two Homo sapiens into the dominant values of the Judeo-Christian tradition in order that they might be instruments for the transformation of the social order into the kind of eschatological utopia that God willed from the beginning of creation.
All she is saying is “I am bringing up two kids to be Christians” but it sounds so much more rich - doesn't it? Or, does it? As a commentator on the book said, “It is embarrassing at times, because the most important person in my household does not even need to describe what she does, she just does it, and does it with love.”
Someone who shares and interprets their faith in the Judeo-Christian tradition is a powerful thing. The Church can embrace culture with exactly the same sort of approach. I am astounded by the number of people who genuinely want to know about the faith. They have little bits and pieces of the Christian faith. They have a little story here and a little story there, but they don't put the whole thing together. It is not interpreted in a spiritual way for them. They only get caught up in the stories. But sometimes something greater occurs, and it occurs when people, regardless of their backgrounds, find out about the wonder of Jesus Christ. Just like that Ethiopian eunuch. And when they do we are told they are filled with great joy.
Philip represents not the seekers; Philip represents the Church, the mothers, those who provide guidance and leadership. Philip, as I said before, had courage going to see this Ethiopian man. It must have taken great strength to go to him, but the Holy Spirit led him. When he got there, he was willing to share with him the content of the faith. He was willing to engage him at the point of his very need in a way that he could talk about things. He found something in common with him and was willing to engage it.
In many ways, I think what Philip did is something that I do when I get in a cab in Toronto and drive around the city. I have realized something: one thing that a lot of cab drivers in this city and I have in common is that we love cricket. If I can mention cricket in the first five sentences of getting in a cab, I find the conversation just explodes, and we can go anywhere, and it all happens so quickly. It is a wonderful experience that we have found something in common. That is not all of them, but a lot do love cricket. A lot of them were probably at the Roger's Centre yesterday watching that great game, which I watched closely on television.
I thought it is sometimes finding something in common that allows you to engage one another in a meaningful way. What Philip did was to engage in a meaningful way this Ethiopian at the point of what he was interested in, the Book of Isaiah, the thing that had moved him to come to Jerusalem and worship. And then, he was able to share with him the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because Philip knew that this gospel was precious, that this gospel was of great meaning and power, and he was not intimidated, even of going to someone of another culture with the Word of God. He knew how valuable it was!
I was reading a story not long ago in a magazine that tells stories about musicians about a man who lived in Milan, Italy in the nineteenth century called Luigi Tarisio. He was born in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and he died in the middle of the nineteenth century. Tarisio had one outstanding characteristic in his life: he collected violins. He didn't have anything else in his life; he was obsessed with his violins. He would even go to Paris, for Paris at the time was the place where violins could be restored to pristine condition, and then he would take them back to northern Italy with him, and he would store them.
In his life, he stored over 240 violins. Twenty-four of them were Stradivariuses - 24 of them! And when he died in a little apartment in penury, in complete poverty, those who came in discovered these incredible violins. In a bottom drawer, in a chest in his bedroom, they found a 1714 Stradivarius that was known as “The Messiah.” Yet, all these years, he had stored all these to himself, kept them to himself and no one had played them, no one had heard them, no one had shared them. These instruments of great beauty and wealth had been stored in an apartment in Milan for no one else to hear and see. In many ways, it was a tragedy. He died surrounded by his violins, but he had never shared the music.
I think the Church's relationship to the Gospel is just like that man. If we have this beautiful good news, and all we do is keep it to ourselves and lock it away for our own protection and edification and comfort and do not share it with others, then how is the music heard? How is the grace of the Holy Spirit manifested? And that is why Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch show us how it is done. The Ethiopian was open, willing, and gracious. Philip was honest, engaging, and compassionate. The two of them went off after their encounter, brought together by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the eunuch was baptized and went away with joy. Philip went on with his ministry to speak to others and to engage them.
Is that not what the Church should do today? In our pluralist society with such great and rich diversity are there not profound opportunities to do this in a meaningful and caring and engaging way? I think there are. And in bringing up children in a home, is there not this great opportunity to share the story, to interpret it, and influence lives in the world ahead? I think there are, because I think there are a lot of people who still haven't found what they are looking for, but in our message we show them this is what you are looking for: the good news of Jesus Christ! Amen.