By Water and the Word

One of the things I like about my neighborhood is the diverse ethnic make-up. I use a little walking trail along the bayou that runs through the neighborhood. I pass people whose appearance delights, and makes me wonder: in which regions of the earth are these people rooted?  It is one of the extra treasures of living in an international city. The grocery store gives me the same good feeling. People speaking different languages.: one man with a dastār adorning his head, one woman in a khimar. We have neighbors from six out of the seven continents. (I am pretty sure there are no people native to Antarctica.)

The Roman world of the New Testament must have been like this. Roman roads created trade routes to connect many more regions than had been before.  There is a story coming up on Sunday that shows how men of very different backgrounds intersected, with a little help from the Holy Spirit and a wilderness road. Even if not a Roman road, it was the meeting place for these two we meet in The Acts of the Apostles.

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.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside 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 silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”

The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.   — Acts 8:26-40

This disciple is not the Philip—the fisherman—that Jesus called as Apostle, but one of the seven wise and Spirit-filled men that the Apostles called to be deacons, laying hands on them to serve the ministry and extend the efforts for the Gospel. Philip discerned the message from the angel of the Lord to travel south and west from Jerusalem to near the Mediterranean coast at Gaza. The royal caravan of the Ethiopian queen, Candice, was traveling through the area. The Ethiopian eunuch in charge of the queen’s treasure had another “treasure” in his hands: a scroll of Isaiah. He must have felt it was a treasure locked away from him because he did not have the framework and background to understand the meaning of the Hebrew prophet.

Philip became a bridge sent by the Spirit to bring the servant to an understanding of how Isaiah’s prophecy applied to Jesus. So, it is a meeting of servants: Philip was a servant of the Apostles, the eunuch was a servant of Queen Candace of Ethiopia. Philip provides him a road toward a relationship with Christ. He points to Jesus as the one expected from ancient times to be the savior of the nations and the people of Israel. The Word of the Lord becomes the avenue to this relationship. Somewhere in their conversation, a word about baptism must have come up, because in the exciting discovery of connection to Jesus, the eunuch sees water and he immediately asks Philip to initiate him with baptism into life in Christ.

It becomes a day of water and the word. The word of Christ-centered prophecy, and the waters of baptism. It reminds me of the old hymn, The Church’s one foundation, number 525 in the Episcopal hymnal. It is a hymn about the unity Christ brings. Things that can divide are thought, belief, culture, geography, nation, fear, and suspicion. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is the one foundation that brings unity by creating us anew. We sing this affirmation in the first lines, which are, “The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is his new creation by water and the word”. These two very different men, Philip, and the royal servant find unity in Christ, in just the way the second stanza of hymn declares as a feature of the Church:

Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth,
her charter of salvation, one Lord, one faith, one birth:
one holy Name she blesses, partakes one holy food,
and to one hope she presses, with every grace endued.

The grace of Philip, that is, the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to him, are generosity of spirit, and discernment with the prophetic scriptures. Both play out as these two men on the dusty road find themselves made brothers. It starts in us, as it did in Philip, with a disposition of loving others, the new commandment of Jesus. Then it goes to the great commission of Jesus “to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them.” All of this is still in play today. We are commanded to love; we are commissioned to make disciples. The Word that moved you and the Water that cleansed you are still moving and flowing, only now, they are flowing through your life to others, who with the help of your generosity, will soon be the extension of Christ’s new creation.