Be First

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
May 10, 2009

Be First
Acts 8:26-40

The sun was blazing hot
as the chariot banged and bumped its way
along the road that led south out of Jerusalem
down to Gaza, into the desert.
The man sitting in the chariot was going home,
back to Ethiopia.
He was just starting out on a journey, a long difficult journey,
one of more than 1500 miles.
It would take the better part of two months,
over difficult, dangerous roads,
most of it through desert,
where death was every traveler’s constant companion.

His community for the next two months
would be a mix of snakes and scorpions,
the occasional bird wondering if the man or his horse
might become its next meal,
and an endless parade of thieves and bandits,
men who valued whatever coins a person
had in his purse
more than they did a human life.

The man from Ethiopia had traveled the same route north
when he first came to Jerusalem,
so he set out with quiet confidence and hope
that he would make it home safely.

In addition to his confidence and hope
he also had faith,
faith that he would reach his home,
faith that God would watch over him on his journey,
faith that God would watch,
“his going out and his coming in”;
that God would “make his face to shine upon him.”

The man from Ethiopia was a man of faith
a man of God,
and his pilgrimage to Jerusalem
was part of his desire, his hunger,
to grow in knowledge, in understanding, and in faith.

His time in Jerusalem wasn’t long;
he had important official duties
that he’d left behind in Ethiopia
as one of the Queen’s counselors.
He was master of the treasury,
the Queen’s chief financial steward.
He assured his Queen that he would be gone
no more than 6 months.
He went with her blessing.

But his time in Jerusalem was long enough:
long enough for him to learn more about the Lord God.
He’d sat with learned men in the Temple;
he’d spoken with Pharisees and Sadducees,
scribes and scholars.
He’d heard them debate their own differences
even though they shared a common faith.
He was particularly fascinated by the argument
the Pharisees and the Sadducees had over resurrection.
The Pharisees believed in it, while the Sadducees did not.
They both pointed to Scripture to make their points,
and they both sounded so sure of themselves
as they debated and quoted texts.

The man from Ethiopia was a learned man,
scholarly, able to read Greek with ease.
The Hebrew Scriptures had been translated into Greek,
which made them much more accessible to him.
He’d read from many of the different books:
The books of the Pentateuch,
the books of the Prophets,
the books of the Wisdom literature,
all in his desire to learn more about the Lord God,
Yahweh, as the Hebrews called him.

His favorite book was that of the prophet Isaiah.
He carried it with him on his journey,
reading it on the long trip up to Jerusalem.
He looked forward to reading through it again
on his journey home.
The prophet’s words read like a poem,
but the Ethiopian found many of the passages
difficult, often confusing.

He was especially eager to read the prophet’s words now,
for during his time in Jerusalem
he had heard people talking of a Messiah,
a Savior,
a man named Jesus, a carpenter from Nazareth
who had been crucified,
nailed to a cross outside the city gates.
People said he had risen from his tomb on the third day,
that his followers had seen him alive.

He had heard the Pharisees and the Sadducees scoff at the story,
saying it was all the ravings of a group of
madmen, loose women, and troublemakers.
After all, a carpenter?
From Nazareth?
He’s the Messiah?

But the man from Ethiopia
had also heard a small number of voices
speak quietly but resolutely that Jesus was the Messiah.
They said the Scriptures proved it,
especially the prophet Isaiah.

But which passages, which verses?
How many times had he read words from the book
and felt confused as to what they meant?
One passage read,
“Now the Lord is about to lay waste the earth
and make it desolate,
and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants”,
and yet just a few lines later he could read,
“The Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people
he will take away from all the earth.” (Isaiah 24/5).

The man knew he needed someone to teach him,
to help him, to be his guide, to help him understand.
And just as he thought that,
he saw a strange man up ahead in the road,
a man who caught up to the chariot
and walked along next to it.

The strange man asked the Ethiopian such an odd question,
“Do you understand what you are reading?”
And the Ethiopian replied without a second’s hesitation,
“How can I unless someone guides me?”

And with that, the Ethiopian invited the stranger,
a man named Philip,
to climb into the chariot
and join him for part of his journey.

Philip immediately began to tell the Ethiopian man
the good news about Jesus,
and, when they came alongside some water,
Philip baptized the Ethiopian,
baptized him in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
just as Jesus had taught him to do.

And from there they parted company,
the Ethiopian to continue on his way home,
and Philip to continue on his way,
doing the work the Lord called him to do,
proclaiming the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is such a wonderful story,
with so many different things going on
in the short space of just 15 verses.

We’ve got two men, two complete strangers,
coming together,
pushed together by God
pushed together so that Philip could proclaim
while the Ethiopian learned,
and then once the Ethiopian learned,
he too could proclaim.
Do you remember how last week
we talked about how we are all called to proclaim,
every one of us, all of us who follow Jesus Christ?

Look closely at these two men;
they are such an unlikely pairing:
The first, a wealthy, powerful,influential man
but also a man who was a foreigner,
a man with dark skin,
and, as we learn, a eunich, different sexually.
Philip was a man of apparently no importance at all,
not part of the religious and social elite of Israel,
more of a social outcast, really,
a man who probably had the appearance of an unmade bed.

The moment the Ethiopian invited Philip
to join him in his chariot, however,
they become a community;
bound together in Jesus Christ,
even if the Ethiopian
did not yet understand it.
Whatever differences they had did not matter,
as they shared their common love for God.
Right there we have such a powerful lesson in welcome,
in reaching out,
in hospitality,
in community.
All in two men riding in a chariot through the desert.

The religious leaders complained, of course,
of the way Jesus kept company
with “sinners and outcasts”,
and Philip probably fit right into the cast.
The Ethiopian was an outcast, too:
a foreigner,
a man so physically different with his dark skin
and a eunich.
That fact alone would have prohibited the Ethiopian
from ever coming near to the Temple to worship the Lord God.

But by the grace of God given to them
and us in Jesus Christ,
both of them were welcomed into community,
into the family of God.

You have heard me say in the past how much I like
the Reverend Peter Marshall’s description of Jesus
as standing before us with
“his big carpenter hands
open wide in welcome.”
Jesus, the one who calls us to community
and welcomes all of us to community.
Jesus, the Son of God who looked past skin color,
or country’s borders,
or language,
or sexual differences.
so he could offer words of welcome,
words of acceptance.

The very nature of the church means,
as William Willimon reminds us,
that we can find ourselves in the company
of the “most surprising sorts of people.”
And that’s a good thing.
We are all different, aren’t we?
And that makes life and the church richer by far.

When we proclaim the good news,
we are proclaiming God’s love and God’s welcome
to God’s community,
the community God invites all to be part of.
We are also proclaiming the reality
that God is always at work
creating, making all things new,
transforming,
tearing down the barriers and boundaries
that we seem so insistent on building,
as God continues to build his kingdom:
a world of joy,
a world of peace,
of reconciliation,
often in the face of our best efforts to work against him
even as we say we are just following Scripture.
We often have more in common with
the Pharisees and the Sadducees
than we want to admit.

These two men: two outcasts,
teach us the importance of reaching out.
They were pioneers some 2000 years ago:
Philip one of the first within the community of apostles
who followed Christ to proclaim this good news.
And the Ethiopian one of the first in the larger community
to hear the good news and respond to it,
and then in turn
take that good news out into the world.

Two thousand years later we can still be pioneers,
we can still be among the first
the first not only to proclaim
in a world that would rather blog, bloviate,
tweet, and argue,
but the first to welcome,
the first to build community
the first to tear down barriers that have existed for too long.
It is surprisingly easy to be first to share love,
to offer acceptance,
to extend arms in welcome.

Even after two thousand years
we can still be pioneers in putting truth
to the words the Ethiopian would have read in Isaiah:
“my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”
(Isaiah 56:7)
All peoples.

These two outcasts,
these two “different” men teach us the truth of a verse
we find later in the New Testament,
words that had not even been written
as they rode along under the hot sun:
“There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear;
whoever fears
has not reached perfection in love”
(1 John 4:18)

Be first within this community,
be first outside these walls,
not only in proclaiming the good news,
but in living the good news,
living the gospel
Be first each day to give life
to the words the Ethiopian and Philip
both exemplified that day so long ago:
“God is love,
and those who abide in love abide in God,
and God abides in them.”
AMEN