A eunuch, a eunuch from Ethiopia, and a powerful man
at that, out in the middle of nowhere in the desert wilderness of Gaza is
surprised by a rather disheveled looking man running up to his chariot, a man
who’s on a mission from God and wants to talk about the Bible passage that the
eunuch just happens to be reading. The
lengths God will go to lift us up at our weakest moments by showing us who he
is.
So, who is this eunuch? Unlike his new found friend, Phillip the
Evangelist, Luke doesn't give us his name only that he's a eunuch and the
overseer of the treasuries of the Ethiopian queen Candace. Why was he an ethnic Ethiopian worshipping in
Jerusalem like a Jew? I assume that he was what was called a
"God-fearer", a non-ethnic Jew who practiced the Israelite faith but
didn't go the full Monty of circumcision (not that this man hadn't had enough
done to him down there as it was). Yet
if he had underwent circumcision, the Jews would have considered him to have
been fully one of them and thus, fully one of God's people. But, we don't know whether he had gone the
full Monty or not. He could have...gentlemen,
commence cringing.
Nevertheless, the fact that this man was a eunuch is
crucial to this story, a story which revolves around the question: "what
makes a person one of God's people?"
Being a "God-fearer" didn't do it nor was being a "full Monty"
Jew. Rather, the answer to that question
involves where one finds oneself situated with respect to Jesus Christ. What we find in this story is that God went
way more than the extra mile to show this Ethiopian eunuch that Jesus knew
exactly what it was like to be him and this Ethiopian eunuch got it. This eunuch was most likely an outcast among
his own people having the faith of a Jew and disgusting in the eyes of
"God's people" for being a eunuch, but after his encounter with
Philip he knows he's got a friend in Jesus who understands what it is like to
be him and who accepts him as he is.
On a side note, I think Luke doesn't give us this Ethiopian
eunuch's name because he is representative of us all. We would not be human if feelings of being
outcast and ashamed of ourselves and not good enough for God did not form a
core component of the package we call "me". But a core element of faith is God bring us
to know that Jesus knows what its like to be "me" and that his death
was to heal us of that. After all, that Ethiopian
Eunuch left that encounter rejoicing, did he not? As Paul says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).”
It was through his commonality with Jesus that this
eunuch discovered he was one of God's people.
It was in discovering that Jesus knew what it was like to be him in his shameful
outcastness that he found himself to be accepted by God as he was; no dressing
up, no putting on the good, no mutilating of his self to try to please God or
meet up to the standards that “God’s people” quite often have. God knew him and accepted him as he was
because Jesus, the Son of God, the Jewish Messiah was just like him.
This eunuch was an outcast among his own people, the
Ethiopians, because of his shared faith with the Jewish people, God's
people. For some reason he would have
included himself among the stories of the Jewish people. Being a "God-fearer" would have
had its liabilities there in Ethiopia.
Believing in the one true God, the God of the Jews, prevented him from
being involved in most social functions in his community. People were very religious back then. They believed in many gods and nothing
happened that wasn't in some related to a god.
Everything from a feast to a business transaction to simply entering
someone's house involved a god and abstaining from all that would have drawn
attention, negative attention. From
since forever the Jews and those associated with them have suffered persecution
in one form or another for not playing the reindeer games involved in idolatry. So, his association with the Jews would have
made him an outcast among his own people.
Nevertheless, he was a powerful man in Ethiopia, a powerful man in the service of the
queen. Unfortunately, that had its
liabilities. The leaders of Arab and
North African lands used to make eunuchs of the men that they put in charge of
treasured things like treasuries and harems to keep them from being
"otherwise minded". But, and
it gets worse, this mark of higher status in Ethiopia was a mark of shame among the Jews, the
people of God for whom he had suffered being an outcast.
So, it was in the wake of an attempt by the eunuch to
acknowledge his place among the Jews that we find him. In an attempt to be faithful to his God, Israel’s God, he did as a Jew would do and went
up to Jerusalem to worship there at the Temple, to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving and
present a tithe, and remember from where he had come. But, I don't things turned out the way he had
expected. Being a eunuch he would not
have been allowed to go anywhere near the Temple.
The Law at Deuteronomy 23:1 spelled it out quite clearly, “No one whose
testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly
of the LORD." That seems an odd
sort of statute to have in your arsenal, but they had a reason…kind of. If a man was unable to procreate then he was
unable to participate in God's mandate to humanity to be fruitful and
multiply. Therefore, this eunuch could
not be host to God's blessing upon humanity.
In the minds of the Jews, a man willingly undergoing castration was a
detestable affront to God. They would
not have allowed him into the Temple to worship and would have sent him
packing thinking “Who does this castrated fool think he is?”
Well, he thought that because of his faith in the God
of the Jews and his suffering faithfully for their faith, he should have been
allowed into the Temple. Instead, he was denied his
right to worship because of the humiliation he suffered in being made a
eunuch. Isaiah speaks of Jesus in this
same light. Jesus, the crucified
Messiah, suffered humiliation and being an outcast among “God’s people”, all
the while being so faithful to God that we believe he was faithful for them and
for us. Due to his life being cut short,
Jesus also had no biological posterity to pass anything on to. This person about whom Isaiah writes was a
waste as a person just as this eunuch would have been stigmatized to be.
Philip finds the eunuch reading a verse from Isaiah
that describes a person who was very similar to himself: due to the humiliation
of being made a eunuch he was denied his right to worship at the Temple denied the opportunity to have
children. So he asks Philip, “Who is
this person?” Philip proclaims Jesus to
him. It was there in his humiliation and
his outcast-ness that the eunuch discovered that he truly is one of God’s
people simply because Jesus knows who he is and has shared in his suffering. So it is with each of us. Seeing some water, he asks Philip, “What
prevents me from being baptized?”
Nothing. So it is with each of
us. If Jesus himself has anything to do
with it, then nothing. Amen.
