"Build it and they will come." I'm sure that at one time or another you folks have heard that line from the movie Field of Dreams. You probably know the story line too. There’s a farmer in the American Midwest with a love for baseball. He’s on the verge of losing his farm and then one day he hears a voice say to him, "Build it and they will come." The next thing you know he's seeing famous ballplayers from years gone by in his cornfield and he becomes convinced that if he builds a baseball diamond in the middle of one of his cornfields they (whoever they are) will come. So he does it. He builds the diamond and the ghosts of famous ballplayers past show up and begin to play.
Well, things get problematic. You see, this farmer is under financial duress and he’s hearing voices and seeing people that aren’t there and doing what they tell him to do. He tries to convince people that it’s all real. And of course, no one believes him. The think he’s lost it. But in time, one by one, the people closest to him begin to see the ghosts too and then before you know it people start coming from all over by the hundreds to watch these “imaginary” ballplayers, the best of the best from years gone by, play their beloved game of baseball. The truly miraculous thing about it all is that people pay money to see it and the income from this “Field of Dreams” saves the farm. Life goes on happily ever after.
That movie was an awe-inspiring story that really hit a chord back in the early 1990’s. The 80’s had been a tough decade economically for a lot of people and so there was a ready audience needing to hear a “follow that inner voice, build your dreams, and all your problems will be solved” kind of story. If you ask me it was a delusional story that simply encouraged the masses with the narcissistic myth that there is a power in the universe that will make our dreams come true and all we have to do is have the faith to devote ourselves towards making them happen. Follow that dream for the Universe is here to make our dreams a reality. I am sorry to inform you, but contrary to what the celebrities on TV and a lot of popular pseudo-Christian devotional materials say, life just isn’t that way. In fact, most of the people I have known who have lived that way have only left a trail of hurt people in their wake.
Looking at our reading from the Book of Acts, it would seem that we have a kind of similar story. Philip, the early church Evangelist, has to do what an angel tells him to do with no idea why. Yet, it’s not his own field of dreams that he’s building. It’ the Kingdom of God.
It happens within the first couple of years of the church. The fledgling Jesus movement had become quite popular in Jerusalem. Things were going so well that the Apostles had kicked back on their laurels as Upper Room experts there in Jerusalem with no real intent of taking the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah to the ends of the Earth. If people from surrounding Judea wanted anything to do with Jesus the Messiah, they could come to Jerusalem and wait there for his return.
It happened that the Jerusalem Temple authorities got angry at a Greek-speaking, Jesus-following distributer of the Widow’s Dole named Stephen, angry enough to stone him to death for blasphemy. Immediately following that, a mass persecution lead by the Pharisee Saul broke out against the church. Saul later became the Apostle Paul. Trying to make a name for himself among the Temple authorities, Saul went from house to house arresting Jesus-followers and putting them in prison. So, the Jesus-followers began to flee Jerusalem headed for the ends of the Earth. A good many of them went to the neighbouring not-so-popular-with-Jerusalem town of Samaria likely because it was the third location on Jesus’ list for where the Gospel would spread – Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the Earth. Should it surprise us that it took persecution for the Apostles to clue in that Jesus was sending them to the ends of the earth with the message of his saving Lordship? Just saying.
It was during this persecution that an angel spoke to another distributor of the Widow’s Dole named Philip and simply told him to go to the desert road between Jerusalem and Gaza. Without hesitation or knowing why, Philip went. He came across a very influential Ethiopian Eunuch in a chariot who for some reason was a practicing Jew who had been to Jerusalem to worship. His pilgrimage may or may not have been a good experience for him. You see, there’s a law in Deuteronomy that basically says that men who have damaged manhood are not allowed into the temple into the presence of God. He could have come to the Temple in Jerusalem only to have been turned away. But, that’s speculation. We don’t know either way.
Philip finds the unnamed Ethiopian riding in a chariot and reading the scroll of Isaiah out-loud. It was a passage from The Song of the Suffering Servant. He was wondering who that might have been. Was it Isaiah himself or some other? I speculate that while in Jerusalem he may have heard some things about Jesus and was trying to piece these things together. Phillip jumped into the chariot and explained to him that the Song was a prophesy about Jesus the Messiah who had been crucified and raised. Then suddenly out there in the middle of that desert wilderness, they come across a pool of water and the unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch wanted to be baptized, to be brought into the new life of Jesus the Messiah. Philip baptized him. The Bible then says the Holy Spirit whisked Phillip away while tradition says the unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch went on to be the first planter of churches in Ethiopia and southern Sudan.
Well, let me briefly make note of the difference between how the Apostles were doing church in comparison to how Stephen and Phillip, the Greek-speaking, Jesus-following, distributers of the Widow’s Dole, went about being the church. The Apostles, having enjoyed success in Jerusalem, had set themselves up as authorities over the church and experts in the Scriptures. It appears that they had begun to expect people to come to them to make decisions about “policy and procedure” and “who’s in and who’s out” and also for authoritative interpretations of Scripture. It seems they weren’t going forth anymore. They were established, a bit of an institution.
Phillip and Stephen were what we would officially call the first Deacons in the church. The Apostles appointed them to this “table-serving” ministry. The need for them arose because there were widows in the church who were of Jewish decent yet had been married to Greek-speaking men. They early church took care of its widows so they wouldn’t have to beg by providing them with a dole. These widows apparently were not getting the same amount of dole as widows who had had Jewish husbands. So, instead of looking after the dole themselves the Apostles appointed seven Greek-speaking Jewish Christians to ensure proper distribution. Stephen began to preach boldly in synagogues where Greek-speaking Jews met and convinced many. He was inturn charged with blasphemy and became the first martyr.
During the Jerusalem persecution, Phillip was the first Evangelist to go to Samaria. He was very successful there. So successful that Peter and John, the church authorities, had to go there and make sure it was a real church. They were suspicious because they didn’t plant it. Not like they would have anyway because they were sitting on their laurels in Jerusalem expecting everybody to come to them.
As our passage points out Phillip listened to the angel and went to this dessert wilderness road and encountered this Ethiopian Eunuch who had questions. Please notice that Phillip went to meet him, took notice of him, got in the chariot with him, listened to the man’s questions, and answered them as best he could. Please note that because of Stephen’s and Phillip’s willingness to be “out there” doing real hands-on needs based ministry and public teaching rather than sitting on their authoritative, institutional laurels expecting people to come to them, the Kingdom of God began to spread to the ends of the Earth.
We, have a lesson to learn here. Culturally, we of the mainstream churches of North America (and Europe) are like the church of the Apostles there in Jerusalem. We have enjoyed success over the centuries. We became authoritative institutions and started sitting on our laurels expecting people to come to us. This is ironic considering that over 80% of Canadian’s do not and will not now come to church because they have either left us or see us as irrelevant. All the while our way of reaching out to them has been to build a field of dreams hoping they will see the the things that we see.
We have to start doing things the Philip way. We need to start discerning the voice of the Lord, and rather than asking what we can do to get people to come in here, to our figurative field of dreams, ask what does Jesus want us to do out there in the neighbourhoods in real hand-ons, needs-based ministry. So also, we have to listen to our neighbours themselves and the questions they are asking about life and what it means to be human in a world that is so screwed up. We have to get out there and listen and demonstrate that following Jesus is no field of dreams but it is what it is to be truly human. We have to give our neighbours Jesus rather than a field of dreams. Amen.
