…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Acts 1:8
After Acts 2 fulfills the first part of Jesus’ parting promise to his followers and chs. 3-7 find them telling his story around Jerusalem, ch. 8 finally takes the apostles beyond that city. Persecution scatters the first Christians to the countryside of Judea (8:1) and Samaria, where Philip proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah (v 5) and new believers are baptized (v 12). As Peter and John take over that ministry, an angel sends Philip to a “wilderness road” leading to Gaza — a location familiar to us for other reasons at the moment, but at the time signifying that the Gospel was starting to reach “the ends of the Earth.”
On that road, Philip meets and eventually baptizes an Ethiopian official. While the ancient church of Ethiopia sometimes traces its ancestry back to this story, “Ethiopian” was a broader Greco-Roman term for dark-skinned Africans. So, as one of my grad school professors argued, this Ethiopian’s baptism indicates that the inclusivity of “ends of the earth” goes beyond mere geography: “By the baptism of the eunuch, Philip proclaimed that considerations of race and external conditions are of no significance in determining membership in the Church. All believers in Christ are eligible.”1
That this particular African convert is described over and over as a “eunuch” inevitably invites debates about gender identity and sexuality, but let me instead move forward in the story and focus on what else we’re told about the official:
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?” (vv 27b-30)
Why would the eunuch not understand? The text doesn’t make entirely clear that he was a Jew… except that Philip “heard him” reading prophecy. If he didn’t know Hebrew, this African elite could at least read the Greek Septuagint well enough to speak it aloud. But even so, he understandably stumbled over a passage that remains difficult to comprehend. Those of us prepared by a lifetime in the church can still struggle to reconcile the King of Kings — or the Good Shepherd of last week’s readings — with Isaiah’s sheep led to slaughter. It’s no surprise that someone devout enough to make the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem would ask if Isaiah says this “about himself or about someone else?” (v 34)
“Do you understand what you are reading?”, asks Philip. “How can I,” the eunuch asks back, “unless someone guides me?”
As a Protestant, I’d like to think that Martin Luther was right that whatever in Scripture is necessary to salvation is ultimately clear to even an unlearned Bible student. But if Scripture alone is our authority, reading it alone need not be our method.
At some point or another, we all invite someone to sit beside us and help us understand what we’re reading. No one does it quite as well as Jesus, who opened his disciples’ minds as they discussed Scripture on another road leading out of Jerusalem. But the Spirit gifts teachers and preachers — and sometimes puts them in our path and prompts them to talk to us (v 29). In my adult life as a Christian, I’ve tried to be more intentional about inviting a wider variety of people into my reading of Scripture — theologians, commentators, and other writers, but also musicians and artists who help me better understand the Word without words. Maybe most often, it’s my students — who don’t just answer my questions, but raise new questions that I bring back to my studies.
Sometimes we let other people guide our reading of Scripture without even realizing we’ve done so. Any preacher out there understands better than me how hard it is to help their flock understand God’s Word when such Christians spend far more hours listening to politicians, podcasters, and cable news pundits than to their pastor. Without our even realizing it, those people become the guides we invite into our study of Scripture.
So maybe spend some time this week not only studying scripture, but asking who has played the role of Philip to your Ethiopian eunuch. Who has guided you in reading the Bible? Have you been listening to uninvited voices? Who else could you invite into your studies as a guide?
Above all else, how have they helped you to hear “the good news of Jesus” (v 35) in the words you’re reading?
Next week’s lectionary readings: Psalm 98; John 15:9-17; Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6.
Frank M. Snowden Jr., Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 206.