A Million Reasons to Say No

A Million Reasons to Say No--May 8, 2018

Then 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]

It's a big question.

This inquiry that the Ethiopian court official asks, it is a big question--bigger than he knows. It is momentous, not only for him, but for the course of history and for followers of Jesus today if we dare to consider what it means.  It is an immensely weighty question when Philip finds himself having to respond on the fly to the words, "Here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?"

That is a good question, because in all seriousness, there were a million reasons Philip could have said, "No!" to the request.  There were a million reasons to say no--no, that this stranger from another country and language and religious background was not eligible to be baptized, and no that Philip couldn't be the one to do it.  

Take the Ethiopian court official for starters.  At the moment of this story in Acts, what became Christianity was still basically a small band of Galilean Jews and their small circle of followers from around Judea, and they were still not quite clear on who was going to be allowed to belong to the community of Jesus.  They were all basically still a sect within Judaism, and it would have been their default assumption that the rules and conditions of Judaism and its covenantal life would have applied.  This official of the royal court of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, was obviously not Jewish--he didn't have the DNA, the cultural background, the language, or the look of one of Abraham's descendants.  He was, undoubtedly, a Gentile--a foreigner, an outsider, an "other."  That by itself could have been reason for Philip to have said, "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think Gentiles are allowed to belong to the people of God.  We're going to have a big debate about the subject in Acts 15, but we aren't there yet.  The official policy of the church hasn't been settled yet, and since I don't have an official authorization to say that you are acceptable, I can't baptize you.  Can you wait another seven chapters, until we get the answer right on this one?" Philip could have argued to himself that if he let this Gentile outsider into the church, when the church was still quite divided on the issue, it would have sparked a huge division or schism in the church, and he didn't want to be responsible for that kind of crisis!  An easy out for a reason to say "No."

Add to that the fact that this unnamed traveler is heading in the wrong direction--away from the rest of the Christian community on his way back home to Ethiopia!  That means he isn't going to be around other disciples who can teach him all the right religious answers--no one to teach him theology and the catechism, no one to be his official faith mentor, no one to check on him to make sure he is keeping all the commandments and following all the rules, and no one to make sure he isn't keeping company with any unsavory people that might tarnish the good respectable reputation of their fledgling movement.  That also could have been a deal-breaker for Philip--one with good, sound theology behind it.  He could have insisted, "Look, Mister, no offense here, but you really need to be a part of the church to be baptized, and you need to belong to a congregation, and right now we only have one congregation in the whole world, and it's back the other direction in Jerusalem, so you would really need to move back up to Judea if you were serious about becoming a Christian."

And, perhaps most disqualifying of all, there is the delicate matter of this man's status as a "eunuch."  We don't need to make anybody blush unnecessarily here, but suffice it to say that, whether you were born with a genital abnormality or had been castrated in order to serve in the royal court around the queen, if you were given the status of "eunuch," there was a clear rule from the Torah itself that you were not allowed to belong to the assembly of the people of God.  What we call Deuteronomy 23:1 is a clear prohibition that this person, whose gender did not fit fixed prescribed categories, was not acceptable--whether they had chosen this condition or not.  This traveler could have been ruled ineligible simply by virtue of being "other." And Phil could have fallen back on the old, "There's a Bible verse that says you're not acceptable," excuse, and had himself one more silver bullet of a reason to add to the other 999,999 reasons to let himself off the hook and say, "No."

That's not even to mention that Philip could have looked at himself and said, "Well, I'm not worthy or appropriately credentialed to baptized anybody.  I'm just a guy who got recruited two chapters ago to help serve meals to the hungry in our congregation and to make sure the widows are taken care of.  I'm not even one of Jesus' first disciples, and I'm not an apostle or an ordained preacher or been authorized to baptize anybody."  Or he could have insisted, as the more liturgically high-fallutin' among us today might say, "Sure, there's water here, but there's no baptismal candle, anointing oil, and organ music!  I can't do the ritual right if it's just me and you jumping in a rain ditch by the side of the interstate!"  After all, when you are looking for a reason to say "No" to somebody, it's amazing how we can talk ourselves into rationalizing any old excuse.

So... the Ethiopian eunuch isn't "acceptable" to be baptized.  And Philip himself isn't "acceptable" to do the baptizing.  And the water itself might not even be safe or clean or ritually embellished enough to be "acceptable."  There are a million reasons to say no to including this stranger on the road in the life of Jesus' people.

Honestly, when the question comes, "Here is water.  What is to prevent me from being baptized?" there are any number of answers Philip could have given which would have shut things down, turned the traveler away, and ended the discussion.  And all of them would have been different ways of letting fear control his answer, while giving him respectable, reasonable sounding answers to give him cover for saying, "No."

And that, dear friends, is why it is a miracle and a sign of the presence of the Spirit that Philip says... "Yes."

Yes... because the Spirit says yes.  Yes, because while Philip had been minding his own business, it was the Spirit who prompted good ol' Phil to go up to the traveler in the chariot.  Yes, because the Spirit had given him the words to say as he explained the Scripture to this court official.  Yes, because the Spirit waited until he had baptized the Ethiopian sojourner before snatching him up and setting him down in the next town.  Yes, because in spite of all the rational, plausible excuses, the Spirit directed and arranged this whole situation--both so that the advisor to Queen Candace could become included in the body of Christ, but also so that the body of Christ could be stretched beyond the boundaries of what they thought was "acceptable."

Yes, in other words, because when you have a million reasons to say "No", but one "Yes" from the Spirit of God, the "Yes" overrules the objections every time.  The "Ayes" have it, and all the excuses topple like a line of dominos.  When the Spirit says you are not merely "acceptable," but in fact already "accepted," it is the truth--even if it takes a while for everyone else to catch up to the Spirit's calling.

It isn't Philip pushing some agenda over against the protests of the votes of Peter, James, and John who makes this moment happen to include the traveling stranger who does not conform to pre-existing boxes of acceptability--it is the Spirit's agenda.  And like it or not, eventually the Spirit's gonna get what the Spirit wants to have happen.  The question, really, is whether we will insist on raising all 1,000,000 of our objections first, or whether we will, like Philip, set the excuses and "No!" answers aside when we see where the Spirit is leading, and let the Spirit's "Yes" be the last word already.

You and I surely know that this was not the last time the community of Jesus' followers found their boundaries crossed, not by troublemaking humans, but by the troublemaking Spirit.  And we know there have been plenty of times since, and still in this present moment, where we have lined up all our million reasons to say "No."  But--maybe--we could pause with trying to rationalize our fear behind respectable sounding excuses just long enough to listen for where the Spirit is actually saying "Yes" right now.

Today, let us listen for the Spirit's "Yes" above all the noise of our many fearful Nos.

Spirit of God, give us the courage to listen to your prompting, to go to whom you lead us, and to say "Yes" where you are saying it already.