The Church is Spirit Led
Acts 8
I am a very extroverted introvert. On a Myers-Briggs test, I am found near the middle, shifting over the middle line depending on the year I have taken the test. Here’s what that means: I am really comfortable at home, staying in my world, where I know what is going on, and I have my things. It also means I’m pretty comfortable in a community, in a group. Sometimes, though, it looks like hanging back and getting a feel of those around me and how I might fit in. Sometimes it is in a leadership role. But here’s the truth, there are many times it takes a lot of effort to put myself out there.
This is really apparent in making new friends as an adult. It’s hard to start in a new town with new people in a new way. Also, the look on people’s faces when you say you’re a pastor is fun… I have to hype myself up for fun social situations when we’re able to be in social situations. “It’s going to be ok, you’re great, and if it’s not, you can go home.” And it’s usually great. But all the anxiety, and fear, and discomfort leading up to it can cause me to use any excuse to stay in the spaces that I know well.
Last week in our story of Acts, we were at another place of huge change, as the first half of Acts is almost all shifting ground, it’s all-new, it’s full of adjusting. The change that we found at the end of the story of Stephen was the scattering of the followers of Jesus.
We have to imagine that staying was filled with fear and anxiety and grief. One of their own, a friend maybe even, had been killed. And he had been killed because of the one thing that bound them to each other--their following of Jesus’ way and their sharing of his story. The story says that people started being dragged out and killed, too. When might they be next?
But leaving was no doubt filled with fear and anxiety and grief. For many, Jerusalem was the first place they heard the story of Jesus. It was where they learned the stories, heard the sayings, discussed the parables. They made friends, they built community, they had been safe. But the safety was gone and they had to leave. Where would they go? How would they live? What was to come next for them?
But leave they did, many of them, to travel and tell the stories. They took these steps in faith. Maybe some had a plan, but not all of them. See, I wonder if Philip actually had a plan, or if he just started wondering. Maybe he decided to retrace the steps of Jesus--before he had come to Jerusalem, Jesus had walked through Samaria. Maybe Philip was being led by the Spirit of God who moved through their upper room, who compelled waitstaff to preach, and who moved the new church into a new way of being. The Acts of the Apostles might be better named the Acts of the Holy Spirit, as nothing would have happened without the Spirit Empowering and Emboldening, Teaching and guiding.
Preaching to the Samaritans didn’t make any sense really. This had been the former Northern Kingdom of Israel--they had, according to the religious leaders, turned away for true worship of the God who was called I AM, to maybe worship other gods, or maybe just worship the God I AM on a different mountain, in a different temple. And during their time of Exile, they had intermarried and had children with people who had never been part of the 12 Tribes of Israel. They were multi-racial (at worst called half breeds) heretics in a time when purity and orthodoxy were of the highest priority.
The Samaritans were judged in a way that you can only do when we are certain you know someone well, but really don’t know them at all. They were the weird uncle, the black sheep, the one you whisper about and never invite over, because you know, even when you never know. They were called names, they were shamed, they were never invited for festival or dinner or family reunions. Best case scenario, you just pretend they don’t exist. Forget them.
I imagine it was incredibly unsettling to enter their cities and start to preach, even to cross the border, to just be there. This was not comfortable, not safe, not with the people whom you judged or outright neglected. It was not where any well respected Jerusalem Jew would want to be seen.
So what do you mean Philip preached there, and they heard and listened, and were moved? The Samaritans converted, they joined the faith, they started communities, they chose to live by Jesus’ stories, they joined all in. It seemed so unlikely that Peter and John, who didn’t want to go to Samaria either, had to confirm stories they were hearing.
Sometimes the Spirit will take you to unexpected places, where you don't want to go.
Philip has interactions with 2 different people while he was there in Samaria. The first of Simon, the Great. He was a magician of some power, the people thought he was from God, but even Simon was overcome by the story of Jesus. And was enthralled by the power of the Spirit that brought healing. Simon wanted to be part of it and naively asked to pay for the Power of the Spirit, a transaction that made sense in the world he was from. Peter has a history of being a bit hot-headed and a bit of a jerk, because Simon, a wizard, had chosen to be part of the Jesus thing and was not deterred from continuing to follow by Peter’s nasty attitude. Instead, Simon apologized, begged to still be included. Simon--multi-racial, heretic who somehow did magic--what is never seen as positive in the bible, becomes a follower of Jesus. Tradition doesn’t tell us much about Simon, he might have been a leader of the church, he might have written treatises.
The other person is the Ethiopian Eunuch. It’s possible this man couldn’t have been more the opposite of Philip. He was wealthy, connected to the powerful, and educated. Ethiopia in Scripture is anywhere south of Egypt, modern Ethiopia or Sudan. In a middle eastern world of brown-skinned people, Euni the Ethiopian Eunuch, as we’re going to call him, was dark-skinned. He might have been reading the Tanakh, but he was not welcomed into the Jewish community. It was still a time when “being fruitful and multiplying” might mean the difference between holding onto your land and losing, winning a battle or your nation being destroyed. Creating life was of the utmost importance for men and women. And not being able to do so could be grounds for abandoning one’s wife. Or in this case, excluding the sexual deviant who has been emasculated. He was not a man in the eyes of those who dedicated the expectations of gender roles--a priority when men and women didn’t pray in the same spaces of the temple, women didn’t interact in politics, and men were primarily educated in the law and expected to pass on their lineage. What is a man who can’t do that?
And yet, the Spirit of the God, through an angel, tells Philip to go chariot, and he takes off in a run, not knowing what he would find, who he would find, what would happen, where the chariot would take him or leave him. He just runs.
And he opens the story of Jesus to Euni. Revealing Jesus in the midst of the ancient story. Teaching that this Jesus way of living is for him too. A racial outsider and sexual deviant.
Sometimes the Spirit of God leads you to people you judge, to people you hate, to people who represent everything outside of what you believe.
Sometimes the Spirit of God invites you into a new way of looking at yourself and others.
Imagine what it was like to be Simon and Euni, to be welcomed to be baptized, to be made part of a community, to be connected to those who have despised you, to be equal to those who had forgotten you. Imagine hearing the good news that there is healing and love and enough, that you are enough, when your whole life someone had told you, you are less than, you are half, you are incomplete, you are not fully human. The Spirit of God moved and this was the Spirit’s mission to the forgotten and the abused.
And imagine being Philip, standing before these men, these people he had been brought up to ignore, to avoid, to mock, to despise, to see as less than fully human because they did not line up with what he thought or was taught God cared about, and yet, the Spirit brought him face to face with Simon and Euni. The Spirit made these 2 a priority, made them part of the work, part of the mission, and members of the community who would go one to share their experience with the risen Christ.
The church was never the same. If they--the people I was taught to hate, were part of this movement--who else could be part of it? What would we become?
But that’s it right, every person we interact with changes us just a little. Every person who joins our community alters it slightly. As a church, we grow and change because as individuals we grow and change.
And sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Because we’re safe and we know what to expect. But there comes a time in everyone's life, and in the life of organizations, and yes, the church, when to stay put becomes more dangerous than listening to the call of the Spirit and taking that first step. I’m sure not everyone’s first attempt was as successful as Philip’s. They listened to the call, they got up, they tried again. Philip was wide open to the moving of the Spirit, be it subtle, or loud, or moving him, which also couldn’t have been comfortable.
Sometimes this leading takes us out into the world, to talk with folks we normally don’t talk to. Maybe it’s the homeless man who sits at the corner. The person who supports the candidate you admittedly oppose. Maybe it’s the person who seems to be your exact opposite.
Sometimes it means doing the uncomfortable things--going to an event where you don’t know anyone, but it supports a cause you care about. Reach out to someone engaged in missions and find out how you can support them. Maybe this year, you want to volunteer to read Scripture in service, even though it makes you anxious. I had friends who knew the name and some the story of the homeless people in their city, and that person knew some about my friends. One never knows to where, or to whom the Spirit is calling you.
For other church communities, sometimes this has meant hosting gatherings, or other faith communities. This has meant inviting homeless in to have a meal and hearing each other’s stories. This has meant going out into the neighbors and caring for people where they are, even when it’s uncomfortable. It is reaching out and welcoming in.
We are being called forth to new places, and to meet new people. To take a step into the unknown an trust that who we will be on the other side is God-given and Abundant living, as we live into the call of the Spirit in our lives.
