Acts 8:26-39 on May 11th, 2025
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.
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Like many boys growing up, I loved dinosaurs. They were so cool and odd and fascinating. And then when Jurassic Park came out, wow, that's so awesome. But then scientists discovered something. A lot of dinosaurs had feathers. And all of a sudden dinosaurs weren't so cool to me. They didn't fit the picture that I had grown up with. What I thought was true turned out to be wrong.
And I had a similar experience with Philip in today's lesson. All right, it's Philip, Saint Philip. Good connection to us, right? Except it's not our Philip. It's another one. And all of a sudden, this Philip is in as cool to me. But let's not take our disappointment over our namesake, not being in this story to dampen the things that God is up to. Because God is absolutely up to something here. And like learning something new that doesn't fit into our childhood minds, it's unexpected, but it actually makes the story a little more fascinating.
This story is remarkable in how it surprises us with who God chooses, where God shows up, and how grace unfolds. So let's get started by digging into the two characters that we meet today.
First, we have Philip, not the Apostle, aka not our Philip. Our Saint Philip was one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus. He appears in all the Gospel accounts, and in Acts 1, among the disciples in the upper room where Jesus appears post-resurrection. The Philip in today's story is Philip the Evangelist, whom we met last week, actually, as one of the seven men chosen to serve alongside Stephen. After Stephen's death, Philip went to Samaria to preach and later hosting Paul at his own house in Cesarilla.
The second character in our story is the Unic from Ethiopia. He is a high-ranking official with power and wealth, but his physical status excludes him from full participation in the temple. In accordance with the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 23 verse 1, Unic often served female higher-ups, because the male powers that be had ensured that there wouldn't be any funny business. And as such, Unic lived on the margins, outsiders, different, no real category, never quite at home, never fully welcomed.
So here we have two unexpected people, not the disciple we wanted, and a person that this world has maimed and marked as other. And where are they? In the middle of nowhere, a wilderness road, and God shows up. The Unic is reading Isaiah, presumably out loud since Philip hears it, and Philip runs over and asks a simple question, do you understand what you're reading? After a little bit of dialogue, Philip began to proclaim the good news about Jesus.
Now, this may not strike us as all that unusual. Jesus did this sort of thing all the time. He would travel from one place to another and meet somebody and the rest of the community would kind of shoot a side eye at. But Jesus welcomes them, tells them about God's love and forgiveness, and they go away happy, fulfilled, healed, whatever. But that's Jesus. This is Philip the lesser known. And he isn't talking about the kingdom of heaven. This is about human beings, and who is welcome now? Who belongs now?
And the Unic, so used to not fitting in, ask a question that cuts to the heart of the matter. What is to prevent me from being baptized? What a question, right? What is it that keeps me from being part, from being welcome, from being included? Because the answer could be a lot of things. What could prevent him? His status as a Unic. His ethnicity, his position in life, his lack of profession of faith, or prayer, his physical location of being in the middle of the desert. So what is to prevent you? Lots of things. And yet nothing. Nothing prevents him from being baptized. Not a thing. None of it.
The pool of water is there in the desert. A holy coincidence? Because nothing will prevent him from being baptized. Not the world's rules, not religions, gatekeeping, not the long list of reasons someone like him might be told no. Because the truth is, God has already said yes. God has already said yes. And that's the heart of baptism. It's not about checking the right boxes or being the right kind of person. Baptism is God's action. God's claim. God's love, showing up in water, and word to say, you belong. In the middle of nowhere, to someone that everyone expected to be left out, God says, you have a place. It is grace upon grace.
But this story isn't just the story about a unit in Acts chapter 8. And that is our story too. That is what God says to you too. God gives you a place of welcome. Acceptance, love, grace. It's not a generic all-or-welcome platitude. It is particularly for you. And yeah, we need that reminder that God welcomes everyone. Even the most unlikely of people. But we also need to hear that we too are welcomed. That we too are unlikely. We too are those people.
See, we know ourselves. We know us. We know what goes on in our heads and in our hearts. We know where we've been hurt and where we've hurt others. We know when we've been excluded and when we've excluded others. We know when we've been too sure and when we don't have a clue. And maybe most days we think we're fine. But there are days, times, moments, when we are wandering in the wilderness completely out of place, stuck in the middle of nowhere. And in the most unlikely of ways God says you are loved. You are welcomed. You are graced. That's surprising and as unexpected as you may think it is.
And God keeps showing up. And no matter the place we are in our lives, God comes to us as out of places it may seem. And yet it's exactly in those places where life feels confusing or disappointing when the story isn't going how we thought we thought it would, that God reveals something new. Like, Philip II, the unit, sometimes a stranger helps us see what we couldn't see on our own. It's like discovering dyno plumage. It's not what we expected but it's not a mistake either. It's just more to the story than we first thought.
And God works like that. Opening our eyes, expanding our understanding, revealing something deeper and more beautiful than we ever expected. Often that revelation comes not in those clear moments but in the wilderness. Because God can turn wilderness roads into holy ground. And God shows up in water and a splash that says you belong now and forever. God shows up in a meal, simple bread and wine made sacred by love. God shows up on a cross and even more in an empty tomb. Because nothing, not death, not despair, not even dinosaurs with feathers, can stop the love of God from unfolding.
God will keep showing up to the lost and the left out to the proud and the uncertain to you, to me, to us all. In Jesus through Jesus because of Jesus we are claimed, we are named, we are loved, we are welcomed. Philip, the unit, you, we all have a place. We all have a place. And for that I say thanks be to God. Amen.