Cut Off and Restored – April 29, 2018 Sermon

For this 5th Sunday in Easter, Year B, I preached on the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40. There’s also some reference to today’s Gospel reading from John 15:1-8.

This is a fascinating story, and I have to say, I learned far more about eunuchs this week than I ever wanted to know. In particular, I found this post from Meetinghouse.xyz and this post from Pastor Cory Driver very helpful.

Without further ado, here’s my sermon for St. Peter Lutheran Church in Greene, Iowa, for April 28, 2018.

How many of you have ever watched The Price is Right?

My father-in-law records and watches it just about every day. It’s surprisingly quick to watch when you skip over all the commercial breaks, but it’s a fun show.

Do you remember what Bob Barker would say at the end of every episode? Drew Carey says it now too. He ends every episode by asking the audience to “Help control the pet population—have your pets spayed or neutered.”

Today’s reading from Acts 8 is about the apostle Philip’s encounter with a person described as an “Ethiopian eunuch.” This man’s condition is not quite the same as a neutered pet, but it’s pretty close. You get the idea.

His condition isn’t just a side detail either—five times he’s referred to explicitly as a eunuch. His condition defines him. It’s part of the point of the story.




In the ancient world, eunuchs were not uncommon. Sometimes, people were castrated as punishment for a crime, but it was also common for people in important positions like this guy, a court official to the Ethiopian queen.

Eunuchs were considered trustworthy, unlikely to betray their ruler. Often, they were the only ones trusted to guard a queen or princess’s bedroom, or to work with a royal harem. One reason, of course, is physical limits to what they could do.

The other reason to trust a eunuch to be in charge of the entire royal treasury is a eunuch’s inability to have children. Theoretically, it reduces palace intrigue, because a eunuch won’t have any in-laws or ambitions of setting up their own dynasty to divide his loyalties.

As the royal treasurer, this guy has both power and great personal wealth. For one thing, he’s riding in a chariot, which is very expensive and luxurious, and second, he has his own scroll of the book of Isaiah. Having your own copy is extremely expensive in an age when everything is hand-copied by scribes.

So this wealthy foreign official had come to Jerusalem to worship at the temple. That in itself is not odd, since there were Jewish people all over the ancient world. He’s probably a faithful Jew who’s been on a pilgrimage to the temple, the house of the Lord. Many in Ethiopia were considered Jewish as descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Or, perhaps he wasn’t Jewish, and he’d just been in Jerusalem on the queen’s business and he was curious enough to go worship. He could have purchased this expensive scroll in Jerusalem, or maybe he brought it with him. We don’t know.

Whether or not he was Jewish wouldn’t have been a problem at the temple, since there was a place for Gentile God-fearers to worship, and it wouldn’t have really mattered that he’s from a foreign country, or that he’s an African. But he would have run into a problem.

Deuteronomy 23:1, a verse that never comes up in our lectionary, bans anyone with crushed or cut off genitals from entering the house of the Lord.

Now, it’s not like there was a body check or TSA scan of everyone who came to the temple, but as a eunuch, he looked different. Thanks to the operation done to him—probably forcibly against his will—he would have had very low testosterone and not gone through puberty. So, he’d look and sounded different, feminine.

Almost certainly, when he got to the temple, he wouldn’t have been allowed in. Imagine traveling 1500 miles to worship and then being excluded, denied entry. On his long trip back, he’s reading aloud from Isaiah. Thinking about him as a eunuch unable to have a family, listen to a few verses from the chapter he’s reading.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
    Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
    for the transgression of my people he was punished.

Sounds pretty appropriate to him, right? This is a guy who understands a perversion of justice, who’s had things done to him. No wonder he’s interested in knowing who the prophet is talking about. Listen to what he would read just a little farther down his scroll, in Isaiah 56:3-5.

This is the scripture he’s reading as the Holy Spirit points him out to Philip. It’s the easiest evangelism opportunity ever! Philip tells him the good news of Jesus. This foreigner will never have a literal family, but he’s invited to become a Christian and be joined to Christ. He doesn’t have to live as just a dry tree, he can be grafted onto the true vine, Jesus.




Imagine how good of news this is for him. Imagine how it would feel to have been excluded your whole life. He had a luxurious, wealthy life, to be sure, but as a eunuch, he would always have been treated as less than, as only half a person, and then to hear that in Jesus, there is a place for you.

Imagine hearing, maybe for the first time, that you’re not just a servant, but a person in your own right, a child of God. God’s love is for you; God understands what you’ve gone through.

He asks Philip, “Look, here’s some water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?” and you can imagine what he’s thinking. Am I good enough? Is this good news really for me? I’ve only just had this explained to me—do I need to keep studying? Can God really want me? Do I belong?

He’s been excluded before, so there must be some obstacle, right?

But there isn’t. There is nothing to stop him from being joined to Christ in baptism. No wonder when he comes up out of the water, he goes on his way rejoicing!

I wonder if you’ve ever felt that kind of joy. Have you ever been excluded, and then given new hope? This story tells us something great about God’s love, and about how the church ought to be.

We ought to be removing the obstacles that keep people out, tearing down the barriers separating people from the good news of Jesus. Of course, we don’t always live up to that.

There’s a great story about a pastor starting at a new church, and she came in dressed, well, not the way you’d expect a pastor to dress. Dressed like someone on the street, someone homeless, to see how the congregation would react. And the ushers let her in, but directed her to the back row, to keep out of the way of the regular worshippers, to not offend anyone else who would come in.

At the beginning of the service, this apparently homeless person got up and introduced herself as the new pastor. What a great way to figure out how your congregation feels about people who appear different!

I wonder what kind of barriers we put up in our congregation, certainly not intentionally. What would make people think they wouldn’t be welcomed by God here? The way they dress? Their skin color?

Their orientation? Gender norms? Their age? Whether they grew up in a church or not? Singing ability?

How hard it must be to come into an unfamiliar church, worrying about what will keep you out.

Fortunately for all of us, Jesus is far better at loving than his church sometimes is. If you’ve ever been excluded from the church, first of all I’m sorry, and second, what a great story this is for you.

Hear the good news with the Ethiopian eunuch from Philip. There is nothing that prevents you from receiving God’s grace.

God accepts you and loves you. You are a child of God and you belong here.

Thanks be to God.
Amen