Evangelism - a sermon based on Acts 8: 26-40 preached on July 2, 2023

“Evangelism” is the title of today’s sermon. Are you nervous already? After the early service, I heard that our church once hosted an evangelism training. Years ago, a specialist came and trained those brave and willing members of the congregation who signed up. She began by asking: Do you know what all Christians and non-Christians have in common? The non-Christians are scared that someone is going to come and knock on their doors, and the Christians are scared that someone is going to ask them to. What is evangelism? Who among us has this gift of the Spirit? What good does it do? As you can tell by looking around the Sanctuary, this summer we’re preaching a series on spiritual gifts. So far, we’ve celebrated the gifts of encouragement, discernment, generosity, and artistic expression. Today is evangelism, and let’s start, not with what evangelism is, but with what evangelism isn’t. The opposite of evangelism is sharing the bad news. There is no need for us to take time to celebrate those who proclaim the bad news, who take it door to door, for those who share the bad news are a dime a dozen. We wake up, turn on the TV, and watch daily coverage of the bad news. Drinking our coffee while reading the headlines in any daily news source, there it is again. Go to the doctor, we’re scared we’ll hear it. Walking through life, we brace ourselves for it. All day long, everywhere we go, we hear about how the world is falling apart, how the good guys are losing ground, and young people are worse than ever. Have you heard how people love to share the bad news about young people? I hear folks talk about how young people are always on their phones. They don’t want to work. They’d rather be on facetime and tweet their tiktoks. Listen to this opinion piece, which could have appeared in any news outlet over the weekend: Children: they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants. Guess who said that. Socrates. The bad news is always around us, and it has been with us forever. The worst thing about it is that it feels true. The bad news feels true because hearing or reading that things are getting worse and worse reinforces what we’re already thinking. According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Out of all the thoughts that pass through our minds in an average day, 80% of them are negative. 95% of them are repetitive. All day long, within our minds we are assaulted by the bad news, and if we are also reading and watching the bad news then it will drown us. Bad news is everywhere. The question for this morning is: Who in your life has shared with you the good news? That’s evangelism. It’s different from encouragement, which we covered already. Encouragement says, “You can do it.” Evangelism says, “God can do it.” Having hit a closed door, then knocked until your knuckles bled, has anyone said, “God can do what you cannot?” As you felt troubles rise to your neck, did anyone help you to hear His voice saying, “Don’t be afraid for I am with you”? When you were isolated and alone, did anyone dare say, “You have a friend in Jesus?” I’ve done it best when I’ve made it simple. Holding the hand of a wife who just found out that her husband is dying, I said, “This is going to be hard, but you’re going to make it.” Preaching the funeral of a man who took his own life, I leaned on the book of Romans and proclaimed, “Even today, nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Evangelism is not rocket science, nor is it brain surgery. You don’t have to make a theological argument, nor do you have to have the Bible memorized; however, the Good News is always countercultural because it is different from what we’ve been hearing and what we’ve been thinking. Evangelism contradicts most every other voice who has spoken, including the voice inside our heads. I was a seminary student in my last semester, and I heard it. As I had for all three years, I worked the breakfast shift in the school cafeteria for my work study. I was shoveling grits and scrambled eggs. Because it was my last semester, my classmates were talking about the churches they would go to after graduation. My friends were getting called to churches as pastors and associate pastors. I, on the other hand, while I’d had an interview or two, was coming up empty. I had few contacts, no leads, and I was getting scared. A classmate must have been able to read the desperation on my face. She asked me what I’d do after graduation, and I told her I didn’t know. She looked me in the eye over the steaming hot bar, and she said, “Every student here is studying to become a pastor. Some of them are supposed to be. You, Joe Evans, are supposed to be a pastor. Just wait.” Have you ever heard something like that? Do you know what it’s like when you’re opening rejection letters, and the thoughts in your head are telling you that you aren’t good enough? One source of bad news reinforces the other. 80% of your thoughts are hopeless, critical, and told-you-so, and that 80% cycles on repeat, then counter to the rejection letters and the negative thoughts, someone speaks into your life a different message. In comes the evangelist with some good news. In our second Scripture lesson, an Ethiopian eunuch was sitting in a chariot, trying to make sense of the Bible. You likely know what a chariot is and what the Bible is, but do you know what a eunuch is? I’m not going to get into the details today. I’m going to tell you the same thing my 7th grade Sunday school teacher, Ken Farrar, told me when I asked him. “Joe, you need to ask your father that one,” Dr. Farrar said. What’s a eunuch? Ask your father for the details. Let me tell you about the consequences. In a world where some are clearly male and others clearly female, the people who don’t fit neatly into either suffered a lonely existence. Many were slaves, made eunuchs by slave drivers because eunuchs could be sold for more. They underwent surgery in unsanitary conditions, and if they survived, they were bought and sold to serve at the table of the prince’s household or at the feet of the well-born Roman socialites. Husbands would assign them to their wives’ chambers without fear of any consequence. They were like men, though their voices were high, they couldn’t grow a beard, and they could father no children. Among the slaves, they were high ranking, for they were valuable and trusted; however, were one granted his freedom, he might have more trouble making a living free than had he remained enslaved. Why? Because he didn’t fit. People found his appearance disturbing, so imagine with me a person who never fit in, who worked for nothing, who’s never been on a date. Valentine’s Day comes around and no one gives him a card because the place of an Ethiopian eunuch is a dead end that leads to nowhere. In no hurry to get back home because no one there is waiting for him, he’s sitting in a chariot reading the book of Isaiah, and listen to what he read: 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 this generation? For his life is taken away from the earth. Asking the disciple Philip, “Who is this about?” Philip tells the eunuch about Jesus, but the eunuch wants to know who it is that the prophet speaks because it felt like the prophet was talking about him. He was like a sheep led to slaughter. He was like a lamb, silent before its shearer. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. When he dies with no offspring, his life will be taken from the earth. That’s the story of the eunuch, and because that’s his story, he is friendless and alone. Yet if the prophet speaks of the Savior, then the eunuch has a friend in Jesus. That’s evangelism. When the bad news says it can’t be done, the evangelist says, “God can.” When the bad news reports on a world full of locked doors, the evangelist says, “There’s a place for you.” When the world leaves you out in the cold, and the thoughts in your head tell you that you’ll always be alone, listen to the good news, for if the eunuch has a friend in Jesus, so do you. All the time Jesus was welcoming in the outcast. He invited all the sinners to His table and was a guest of the tax collectors. The religious authorities turned their backs and locked their doors on people like eunuchs, maybe even to people like us, but at this table, we find our welcome. Who helped you to see that? Who helped you to see Jesus? Who helped you feel welcome, instead of judged, in church? Has anyone ever heard the bad news in a church? About this time of year, an old country church I drove past often would always put out on the marquee: “Sinners, you think it’s hot now?” I don’t know how many people found their way into the church after reading that message, but I do know that in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch, as Phillip left him, he went on his way rejoicing. Twelve thousand to 60,000 thoughts move through your brain each day. 80% of them are negative. 95% of them are repetitive. Whose voice broke the cycle? Whose voice pointed you towards the mighty love of God in a world of bad news? Write their names down on your cards. Now hold your cards up. In a world of bad news, there are those who have proclaimed the good news. This summer, instead of standing to say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed, we affirm our faith by celebrating the gifts of the Spirit, given by the God Who is at work in our world still. God is not silent, nor is He dead. Halleluiah. Amen.