The Ethiopian Eunuch: A Follower of Jesus, a sermon based on Acts 8: 26-39, preached on June 22, 2025

Friends, today is the fourth Sunday in our summer sermon series. Each sermon this summer is focused on a particular follower of Jesus, and today I call your attention to the Ethiopian eunuch. The Ethiopian eunuch is not named in our Bible. He’s only described, and there is a significant quality of his that has nothing to do with his being Ethiopian, which I’ll simply allude to without going into detail. Should you be wondering, “Now what exactly is a eunuch?” I’ll echo the response my Sunday school teacher, Dr. Ken Farrar, gave when I was 8 or 9 and asked him about circumcision. “That’s a question you’re going to have to ask your father.” Without getting into the specifics, let me say that being a eunuch made this man neither a social outcast nor a social insider, which might be the loneliest place of all. He was on the fringes of two worlds, fully accepted by neither. On the one hand, he operated in the world of wealth and privilege. He worked among the polite and the powerful, and yet he had no family, and he would leave no heirs. He was respected, but people made jokes about him behind his back. He was wealthy but had no one to share his wealth with. He was powerful but lonely. He was an insider and an outsider. He owned his own chariot, had made the journey from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, and was now on the way back. We read in our second Scripture lesson that this was no business trip, for he went to Jerusalem to worship. He didn’t write the travel expenses off to his business account but paid out of his own pocket. Remember that it took the Israelites 40 years to travel from Egypt to the Holy Land, and that was only one way. How many horses did he have to own to pull that chariot from Ethiopia to Jerusalem and back? The long journey points to his desire to know God and to his substantial wealth, but he could afford it. He just didn’t have anyone to travel with, so Philip found him as he was sitting alone, reading his own copy of the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. Today, Bibles are not expensive. Members of our church give out hundreds of them in the Cobb County Jail each year. The Gideons have given out 2.5 billion Bibles worldwide, yet there was a time when Scripture was so rare that an entire synagogue might only own two or three books of the Bible written on scrolls and locked up in a cabinet so that no one could steal them. To own his own scroll of the book of Isaiah was rare. It points again to his desire to know God and to his wealth, and so I imagine that when he walked into Jerusalem, as a wealthy representative of the Queen of Ethiopia, he was shown into the shops where scrolls could be bought. Surely, the scribe who sold him his scroll treated him the same way that the salesperson at the car dealership treats the man waving around an Amex Centurion Card looking to buy a Bentley. “Yes, sir, right this way. Can I get you a coffee, sir?” “Would you like that scroll gift-wrapped?” Yet the minute the Eunuch said, “I am here to worship. May I go into the Temple?” he would have run right into verses like Deuteronomy 23:1 or Leviticus 21:23. Look one of those up. I’m not going to read them. Not every verse of the Bible should be read in polite company. Just know that this man who traveled to Jerusalem to worship, who spent a considerable sum so that he might own his own scroll of the prophet Isaiah, was not allowed into the Temple, for he was wealthy but also considered impure and unworthy. He was invited into the community, but only so far. He was permitted to explore his faith, yet, left to linger in his heart was the feeling that there was something wrong with him. I imagine that someone in here knows what it would have felt like to be the Ethiopian eunuch, for the Church still causes people the feel this way. I’ve told you before the story of Flora Speed, who, with her four children, walked into this Sanctuary the first Sunday her husband, Jim, was to preach from this pulpit as the new Senior Pastor at First Presbyterian Church. They were dressed to make a good first impression. They were surely nervous and excited, for it was their first Sunday in their new church. They walked right into this Sanctuary and took a seat on the fourth pew from the front, which they found out was where someone else always sat, for this someone stood at the end of the pew and said, “You all are sitting in my seat.” After that show of hospitality, they walked up to the balcony and never came back down, for while all are welcome here, not all are made to feel welcome. There are all kinds of ways that the children of God are made to feel as though they would not be at home in God’s house. So it was for the Ethiopian eunuch, and so it is for all kinds of people in all kinds of churches every Sunday morning, even here. The good thing about being in this Sanctuary for the summer is that at 11:00, we nearly fill this room up. The bad thing is that those who walk in from the back can’t tell that there are plenty of seats up front or in the balcony. At 11:00 on a Sunday morning, from the back it looks like the school bus scene in Forrest Gump. “Can’t sit here.” Remember that? No one here would ever say that. I’m just talking about the way it feels walking into the back of a room where back pews fill up first, as though everyone feared sitting too close to the preacher. I get self-conscious about the back pews filling up first. It makes me worry about what people are saying about me out on the street. Is it because I yell? I do yell. I only whisper to my children when I want them to fall asleep. I don’t want you falling asleep. I want you awake to the reality that people walk into this Sanctuary looking for love and acceptance, hoping to encounter God, and trying to figure their faith out. Unless they’re welcomed in, unless y’all make some room for them in your pew, unless you make them feel at home in God’s house, they may wander back out that door with the words of Mahatma Gandhi ringing in their ears, “I like the sound of their Christ, but I’m not so sure about those Christians.” After trying to worship God in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian eunuch left that city and was on his way back home when Philip found him sitting in that chariot, reading the scroll of Isaiah with his head full of questions, asking “How can I follow Jesus unless someone guides me?” That’s what the Ethiopian eunuch says to Philip, and this is where I admire his faith. Rather than walk away, this man kept seeking Jesus, asking, “Might Jesus know what it’s like to suffer?” Might Jesus know what it’s like to be a lamb silent before its shearer? Might Jesus know what is like to have justice denied? Might Jesus know what it’s like to be me? Now I want to stop right there and ask you to think about that because in the 21st century, there are all kinds of reasons given by all kinds of people not to come to church on a Sunday morning. Many people feel rejected as the Ethiopian eunuch did. Many feel left out, or only half included. Sometimes, that’s my fault. Folks wander out from the fold quietly, which I hate. Far better is to speak up. Silence can be bad. I’ve just bought an electric car. It’s a Nissan Leaf. The biggest challenge I’ve faced in owning an electric car is that it’s so quiet, more than once I’ve walked away while it was still running. I’m not kidding. Just last Sunday morning, I pulled into my parking space in the west lot across the bridge, talked to Parker Gilbert, who was out walking around, got out of my car, started walking towards the church, and couldn’t figure out why my headlights were still on. It was because my car was still running, but it made no sound. How many people have been hurt by the Church, but suffer in silence? We would pay attention, I would pay attention, but unlike the Ethiopian eunuch, they’re not boldly asking the questions. They’ve already given up or they’re waiting for us to prove to them that we care enough to listen, which some among us are bold enough to do. It happened just last Tuesday. Hundreds of cars were lined up for our food pantry. Each week, hundreds of families drive through our parking lots to get a box of food, diapers, and dog food. Our volunteers even hand them a prayer card. They can write on that card their prayer request with the assurance that we’ll pray for them. Last Tuesday, one woman in the line took the card from one of our volunteers and said, “Knowing that you’ll pray for me matters more to me than the food.” When you think about people who aren’t in church this morning, I want you to know that some of them just love baseball more than church right now. They think their kids are going to play for the Braves or something. Don’t worry about them; they’ll be back when they finally realize their kid isn’t Dansby Swanson. But there are a whole lot of people outside the walls of this church this morning because someone at some time made them feel as though they weren’t good enough to sit in here. The Ethiopian eunuch dared to question that feeling. Might Jesus know what it’s like to be me? And what is to prevent me from being baptized? The answer to that question: nothing. Nothing would have prevented him from being baptized, so don’t you dare stand in his way, for we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.