13th Day of Easter, Friday April 24: Acts 8:26-40

An angel sends Philip south to the Gaza road heading to Egypt. Does this remind you of the birth narratives in early Luke? Do you see images of the Gaza strip today, still a critical trade route to Africa and the Mediterranean? Who do you meet on such a super highway, like an international airport today? How else did this movement reach Africa, India, and Spain in its first 20 years, except by hitchhiking on the existing flow of commerce and governors?

An Ethiopian eunuch, civil servant managing the treasury of Candace queen of Ethiopia, makes a perfect heroic type for the first Gentile convert. (Sure, there had been Hellenists and Samaritans – still cousins of the Jews of Jerusalem) The church for its first centuries was centered in Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria, only latterly in Rome. Here’s an aristocratic seeker who has already been to temple and read the prophets – not an ignorant barbarian blank slate. Philip shows him how to reread through the lens of Jesus as Christ, and he sees it.

I’m preaching this text on Sunday, as one of the many in Acts that provoke the question of ‘Us & Them’ as a movement moves beyond its ethnic homogeneity, and includes ‘others’, and has communities of varying ethnicity. Philip as a first missionary is not doing cultural imperialism – nor is he driven by family values. With our fetish for Sunday Schools and mantras of ‘the youth and young families are out future’, we need reminding that the first Gentile convert was a eunuch, castrated to ensure he would have no children tempting him to nepotism or designs on Candace’s throne for his daughter – and no kids for Sunday School!