Some thoughts before you join the worship service online this Sunday:
It started with the word from the Lord: “Go to the desert road.” In obedience Philip went and there and then given further instructions. The long and short of this was a conversation with a stranger who happened to be reading from this chapter in Isaiah we have been studying. Philip listening and obeying ended up in a conversation with a man from a foreign country in town just for the festival. He probably was Jewish because of the witness centuries earlier of Queen Esther, who had visited Solomon beginning a Jewish community there. However, here he had been, and here he was perplexed reading Isaiah -- and God sent someone to explain it to him.
I’ve wondered in life how many such appointments I have missed caught up in my own schedule or fears to take notice. But I love the story from Acts 8. And I love this line in that passage, “Beginning with that very passage, Philip preached Jesus to him.” Beginning with the phrase that said, “...he was led like a sheep to the slaughter.” The Ethiopian Eunuch asked what people have asked for generations: about whom was the prophet writing? And Philip told him Jesus. Jesus described as a lamb 800 years before he was born. Jesus described dying by what could have been crucifixion (before it had been invented) and being buried in a rich man’s tomb. Jesus described as being “marred beyond human likeness.”
I was speaking with someone going through a really tough time, and feeling justified in his anger and defensive posture and asked this question, “It sounds like you are feeling betrayed by these people. Do you think Jesus could relate to that feeling?” And the bravado, the pride, the attempt to deflect and defend vanished and he looked at me suddenly stymied: “Of course he could,” he replied, “he was betrayed by so many.” “Well, then, do you think since you share that feeling, this situation might be used to help you grow closer to him?”
Sometimes we spend lots of time saying we believe but less time applying what that means to the real, daily circumstances of our lives. Perhaps like the Ethiopian we need to face off with the fact that Jesus really did something for us, to change us, to pull us from our own postures of defensiveness and into a place of submission and openness. And that we too can relate to Him, indeed, can encounter him where we are.
Don’t skip worship - join us online - but come and let Jesus encounter you in your everyday life.