“What makes the gospel offensive is not who it leaves out, but who it lets in.”
Rachel Held Evans 

Famous for her thought provoking books such as Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, Inspired, and A Year of Biblical Womanhood, Rachel Held Evans inspired many on their journey through doubts to a deeper faith. Scrolling through Facebook a while ago I happened upon a video of her speaking at a United Methodist Church in Alabama in 2015. Her topic: “Keeping the Church Weird”. It’s a great sermon, but the best part - the part that stopped me from my multi-tasking - came as she expounded on a story in Acts 8. There readers find the Deacon Philip explaining the good news of Jesus (the Gospel) to an Ethiopian eunuch. But her statement quoted above only makes sense with a little Biblical context.

In Acts 8:26 Philip is directed by the Spirit to walk on a remote, dusty road heading south out of Jerusalem. No other instructions, just that. Amazingly, Philip obeys. While walking he encounters a high official of the Queen of Ethiopia, a eunuch. What’s that you ask? In Bible times, the term eunuch often referred to a male servant of a political ruler who had been castrated forcibly to remove sexual temptations from these servants. 

It’s important to know the Law of Moses in Deuteronomy 23:1 expressly forbids eunuchs from entering the assembly of people who worship Yahweh. (I can’t resist quoting this verse from the King James Version: He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.)

This eunuch is riding in a chariot heading back to Africa from Jerusalem. And he’s reading a section from the Jewish Bible, a passage from Isaiah to be precise. Philip approaches the chariot (he’d have to be jogging next to it) and asks the eunuch if he understands what he is reading. When the eunuch expresses his difficulty in understanding the prophet’s words, Philip helps him see the foreshadowing of the life and death of Jesus in the ancient prophet’s words.The eunuch then asks a very important question. What stops me from getting baptized right now? In other words, the eunuch is convinced Jesus is the Messiah and he wants to pledge his allegiance to Jesus the way the Jesus-followers do.

Before we get to the answer of that important question, it’s important to place this story within the framework of the entire book of “The Acts of the Apostles”.

In Acts 1:8, Jesus leaves the earth and tells the followers gathered on the mountain that they are going to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and finally to the known ends of the earth. The book of Acts follows the first Christian evangelists as they end up carrying out this audacious mission within their generation. The 12 original disciples and their first converts, all Jews, would have been taught their whole life to stay pure from those who were not Jews. So evangelizing and including those from Jerusalem and Judea would have been no problem, But those from Samaria and “the ends of the earth” who were not Jews would have been outside the bounds of God’s people. They were outside the interpretation of God’s laws these Jewish men had heard their entire lives. 

And now here’s Philip, talking to a total outsider to the Jewish faith, who responds to the good news about Jesus with this question: “Look there is some water! What prevents me from getting baptized in Jesus’ name right now?” 

As Rachel Held Evans so masterfully points out, Philip would have immediately thought, “What prevents you? Well, your ethnicity for one, and your mutilated anatomy for another.” These were good “Biblical” reasons for Philip to deny the eunuch’s  enthusiastic request to be baptized.

But as Philip turns the eunuch’s question around in his mind, he remembers Jesus’ trip into Samaria to meet with the woman at the well, and how He touched unclean lepers, and spoke to people across the Gentiles’ “10 towns” about the good news of God’s love. He figures if Jesus did it then he should do it too. So Philip sets aside the clear command of Moses, with its centuries of Jewish tradition, in favor of including a man sitting there in a chariot who wants to be a follower of Jesus. 

What happens next? Philip baptizes him in the very first body of water they come upon near that dusty road. And instead of God striking him dead on the scene (like happened in Acts 4 to people who were pretending to be more devoted than they really were) God immediately transports Philip to another place. He literally teleports him. I guess his work was done. He had done exactly the work God wanted him to do when he sent him to that dusty road.

And Luke, the author of this book, heard that story and wanted all the people of his generation to hear it. God was on the side of Africans. God was on the side of the sexually mutilated. Even though the scriptures they had studied all their lives taught that these types of people should be excluded from the community of faith, Philip baptized the man. 

And again, as Held Evans said “What makes the gospel offensive is not who it leaves out, but who it lets in.” 

It seems what is most important in the work of God is not keeping certain classes of people out, but making sure those who have been excluded hear the Good News that they can come right in. For Philip, and for Luke, even though there was written proof that God had excluded them before, things were changing. All who heard the good news of the love of Jesus and wanted to follow his teachings were to be accepted and included immediately.

And here comes the part that may seem offensive. Can you think of any groups of people that have been excluded from full participation in the community of faith not because of their lack of desire to follow Jesus, but because of Bible verses? Maybe what this Bible story teaches is the good news is that even THEY can be baptized, even THEY can live inside the “good news of great joy that is for all the people”.

If this is offensive, then Rachel Held Evans must have been right. 

What makes the gospel offensive is not who it leaves out, but who it lets in.
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(Want to watch her whole talk, titled “Keep the Church Weird”? Here you go!

Keep the Church Weird - Rachel Held Evans

Image by Adam Derewecki at Pixabay.