Chasing Chariots

Over the last couple of weeks, the Common Lectionary has taken us on a couple of road trips. 

Last week, Luke's gospel recounted the story of the Road to Emmaus, the famous post-resurrection event in which Jesus walks along the road with his disciples unrecognized until he is invited into their home to break bread.

This week, we Encounter Philip in the eighth chapter of Acts as he comes alongside an Ethiopian eunuch to teach him about Christ. 

Philip is known (traditionally) as "the Evangelist," based largely on the weight of this story.  The setting falls into the period immediately following the first Jewish persecution of the church in Jerusalem.  Many of the first converts to Christianity (including Philip) have left the city to live in the world at large.  Traditionally, the Apostle John travels to Asia Minor, for example.  One legend places Mary Magdalene in southern France during this period.

Philip, evidently, decided not to stray so far from Jerusalem.  The first we hear of him outside of Jerusalem places him in Samaria.  You don't have to be much of a Bible scholar to know how Traditional Jews felt about Samaritans in those days.  The bad blood went back generations.  That Philip would set out from Jerusalem to take up ministry in Samaria says a lot about his heart and character.  What ever drove him from Jerusalem, it probably wasn't fear, and it certainly wasn't a desire to find a comfortable place to live out his years.  This was a man driven by his calling, and a man who believed that the fulfillment of his calling meant living and ministering among marginalized people.

The trend continues in the story of the Ethiopian eunuch.  The text tells us that this man was returning from worship in Jerusalem.  What the text doesn't tell us, because the author would have assumed that his readers all knew, was that as a foreigner and a eunuch, the man would have been doubly forbidden to enter the Temple.  Evidently, he traveled there to simply get as close to the God he had come to believe in as he could.  It would have gone without saying in his own mind that there would always be some irreconcilable distance between himself and God.

But what distance he can cover for himself, he covers.  In fact, he has either borrowed or purchased a copy of a scroll containing the writings of Isaiah.  This is one of several indicators in the story that this man was a somebody.  Regular joes didn't drive around in chariots or own scrolls.  This fellow was some kind of dignitary.

According to the text, Philip ran to meet the chariot.  Apparently, he also jogged along side the chariot for at least a few minutes, discussing the scriptures, before the eunuch finally invites him to step up into the chariot.

The parallels between these two stories can hardly be coincidental.  Just as Jesus walked along side the disciples on the road, so his disciple, Philip walked alongside the eunuch's chariot.  Just as Jesus waited to be invited into the disciple's home, Philip waited to be invited into the eunuch's chariot.  In both stories, scriptures are explained.  In both stories, Jesus is ultimately revealed.

It's almost as if Philip is trying to imitate his rabbi.

I wonder what it would look like to "walk along side" the marginalized in our own time?  What if we learned to simply wait until those whose journeys we share were ready to ask their questions and invite our responses?

This is a scriptural picture of evangelism that I think the church needs to recapture for today.