Jeremy Duncan: The miracle isn't the moment at the end of the road when it all comes together. The miracle is all the choices we made all along the way to become the kind of person who would find ourselves in the kind of situation that we are perhaps uniquely prepared to be in. In fact, sometimes it feels like the miracles, the fact that we even notice those kind of moments at all. Today is in fact the fourth Sunday of Easter, and we are in a series called the miraculous. Now, hopefully, you're enjoying the series.
I am actually. My sermon a couple weeks ago was, one of my favorite ones I've done in a while to kick off this series. I got to talk about the big bang and quantum dynamics and how God probably doesn't exist in the way that we think God does. Really though, all I wanted to say that week was that life is more incredible than we often realize, and that God is more mysterious than we often admit. I think one of the most important things in theology is a sense of wonder.
And by that, what I mean is first, if we're gonna talk about God, we have to start with how incredible the very idea of life is. That all of this is a gift. And second, if we're going to talk about God, we have to acknowledge how out of our depth we are. That all of our theology is grasping at the divine. In other words, I really think you can't do good theology without both gratitude and humility.
And I think that's come a pretty core conviction for me these days. Gratitude and humility is where I start. But, I think that's also why I also appreciated deeply how Scott picks things up last week and talked about miracles in the bible. How the significance of a miracle is not just whether we can explain it or not, but whether it does something to open our perspective of what's possible for us. I think if our theology of miracles depends on us being the exception to the rule, I think that risks actually taking us away from fully participating in the world with the people near us that need us.
On the other hand though, if our sense of the miraculous can instead be grounded in God's presence with us in every moment even when that moment doesn't go the way that we hoped. Perhaps that can build in us the courage to be with each other in ways that are perhaps more miraculous than we realize. We all need each other. Today though is all about the miracle of serendipity. First though, let's pray.
God of mystery and of nearness, we come to you aware that life is already a gift. At every breath, every moment, every encounter, all of it is more sacred than we sometimes notice. And so today, we bring you our gratitude for a world that's more beautiful than we remember, for a presence that is closer than we often imagine. And then we bring our humility to acknowledge that we often shrink you down to what we can understand, and we confuse our certainty with your truth. And that means we miss the wonder of what is right in front of us at times.
And so we ask that you might open us up again. Open our eyes to the moments we might otherwise pass by. Open our hearts to those we might otherwise overlook. Open our lives to the quiet imitations of spirit nudging us toward the margins even today. And may that shape us then into the kind of people who notice and who listen, who are willing to sit when invited, who are willing to speak when the moment calls.
And in all of the ordinary and surprising intersections of our lives, would you teach us to recognize your grace? To celebrate the serendipitous unfolding of each day in your world. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Can a coincidence be a miracle?
That is our question for today. And to explore that, we're gonna cover recurring characters, from dreams, foreign travelers, and then simply learning to be ourselves in the moment. First off, bit of a story. Last week, I was picking up my daughter from her after school program. And on the way home, she's six years old, but she says to me as she often does, when we get home, can I see if my friends are available?
So, she phrases it every time. Mom or I said that at some point, and she has just picked up that phrase and run with it. It's always, can I see if my friends are available? Now, dad, as uncommittal as ever, replies, well, let's get home, let's get our stuff inside, and we'll see what happens here. However, as we're coming around the corner, pulling into the alley, heading toward our garage, what do we see?
Well, we see Shansay and Alisa and Maria making their way across the alley to our backyard. My daughter is ecstatic about this. She says to me, daddy, see? I told you they'd be available. As if their Google calendars are all synced up and they know what each other's doing.
But she says to me, I told you they'd be available. It's exactly what I wanted. Now, she called this a miracle. Not exactly. I'm not actually sure a miracle is part of her vocabulary yet, but I can tell you she was absolutely flabbergasted that the very thing she was hoping for was now happening in front of her.
Now, will say, the fact that these kids are at our house multiple times a day, every day, every week made that moment slightly less spectacular from my perspective. But I think that's part of the problem. Right? My daughter is more in touch with the miraculous around her every day. How wonderful even a coincidence can be.
And I wonder if maybe somewhere along the line, I'm the one who's lost out on a bit of that perspective. And to talk about that, I wanna look at a very interesting story that kind of slides by in the opening chapters of the book of Acts. By the way, right after we finish this series, we are going to start a longer series moving through the book of Acts. That's gonna take us right through to the summer. So today is maybe just a little bit of a teaser for what's coming.
But our story for today shows up in chapter eight with a serendipitous encounter between a disciple named Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch. Now, we'll talk about who Philip is. We'll talk about what that designation eunuch means in a moment. But first, let's just get the opening scene fresh in our minds. This is starting in verse 26.
Now, angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. So, he started out and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of the treasury of the Kandik, which means the queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship. And on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah the prophet. So, the spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it.
Now, let's start with Philip here. What do we know about this guy? Well, there is a Philip named as one of the 12 disciples. This is not him. This is a new character that is introduced in the book of Acts, and kind of fascinatingly, he's a bit of a recurring character in the book of Acts.
And we actually get his introduction a couple chapters earlier. See, in chapter six, what we find is that the early Christian community is regularly gathering together. And they are sharing all of their resources with each other. And because of that, a lot of people in need, particularly people who need food, are joining the church. And the response, in fact, gets so dramatic that the OG disciples actually spending a lot of their time on food prep, and they don't have enough time to do the quote unquote ministry.
Now, I really love this part of the story because the early church does not look at that situation and say, well, preaching is more important. Let's prioritize that. What they actually do is take time to pause and reflect. They say, what's going on here? And specifically, what's happening is that the Hellenized community is complaining that the Hebraic community is prioritizing the care of their widows over others.
What does any of that mean? Well, Hellenized refers to, probably primarily Jewish people, although probably some non Jewish gentiles as well who had converted to the way of Christ. But, this was the group of Christians that spoke and read and conducted their business in Greek. More than just language though, this was a group that had largely adopted Greek culture in a lot of different ways. Hebraic, of course, refers to the Jewish Christian community that maintained all of their distinctive Jewish practice and language.
Now, Hebrew people were an alternative culture in society, but they were the dominant culture within the early church community. And, this is kind of an ongoing struggle in the early years. Right? Like, Peter and Paul initially can kind of be said to represent those two factions in some sense. Peter wants to stick more tightly to his Jewish traditions, and therefore he sticks with the people who also do.
Paul advocates for a more open, more diverse expression of faith. But, what's fascinating here in Acts six is that the original apostles who all by the way fit into that Hebraic camp, they don't dismiss the concerns of the newcomers. What they do instead is say, look, we do need to focus on telling the story of Jesus, but getting food to people in need, that's just as important. Therefore, what we'll do is we'll appoint seven leaders who are known to be quote full of wisdom and spirit. They can look after the distribution of food and also ensure that those resources are distributed fairly among everyone.
That seems like a good plan. So, seven names are suggested, prayed for, commissioned by the apostles, and this Philip is one of those seven. Now, what's fascinating here is that all seven names, Philip, Stephen, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenius, and Nicholas from Antioch. Those are all Hellenized names. In fact, we're even told that Nicholas is from Antioch, a convert to Judaism, which means not only does the early church leadership listen to the complaint, they actually turn over responsibility to the group that feels like they've been neglected.
Neglected. In other words, they don't just say, we'll do better. They actually say, why don't you teach us how to do better? A really powerful interesting moment in the early church. It's also what establishes Philip here who we now encounter in chapter eight of the story.
And what do we know about Philip so far? So, we know he's wise. We know he's full of the spirit. We know he's concerned for the forgotten. And we know he's very happy to make lunch behind the scenes.
We know his role in the church is forged in a moment of cultural tension, and a moment where the leadership of the church is shared amongst the community so that the overlooked can be given a voice. Interestingly though, that's not all we know about Philip. Because there's actually another appearance later in the book. This time, it's chapter 21. It pops up again.
Now, the text refers to him as Philip the evangelist one of the seven. So this is years later. Philip has now settled down. He's no longer out there wandering desert roads and talking to traveling dignitaries. He's just a dad with a house and a family, and Paul comes to stay with him in Caesarea.
However, even after all these years, he's still known as one of the seven who looked after making lunch for widows. And now he's picked up a new title, the evangelist, which is likely a reference to the story we're looking at in chapter eight. But this is the fascinating bit in chapter 21. We also found that Philip now has four unmarried daughters who all prophesied. So you mean to tell me that this guy who shows up three times without any fanfare, then lives most of his life exclusively off the page in unwritten stories, builds a legacy that includes being one of the first leaders of the church, selected from outside the dominant culture, specifically to care for those who are being ignored, shares the gospel with an Ethiopian official, Ethiopia by the way, which goes on to be the first kingdom in the world to officially adopt Christianity anywhere, and then raises four daughters in the first century, I might add, who all decide, look, we don't need any men.
We got better things to do with our time, things like declaring the goodness of God. Philip is kind of a boss. So, why are we going through all this just to read a story in chapter eight? Well, I think if we're gonna read a story about serendipity, we have to understand something about the characters that intersect. I think a story that is at least on its surface could feel like nothing but an odd or even miraculous coincidence is actually a story that is dined very much for Philip.
See in Acts eight, read that an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road, the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. That's an odd introductory line. First of all, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, that feels kind of nonchalant for an angelic appearance. Am I right? Like angels appearing in scripture generally comes with at least a little bit of fanfare.
Here is just angels talking to Philip one day and tells him to go that way. And part of what could be going on here is that we're reading too much into the text. Angelos is the word for angel here. That's also just the normal word for messenger, message in Greek. And we've left out a little bit of context in the translation here that shifts how we might hear this.
Because this messenger doesn't just say, go south on the desert road, the way it's translated in the NIV. What the messenger actually says is, get up and go south on the desert road. Which might mean, as the scholar FF Bruce suggests, Angelos is being used here interchangeably with the spirit of God. And perhaps, the story is less about Philip meeting an angel and more like Philip getting a sense of where he should go next from the spirit in a dream. Get up and go that way.
Now, does that make the story any less miraculous? I don't think so. But I do think it means that the story starts to line up quite nicely with what we already know about Philip from chapter six. Namely, he is full of wisdom and he's full of the spirit. The story doesn't start with just someone randomly being told where to go.
This story starts with someone who we know is listening for God. We know is looking for ways to serve, and now is willing to trust when he gets a sense of where that might lead. Which is interesting because then we're told Philip is told to go south on the desert road to Gaza. Now, this Gaza is a little different from the one that we know today. Gaza was originally an ancient Philistine city, and it had been destroyed before this and rebuilt.
And so this would have been near the coast, away from the major population center of Jerusalem. It was sort of a gateway between North Africa and the Mediterranean. Part of what's interesting about that though is that what the NIV has translated, the desert road to Gaza is somewhat ambiguous. The word itself can mean desert or it can mean wilderness, but it can also mean a desolate place. And while the NIV thinks it refers to the road itself, the King James, for example, thinks it refers to the destination itself.
Which could mean that then the reference is actually to the older, more ancient, now abandoned city that was once called Gaza. Now again, from what we know of Philip, a guy who comes from outside the dominant culture of early Christianity, someone who's chosen to advocate for those on the margins, someone who would later go on to raise four women who certainly challenged their boundaries. That kind of man, full of wisdom and spirit, listening and looking for ways to serve, to wake up and imagine that perhaps he should head toward an old abandoned husk of a city on the outskirts of the area, a transition point between his culture and another. Again, it starts to feel maybe a little less random than it did when we opened. And here, lo and behold, on the road he meets an Ethiopian.
Now, this man is identified as a eunuch. That word primarily referred to men who had been castrated, usually as young boys, lots of people uncomfortable right now. I get it. I feel that too. However, that was a practice in the ancient world.
Thing is the word itself, however, was used a lot more broadly in culture. For example, at one point in Matthew 19, Jesus speaks of people who are eunuchs by birth, or by choice, or by the actions of another. And what he's talking about here is not that definitional use of the term, but the expanded cultural use which had come to include those who had been acted upon, perhaps even against their will as children. Those who also for a range of different conditions did not fit the cultural expectations of gender, or even those who perhaps even for religious reasons simply chose to be celibate as a way of life. All of that fit under that cultural term eunuch.
Now, even though it was the first category only that was excluded from temple worship, Jesus brings that up in Matthew 19 to say, look, everyone is welcome here. There is no exclusion in the kingdom of God. All that to say, we don't know exactly what this term is referring to in terms of this man's experience from Ethiopia. He could have been someone castrated for service in the royal court. He could have been a celibate man dedicated to service of his queen.
He could have been anything in between. We don't know. Regardless, here he's identified with a group that was excluded from temple worship. He's identified as Ethiopian, not Jewish by descent. And yet, encounters him having traveled to Jerusalem to worship, now reading the prophet Isaiah.
And Philip decides he's going to go over and just listen. Again, knowing a bit of Philip's story, I think this is significant. In the story, Philip is presented not as a prophet with a word from the Lord and not a messenger like an angelos. Honestly, he just seems like someone open to an unexpected encounter, someone willing to wait to see where that encounter might lead him. Again, think about the whole story.
There's no promised outcome. There's no real agenda. There's just a prompting to head toward the margins. He does, and here he is. He comes across a stranger, someone who's already on their journey, literally and spiritually.
Someone who's identified with a group that's excluded, Philip notices, decides to pay attention, he draws near to see what happens. Honestly, for me, in context, all of this just reads as someone who has a consistent pattern for looking for the ignored, someone who has a moderate level of relational intelligence, someone who is reasonably aware of the world that's around them. Now, am I suggesting that means this story is not miraculous? No. Not at all.
What I'm suggesting is that oftentimes, what we read as supernatural coincidence is the product of all the ways we shape our lives. And what it means is that the miracle isn't the moment at the end of the road when it all comes together. The miracle is all the choices we made all along the way to become the kind of person who would find ourselves in the kind of situation that we are perhaps uniquely prepared to be in. In fact, sometimes it feels like the miracles, the fact that we even notice those kind of moments at all. I'll be honest here.
Had I, for some reason, found myself walking down a dusty dirty road on that day, would I have looked up for whatever reason to notice a random person standing by the side of the road? Probably not. I'm not the kind of person who strikes up conversations with strangers. It's just not how I've shaped my story. But my point is, our concept of the miraculous is sometimes so focused on the moment of surprise, it's too small to properly hold all the ways that we, like Philip, are being shaped, guided, held at every moment of our journey so that we can even become aware of the moments in front of us when they arrive.
It's incredible story that Philip is here to recognize it. And what happens? Well, we can pick up the story in verse 30. Philip comes near to the Ethiopian. He hears them reading Isaiah, and he asked him, do you understand what you're reading?
And the man said, well, how can I? Less someone explains it. So he invites Philip to come and sit with him. And again, I love this moment in the story. For me, it kind of affirms this way I'm reading it.
Philip doesn't force a conversation. He doesn't try to make it happen. He doesn't jump and say, hey, God told me to talk to you so you better listen. He's just the right guy in the right place to ask the right question. And then it's the traveler that extends an invitation to chat.
There's something so disarming about the story when we let it breathe. It feels miraculous, but not in a God broke the rules kind of way. The miracle is the fact that any of us ever find our own people kind of way. And so the narrator fills in some details here. He says, that passage of scripture the eunuch was reading was this one.
He was led like a sheep to the slaughter. And as a lamb before the shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation, he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants for his life was taken from the earth? And so the Ethiopian asked Philip, tell me please, who's the prophet talking about here?
Is it himself or someone else? And Philip began with that very passage to tell him about the good news of Jesus. Again, notice here, Philip has no agenda of his own. He's just very happy to start with wherever the traveler's questions guide him in the conversation. And even the traveler then suggests, look, there's some water.
Why don't I get baptized? I'm convinced. The miracle isn't that Philip finds himself on the road. That's a product of his story. The miracle is that Philip has been shaped through all of his experience, through all of his life to be the kind of person that can be the kind of friend this man needs here in this moment.
And look, I get it. When it all comes together, and the threads connect, and we see how it flows, that's when it feels like the story has reached a satisfying conclusion. That's when it seems like a miracle. But I think Philip learning how to listen to Hellenized widows in chapter six is what teaches him how to listen well here in chapter eight is what teaches him how to raise daughters who prophesy in chapter 21. I think sometimes what we notice as miraculous is simply the blossom on a tree that has roots that reach much deeper into all of our lives than we probably even realize on the surface.
And I wanna suggest it's only in acknowledging that. All the stories, all the connections, all the experiences that have made us us, that's when the miraculous starts to feel tangible in our lives. Because sometimes, the most important miracle isn't the one you can't explain. It's the one that explains so much of your story back to you. This is why I'm here.
And sometimes those stories need to be told in us in ways that help us recognize how special they are. Now, there's one more thing I wanna address here. Because if you are following along in a bible, you might notice that at the end of this verse, we reach a bit of a cliff. All of a sudden at the end of verse 36, you find yourself in verse 38. Here's what verse 37 would say if it was in your bible.
And Philip said, if thou believest with all thine heart thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Fun to read from the King James once in a while. Also puts a very nice little theological bow on our whole story here, about this man and his baptism. However, the reason that verse is not in your bible today is that our earliest manuscripts of the book of acts don't have that line.
That line starts to show up in about the sixth century. Now, certainly nothing wrong with what this says. It does seem to have been a later addition though. Perhaps, it was there to help guide those seeking baptism for themselves. However, this story gets a little more complex and fascinating than even that because, well, we don't have any early manuscripts that include this verse.
We do have a very important early church father named Irenaeus who seems to be talking about this verse all the way back in the second century. And, that seems to suggest that possibly this verse may have been there at one point, and then was taken out, and then was put back. And, the speculation here is that this verse may have been original to the story, but it was removed when the early church practices around baptism started to become more secretive. And they did that because baptism was becoming a point of persecution. If you look at that verse 37, it's saying baptism is a confession that Jesus is the son of God, but the son of God was a title that was also used for Caesar.
And so, essentially, that verse was proof that if you were baptized, you were challenging the status of the emperor. And so, one of our theories is that it was removed when Christians were being persecuted. So as not to implicate any new Christians in any seditious crimes against the emperor, But it was then later added back when Christianity became legal in Rome. So there you go. We smuggled in a little bit of church history to this sermon as well.
However, I wanna go back to the story. Because what I want us to notice today is simply this. The Bible is telling us stories about the miraculous all the time all around us. And, yes, sometimes that's in stories we can't explain, but very often, it's in stories that are about the everyday world all around us told in ways to help us notice in new ways. I think this is a story about Philip being Philip.
And maybe that means my daughter was right last week that the miracle isn't that her friends showed up when she wanted them to. The miracle is that we learn to believe they might, and we celebrate it when it happens in front of us. But good things are more than coincidence. They are opportunities to be present in ways that we've sometimes forgotten about. And maybe part of faith is about simply relearning that posture all over again.
Trusting that the kingdom of God isn't breaking through just in spectacle that we can't explain, but also already here in alleys and conversations and even dusty roads we saw in dreams just waiting for us to notice IRL. Let's pray. God, for all the ways that you are present all around us all the time, orchestrating, guiding, holding, pulling our stories together in ways that sometimes we don't notice until the climax. And yet, trust that if we can just become ourselves and allow our stories to inform us, to step into every moment with an openness and a humility to what might come. And perhaps we could come closer to your incredible miraculous divine love that is present in every interaction we enter.
The chance to be ourselves. The chance to be exactly where we need to be. The chance to bring our story and our experience to bear in the right moment for the right person with kindness. Might we notice that for something as miraculous as it is and be present in the ways that you share your love through us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray.
Amen. Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials CommonsChurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community.
You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.
We'll talk to you soon.