Homily for Thursday, 3d Week of Easter

Homily for Thursday, 3d Week of Easter

April 19, 2018

Acts 8: 26-40
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, ‘Get up and head south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza’” (Acts 8: 26).

The Philip whose apostolic activity is reported in Acts 8 isn’t the apostle Philip but the deacon Philip, one of the 7 chosen to serve the needs of the Greek-speaking widows in ch. 6.  Stephen was the 1st of those 7, followed by Philip.

Yesterday’s reading described some of his preaching in Samaria and the conversion of the 1st batch of non-Jewish believers.  Today we have a new episode in a different geographical zone.  Samaria is north of Jerusalem; the road to Gaza is southwest of the city.  Here Philip encounters a foreigner from—the scholars tell us—what is now Sudan, south of Egypt, and not the country that we know as Ethiopia.  However that may be, he’s some sort of convert to Judaism and has just been worshiping in the holy city.  Now he’s on his way home, and he’s reading from the Scriptures.

In the ancient world, people read aloud, not silently as we do.  So Philip hears him as he reads from Isaiah.  The passage is one of those that foretell the sufferings of Jesus—one of those texts so often referred to in Acts, and also Luke 24 (the disciples on the road to Emmaus), about the necessity of the Christ to suffer and so fulfill God’s plan.

So that point is made again—a most fundamental point of Christian teaching.  We follow a God-man who suffered and died, as we suffer and die, but who rose physically from the dead and who will raise us up too if we follow him faithfully.

The 2d point of the reading today is the continuing spread of Jesus’ message to the non-Jewish world:  1st Samaria, now to black Africa, and soon to Greeks and even Romans.  Jesus’ salvation is for the entire world.

The 3d point is the joy that the Ethiopian experiences as he proceeds, now baptized.  Yesterday’s reading about the Samaritan converts ended on that same note, and it’s a note mentioned repeatedly in Acts.  When students of religion and of history ask how it was that Christianity so quickly and so completely captured the Roman Empire, in spite of abundant prejudice and vicious persecution, one of the answers is the joy of believers.  What is it that makes these people so happy?  I want to know.  I want to be part of that.  And that, dear sisters and brothers, is still a powerful message, a powerful witness to Jesus that we ought to be giving to our families, friends, co-workers, and the whole world.