Biography
The Rev. Dr. Anna Carter Florence began her career in Minneapolis as a Presbyterian youth minister. She taught at Princeton Theological Seminary in the mid-90s, and in 1998 was named Assistant Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Some of her special interests are the performance dimensions of preaching and the history of preaching women. Anna’s sermons have been published in books and journals and she’s a frequent guest preacher at festivals and conferences.  [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"Do You Really Understand What You Are Reading?" 
The Scripture reading is from the Book of Acts, chapter 8, verses 26-40:

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go toward the south at noon to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So Philip got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, ‘Do you really understand what you are reading?’ The man replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to the eunuch the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.

If one of my students asked whether “kindness” was a prerequisite for preaching, I guess I’d say yes. Preachers need to be kind people, or at least, they should be, at least when they’re with their people. But this is a story from Scripture that puts that theory to the test.

Philip should have had the “kindness” thing wrapped up. It’s true, he never sat at Jesus’ feet, because he wasn’t one of the original twelve disciples. But Philip was a deacon in the very first church in Jerusalem. He waited on tables and distributed food to widows, sort of an original “meals on wheels.” That sounds like the milk of kindness to me. But before Philip could really develop his abilities as a deacon of kindness, the persecutions against Christians started and the church kind of disbanded for a time. Soldiers were going door-to-door, searching every house in Jerusalem for Christians, and dragging men and women off to jail. If you were lucky, you got the word in time and fled the city. Philip was one of those lucky ones. And since you can’t very well wait on tables when you’re hiding from the law, Philip the deacon went down to the city of Samaria and started preaching.
 
He turned out to be really good at it: a 1st century Billy Graham, and his first time out, too. He had the moves, he had the words, he had the miracles—Philip was a star. He was also a man after Jesus’ heart, because he wasn’t afraid to cross the line into Samaria, where no self-respecting Jew would be caught dead in those days; in fact, Philip was the first disciple to leave the old neighborhood. Peter and John, back in Jerusalem, heard about Philip’s success, that one of their deacons had traded in his apron for a pulpit. They heard about how the Samarians had actually accepted the word of God from a rookie and been baptized, which sounded like mission impossible to them. But the reports were true: Philip the deacon had converted a whole city of Samarians. Who would have thought it?!

It was a major coup for the Christians, their first big missionary success. I bet Philip, the deacon, couldn’t wait for his next preaching assignment. I bet the deacon of kindness was pumped when he saw that angel of the Lord coming, bearing a message he could just imagine: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to continue north to the biggest urban challenge yet: the city of Caesaria… But you know what that angel said? “The wilderness road. Jerusalem to Gaza. Desert. High noon. Be there.”

I bet Philip was so stunned, you could have knocked him over. Of course, he was a kind person, so I doubt he argued much, except perhaps to ask politely if there had been some mistake, and hadn’t the angel read the report about Samaria, don’t you think Philip could really contribute more, make better use of his gifts, if the angel sent him to a major metropolitan area where there might actually be some people to listen to him…etc. etc.

But no: the angel is firm. The wilderness road. Jerusalem to Gaza. Desert, high noon. Be there.
No one really talks about it, but for an up-and-coming missionary like Philip, those words had to be a blow: disappointing, sure, and even downright insulting. Because your efforts in that city were so successful, Philip, we are assigning you to a deserted stretch of road without a single village! What a waste of talent. No human being in their right mind would do such a thing—which is our cue, by the way, to immediately suspect that God is involved. In the Bible, God is always behind the really insane ideas.

Scholars tell us how obedient Philip is, and I suppose they’re right: by gum, he goes where he’s told. He doesn’t pull a Jonah move, get on a boat so God has to send a whale after him. But I do notice that Philip is not what you would call proactive in this story. He’s on that wilderness road, where he’s supposed to be; he sees the man in the chariot, but does he approach him? Nope; not until the spirit orders him to. Which tells me that Philip, the deacon of kindness, was pouting because even he would have to be suspicious of a scene this ludicrous. What? You mean he’s not the only one on this road? Someone else is there, too? What a coincidence! And, somewhat unusually, that person is an Ethiopian eunuch, and he is reading aloud from Isaiah? Who else would concoct this but God?! It sounds like, The kingdom of God is like a shepherd, who leaves ninety-nine sheep so he can go look for one that was lost. Philip was a preacher; he should have seen it a mile away: The kingdom of God is like an Ethiopian eunuch, sitting in his chariot, in the desert, at noon, reading aloud from Isaiah. But Philip just sits there until the Spirit pokes him. And somehow, I doubt he converted the city of Samaria by going up to complete strangers and kindly asking them, “Do you really understand what you’re reading?”

Do you really understand what you’re reading? They aren’t exactly kind words. They aren’t even polite, actually, if you look the man Philip is talking to. Look at him: the man is an Ethiopian, which means that he was gorgeous (because in those days the Ethiopians were considered the most beautiful of all people in the ancient world); the man has a chariot and a scroll, which means that he was rich since that’s the only kind of thin rich people had; he’s the Queen of Ethiopia’s treasurer, in charge of all her money, which means that he was powerful. Beautiful, rich, powerful, and—a eunuch, a castrated male, which means that in the eyes of Jewish law, he was a mutilated outcast, forbidden to even enter the temple. No one was allowed to talk with him, or have a meal with him, or even touch him, no matter how beautiful, rich, and powerful he was.

Do you really understand what you are reading? I don’t think Philip wanted to read or to even talk to this man. I don’t think he wanted to look at him. And here is the troubling part for me. Philip was a deacon; he was all about kindness and social justice. He fed widows. He served the poor. He preached in Samaria, which took guts, I can tell you. But I think preaching to a eunuch basically rocked his world. It challenged everything had been taught. I don’t think Philip knew how to preach to a eunuch and still be a Christian. Maybe he didn’t even know how to be kind to him. And maybe you recognize that wilderness place. Have you stood with Philip, eyeballing that chariot, wondering: Do you really understand what you are reading?

You know what blows me away? The eunuch’s reply: How can I, without someone to guide me? How can I, when you won’t let me in your church? How can I, when you are so afraid of me that you won’t even talk to me? Do I really understand what I’m reading?! No! I’m sitting here in the wilderness, trying to make sense all by myself, in my chariot, and I’m stuck here—unless, of course, you’d like to climb up and sit beside me.

I notice that Philip doesn’t exactly volunteer for the job. But he doesn’t say no, either. It’s hard to, when there’s a live person right in front of you, and a Spirit that keeps bossing you around. I imagine Philip taking a deep breath and saying, “Okay, Lord; if you’re going to go to the trouble of these special effects, I guess I’d better play along, but next time, maybe you could blow my circuits with a lost sheep, instead of sending me an Ethiopian eunuch sitting in a chariot in the desert, reading aloud from Isaiah? Give me a break!”

So Philip the deacon sat beside the Ethiopian eunuch, and they read Isaiah together, and Philip told the eunuch the good news about Jesus, and it turned out Philip was a good preacher this time, too; really good. So good, in fact, that the eunuch lifted up his eyes, and he saw water in the desert. Did you get that?! He saw water! And while Philip was mulling that one over, the eunuch turned to him and said, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?” You see, the eunuch really did understand what he was reading. He understood so well that he believed the impossible: that God loved him, an Ethiopian eunuch, sitting in a chariot in the desert reading Isaiah with a really scared guy called Philip. God loved him, exactly as he was, and all he had to do, now, was show up at the font to be baptized. Because that’s what baptism is: the mark that God loves us, not because of anything we do, but because of who we are.

What a miracle. Two guys sitting in a chariot in the middle of a desert, reading the Word of God together. Two guys deciding that maybe the world was bigger than they’d imagined. Two guys realizing that nothing can separate us from the love of God. When you can see that, you can see springs of water in the desert. Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized? Philip knew there was a time to preach and a time to shut up and wade into the water, and this was one of those times. Because he finally understood what he was reading, too, once he climbed up into the chariot. Reading scripture with the eunuch changed Philip’s life, and it changed the church, too. Philip saw: there wasn’t anything to prevent this man from being baptized. There never had been, except for Philip himself.

I’m still not sure whether kindness is a prerequisite for preachers. But I guess I do know this: it’s hard to be kind to someone you’re afraid to even touch. It might even be easier to deliver meals on wheels to that person, than to climb up into a chariot and sit right next to them, and read from the same bible, and share the good news about Jesus, and see in that person’s eyes how it will change their life. Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized!? Is kindness a prerequisite? No, but the Spirit is. And when we leave our fears behind, the Spirit blesses us with the gift of kindness, all the way to the river’s edge. Amen.