VII.
What questions does the Ethiopian official ask of Philip?

VIII.
Acts 8:26-39 (NRSVue)

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south[a] to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the 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. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He 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 him 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.

IX.
“How can I [understand] unless someone guides me?”

“About whom … does the prophet say this …?”

Many of us come to Scripture with questions and stand in need of some guidance. Philip was there for this man.

Who has been your guide to deepening your understanding of Scripture?

And then, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Since Philip baptized the man, we have to assume Philip’s answer was, “There is nothing to prevent it.”

Does it seem to you that Philip saw the Kingdom of God as a place for people to be included and not excluded?

How comfortable are you with a radically inclusive Kingdom? What brings you to that place?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}