I took a “20th Century Novel” class in college, and the professor, perhaps seeing how naïve and “unworldly” I was, suggested that I read a novel by Alan Sillitoe, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”. Published in 1958 (only about 20 years before I was reading it), it depicts the life of Arthur, who works in a steel factory all week and spends his Saturday nights drinking, fighting, and sleeping around with other men’s wives. The blub on the back of the paperback copy I have says “Sunday morning’s hangover does nothing to dull Arthur’s piercing insight into his own situation. He knows that come what may, no matter what, he won’t go down without a fight.” I was shocked by this character, a guy whose lifestyle was nothing like my own—nothing like I had been taught was how I was to behave. It was fascinating—and appalling. Coming from my background, I was practically traumatized to learn that people actually lived like this—and were depicted as heroic.
The copy of the book that I now have I bought in 1995, when I reread it, nearly 20 years later. When I read it that time, I wasn’t shocked and appalled. Almost 20 years of living—as an adult “in the world”—had caused me to know more than I did as the naïve, sheltered college student. People did live like that. Some always lived like that—some “grew out of it”—some did so because of the hand that life had dealt them. I wasn’t nearly as judgmental as I had been when I first read it. Life had taught me a few things in the meantime, and the more people I got to know over time, the more I realized that a whole range of life choices get made.
Philip, in this passage from Acts 8, is told to go to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza. The passage says parenthetically that “this is a wilderness road”. It may have been wilderness in terms of not passing through many settled places, but it was a main thoroughfare—according to New Testament scholar William Barclay, “This road which led by Gaza would be one where the traffic of half the world went by.” Philip was likely to encounter all kinds of people who were nothing like those from his own sheltered upbringing—and he did, engaging in conversation with a eunuch who was a high-level government official, in charge of the entire treasury of the Queen of Ethiopia. Nothing about this man was familiar to Philip from Philip’s own life experience—except that this man was reading from Isaiah, a passage familiar to Philip. Even though this man wasn’t born of Jewish lineage, even though he was “foreign”, even though he was a eunuch—either his testicles had been crushed or surgically removed, so according to Deuteronomic law he couldn’t be part of the worshipping community—even though so much about him was not part of Philip’s life experience, this man was a believer in God, and Philip baptized him as a follower of Jesus. What Jesus taught and made possible for Philip was also possible for this man.
I pray that we understand that that is how God’s love works. No matter how “different” someone is—no matter how far outside of our own life experience someone’s life is—the love of God as made manifest in Jesus is still offered to them, just as to us. And we don’t have to make them into us for that love to be offered, or received.
NEW TESTAMENT Acts 8:26-39
26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) 27 So he 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 28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ 31 He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32 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.
33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.’
34 The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ 35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36 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?’ 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39 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.