Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Sunday, June 16, 2013 Read – Acts 8:26-40 The main character in the next story is still Philip. He has now left Samaria and ventured to the edges of Judea – on the way to Gaza which was at that time, as it is today, on the fringes of Judaism. The Philistines once controlled Gaza and still had influence at this time of history. But it is not really the inhabitants of Gaza who are important to this story. Rather we are introduced to a rather peculiar man – an Ethiopian eunuch. Who are we to understand this man to be? Luke is silent about his race – was he Jewish? Or was he a Gentile? Luke does not say. But, it is likely that even if this man was of the Jewish race he would not have been recognized as a Jew because he was a eunuch. Jewish law specifically declared that eunuchs were “cut off” from the people of God (Deuteronomy 23:1). Yet, the prophet Isaiah had said that even eunuch will have a place within God’s house (Isaiah 56:3-8). Luke deliberately makes the identity of this man ambiguous. The story is another of those wonderful stories that Luke has given us – it belongs with stories like the travelers on the Emmaus road – the story even sounds a lot like that story. In the story the Ethiopian eunuch is reading from the book of Isaiah – Luke’s favorite. He is reading from Isaiah 53, the last of the servant songs. But, his reading is not productive – he does not comprehend. So, Philip does what Jesus did in the Emmaus story and was said to do in the upper room on Easter evening – he opens the scripture so that he can understand by using this scripture and apparently others to tell the story of Jesus. I have spoken of “Messianic Exegesis” before and this is more of it. This story functions for Luke to remind his readers of the need to understand Jesus through the message of the OT and to understand the OT through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is one more thing we should notice about the passage from Isaiah that Luke quotes. Luke has been selective in his use of this scripture. For theological reasons Luke lifts out the part of Isaiah that speak of an innocent one who is denied justice – but he omits the parts from Isaiah of this innocent one bearing the sins of others. We need to remember that Luke omitted Mark’s reference to Jesus as a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The death of Jesus is not a matter of atonement for Luke – his death is not a sacrificial death for Luke. Jesus dies as the righteous one who fulfills God’s will. He is vindicated as the righteous one through the resurrection God accomplished in him. And he is exulted as the Savior through whom repentance – repentance not so much for sin as for not welcoming God’s visitation – is offered. This may be a subtle difference between Luke and other writers such as Mark and Paul. We need to not make too much of it but just notice Luke’s consistency and also his theology.