NOTES for Act 8:26-40

It would hardly have occurred to Philip to go preach on an empty road, but the Angel of the Lord directly intervenes in the ministry of preaching and sends him there at the very moment when the Ethiopian official is about to pass along it. This encounter cannot be called ordinary, and not only because it happened through a direct angelic prompting. The encounter itself became the embodiment of the prophecy of Isaiah, the book the Ethiopian was reading.

That the foreigner was a Jew by faith is not surprising: by that time faith in the God of Israel had already gone beyond the boundaries of the Jewish people, so it is no wonder that the Ethiopian was reading the book of the prophet Isaiah. What is striking is the court official's humility, his readiness to listen to an interpretation from an ordinary-looking person he met on the road.

Immediately after Philip revealed to the Ethiopian eunuch, whose name remains unknown to us, the meaning of the prophecy, he wanted to be baptized. He did not need a long catechumenate, and not only because he himself was already ready for it.

After parting from Philip, the Ethiopian must have continued reading Isaiah, and a few turns of the scroll later he was going to read the prophecy that the Lord would accept even eunuchs, to whom He would give "an everlasting name that shall not be cut off" (Isa 56:5), and foreigners, "for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (Isa 56:7).

Who was the eunuch from Ethiopia? Probably one of those then called “God-fearers”: a former pagan who had turned to the God of Israel without embracing Judaism in its entirety. Such people were not required to observe all Jewish religious rules and prescriptions, but they did participate in the life of the Synagogue. In synagogues, they listened to preaching and prayed together with Jews, although they sat separately. Observing the Sabbath and kashrut was not obligatory for them, so they could not sit at the same table as Jews during ritual meals in the home. Nor could they take part with Jews in sacrifices or sacrificial meals.

A special place was set aside for them in the Temple, called precisely the Court of the Gentiles. The Ethiopian eunuch belonged to these “God-fearers.” He was, incidentally, a high-ranking man: in Ethiopia at that time, and not only there, eunuch was a responsible court office. But something else mattered more to him. He was awaiting the Messiah. It is no accident that the passage from Isaiah he read on his journey was a messianic prophecy. Evidently, this was not the first time he had reread messianic passages in the prophetic books, trying to understand what he and people like him could expect from the Messiah.

The position of the “God-fearers” was somewhat ambiguous. Inwardly, they had distanced themselves from the familiar pagan—or rather secular—world and its way of life; that life no longer interested them. Yet they had not entered Judaism either and remained largely foreign to the Jewish world. In essence, they stayed on its periphery, and one cannot say that the Synagogue encouraged them to move farther in that direction: at the time, Gentile conversion to Judaism was treated cautiously.

The Synagogue's missionary work consisted in arousing Gentiles' interest and drawing them closer, but no more. The “God-fearers” could only hope that the Messiah would come and everything would change, for them as well. But how can He change the world while remaining a nobody within it? This is the question Philip answers for the eunuch as he explains the relevant messianic passages in the prophetic books. The eunuch understands: what he has awaited so long has finally happened. The Messiah has come. There is nothing more to wait for. He does not wait, and soon the Kingdom has one more inhabitant.

Today's reading shows us how the spirit of God works upon the hearts of those who seek God. The story evidently concerns one of those whom the Bible calls proselytes. Proselytes were people of non-Jewish origin who had come to believe in the God of Abraham without embracing Judaism in its entirety. They were monotheists but did not observe Jewish religious laws; indeed, this was not required of them, since the Jews did not regard them as part of God's people anyway. To the Jews, proselytes remained Gentiles who had turned to their God, outsiders who were admitted to the Temple, certainly, but separately from Jews. At that time, the Temple had a separate courtyard for proselytes, known as the Court of the Gentiles. The Ethiopian court official belonged to these proselytes and had evidently come to Jerusalem as a pilgrim (v. 27). It should be noted that proselytes often surpassed the Jews themselves in the intensity of their spiritual searching. This is unsurprising, for they had turned to God not because of, but despite, the environment in which they had been born and raised. Each such conversion was usually deeply felt and often involved suffering. Messianic expectations among proselytes were even more intense than in the Jewish community, for they often found themselves outsiders both to Jews and to their own people. Their only hope was the coming Messiah, who, according to the ancient prophets, would welcome every seeker into His Kingdom. It is unsurprising that on his way from Jerusalem the Ethiopian dignitary is rereading the second part of the Book of Isaiah (vv. 32–33): here the Messiah is spoken of as nowhere else in the Old Testament. Yet understanding the second part of Isaiah could be difficult. Apparently, already in the Gospel era, rabbinic circles debated what in it referred to the Messiah and what to the prophet himself (v. 34). The text alone is clearly not enough; an explanation is needed (vv. 30–31). Thus studying Scripture brings the reader to the boundary beyond which lies the Kingdom. But to cross that boundary, the text alone is not enough, and even theology cannot help here. To make that decision, one needs the testimony of someone who knows what the Kingdom is, and God sends such a person to meet the seeker. Philip's explanation was evidently precisely such testimony (v. 35), and it helped the Ethiopian dignitary take the decisive step (vv. 36–38). Thus Scripture brings a person to the Kingdom, while the testimony of someone guided by the spirit of God helps them enter it.

God's providence is an astonishing thing. On the one hand, it cannot be understood at all, and it may even seem that it is not worth trying, because the Lord Himself says, "My thoughts are not your thoughts" (Isa 55:8). On the other hand, the Lord says that "whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother" (Mark 3:35), and through the mouth of the apostle Paul the Spirit commands us: "Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of God is" (Eph 5:17).

So what should we do? How are we to grasp what, by definition, we cannot contain within ourselves? There is only one answer: call into yourself the Author of this design. And if He is in you, then the question of discerning God's will simply does not arise. Because the closer you are to God, the purer your heart is, the more you see God (see Matt 5:8), and the more your own desires turn out to be what God is in fact placing in your heart. It is immensely difficult to give yourself to God so completely that you are always led by the Spirit. Perhaps it is even painful: painful to one's own selfishness and vanity, which very much do not want to give up ground. But it is possible. It is possible to live a full life.

And today we see one such happy person, the deacon Philip. Philip is so open to the "breathings" of the Spirit that without hesitation he agrees to set out without knowing for what or where. And the Spirit rewards him fully for this, breaking the order that had existed until then and granting him a new gift: to "transmit" baptism with the Spirit.