The story in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is a familiar one. The eunuch in the chariot is clearly a high and important official of the Queen (Kandake) of Ethiopia. This is revealed not only by the fact that he is riding in a chariot, but also because he is reading, meaning that he had his own servant steering it. From the fact that he is reading the prophet Isaiah, we can also tell that he is a convert to Judaism. The story also gives us to understand that he is returning to his native land, having made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, probably to participate in the Passover that has just passed. He is reading the oracle in Isaiah 53 about the Suffering Servant of God, of the Servant’s death on our behalf. He is perplexed by it. The Spirit sends Philip to enlighten him. This Philip does before disappearing from the eunuch’s sight.
The incident is one of several in Acts in which the disciples are seen to be sharing in the powers of the Lord Jesus, of doing the same things he did, from healing to mysterious appearances and disappearances. The story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is strongly reminiscent of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. There, Jesus joins them as they are perplexed over the prophecies about the Messiah, of how they had hoped that Jesus was that Messiah, and of their disappointment when he had come to such an apparently sticky end. He explains to them the true meaning of the messianic prophecies. At the inn, when he prays the blessing over the bread at supper and breaks it, they “recognise him in the breaking of the bread,” but in that moment he vanishes from their sight.
In the incident of the eunuch, Philip explains the meaning of the oracle in Isaiah, so that the eunuch understands that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Suffering Servant of which he was reading at the very moment in which he met Philip. As a consequence he is baptised by Philip. As the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus burned within them, so the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. And at the very moment in which the eunuch recognises the crucified Jesus as Lord and Saviour, Philip vanishes from his sight, carried away by the Holy Spirit. We could say that “he recognised the Lord Jesus in the breaking of the Word.”
We, too, are brought to faith by such moments of conviction in the real presence of the Risen Lord. It could be is a verse, a phrase of Scripture. It could be a special moment in which we received the Eucharist, or were inspired by a word from a holy person. There are many other moments in which, in a flash, we might see and recognise the living Lord. And how often, in the moment in which we recognise him, he seems to vanish from our sight. But those moments are also moments in which our faith is inspired and strengthened, so that our hearts, too, burn within us, so that we, too, can go on our way rejoicing. In life as we know it, we may never be continuously aware of his abiding presence. But we have his promise: “I am with you until the end of time.” Let us praise him for those brief glimpses of his glory which strengthen and inspire our faith, then, and let us ask him earnestly to bring us at last to that place where we will experience for ever, as the blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby put it, “our wonder, our rapture when Jesus we see.”
Fr. Phillip
