Unexpected Guides will be our theme this week as we continue our worship series, This Christian Life. Our worship series is inspired by the story telling curated by Ira Glass on National Public Radio’s This American Life. Each week we’ll look at a theme related to the Christian life through the lens of several stories. The stories will vary each week. Some will be rooted in our own community’s story and some will come from people far away. Some will be humorous and some will be challenging. Many of our stories will come from the Book of Acts. Here is a list of our themes for the series:
▪April 12: Weighing What Matters (Acts 4.32-35)
▪April 19: Inside Job (Book of Esther)
▪April 26: Crossover Tactics (Acts 4.5-12)
▪May 3: Unexpected Guides (Acts 8.26-40)
▪May 10: All Means All
▪May 17: Waiting Sucks OR Forcing It
▪May 24: Birth Stories
This week, Unexpected Guides. Begin by inviting your Kitchen Table to think back over their lives noticing the people who have been Unexpected Guides for them. Perhaps folks were guided by individuals that others would not have expected to play the role of guide? Perhaps folks were seeking guidance from someone, but it came instead unexpectedly from someone else? Share the memories that arise.
Acts 8.26-40, the story of Phillip’s encounter with a gender transgressive foreigner, is often titled “The Conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch.” Yet, the story quickly becomes more complicated when you read beyond the title. Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber writes, “Because if the Eunuch was reading Isaiah as he returned from Jerusalem having gone there to worship, then I would bet he was also familiar with Deuteronomy, specifically 23:1—“No one whose testicles are cut off or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord” (otherwise known as the very best memory verse ever). This law strictly forbids a Eunuch from entering the assembly of the Lord. Their transgression of gender binaries and the inability to fit in proper categories made them profane by nature. They do not fit. But despite the fact that in all likelihood he would be turned away by the religious establishment, the Ethiopian Eunuch sought God anyway. I wonder if, when the Spirit guided Phillip to that road in the desert, if she guided him to his own conversion.”
Read Acts 8.26-40.
Reflect upon and share with a trusted friend your experience of a time when you were like the Ethiopian Eunuch and sought God in spite of the likelihood that the religious establishment would turn you away. When have you been like Phillip and gone against the religious establishment to welcome people outside of the establishment’s perceived boundaries?