The Ethiopian Eunuch and the Priesthood of All Believers

I’ll begin with the beautiful words from 1 Peter 2:4, 9, 10: Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
We need to fully grasp how radical this is for each one of us and for our community of faith: God has chosen us, made us holy, made us royal, made us priests for the purpose of proclaiming how much he has done in calling us out of darkness into light. Each one of us, each community of faith. Holy, Royal, Priestly.

In order for us to appreciate what this really means, we have to go back to a famous story of evangelism from Acts 8, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, and get under its skin.

Philip was one of the administrators along with Stephen that the original disciples chose to take care of details while they preached. Then Stephen was martyred, and within weeks, Philip is off in Samaria preaching and working wonders, leaving the tables to wait on themselves. Philip may have been the first besides Jesus to preach the gospel to the Samaritans. While there, God directed Philip to go out on a road through the wilderness toward the south, where he met a man in a chariot reading. (Apparently someone else was driving.) Again prompted by God’s Spirit, Philip ran over to the chariot and heard the man read aloud from the book of Isaiah. This man worked for the Queen of Ethiopia as a highly placed official. He had been to Jerusalem to worship and was going home. He was also a eunuch.

Think about this. Somehow, this man’s hunger for God was so strong that he had come many days journey to worship in the temple of God. Think also about this: in this temple, people like him were not eligible to present the offerings in the holy place. Any priest who presented an offering was required to be physically unblemished, whether the blemish was temporary or permanent. The list in Lev. 21:16-20 includes a number of physical imperfections that disqualified a member of the priestly tribe from making the offerings. The one with a blemish could not “come near the curtain or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, [so] that he may not profane my sanctuaries.” I don’t know why this law was given to Israel. Perhaps the priest was a gift to God, like other offerings, and it was irreverent to give God a blemished gift. Perhaps the priest symbolized God to the people, and an unblemished person better symbolized a perfect God. These blemished priests were, however, allowed eat the offerings other priests ate, and to perform tasks around the temple, just not the central ones. Because humans are what we are, this undoubtedly created a sense of hierarchy, something like this: unblemished priests, offering sacrifices, eligible to be high priest; blemished priests, sweeping up and keeping order; and everyone else.

It is possible to see a similar hierarchical pattern emerge in the early Church. The original disciples are praying and preaching, doing signs and wonders, and representing the Spirit of Jesus everywhere. They were like the unblemished priests, eligible by their previous closeness to Jesus to be the top of any social heap of holiness. So when the common believers complained about unfair treatment, the apostles said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait tables.” So they named some non-apostles to wait tables. These were like the blemished priests, not quite as holy. Philip was one of these. Beautifully, God brings the waiter to talk with the eunuch. Both have the experience of being designated as second-tier.

But there’s more to the story here. In the cultures around the Mediterranean and into northern Africa, young boys were captured or chosen and turned into eunuchs for the purposes of making them loyal and hard-working civil servants. They had no descendants for whom they had to provide, they had no spouse with ambitions for them. Because they lost the possibility of a lineage, a legacy, children, they had, literally, only their jobs to live for. Their high positions were entirely at the will of the rulers. And if they were Jewish or converts to Judaism, they were outsiders in worship also. Deuteronomy 23:1 says that no eunuch shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.

The wonderful thing about the Bible is how it talks to itself, and when we pay attention, we can get a fuller picture of the heart of God. Now that we know how little place there was for a eunuch in temple worship, we can hear just how redemptive and healing are these words from Isaiah 56:3-5: “do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.’” The heart of God revealed through the prophet includes the believing eunuch in worship and promises him a legacy.

And later Jesus says to disciples dismayed that they cannot walk away from their wives and who think then it might be better not to marry: “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, there are eunuchs who have been made so by others, and there are eunuchs have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can” (Matthew 19: 10-12). Undoubtedly, this was even more horrifying to the disciples than permanent marriage. But it is a statement that widens their understanding of who can be holy, who can be in the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven includes more than unblemished men; it includes women, children, and eunuchs.

Unsurprisingly, because we are human, the church has often taken this as a statement that those who choose celibacy for the kingdom of heaven are holier than others. We are absolutely incorrigible; we need to know which group is closer to God, which group gets to speak for God, which group gets to represent us to God. We are simply not comfortable with the idea that we ordinary folks are close to God, we speak for God, we carry the world to God. We are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are.

But wait, there’s more. The Ethiopian is reading from Isaiah 53. He hasn’t yet gotten to the passage that gives him full standing among God’s people, but he has come to the heart of the matter. He is reading this passage: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with disease and sorrow; and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has born our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth…by a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people. It pleased the Lord to crush him … When you, God, make him the offering for sin, he will see his descendants.” Who is this referring to, he asks Philip, the prophet or someone else? And Philip tells him the good news of Jesus.

What is the good news? Hebrews 4:14 tells us that we have a great high priest, Jesus, the Son of God, able to sympathize with our weaknesses, in every respect tested as we are, yet without sin. He was chosen by God, he learned obedience through what he suffered, and he was made perfect. Now he is the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. He is a priest outside the Law—not from the line of Aaron, but from Judah—signaling the introduction of a better hope through which we approach God and guaranteeing a better covenant (Hebrews 7:19). He is the only high priest we will ever need; he holds office permanently, continuously able to save those who approach God through him, living always to intercede for us.

Here’s the good news: no more are we under a law that specifies the physical attributes of those who can approach God and represent God in worship. We have a permanent high priest, a priest who entered the holy places bruised, crushed, marred, bleeding, mangled—a priest who did not measure up to the physical standard of the Law, a priest who still carries the wounds that plead for us, who remains physically marred while glorified.

What this means is that we are all eligible, we are all called to “be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We ordinary believers in Jesus Christ are close to God, we speak for God, we carry the world to God. We are a royal priesthood, a holy nation. We are.

Three Rich Men and Jesus

Taking a little break from the stories of women to look at three encounters with Jesus by rich men: Nicodemus, The Rich Young Ruler, and Zaccheus--These stories are parables of individuals—we can apply them to our own spiritual lives—but they are also parables of churches, denominations, the church universal. Jesus walks among the churches, we read in Revelation, and he has something to say to each congregation, each denomination, the whole of Christianity.

These individuals were all rich. Two of them had the approval of society, influence and spiritual authority. One had coercive power over others, backed up by the government, but was despised. When Jesus met each of them, he didn’t say the same thing. To the first, he said you must be born again; to the second, he said sell everything you have and give it to the poor; to the third, he said today I must stay at your house

What can we learn from these differences?
We can see that
1) Jesus speaks particular truth to particular individuals or groups.
2) We can see that if we want to have Jesus come to our house, we need to set aside the ways we protect ourselves from what Jesus brings to us, a life at the mercy of the Spirit of God.
3) And we need to quit caring about being approved of by our culture or cultures. Jesus cares more about openness to truth than about approval by others
4) And we show we’re serious about Jesus by being generous and by repenting of what we’ve done wrong and making it right.


Nicodemus came by night. He was a man of position and influence and a Pharisee. His coming by night suggests caution and care about appearances.

He is polite, even complimentary: Rabbi, he says to Jesus, we know you have come from God as a teacher because no one could do what you have done unless God is with him. Nicodemus states that he approves of Jesus’s ministry in a quiet way. He finds out that Jesus doesn’t care about approval. Jesus cares about something else—Nicodemus himself.

Jesus replies, no one can see the kingdom of God unless that person is born again.

Nicodemus says, “how can an old man be born again when he is old?” What I hear in this question is self-defense. What does it mean to be reborn? I think it means I need to make a completely new start, without the protection and mask of influence and position—complete vulnerability, complete dependence, complete openness. It confronts my fear of change.

Jesus makes it even worse for the cautious: This new life is based in the Spirit, and it is not predictable or safe. It is like being the wind, without boundaries, without excuses. A person who is born of the spirit will not seek Jesus under the cover of night. Jesus speaks repeatedly in the passage that follows in John 3 about openness, the public nature of God’s kingdom and the daylight redemption for those who believe in God’s Son.

He warns Nicodemus about preferring the darkness, and he suggests to Nicodemus that such a preference means that he fears that his sinfulness will be exposed. It’s not that the darkness that defines night is outside of God’s love; but Nicodemus takes cover behind influence, power, age, privilege; this state of his heart is revealed when Nicodemus bestows on Jesus his “seal of approval.” Approving of Jesus allows Nicodemus to keep his distance from the new life Jesus brings.

Jesus says to Nicodemus: Set all that down in order to see God’s kingdom with newborn eyes and be one with the wind of God’s spirit sweeping across the countryside.

Second story:
The (nearly) Perfect Young Man

This story is prefaced in Matthew, Mark, and Luke with Jesus blessing the children and saying that whoever doesn’t receive the kingdom of God like a child won’t enter it at all. This intriguingly echoes the “born again” advice given to Nicodemus above.

In fact, the youthfulness and openness of this nearly perfect man sets him apart from Nicodemus, though like Nicodemus, he is a ruler. To all appearances, he has the courage of his curiosity, and he approaches Jesus in broad daylight. “Good Teacher (or rabbi),” he says, “what good thing shall I do in order to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” says Jesus in Mark and Luke; “Why are you asking me about what is good?” reports Matthew. Jesus reacts to the man bestowing his approval on Jesus with the word good. Jesus pulls him up short. “You know only God is good.” Don’t try to flatter Jesus.

I notice that Jesus resists flattery. I wish I always did that, also. When someone comes up to me and identifies me as a somehow superior being, I have a hard time finding fault with that person, particularly if he or she is from a position of influence. Oh, I say to myself, I have the seal of approval. I am now ok. I will be careful not to lose that standing.

Suppose I were Jesus; I would see flattery for the temptation it is, the temptation to compare myself with other people to my advantage which is based on the weakness of thinking I am not really ok.

This applies to churches, too. Do churches compare themselves with others? And why do they do so? Are churches open to flattery? Can whole churches and denominations be manipulated to buy into the dominant culture or to prove they are counter-cultural?

Why can Jesus resist this temptation and call out the tempters? Jesus finds his identity in obedience to God. Whatever God tells me to say and do, that’s what I say and do, he says repeatedly. Put down your burden and be in this kind of relationship with me; just like oxen in a yoke, you and I will obey God together.

Back to our story: Jesus meets the perfect young man where he is, measuring himself by the law; Jesus says to him, “do the commandments given by God who is good. “

Now the nearly perfect young man’s façade cracks just a bit: he asks, “which ones? “ This young man is not stupid. He knows he can’t obey all the commandments. As St. Paul said, the law exposes our need for grace; Paul’s own particular downfall was the “do not covet” commandment which went past appearances into the heart. This young man already knows he hasn’t kept ALL the commandments.

The list in Luke are these:
Do not murder
Do not commit adultery
Do not steal
Do not bear false witness
Honor your father and mother

Mark adds: do not defraud; again, the young man can check this off.

Matthew adds: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I don’t know why these lists are not identical. But I can tell you that the perfection façade cracks wide open with this last commandment. And we know it has broken open when Jesus says, “Give everything you have to the poor—your neighbors—and follow me.” Suddenly that emotional word love has real dimensions—generosity. Generosity outside the family, generosity to the beggar and the undeserving. Be gracious, Jesus tells him. Don’t be legalistic.

So we’ve seen Jesus confront the heart issues of two men of influence and position. Give it up, Jesus says. Lay it down. Give it away. Just you, come follow me with just you. The kingdom is open to those who just drop everything and run into it. The kingdom is being seized violently, he said, urgently, by those with nothing to lose and nowhere else to turn.

Third story:
One more rich man, but this time a tax-gatherer. I’m sure you know that the tax system under Rome was filled with corruption, that a tax-gatherer could collect much more than was actually required by Rome. Tax-gatherers were beneath contempt, collaborators with the occupying army, not admirable people at all, certainly not in the moral class of the other two rich men.

This particular tax-gatherer, Zaccheus, is a short man. I sympathize with him. He can’t see through a crowd, and so when Jesus comes through town, Zaccheus climbs a tree because he is trying to see who Jesus is. Well, so much for dignity, so much for status; a grown-up throwing aside his fancy clothes, climbing a tree and perching on a limb. That sounds like something a child would do.

And Jesus stops right below the tree, looks up, and says, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” Surprise! Jesus wants to see who Zaccheus is, too. Tumbling out of the tree, Zaccheus receives Jesus gladly. Imagine how he beams, sheer pleasure lighting up his face.

He stands right there in public in his under-tunic, and says to Jesus, “I will give half of everything I own to the poor, and I will repay four times any fraud I’ve committed.” Jesus doesn’t say to him, “Sell everything and give it all away.” He doesn’t need to. He sees how much Zaccheus wants to see who Jesus is. Zaccheus knows what God wants him to do and he rushes to do it. Even if he remains rich, he will be a new person.

What makes this story different from the other two? Zaccheus’s energetic determination to see who Jesus is and the delightful discovery that Jesus knows him by name and by heart. Zaccheus is like a little child, tumbling into the kingdom without dignity, influence, position, wealth, or even most of his clothes.

As I said at the beginning, these stories are parables of individuals—we can apply them to our own spiritual lives; one hearer remarked that she can see herself in each of these at different points in her life. These are also parables of churches, denominations, the church universal. The same questions can be asked of individuals, congregations, denominations: Do we come to Jesus after cover of darkness because we are afraid of change? Do we come to him with the list of everything we’ve done right because we are unwilling to admit our need for grace? Or do we do whatever we can to see who Jesus is, and then out of sheer joy, turn to make life easier for our neighbors and to make things right with those we’ve wronged?