An Artist of the Soul and a Friend on the Journey

Sharing the Presence M5 (Acts 8:26-40) 04 22 2012 Speaker: Ken Shigematsu Title: An Artist of the Soul and a Friend on the Journey Text: Acts 8:26-40 BIG IDEA: With the help of the Spirit, we are called to be artists of the soul and friends on the journey. The first time I spent significant time with Leighton Ford, the person who has been my mentor and friend on the journey for two decades, was when I was a seminary student in Boston. He asked me if I would drive him west across Massachusetts to the home of a friend and board member of his ministry. I picked up Leighton at about 10:00 p.m. from Logan Airport. As I merged onto interstate highway, I turned to him and said, “You can recline your chair and sleep if you want.” Leighton crossed his long legs, reclined the chair part way and said, “I don’t think I’ll sleep… tell me your life story…” And this is exactly the kind of thing that Leighton does. Leighton describes his own mission to be “an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey.” As an artist of the soul sees what’s going on inside us, sees the beauty and what we can become with God’s help. For years Leighton Ford was an associate evangelist of Billy Graham. Leighton was preaching the gospel to full football stadiums on every continent of the world. But when Leighton was about 50, through the unexpected death of his own 21-year-old son Sandy, who was also hoping to be a minister of the gospel, Leighton felt called by God to shift his emphasis from preaching to the masses and instead pursued a ministry of one-on-one mentoring with young, emerging Christian leaders. In the book of Acts we see a person named Philip, whose ministry trajectory was similar to Leighton’s. Philip was in Samaria proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ to great crowds where people were experiencing physically healing and in some cases were being delivered from evil spirits. There was great joy in the city. But then the Holy Spirit led Philip away from the great crowd to an individual. The Spirit called him to be an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey to an Ethiopian eunuch. If you have your Bibles, please turn to Acts 8:26. Philip and the Ethiopian 26 Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” 27 So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. 29 The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” 30 Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. 31 “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. 32 This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 33 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.” 34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” 35 Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” 38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea. Pray In verse 26 we read that an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” As he does, he sees a chariot with a man reading in it. The man in the chariot, as we read, is an important official in charge of the treasury of Kandake, the queen of the Ethiopians, so he is what we would call the minister of finance for the nation of Ethiopia. He owns a chariot (the equivalent of a black limousine). He is part of the caravan. He is the VIP of an entourage. He owns a copy of the book of Isaiah which would have been very rare. In his day it would have suggested that he was a person of great means. He is obviously someone who is very wealthy and powerful. Then in verse 29 we read the Holy Spirit tells Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Philip runs up to the chariot and hears the man reading Isaiah, the prophet. We can read this quickly without being particularly impressed. But it is remarkable that Philip is so attentive to the voice of the Spirit and so willing to do something that would likely make him feel uncomfortable. How so? Philip is walking south on the road which leads from Jerusalem to Gaza. He has been asked by the Holy Spirit to approach this powerful VIP in a moving chariot. It would be like one of us walking on the sidewalk with a friend, and then seeing someone driving slowly down Tenth Avenue listening to something on the radio and your friend saying go, run alongside the car and ask “Do you understand what you are listening to?” To make matters even more challenging for Philip, he is a conservative, middle-aged Jewish man who is being asked by the Holy Spirit to make contact not only with someone who is clearly above him in terms of the social strata, but is also a black, sexually-altered African. And in his day, a Jewish middle-aged man would not be fraternizing with someone of a different race, ethnicity and social class. Yet, in spite of all of this Philip responds to the Spirit, runs up beside the chariot and begins to engage the man who is reading the book of Isaiah out loud. (It was the custom of the day for to people read out loud, as a way to more deeply internalize what they were reading.) We become artists of the soul and friends on the journey as we allow the Spirit to fill us and to guide us in all that we learn and do. This is certainly a prayer of my own heart for my own life—to be guided by the Holy Spirit in the big things of my life and the small things of my life. At a recent board meeting the members of our board asked how they could pray for me. One of the first things I said didn’t sound particularly spiritual, but “can you pray that God would guide us in the selection of a dog?” Even in the small so-called “secular” details of my life, I want to be guided by God, even the choice of a dog…down the road a choice of a school for our 3-year-old son Joe…guided in my ministry here at Tenth…guided in my relationships…guided in sharing the presence of God. As I look at someone like Philip, someone like Leighton, and as I hear some of your stories, I realize that sometimes the Holy Spirit guides us in a way that is counter-intuitive. God led Philip away from the masses to an individual, a black African. I want to be a person who resists the more human tendency to always move toward what is bigger, better in a worldly sense, more prestigious, and to be truly surrendered to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So Philip becomes an artist of the soul, a friend on the journey to the Ethiopian by listening to and obeying the Spirit. Philip responds to the Spirit, runs up beside the chariot to this Ethiopian finance minister who is reading the book of Isaiah out loud. As an artist of the soul, Philip sees how God has already beautifully at work in this man’s life. In fact, we read in verse 27 that the African minister of finance had gone all the way to Jerusalem from Ethiopia to worship the living God. The doctrine of prevenient grace shows us that God has been at work in a person’s life long before we got there. Prevenient literally means “come before.” prae—before + venire, vent—come. And God’s grace has “come before” a person before she or he ever made a conscious decision to seek God (John 6:44). God has been at work in a person’s life long before we got there. So part of what an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey does, as is true of Philip, is to respond to the Holy Spirit, see the beautiful work that God has already been at work in a person's life, and then to walk along side them. Leighton Ford has said that sharing the presence, sharing Jesus with others, is about engaging in conversations and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit in those conversations. (take time). Part of what the Holy Spirit leads us to do is to feel the edges of a person’s life, like the edge of a glass (HOLD UP GLASS or use PP). Feel what the crack is and then show how Christ helps to fill that crack. (take time). We have a clue that there is a crack in the Ethiopian’s life. In verse 27 we are told that the man has gone all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship. As we’ve observed, he is a Minister of Finance. He is extremely successful. He is also a eunuch, which means that he was castrated. As one of my teachers has pointed out, the word in the Greek for eunuch, a person castrated, could also be used to mean prime minister. So why would either eunuch or “castrated” also mean in certain contexts “prime minister”? There are a couple of ways in the ancient world that you could become prime minister or a high-ranking government official. One way, of course, was to be born into a royal family and ascend to your position by virtue of your birthright. Another way was to be born as a commoner and to climb your way up the ranks of the royal court and become a high-ranking member of government. Because some members of the royal family in some ancient societies didn’t feel that they could trust a commoner to work with their females, they would force them to be castrated as a prerequisite for being able to work with members of the female royal family. In other words, they would force ambitious men who wanted to work in the royal court to be castrated as a prerequisite to be able to move up the ladder of government power and into the ranks of royalty. So, the only way to make it to the top of the royal court, unless you were born into a royal family, was to become a eunuch, to be castrated. So if a man was a Minister of Finance, a Minister of Trade, or the Prime Minister, he might also be eunuch. This minister of finance has made it to the top, but he seems nonetheless to be missing something in his life—something literal and something figuratively missing. How do we know this? He lives, from the perspective of the Jews, in Ethiopia at the end of the world. He leaves his job for several months and takes the very long trek from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship the one he believes is the living God in the temple. His friends would have said, “Are you kidding! We have all these temples, all these gods in Ethiopia. Why are you going all the way to Jerusalem?” Apparently, the gods of Ethiopia do not satisfy the deepest longings of his heart so he goes all the way to Israel to worship the God of Israel. So he is in a very serious spiritual search mode. He had made it top but he is still spiritually empty. But when he got to the temple he would have been told, “Eunuchs can’t come in here.” Some people were not able to enter the temple, including lepers and sexually-mutilated people. He must have been so disappointed, so dejected to travel all the way from Ethiopia to Jerusalem searching for an answer, finally gets to Jerusalem, only to be turned away and rejected. As he is making his way home, he is scouring the Isaiah scroll. As he reads a part of Isaiah, he would have read these words in Isaiah 53:3 about a man has also been cut and who is and rejected by the people. Then he would have read Isaiah 53: 4-8: Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He would have likely thought here was a man like me who was rejected by people, a person who took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. He is probably wondering, “Who is Isaiah talking about? Is he talking about himself? Or is he talking about someone else?” It is right then that Philip approaches him and asks him the question; “Do you understand what you are reading?” The Ethiopian minister of finance says, “How can I understand unless someone explains this to me?” Philip, as an artist of the soul, and a friend on the journey, sees how God is at work in his life and then walks beside him to help understand what God is saying to him. As artists of the soul and friends on the journey, we will see how God is at work in the lives of people around us and describe how God is at work in their lives. Some time ago, I was traveling from Vancouver to LA. I was coming back after a long meeting, and I was tired. But as I got on the plane, I prayed, “God, if you want me to talk to someone, I’m available, but if you don’t want me I’m very OK with that too.” I had the aisle seat and no one beside me (the plane was far from full) and I was about to sleep when at the last minute someone walked onto the plane. He was the last person on board--a tall, young man… Though the plane is relatively empty, he ends up sitting beside me on the window side of the plane (I am on the aisle side and there is one empty seat in between us) He pulls out a book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Victor Frankl. We got into a conversation. I found out he was an actor. He said, “What do you do?” “I work for a non-profit.” (As I said, I was tired and not in the mood to talk and this was before we began sharing the presence.) “What kind of non-profit?” “I’m a minister of a church in Vancouver.” He said, “I’m really glad I sat beside you.” He started telling me his life story. He told me he grew up on East Coast of the U.S. and ending up studying business in the Boston area. He had pursued a business career for a few years after university, but found that unfulfilling and meaningless. He said he decided to go to Hollywood and pursue acting. He said, “When I told my uncle at a party that I was leaving the marketplace to pursue an acting career in Hollywood, he laughed in my face.” He said, “Now I am getting a fair of number of acting roles, and I’ve met a number of the top twenty “A-level” actors. I’m still empty and I know if I ever get there, I’ll be empty too.” I listened, then I simply pointed the ways I sensed God work in his life, awakening desire… ending up taking a book on spiritual search with him to the Pan Pacific Hotel. As a friend on the journey, we will become people like Philip who respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit, recognize that the ways God is beautifully at work in a person's life, and begin where they are. Finally, the Holy Spirit opens the door and presents the truth of God in Scripture. Philip, by the way, was a lay person. He was not an ordained minister. He was a lay person and understood Scripture well enough to be able to communicate it to this man and lead him to a point where he commits his life to Christ through baptism. Here’s an email I received from a lay person (paraphrase): I feel like in my faith day-by-day I am trying to share my faith, talk about my faith, live out my faith, and I discuss it with people a lot, I look for opportunities to do so. In my line of work, it is often a gentle transition. I feel like I need to deepen my biblical knowledge more to be able to share more accurately. This is why I am craving more teaching. Philip would likely have taken him through all 12 verses of Isaiah 53, describing Jesus’ royal lineage, and his death in our stead as a punishment for our sins. In Isaiah 53:6 we read: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He would have also spoken of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as God’s way of saying that our sins have been paid for by Christ, and then as a result, Israel and we could have a new beginning….people of Israel and people like this African Ethiopian could have a new beginning with God. Then Philip guides the Ethiopian minister of finance into an understanding of this passage in Isaiah 53. He helps him understand the heart of the biblical message that Christ died for his sins so that he could be welcomed into God’s family and know and love and serve the living God—the only one who could satisfy the deepest longings of his heart. Perhaps, Philip also pointed him to passage just a little further in the scroll: Isaiah 56:3-5: 3 Let no foreigners who have bound themselves to the LORD say, “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.” And let no eunuch complain, “I am only a dry tree.” 4 For this is what the LORD says: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. Philip may well have told the eunuch, “Even though you are a foreigner and a eunuch, God will come to you and give you a name better than sons or daughters in a name that will endure forever.” Unlike our own world, in the ancient world one of the most important ways to gain a sense of meaning was to have your own sons and daughters. Another way of course to find meaning was to make it the top. The finance minister made it to the top, sacrificing the possibility of having sons and daughters in order to become a eunuch. Perhaps there were times when he regretted his choice, wondering if instead of being so ambitious had he chosen instead to have a family, he might've been more fulfilled. He might have been. But, he might not have been more fulfilled had he chosen that more traditional path. Philip using Isaiah 56 assured him that through a friendship with the living God, he would have something better than sons and daughters, far better than success in the Ethiopian Royal court. An artist of the soul and friend on the journey responds to the leading of the Holy Spirit, sees how God is at work in their lives, and shows how the beautiful, joyful, content people God created them to become. The story of Jesus is the greatest story ever told. Part of our call to be an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey is to respond to the leading of the Holy Spirit and see how God's been at work in a person's life, and how he uses Scripture to help point them to the ultimate artist who can help them become the beautiful person God intended them to be. And the Scripture obviously isn't just a gift for others through us. It's also a gift to us to help us become a friend on the journey. The novel by Charles Dickens, The Tale of Two Cities, is about two men named Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay who know each other Sydney is in love with Lucy, but Lucy marries Charles. Charles ends up being arrested during the French Revolution and is condemned to die. He's in a cell with the other prisoners who are were going to be executed the next day by guillotine. That night Sydney sneaks into the prison cell. He says, “Charles, look we resemble each other, let me take your place. You are going to live with Lucy, you will raise a family with her.” Charles won't do it. So Sydney knocks him out with a drug and pushes him out of prison. He bribes someone to take out his body, and takes his place. There's a young girl who was also in the prison and will be executed the next day. She walks up to Sydney and she thinks it's Charles Darnay and begins to talk to him. Sydney tries to keep up the appearance that he's Charles. He says, “It's nice to see you.” Suddenly the girl realizes that it's not Charles and it is someone else who has taken his place. Her eyes get wide as it dawns on her, and she says, “You're dying for him aren't you?” “Yes, and for his wife,” he concedes. She says, “I'm having a lot of trouble facing my own death, but if you, a brave stranger, will hold my hand I think I can do it.” Carton takes her by the hand and comforts her, telling her that their ends will be quick but that they will be going to a place where they will be mercifully sheltered… it is a far, far better rest that we go to than we have ever known. She is able to meet her death in peace. The wonder of his sacrificial love changed her even though it wasn't for her. When we realize that Christ's died in our stead, and he says “Yes, I will hold your hand the rest of your life,” then we can face anything. It is then we can become people like Philip who are friends on the journey to others. When we are an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey we do not know exactly how the Spirit will lead us, but we will always be led in an adventure that will last forever. Let’s pray. · Like Philip…like Leighton…will you become an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey? · Will you be led by the Spirit of God? · Allow the Spirit to enable you to see how God has worked in the lives of others, beginning with where they are as the Holy Spirit opens up opportunities. · Use Scripture and encourage baptism.