Thought for the DayThe Rev'd Duncan White, Clergy

Sunday 28 April 2024
5th Sunday of Easter

The Revd Duncan White, Priest


To download this 'Thought For The Day' as a PDF document, or to browse our archive of earlier 'Thoughts', please visit the Previous Thoughts page.


First  Reading  –  Acts  (chapter 8  v26-end)

Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’  (This is a wilderness road.)  So he got up and went.  Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury.  He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home;  seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.  Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’  So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah.  He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’  He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’  And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.  Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
    ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
    and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
    so he does not open his mouth.
    In his humiliation justice was denied him.
    Who can describe his generation?
    For his life is taken away from the earth.’
The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’  Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.  As they were going along the road, they came to some water;  and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water!  What is to prevent me from being baptized?’  He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.  When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away;  the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.  But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Second  Reading  –  1 John  (chapter 4  v7-end)

God Is Love
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;  everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.  God’s love was revealed among us in this way:  God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God;  if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world.  God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God.  So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.  Love has been perfected among us in this:  that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;  for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first loved us.  Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars;  for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.  The commandment we have from him is this:  those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Gospel  Reading  –  John  (chapter 15  v1-8)

Jesus the True Vine
‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower.  He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit.  Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.  You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.  Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.  Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers;  such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.  If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

A Reflection

Philip the Deacon was one of the seven appointed deacons whom Luke mentions in the sixth chapter of Acts.  He is perhaps more properly thought of as Philip the Evangelist.  His preaching mission in Samaria not only brought the followers of Simon Magus to be baptized as followers of Jesus, but also converted the magician himself – who was amazed at the signs and miracles that were taking place around Philip’s preaching.

In today’s reading from Acts, Philip is nudged by an angel of the Lord to put himself in the way of meeting a very powerful person indeed:  the chief treasurer, who was also a eunuch, from the court of the Candace of Ethiopia.

This ancient Chief Financial Officer had been up to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home down the wilderness road to Gaza on the coast.  Philip saw the great chariot and the man in it reading aloud from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  After the Spirit tells Philip to join the eunuch in his chariot, the two men began reading Isaiah together, and Philip explained what we would call one of the ‘Suffering Servant’ songs as a reference to Jesus.  After further conversation, the man was baptized and Philip moved on again – as it says in verse 38, “snatched away by the Spirit of the Lord”.

The section is part of Luke’s careful literary composition.  It shows in the first few chapters of Acts, before Paul’s conversion and travels, that the Good News of Jesus Christ crossed several boundaries in a rapid and Spirit-filled expansion of apostolic witness – as it says in verse 8, “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth”.

Like the people of Samaria – who were considered only half-Jews – the Ethiopian convert is beyond the social boundary of Temple Judaism in Jerusalem.  He is presumably still a gentile but, given his interest in Isaiah, he might well have been one of the God-fearers who clustered around synagogues at this time.  At any rate, when he is baptized by Philip, the unnamed foreigner of wealth, power, and influence becomes a representative of the spread of the gospel to gentiles.

Philip’s evangelism is not usually equated with the work of love, but he embodies the commandment to love our neighbours, especially when those neighbours are strangers, people who are entirely ‘other’.  Practising evangelism is often no more and no less than learning how to encounter strangers with the openness and readiness of Jesus himself.  And Philip shows us how there is a whole lot of love that needs to be expressed on the way to conversion and baptism.

Philip seized the opportunity to join the Ethiopian on the man’s own terms, reading what he was reading, answering the man’s questions, bringing the conversation around to Jesus.  To proclaim our faith in the risen Jesus as a work of love among all our neighbours needs the gentle nudges as well as the motivating powers of the Holy Spirit.  And we had best abide firmly and deeply rooted, planted in the ways of Jesus himself.

Recall the Jesus portrayed in Luke’s gospel – the Jesus who encountered strangers and loved them as if they were his kinfolk – whether they were lepers who needed to be touched to be healed, a nameless woman bleeding to death, a young girl who was deaf, a Roman centurion.  The list in Luke and in the other gospels goes on and on.

Last week Tracy spoke to us eloquently concerning our vocations, we all have at least one but may not always recognise its existence.  Apparently we are all akin to sheep dogs whether just puppies or trained to the limit of our abilities, with most of us being somewhere in between.  This has been going on for centuries and we heard of an early example in this morning’s reading.  The Candace of Ethiopia, when he is baptized by Philip, becomes a representative of the spread of the gospel to gentiles, or should I say a ‘puppy sheepdog’ with a role to guide God’s sheep.

As sheep dogs, in that never-ending training of Christian life, let us accept that the work of the Holy Spirit that brings us deeper into new life in the risen Christ is the same work of the Holy Spirit that teaches us to love the strangers we encounter, and teaches us how to honour and respect the dignity and integrity of the ‘other’, the ‘different’ and the ‘alien’ among us.  It would be so easy to say, “let us go and do likewise”.  The trouble is that it is easy to say but not easy to do – but we can all try to do our best and to trust in God to cover our shortfall.   Amen.


The Collect Prayer

Risen Christ,
your wounds declare your love for the world
and the wonder of your risen life:
give us compassion and courage
to risk ourselves for those we serve,
to the glory of God the Father.   Amen.