Let’s be clear from the very start. This was never
supposed to happen. Nearly every piece of this story is
all wrong.
The place—all wrong. A wilderness road between
Jerusalem and Gaza far from anywhere the apostles
expected the gospel to go.
The people—all wrong. Afterall, Philip was a deacon. He
was supposed to be serving tables back in Jerusalem,
not leading Bible studies in the desert. And as for this
outsider, his name appears on no approved list of
baptism candidates.
The process—all wrong. There is no committee. There’s
been no session vote, no statement of faith carefully
reviewed in advance.
And yet here they are. Philip and this unnamed
Ethiopian official, sitting together in a chariot on a road
to nowhere, reading Isaiah out loud and asking what
these ancient words mean for them now. And then, on
this wilderness road in the middle of the desert, behold!
There is water. A stream flowing through the desert. As
if someone knew they were coming.
Theologian Justo González calls Acts the fifth gospel—
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Holy Spirit. And the
Spirit, in the ancient church as in ours, is a disruptor, a
kind of holy menace. The Spirit often sends us places we
would never choose to go.
The Ethiopian is powerful, a treasury official serving in
the courts of the queen of Ethiopia. He has gone to the
right places and asked the right questions. Still, it is not
enough. The laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are
explicit on this point. He is categorically excluded from
membership in the community of faith. Not because of
his beliefs. Not because of his character or his spiritual
practices. Not because of his personal piety. But
because of who he is. His body is the border. People like
him stay outside.
Which means that what Philip should do, good deacon
that he is, is clear. What he should say here is carefully
prescribed. If faithfulness means guarding the boundaries
he’s always known, he should gently, pastorally explain
that the grace of God has its limits, and that this stranger
on the road—as well-meaning as he might be—falls
outside those limits. That is what the institution would
require. But just watch what the Spirit does.
The passage he is reading when Philip catches up
to his chariot is Isaiah, Chapter 53. We call it “the
suffering servant” passage. Led like a sheep to the
slaughter. In his humiliation, justice was denied him. His
life is taken from the earth.
Philip asks the man, “Do you understand what you
are reading?”
“Well, how can I understand it unless there’s someone
to explain it? To guide me? About whom does the
prophet write these words? Is he talking about
himself? Or about someone else?”
The Ethiopian eunuch is asking what the text means.
But underneath, he is asking something deeper. He is
asking whether this story—about one who is humiliated,
denied justice, excluded—whether he could belong in
that story. He is asking, “Is there a God in the universe
who knows what it is like to be me?”
Philip begins to tell him about Jesus—God in flesh the
world would reject. And there on that desert road, with
the scroll of Isaiah unrolled before them, something
Rev. Christopher A. Henry
Senior PaStor
Acts 8:26-40; Isaiah 56:1-8 May 17, 2026
7700 North Meridian Street • Indianapolis, Indiana 46260 • SecondChurch.org • (317) 253-6461cracks open. He does not wait to be invited or examined.
He does not submit a proposal or a statement. He sees
the water—that stream that has no business being on
a desert road—and says, “What is to prevent me from
being baptized?”
I find it the most direct, urgent, and vulnerable question
in the entire Book of Acts. There’s such a tenderness
to the question. What is keeping me out? What wall
separates me from the grace I now understand?
And here’s the truth. The technical, legal, institutional
answer to his question is: everything. The list of barriers
separating him stretches a mile long. Philip—well-versed
in the ancient texts—could recite them all. He could list
them one by one. What is preventing you? How much
time do you have?
But something in Philip has cracked open, too. And so,
this deacon, this servant of the Lord, wades into the
water without pausing to consider what the apostles
back home would think. The Spirit has gotten there
first. Now Philip knows. But you should know that God
was not improvising there on the desert road. God was
already on record. If Philip had turned three chapters
further in the book of the Prophet Isaiah, he would come
to these words in Isaiah 56, words that name the eunuch
specifically—name the ones the law excluded—and
promised them a place within the walls.
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.
I will give them a name better than sons and daughters.
The foreigners shall come from the north and the south
and the east and the west. My house is for all people.
In other words, the Spirit on the desert road was not
changing God’s plan. The Spirit was fulfilling God’s plan.
The Spirit was not breaking the Bible. The Spirit was
teaching Philip how to read it through the lens of grace.
Over the years, I’ve heard sincere, well-meaning people
I love and respect say, “I want to be more inclusive. I
really do. But the Bible…” If that’s where you are, you are
not alone. Many of us were taught that taking scripture
seriously means drawing lines that limit the reach of
grace. Letting go of that—even questioning that—can
feel like losing your footing.
A mentor once asked me, “Do you think it is possible to
overestimate the love of God?” And something in me
cracked open.
Here is what years of careful reading have taught me:
the Bible is not the obstacle. The Bible is the reason.
From the moment God called a wandering people
and promised to bless all nations through them, to
the prophets who extended welcome to the discarded
and the dehumanized, to Jesus gathering an unlikely
group of followers to form a church with no walls, to a
Spirit who shows up on a wilderness road—the whole
arc of scripture bends toward a welcome wider than
we imagined.
The Bible has held up this truth all along. The Church is
still catching up to the wildness at the heart of its own
book. And the Spirit keeps moving—whether we are
ready or not. Sometimes the Spirit must move us out of
the way.
John was a lifelong Baptist from the deep south. He
taught Sunday school for thirty years. He was the kind
of man who had the scriptures memorized, and he
believed every word of them. I loved John. He lived close
to the Presbyterian church I served in Atlanta, and he
had begun attending just before I arrived there. As soon
as he started attending the church, he also started a
new Sunday school class. In a matter of months, it grew
to be our largest Sunday school class. We called him
John the Baptist from the deep south.
One Monday morning, John the Baptist asked to
come and see me. It sounded urgent, so we met that
afternoon. He sat down in my office, and he let out a
deep sigh. He asked if he could pray for us. Then, after
his prayer, he shared his concern. He said, “Pastor, I
need your help. Two women have started coming to my
Sunday school class. A couple. I don’t know what to do.
This isn’t what I grew up with.”
I asked him, “Well, John, what do you think you should
do?” I had no idea what John would say.
He sat with my question for a moment. He knew the
scriptures. John the Baptist believed every word of them.
THE IMPERATIVE OF INCLUSION
7700 North Meridian Street • Indianapolis, Indiana 46260 • SecondChurch.org • (317) 253-6461After what felt to me like an hour, he said, “I’m not sure
what I think. But I’m pretty sure I know what Jesus thinks.”
“What’s that, John?”
“Jesus thinks they belong right here. In fact, he’s
probably the one who brought them. Maybe to change
my heart.”
The couple joined the class, and then joined the church.
They were lifelong Presbyterians. They knew the
scriptures. Lived every word. Together the class opened
the words of scripture and listened to each other’s
stories, and over the course of years they built strong
and faithful community together. In fact, two years later,
the couple brought their daughter to be baptized in our
church. We needed an elder to stand with the family at
the baptismal font. The Spirit had been preparing for
that moment all along. Every scripture we read. Every
story we shared. Every step that was taken. And guess
who stood at that font. John the Baptist. It was never
supposed to happen. It was the most joyful baptism I
can remember.
That’s how this story ends. It ends with joy. The eunuch
goes on his way rejoicing. The Spirit gives us his
baptism as a charge to the church, a witness to what
happens when the walls come down.
There are people in our city, and in our pews, who
have spent years—some, decades—standing at the
border of belonging. Religious voices have claimed
Biblical authority to put their story, their very identity,
outside the grace of God. Too often, these voices have
sounded like our voice. Too often the church has not
only witnessed those walls; it has built them, and it has
defended them.
There are people in this space and who hear the sound
of my voice who know what it is to ask the eunuch’s
question deep in the privacy of their own hearts. Is
there anything in this story for me? Is there a God in the
universe who knows what it is like to be me?
And the answer to that question is yes. This story
belongs to you. You belong to this story. And the Bible is
the reason.
This is the church we need to be—what it looks like
when we follow the Spirit. There will be moments that
make us uncomfortable and even afraid. Imagine Philip
standing on the water’s edge. This was never supposed
to happen. When those moments come, listen deeply to
each other. Trust that the God of the wilderness road is
with us.
When we make space for those the world pushes to the
margin and space for the ones who thought they knew
where the lines were drawn, we are not going further
than God intends, we are catching up to where the Spirit
has always already been.
Our children are watching to see if we mean it. Our city
is watching to see if it’s true. The danger was not that
Philip went too far, overestimating the love of God. The
danger would have been staying on the shoreline. And
as it was, so it is today. The risk is to resist the call of
the Spirit.
There is an old spiritual the Black Church has been
singing for generations, shaped by faithful souls who
faced the worst of human power and held fast to the
promise no oppressor can withhold.
Plenty good room.
Plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.
Just choose your seat and sit down.
Many stand at the border of belonging, wondering if we
really mean it. We mean it. There is room in this place.
Now, what is there to prevent us? Amen.