“Co-Workers Together for God”

Acts 8:26-39, World Communion Sunday

Pastor Deb Troester, STHPC, October 6, 2024

O Lord, our Sovereign,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;

 what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

With this magnificent poetry, Psalm 8 conveys the awe we feel when looking at nature, at all God has created. We sense how small we are in comparison with the vastness of the heavens and the breathtaking beauty of this blue and green globe we live on, lost in the immensity of space.

We are not the only ones to be overwhelmed by nature’s splendor. I once read of an indigenous leader who, when walking through the jungle, came upon a flower of astonishing beauty. As he contemplated the flower he thought, “Someone must have made this flower. It is so amazingly intricate and colorful. A human being could not have created a flower like this. There must be a god who made this flower.”

And he began to think, “I would like to know more about this God who created the flower, and maybe even the entire forest.” He began to wonder how he could find out about this creator God.

A few years later some people came to his village saying that they brought a message from God. It was found in a book called the Bible, and they wanted to translate the book into the language spoken in that village, so the people could learn for themselves about the God who created the world. The man spoke up, “This is just what I have been wanting to know! Who is the God who made the flowers and trees, even us human beings? If this book can tell me about this God, I want to hear what it has to say.” Since he was a respected leader, many others in the village joined him in asking to find out more about the Creator God, and they invited the people to stay and teach them.

These visitors were sent by Wycliffe Bible translators – some of you have heard of them. Because their leader welcomed them, the whole village welcomed them. They were receptive to what the strangers taught them and later many of them became followers of Jesus Christ.

God had prepared their hearts so that when someone finally brought them the Gospel, they were eager to hear it. God was already there, and had been all along. The Bible translators didn’t bring God with them. They just helped the people understand God in a new way.

God is present everywhere. There is no where we can go where God is not. As the Apostle Paul wrote: “In Him we live and move and have our being.” The Psalmist asks, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

The famous hymnist, Isaac Watts, wrote:

all that borrows life from thee
is ever in thy care,
and everywhere that we can be,
thou, God, art present there.

On World Communion Sunday, we celebrate that God is present everywhere in the world, and, indeed, everywhere in the universe.

In our reading from Acts this morning, we find that God was even present on a dusty, deserted wilderness road, leading south out of Jerusalem, toward Gaza, places still in the news today, sadly.

In last week’s sermon, we met Philip, one of the first seven deacons ordained in the Bible. A Greek-speaking Jew, Philip was respected in the early Christian community of Jerusalem, and, like the other deacons, he was a man full of the Holy Spirit. But since we saw him last, something had happened: the martyrdom of Stephen, another deacon, who went out to preach and ran afoul of the religious authorities, who had forbidden preaching in Jesus’ name. Stephen was stoned to death, the victim of mob violence. After that, we read, “a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.” Christians were now a persecuted minority, a status that would continue for nearly three centuries, until Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire in 313. Yet this first persecution, although terrible, was a catalyst in spreading the Good News: Acts 8:4 tells us: “Now those who were scattered went from place to place proclaiming the word. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them.” When bad things happen, such as the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution of the church,

God is still able to use these events for good. The church would have been happier if Stephen had not been stoned, and they all could have gone on living peacefully, without persecution. But God used these events so that many more people could hear the Good News of Jesus Christ. The church had grown comfortable in Jerusalem, but now God was pushing the believers out of the nest, into the world.

As they left Jerusalem, they discovered that God was already at work in the places where they went. We see this truth clearly in the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. It is not by accident that they met upon the road that day. As we read, Philip had gone to Samaria, the region north of Jerusalem, to preach the gospel. Now an angel points him in the direction of Gaza, south of Jerusalem, where he encounters the Ethiopian, and new era in the development of the early church begins: the spread of Christianity to another continent, Africa, for this man is the first African convert that we know of.

The Ethiopian eunuch was an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful person, in charge of the royal treasury.

He traveled all the way to Jerusalem in a chariot, in a time when most people traveled on foot. He was most certainly accompanied by servants. He was reading a scroll, an expensive item in a day when books were painstakingly copied out by hand. We know he was a learned person because the scroll was written in either Greek or Hebrew – a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures called the Septuagint had been written around 250 B.C. Neither Greek nor Hebrew would have been his native language.

But how did he find out about the one true God? How did he end up going to Jerusalem to worship? And how did he get a copy of the scroll of Isaiah? God was already at work in this man’s life long before Philip ever came on the scene.

Later in Acts 17 we see that the apostle Paul also recognizes this truth. As he is preaching in Athens, he says, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” Paul recognized that God had already been at work in Athens, prompting someone to build an altar to an unknown god. Paul proclaims that he has come to make known the truth about this hitherto unknown God: “the God who made the world and everything in it.”

Paul knew that we don’t take God with us; God is already there. We don’t actually begin any new work for God – whether planting a church, or building a school or maternity clinic; God is the author of everything. But we have the privilege of participating in the work of God’s grace. We have our part to play, and then we move on. And God continues the work with other people, in other places. Indeed, the ancient Christian historian, Eusebius, writes that the Ethiopian eunuch returned to his home and started the first African church.

In fact, the church in Ethiopia traces its roots back to this story in Acts.

Some theologians call this principle “prevenient grace” – the grace of God at work in people’s lives before they are even aware that God exists. Some call it “the random hand of grace,” but it is anything but random. We may not see a pattern, yet God has been working out God’s purposes in our lives and in the world all along.  

If we think about our church, we are grateful for those who planted Santa Teresa Hills in this community, some of whom are still with us today. When we joined this congregation, we picked up where others had left off. After we are gone, others will take up God’s work. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth…For we are God’s coworkers, working together.” Today more than ever we need to see each other as coworkers, working together for God’s kingdom. Here in California, in Cameroon, all over the world. We are all co-workers, working together for and with God. This World Communion Sunday, let’s celebrate that we are not alone – God is with us, and throughout the earth we will find those who are our co-workers, brothers and sisters in Christ. God is always working, everywhere, in every nation and people, in every individual. If we are open to the nudging of the Holy Spirit in our heart, sometimes, like Philip, we are invited to get into the chariot and come along for the ride. Amen.

©Deborah Troester 2024