Following the Spirit in the Lives of Others

This week our summer journey through Acts takes an unexpected turn. After the wave of persecution that scatters the church in Acts 8:1-3, where Saul, to become Paul, is introduced as one in opposition to the Spirit, a stark juxtaposition for how Philip, in our next story, follows the Spirit very differently. Of course, we will learn how the Spirit creates a different trajectory for this passionate persecutor of the early church.

The story that follows is the Spirit sending Philip down a lonely desert road to meet a single person, an Ethiopian eunuch, riding home, reading the prophet Isaiah, searching for meaning he can't quite name. We're grateful to welcome Pastor Terry Kyllo to preach this weekend, continuing our summer series through Acts by guiding us through this remarkable encounter in Acts 8:26-40.

My own reading of this text has been shaped by Willie James Jennings, theology professor at Yale Divinity, and his commentary on Acts (see video below), where he names something I find myself returning to again and again. He says that life together in the Spirit involves a forming of community that is not abstract, but one that creates a revolutionary intimacy, where the Spirit joins people to one another across every boundary we'd normally maintain, and every line we'd use to keep our distance.

Notice what Philip actually does. He doesn't preach at a crowd this week. He doesn't have an agenda to deliver. He gets in a chariot with one person and follows where the Spirit is already at work in the Eunuch’s life, and long before Philip ever showed up. That's a ministry of accompaniment, the discipline of noticing what God is doing in someone else, not only in us, and having the humility to simply join it.

Come hear Pastor Terry explore it with us this weekend!

Peace, Pastor David

https://youtu.be/zu2pt9Iv8r0?si=tbQFTG4_JH4V4DOr