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| Essential 100 -- No more barriers | | Date Created: Apr 21, 2005, 07:07 AM |
74 — Thursday April 21 — Acts 8:26-40
When the eunuch asked, "Look, water! Is there any reason why I can't be baptized?" he was asking a very real question. Before he met Philip, he had been very interested in Judaism. But he could not have become a convert to Judaism. Levitical law stipulated that someone his physical condition could not.
Something prevented him from fully belonging to Judaism; does anything prevent him from fully belonging to Christ? For the eunuch it was a real question; but Luke includes it precisely because the answer was no longer in question. Nothing prevents you from coming to Christ, unless you prevent yourself. Part of Luke's message -- and part of ours -- is that now there are no external barriers to becoming full participants in God's people.
I wonder if it is the eunuch's very real question (and Luke's no-longer-a-question) that was the starting point for similar questions preserved in early church liturgies -- one place you'll hear it most today is in wedding services: "If anyone knows any reason preventing these two from being united in Christian marriage, you must declare it now." If these liturgical formulae are preserving the eunuch's question, the church might have included it, ironically, not as a real question, but celebrating the answer that will have been given to the eunuch, the answer that is virtually always (except in films) given to the wedding question. Hallelujah, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God -- nothing but ourselves, that is. |
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