LENT DAY 24: Whatever Happened to that Eunuch?

 

Day 24 Tuesday - Mar 21, 2023; Mar 12, 2024; Apr 1, 2025

See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized? -Acts 8:36

TV shows love to end with cliff hangers, because they know you’ll come back. They know you just have to see how things end. But when a story ends without ever tying up the loose ends, we find ourselves endlessly speculating or eternally bothered.

That is the case with the Ethiopian Eunuch who seeks baptism in this text. Philip meets him, preaches to him, baptizes him and then is shuttled away by the Spirit and all we hear is this man went on his way rejoicing (Acts 8:39). And as so often happens in the Bible, we know nothing more of this man. Tradition gives him a name (Simeon Bachos), potentially the “Simeon who was called Niger” of Acts 13:1. This Simeon was listed among the “prophets and teachers” in the church in Antioch. Whether these two are the same men, we do not know. Acts chapter 8 assigns no name to this eunuch. But we fill in the story or are left to wonder.

In this case, I prefer to wonder. Sometimes the church’s tradition seems well worth believing, but it would seem odd that Luke would write about the same man twice without using his name in both instances or giving us some indication he speaks of the same man. But more than that, I like to wonder in this story about what becomes of the eunuch after his baptism because we are often left to wonder about folks who we see get baptized but don’t see again.

It is nice and easy when we know how their story goes. It is convenient when we can see results of the baptism we did. But that simply does not always happen. Sometimes, a person never is raised in the faith, never clings to the promise, never goes any further. That’s our fear every time someone is baptized and disappears. Sometimes the seed takes long to grow, or the fruits of the baptism happen elsewhere. Sometimes faith is but the size of the mustard seed, seemingly insignificant to our eyes but by the grace of God mountain moving. 

The point is we don’t baptize in the knowledge of what becomes of the person who is baptized, rather we baptize for the opposite reason. We baptize because we don’t know how it will go for them, but we want it to go well. We baptize because we know God and how it is that he views his children. His Word has revealed his will for our baptism. That will always suffice. 

How it plays out, that we may be left wondering. Baptism lets us leave it with God.

Into your hands, O Merciful Father, we commend all for whom we pray. Every baptized child - especially those we see no more and no longer know what has become of them. We leave them in your baptismal embrace, and we ask you to continue to reach into their lives with your Holy Spirit. Let not the mystery of those who are baptized harden our hearts towards the sharing of your good gift. Rather, make us diligent in our own commitment to faith and our own part to help your church raise up the baptized to true faith in you. Amen.

This post is a part of my daily Lenten devotional on Baptism. You can read more about it here.