The Ethiopian eunuch revisited

A curb, door and stairs are all barriers. The Americans with Disabilities Act sought to make us barrier free, but people complained about the ADA regulations. The real barriers are in hearts and minds.

The walls

A man came to worship, but he could not go all the way into the Temple because of his disability. On his way home he was reading about someone else rejected and treated unjustly. This man also had no children. The man asked a stranger if he knew this person who knew his pain. Yes, the stranger knew Jesus.

When the first man heard about Jesus, he wanted to join his community. Could he? He was disabled, a foreigner, one not allowed in the sanctuary. Would someone or something prevent him from joining? No. Philip baptized the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8).

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:13-14).

The list

A drowning man called out for help. One walking past heard him and asked if he was a Christian. Yes, he was. Was he a Baptist? He was. “Bible-believing, born-again, Spirit-filled?” “Yes,” so the second man helped him out of the river. In gratitude, the first man hugged him. “Are you gay?” “Yes.” He pushed him back in. The longer the list, the greater the barriers.

Robert Frost wrote “good fences make good neighbors” in his poem “Mending Wall,” to mock the phrase. Frost wondered why he and his neighbor had to keep rebuilding the wall. Of what was his neighbor afraid? That his apple trees would attack the neighbor’s pines? Frost begins the poem and later repeats “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” Nature keeps knocking it down, as does God.

The coming Kingdom

Scripture describes the mission of the church as opening doors, not building walls. The Philadelphian church is an open-door church. “See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut” (Rev. 3:8).

Let us look for and pray for open doors, “And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ” (Col. 4:2, cf. Acts 14:27, 1 Cor. 16:9, 2 Cor. 2:12). Let the church foreshadow the coming Kingdom where “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it” (Rev. 21:24-26).

We are all disabled and need open doors.

“Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in” (Psalm 24:7).