“What Hinders Me?”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Reading: Acts 8:26-40
Happy Canada Day everyone!
A little bit early, I know, but it's coming soon. It's gonna be exciting, isn't it? I love Canada Day. Lots of things to love about Canada Day: Barbecues. A day off. It's also one of the few days in the year where you can fish without a license. Personally, that's why I love it.
Canada Day is also a day where we get to ask lots of interesting questions and think about how great this country is. It is great and amazing and many ways. One of the questions we've probably found ourselves asking a bit more lately is something like, “What is Canada?” Especially with the tensions we've had with neighbours. This increasing sense of national identity, figuring out who we are when we're tested by others, we find ourselves asking, what does it mean to be Canadian? Is Canada just a piece of geography? All that stuff between Niagara Falls and the Arctic? Or is it more than that? Is it a legal entity, a body that made treaties and agreements with different indigenous peoples in order to figure out who would have what over a long period of time, some of which is still disputed and some which is unceded? Or is it more than that?
Does it have a heritage? Some people, when they think about what Canada is and what a Canadian is, might call to a founding stock. The English and the French settlers that came and negotiated with the indigenous that were here. But then, can I ever be Canadian? But then there are legal processes, aren't there? You can become a permanent resident; you can become a citizen. And then when you get that badge, when you've passed the test and you're a citizen, then you're Canadian, right?
Or are you? Because Canada's more than all of those things, isn't it? Canada is maple syrup and politeness. It's double-doubles and toonies. It's shoveling your neighbour's driveway because you noticed they were a bit tired and they didn't get to it in time. It's saying sorry when someone else bumps into you.
So how long does it take? Is it just something you get when they hand you a piece of paper or is there a process? Is it years? Decades? Generations? What makes us, us?
A good question to ask, and I'm not planning on answering it today, but if you're not thinking about those questions yourself, you're gonna find it really hard to have conversations with people that are passionate about these issues, that feel threatened by the increasingly changing demographics of our nation. If you want to figure out who you want to be, you’ve got to figure out who you are, and maybe who you want to be open to as well.
But all these questions, questions of identity and belonging are central to the story we just read. They're all reasons why I love it so much. Over the summer, I and some excellent guest speakers will come and we'll preach from our favourite Bible stories. I have to say out of all of them that I'm gonna be preaching this summer, this is my absolute favourite story. It's not even one that everyone recognizes. It deals with an apostle that we don't even hear that much about, Philip. Usually when there's a cool story in the Bible from an apostle, it's Peter, James, or John. But this is Philip and his encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch. So why does it get to me so much? At first glance, this is just a story of some black guy with interesting nether regions encountering the gospel for the first time. But at a closer look, we'll find there's much more going on here in this identity and this relationship between the Jews and the Ethiopians than first meets the eye. And it's why I cannot get this story out of my head.
It begins with the apostle Philip leaving this great revival that's happening in Samaria. They've preached to tons of people. He's been working miracles, helping the dead to walk, casting demons out of people, proclaiming the gospel. Then God interrupts him and an angel tells him to get up from where he is in Samaria and go out to the desert, which is where most of us would have stopped listening to God, right? I'm having fun here. Leave me alone. Philip gets up and he goes out into the desert and when he gets there, he sees this chariot on its way to Gaza. Then he hears God speak again. Go and overtake this chariot. On foot. So now he's darting across the desert (the guy must be sweating profusely) to chase this chariot down, not even knowing what he's supposed to do when he gets there. And when he arrives at this chariot, he meets this man who's a racial minority and a sexual minority from a different country: an Ethiopian eunuch.
Now to us, we might think this is just a man going about his business. There's nothing special, but there are lots of little details in this story that tell us what's really going on. The first one is that he's on his way back from the temple. This guy from Ethiopia wasn't just a tourist. He was a Jew. He was a believer in the God of Israel, and he had gone somewhere to worship his God. See, what many of us don't know is that Ethiopia has a long history of connection to God's people going back centuries before Christ. There are people in Ethiopia today known as Beta Israel, who look far more like me than they do most of you, but are Jewish and genetically so. They trace their lineage all the way back to King Solomon, who was once visited by the queen of Sheba, who brought gifts and all sorts of things to the palace.
Legend has it that those two had a romantic relationship and bore a son, Menelik I, the first of the Solomonic dynasty. A lineage of kings that followed Menelik ran all the way down to probably someone you might've heard of: Haile Selassie. If you ever listened to some Bob Marley, you might've heard that name a few times. But because of that, there were people living in the mountains in Ethiopia who have believed in the God of Israel for millennia now. In fact, there's a legend in Ethiopia that somewhere among these people is hidden the Ark of the Covenant. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, it gets really cool.
These people of Israel that were detached from the mainland were following Torah. They were making sacrifices, worshipping their God year after year after year. Yet to this day, many in Beta Israel aren't fully integrated into the people of Israel. Thousands of them were allowed to come back when they were facing persecution in their own country from waves of Islam. The Christians persecuted them as well. But even as they exist in the state of Israel today, many of them aren't considered properly Jewish by some of their neighbours.
So here he is going to worship God in the temple, and he's already got one issue. He's Ethiopian. He doesn't look as Jewish as everyone else at the temple. But then when he gets there, he's got another problem because to be a eunuch at this time was a serious issue if you wanted to worship. And not just because of discrimination, not just because of the way people thought, but actually because of what was written in the law that was given to Israel. You see, in the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 23, verse one, it says this, “He who is emasculated by crushing or mutilation shall not enter the assembly of the Lord.” The law that was given to them was that if you, didn't maintain all of your virile organs, you were not even to enter the assembly.
So, he came to worship at the temple that day. He came to worship the God he'd probably known all his life, that he'd been reading about, that he couldn't wait to make his sacrifices to. And the likelihood is that when he got to the temple, when they looked at him and saw that he didn't have all the secondary male characteristics, saw a eunuch, they said, you're not allowed in here. There he was standing maybe at the gate of the temple. He could probably smell the incense. He probably brought a whole bunch of sacrifices with him to offer and found out that because of something he couldn't control, something that happened when he was too young to make a decision, decisions were now being made for him. He's not allowed to worship the God he'd been trying to worship his whole life.
Now he's on his way back home on a chariot, to the place where he's welcome, to the place where he's loved. I wonder how many people feel that way today in the church or in other communities. That they’d just love to be able to access the God that we worship. That they believe just the same way that we do, but for some reason they feel like they can't get as close to Him as we are. Maybe it's because of where they're from. Maybe it's because it's of what they carry between their legs. Maybe it's because of something that happened to them when they were young. Maybe it's because of who they love. And just like the man in this story, they're in chariots going back to places where they feel loved, going back to places where they feel welcome, away from the place of worship.
This story hit me to the point that when I first started ministry in Canada, I had a home church in Hamilton, called the Safe House Christian Fellowship. The tagline of that ministry was “chasing chariots for the kingdom of God” because here was my idea, everyone's got a chariot, right? Everyone's got something that they can do other than being in a place of worship.
We, here, are often putting on events hoping that one day they're gonna come inside and find God here. But maybe the call in 2026 isn't to expect everyone to come and find God in the place of worship. Maybe it's to chase them down where they are because they're in chariots today; chariots that might not have four wheels and horses in front of them. It's that dive bar three blocks away from your house that you'll never go to because it's got a bad reputation. It's the staff room at work. It's that online forum where they're able to be themselves and someone will talk to them and make them feel human. It's the interactions they have with people every single day. And the angel says to the people of God, go and overtake the chariot. Run. Find them where they are. Find what it is that's taking them away from God and from God's people and compel them to come.
So, Philip runs, sweating profusely. He catches up to this chariot. He sees this guy reading. And what is he reading? Of all books of the Bible, this Ethiopian eunuch is reading the book of Isaiah. Again, we might look at that and think, it's a book of the Bible, he's just reading, he likes to do some reading. But the amazing thing about Isaiah is that Isaiah prophesied this very moment. In chapter 56, it says this:
Keep justice and do righteousness for my salvation is about to come and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this and the son of man who lays hold on it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and keeps his hand from doing any evil.
Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak saying, ‘the Lord has utterly separated me from his people.’ Nor let the eunuch say, ‘here I am, a dry tree.’ For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and holds fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
See, a big deal for anyone trying to live amongst the people of Israel was that God shows his blessings by giving you children, offspring, so that you can declare your generation and leave a legacy. Yet God promises these eunuchs, those who weren't able to do that in the natural way, he says to them, “I will give you a place in my house better than that of sons and daughters.” That no matter what makes you feel like you're cut off from God's people, no matter what makes you feel like you're not where you're supposed to be in your life, God has a plan and a destiny for you. And if you would just keep his word and abide by his covenant, if you would just believe, he has something greater for you than you could ever imagine.
He's sitting in a chariot, reading these words. Maybe that's why he went to the temple in the first place. Maybe he thought that when he got there, they'd be living in the truth of this prophecy. But we know what he was reading on his way back. He's reading something that makes him recognize himself. He reads about a man that was oppressed and afflicted but opens not his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter… yet he opened not his mouth; who didn't receive justice, who couldn't declare his generation.
As he sat there next to Philip the apostle, he had a question. Was he talking about himself or about someone else? Because as I look at this text right now, it feels like Isaiah might be writing about me. And I wonder if God sees me where I am with all that I've been through. I wonder if God could possibly have a plan for my life. Philip preaches the gospel to this man and something absolutely amazing happens. The chariot stops. The thing that was taking this person who desired God away from God's house stopped in its tracks and he turned and pointed to the water and asked the question I think the whole world has been screaming at the church for years. He says, “what hinders me?”
That's a strange question, friends, because elsewhere in the Bible, when people are seeking God, they ask more positive questions. They say, “what must I do to be saved?” They say, “how can I receive salvation?” “What does it mean for me to be perfect, for me to be part of the people of God?” Well, that's not the way this man asks. He's been burned already. He knows what it's like to have the door slammed in his face. So, he asks a question and probably braces himself, right? “What hinders me?” He's waiting for the apostle to tell him, “dude, your skin's too dark.” He's waiting for the apostle to tell him, “man, you're a eunuch. You can't be one of the people of God.” He's waiting for the apostle to tell him there's some reason that he can't access the God he loves so much and who he's read loves him with an everlasting love. But Philip does this amazingly. He doesn't do what many of us are tempted to do and put extra barriers in the Ethiopian's way, no. But he also doesn't do what some of us are tempted to do and remove all the boundaries and say it doesn't matter; everyone can be part of the church. He chooses appropriate boundaries. The one and only boundary that really matters. He says, “if you believe with all your heart, you may.”
What did we learn from Romans? That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you shall be saved. No matter who you are, no matter what has happened to you, no matter what you've done, no matter where you come from. And the question we need to answer over and over again is what hinders me? The only proper response is belief.
They got down and the man was baptized. “I baptize you in the name of the Father.” And suddenly he realized that he's a child of God who loves him with an everlasting love. “I baptize you in the name of the Son.” And he's grafted into the people of Israel several generations into the future. “I baptize you in the name of the Holy Spirit.” And the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs with God and joint heirs with Christ. And when he got up out of that water, he received a promise that would never fade away. Because Galatians 3:28 tells us that in Christ Jesus, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for all are one in Christ.”
The Ethiopian eunuch in this story has no name. But if you go to Ethiopia now, they'll tell you his name was Simon Bacchus and he went back to Ethiopia with the gospel that he was given and birthed one of the oldest established churches on this entire planet: the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, because one man obeyed God's word and outran a chariot, and because one man was able and willing to share the gospel with someone who felt like he didn't belong. The gospel reached Africa before there was ever a Roman Catholic Church, before there was ever a Church of England, and certainly before there was a United Church of Canada. The gospel was brought to an entire people. As one man said, only believe.
So, what's the message for us today? The church in 2026 is being called to chase down chariots, to find people where they are and shamelessly and boldly proclaim the gospel to them, letting them know that they are welcome wherever they've been and whatever they've gone through. But maybe that's not who you are today. Maybe you're one of the people who felt ostracized, unwelcome, like you can't really join the family of God. Maybe you're sitting there and you're watching on YouTube because you scrolled here hoping you would find something to give you some hope today.
You see, Canada's going to spend years trying to figure out who it is and where our boundaries are, but there's only one boundary for the church, and that's that we believe. So, if you're hearing this message and you are a man without a country, a woman without a family, or a person without a place to call home, I want you to hear the word of the Lord today. That if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, there is a place for you within God's house forevermore, whoever you are. And if you would, a place right here at TEMC, a place for life.