As we remember today Jesus’s Baptism, the lectionary offers us as a New Testament reading a short extract taken from the Book of Acts, Chapter 8, and it’s about the baptism of the Samaritans. A few verses before our passage (v.5), we are told that Philip had started “proclaiming the Messiah” in Samaria, he has also performed some exorcisms and acts of healing (v6-7), and we can also gather from our passage today that many people have been baptized.
And yet, something is missing. Something is missing. Our passage tells us that, after the Apostles hear that people in Samaria have accepted the word of God, Peter and John come down to meet the converts, pray for them, lay their hands on them, asking that they would receive the Holy Spirit – because, as the passage mentions- until then the converts “had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”.
It sounds a bit strange, does not it, to think that in a sense baptism isn’t enough, or that the name of the Lord Jesus isn’t enough. It’s a bit strange to think that something is missing. And yet, let’s remember that the author of the Book of Acts is also the author of Luke’s Gospel and we hear clearly in the Gospel today that baptism is about water and fire, purification of sins and gift of the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit isn’t present, then something essential is missing.
I am stressing that today because I wonder how often it is our experience as well, as it was for the people in Samaria, that something is missing. We have heard about Jesus, we have been taught, we are aware of having been forgiven at our baptism and we know we have been received in the Christian family, we may have witnessed prayers answered, small or bigger miracles or healing, and yet there is an emptiness in our lives as Christians, there is an emptiness in our lives of faith. And it can happen not only for new converts, as we hear today in our passage of Acts, it may also happen after years or even a life long serving in the church: Something is missing.
So what is it that is missing? The book of Acts does not keep us in suspense for long, so I won’t do that either. The passage is very clear: What is missing is the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist himself, the one who “invented baptism” if you will, was already very clear: he could only offer a baptism of water, of repentance, his baptism will not be complete until the people receive a baptism of fire, a baptism in the Holy Spirit. Baptism is water and fire, purification and gift of the Spirit. And so the idea is that for some Christians, like the Samaritans in the first century but also maybe people like ourselves in the 21st, we have heard about Jesus, we have accepted his name, we have received the sacrament, we have been forgiven and we even have witnessed God’s actions in the life of the church, and yet something is missing because we haven’t received the gift of the Holy Spirit or maybe we need to receive it anew or maybe we just need to be more aware of the Holy Spirit so our baptism, our act of being Christian, or rather our life as Christians, can be led to completion.
Now the question for us is what does it mean to receive the Holy Spirit, and who is the Holy Spirit anyway? This is of course a huge question for a 15 minutes sermon, the church has been debating about that since the beginning and will probably continue to do so as long as there is a church! So for today, I would like just to point to the role of the Holy Spirit as presented in the Book of Acts, and we will have opportunities to speak again about the Holy Spirit in the coming weeks since our New Testament readings will focus on the first Letter to the Corinthians until the end of the month, a letter dedicated to explore the meaning of what it is to be “people of the Spirit”. But let’s stick for now to the Book of Acts.
What we notice immediately in the Book of Acts, and even before that in Luke’s Gospel, is that the Spirit is power and, even more remarkable, the Spirit empowers those who receive it:
In Luke 24:49 (the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel), Jesus says: “I am sending on you the gift promised by my Father, wait here in the city until you are armed with power from above”. And then in the very beginning of the Book of Acts, in Acts 1:8, it is stated again that Jesus left this promise: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you”.
The Spirit is power and the Spirit empowers those who receive it. And you know, when I read that, I think it makes a lot of sense that we feel something is missing when we don’t have the Holy Spirit. We are good Christians, aren’t we? We fulfill our obligations, we come to church and even more we serve the church, we are attentive to the needs of our neighbors, we are generous in giving, we make time for prayer and maybe even time to read the Bible, and yet we know inside of us that something is missing: we lack energy, we lack power – and I am wondering if we don’t lack this energy and this power just because we don’t know that it is what the Spirit is supposed to give us and that we should pray continuously – as did the Apostles – to receive this power in our communities.
What is the obstacle? Maybe the main obstacle is that we don’t believe that power is a good thing – and it wouldn’t be very surprising to believe that when we observe how power is used in our societies. Power is so often misused that we often automatically identify power with abuse of power, force or even violence – and as Christians we should rightly be afraid of using power in this way – but when Luke describes this power that is “sent from above” he is explicitly talking about a different kind of power than the earthly power! This power is strength, energy, moreover, the Spirit is the presence of Christ in the Apostles, when they receive the Spirit, the Apostles continue the work of Christ and so it is for us.
To understand this, I invite you to have a closer look at Acts Chapter 8, the Chapter we have just read from. The passage we have just heard is actually “sandwiched” in between a strange story: A man named Simon has observed the deeds of the Apostles and, being very impressed by their power, he offers them money so he, also, can receive the Holy Spirit. As you can imagine, he is not well received by Peter whose quick temper we know from the stories of the Gospel! But as we dive in the story, we understand the confusion: Simon wants a power that would bring him prestige, a political power that would enable him to become a leader for his own personal benefit. On the other way around, the Holy Spirit gives power to the Apostles so they can make decisions for the well being of the community. Through the Book of Acts, we understand that the power from the Holy Spirit is always given to gather people and to reveal Christ, indeed to live together according to the Spirit of Christ.
In the Book of Acts, we discover that the Spirit is not a power of coercion, quite the opposite, it is the power to serve God and neighbors by fulfilling our mission. Baptism is about being received and accepted but it is also about being empowered and sent. You know I hear so often that we want to feel received and accepted by God (and by our Christian communities!) and this is certainly important, but as Christians we also need to do something meaningful by giving out the best of ourselves, we cannot be just self centered people or communities looking to fulfill our own (spiritual) needs. And that’s exactly what the Spirit leads us to do: The Spirit pushes us to cross boundaries, not just to receive the Gospel but to live out the Gospel, to continue the mission of Christ in our own circumstances, according to our own abilities. And we’ll learn more about that in the coming weeks as we will be reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, a letter, as I mentioned earlier, that certainly invites all church members to become people of the Spirit.