by Mark Stenberg
New Testament Reading: Acts 8:4-17
For Sunday, January 13, 2013: Year C—Baptism of our Lord
What were the good folks on the Revised Common Lectionary committee thinking? What a bizarre little text to match with the Baptism of our Lord Sunday!
For those of us in mainline Christendom this is a text that outright defies our most central notions of Word and Sacrament, especially when it comes to our understanding of baptism.
Holy Spirit as Dynamic Communism
Have you actually read The Book of Acts lately?
The Holy Spirit is all over the place, animating, pouring forth, reviving. The Holy Spirit brings these tongues of fire, the rush of a violent wind, speaking in other languages. The same Spirit convinces the people to "sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need." Karl Marx, eat your heart out!
Today's Episode
Here's this little story in a nutshell. The passage comes at a point in the book when the Gentile expansion is going into full swing. The Samaritans were considered no good, scum-sucking half-breeds who had gone ahead and tainted their blood by inter-marrying with the infidels.
But suddenly, the apostles at Jerusalem "heard that Samaria accepted the word of God." The good and proper Jerusalem Jesus-followers are astounded. And so they dispatch Peter and John from Jerusalem, to check things out.
Send in the Closers
The Samaritans "accepted the word of God." Sounds like they are in. Full on believers. In the win column. In and not out. But Peter and John are dispatched from Jerusalem to take them to the next level. Here's how it goes:
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
What? It is possible to have "accepted the word of God" but to not have yet received the Holy Spirit? Apparently the Samaritans only had a handshake deal with the word of God. But Peter and John are sent in to close the deal by laying their hands on them and dispensing the Holy Spirit.
The Hardest Question
Wow. It's really hard to come away from The Book of Acts and not see the case for the Holy Spirit as a second step, a deeper truth, a graduate school for believers.
So the hardest question is an obvious and simple one: If throughout the Book of Acts "receiving the Holy Spirit" is most certainly a different, second move from mere faith or believing or even baptism, has the Charismatic/Pentecostal movement discovered the true meaning of the Christian faith?
Mark Stenberg is a trained academic theologian who got side-tracked planting churches. He started House of Mercy House of Mercy, with co-pastors Debbie Blue and Russell Rathbun in 1996 and ten years later he left that call to launch Mercy Seat Lutheran Church along with his current colleague, Kae Evensen. Mark holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University where he studied philosophy with the likes of Jürgen Habermas. He is also an adjunct professor at Luther Seminary, teaching in homiletics and in the D.Min. program. Mark lost his spouse to cancer in March of 2007 but is profoundly grateful for every moment he gets to spend with his amazing children, Angela and Mateo.
