One in the Spirit

Acts 8:12-24

The news that came to Jerusalem just didn’t make sense. Oh, part of it was wonderful. In the aftermath of the great persecution of the Church, Christians had scattered from Judea, the area right around Jerusalem. And they preached the Word of God wherever they went. Philip, who had been ordained as a deacon, had gone to Samaria to preach to the people there. And now the apostles were hearing that the Samaritans, bitter enemies of the Jews for so many years, had received the Word of God. Even though Philip was a Jew, the Samaritans had believed Philip's preaching of the Good News of a Jewish Messiah, and many of them had been baptized in the name of Jesus.

But that was what was so strange about the news: these new Samaritan believers had not received the Holy Spirit. Now, this was beyond unusual – it seemed to contradict everything the apostles had been teaching. After all, Peter himself, during the very first sermon he had preached on Pentecost Sunday, had clearly told his listeners: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Well, the Samaritans had heard the Word, and they had believed, and they had been baptized in the name of Jesus, but they hadn’t received the gift of the Holy Spirit. It just didn’t make sense. No wonder that Peter and John took off for Samaria to check things out.

So, what was the problem in Samaria? Was some critical component missing from Philip’s preaching, something that prevented the people from truly believing in Jesus? It doesn't seem so, because verse 15 doesn’t say that Peter and John preached to the Samaritans. Instead, all they did was to pray for them and lay hands on them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. And once Peter and John made this sort of personal contact with the new believers, God poured out His gift just like Peter said He would during that first Pentecost sermon.

So, why the time lag? Why the separation between when the Samaritans believed in Christ and when they received the gift of the Spirit? Probably because this was the first time that the gospel went forth from the Jewish community to be received by a completely different group of people - the Samaritans. It was therefore crucial that the link between Jewish and Samaritan Christians be made clear right from the beginning of the Church's outreach in Samaria.

But why was that so important? Given the historic divisions between the Samaritans and the Jews, it would have been not only possible but very likely that the two groups of believers would have done what has happened all too frequently over the course of Church history – to have divided into different churches, one for Jews and one for Samaritans.

The practice of Christians sorting themselves in this way has been recommended by many of the leading church growth experts of the modern age. Donald McGavran was perhaps pointing out the obvious when he said that people prefer to join churches “whose members look, talk, and act like themselves.”

And so for years, church growth experts have said that if you want your church to grow, then you must target a “homogeneous unit,” a very specific slice of the population. You must try to gather people, for example, from only one socio-economic status. This sort of church-growth strategy has led many downtown congregations to move to the suburbs, where their buildings would be surrounded only by upscale neighborhoods.

Of course, other congregations pursue this tactic implicitly, appealing to a narrow segment of society by adopting or maintaining a particular style of worship that is only attractive to one age group or one ethnic group. In our increasingly divided culture, organs and choirs on the one hand and drums and guitars on the other hand are dividing the Body of Christ at an alarming rate.

It seems, however, that by withholding the gift of the Spirit from the Samaritans for a time, God was making the Samaritans aware of their need, not just for a vertical relationship with God, but for a horizontal relationship with the rest of the Church, even though big parts of that Church happened to be made up of people they traditionally didn't like very much.

Just so, by withholding the Spirit from the Samaritans, God was teaching the same lesson to the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. It wasn't right for the Jewish Christians only to preach to people just like them. Instead, they were to do what Jesus had told them to do back in Acts Chapter 1 – to bear witness to Christ in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth. The Church was and is commanded to offer the gospel freely to people from all over the world, to people from every tribe and tongue and nation, and we are to welcome all kinds of people to respond to the gospel and to become part of the Church of Jesus Christ.

This is, of course, in full accord with what we read in perhaps the best known verse in the entire Bible, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus died to pay for the sins of people all over the world, and people all over the world should have an opportunity to hear the gospel and trust in Jesus and receive the blessing of everlasting life.

And so, when Peter and John went to Samaria and saw the Holy Spirit fall upon the Samaritans they simply could not deny that God desired to bring even those whom the Jews so greatly despised into the Church. And when God chose to use their own hands as the means of imparting His Spirit, God thus showed the apostles in a powerful way that they should not exclude any believer from their fellowship.

In short, this passage teaches us an important lesson about the unity of the Church, which we read about in our responsive reading this morning. This unity of the Body of Christ exists across all the barriers we try to build up – barriers of race or ethnic identity, barriers of worship style, or even barriers codified by denominational labels. No, we can’t wave a magic wand and make these sorts of barriers disappear. But neither should be satisfied to stay on our side of those barriers, simply wishing our Christian brothers and sisters well while remaining effectively separated from them. While being faithful to the Word of God as we understand it, we should seek ways to reach across those barriers, sharing opportunities for fellowship and worship and mission with all those who love and trust Jesus. In our corporate and individual lives, we should try to reveal the unity of the Body of Christ that today’s passage reveals so clearly to us.

But if Peter and John’s trip to Samaria makes clear the Biblical principal of the unity of the Church, it also tells us a lot about the sovereignty of God Who sends the Holy Spirit to whom He wishes. After all, in the same chapter of the Bible where we find John 3:16 with its warm welcome of sinners to trust in Christ and be saved, we also find these words of Christ to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” And how does Jesus say that one receives that Spirit? “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Simply put, the Spirit of God cannot be compelled or controlled by anyone.

No, the apostles couldn’t do what Jesus did in John chapter 20, breathing on people and saying “Receive the Holy Spirit.” They also couldn't just lay hands on the Samaritans to grant them the Spirit. No, in order for the Spirit to be given to the Samaritans, the apostles had to pray first. Their prayers reinforced the truth that the apostles were simply the means God used to impart His Spirit. By their prayers, they made it clear that they could not control the Holy Spirit in any way.

That of course, is where Simon went wrong. Simon easily grasped the more obvious point, the horizontal connection between the apostles laying hands on the Samaritans, and the Samaritans receiving the Holy Spirit. But Simon assumed that this was a power that the apostles possessed in and of themselves. That's why he offered them money to be able to impart the Holy Spirit to whomever he wished.

Now, it is of course easy to condemn what Simon did. In fact, condemnation of him has even come into the English language, as any attempt to gain office or preference in the Church has come to be known as simony. The rejection of simony was one of the main motivations of the earliest Protestant Reformers, who argued that it was impossible for the Church to grant indulgences, selling promises of forgiveness for money.

No, I doubt that any of us would dare to think that we could buy our way into heaven. No matter how much money we may put in the plate, I doubt that any of us believes that the amount we give to the Church has any bearing on how much God loves us. No, we modern Presbyterians are in little danger of that sort of simony.

But I wonder if Simon's mistake doesn't have something more subtle to teach us. Remember, Simon thought that the apostles could control who received the Holy Spirit, and he sought to have such control for himself. And isn’t it easy for us to fall that sort of thinking, that sort of desire for control? For whenever we make plans to seek growth in our congregation, it is easy for us to imagine that it is our plans that will draw people to Christ, isn’t it?

For example, we might think that if only we adopt this program or use that Sunday School curriculum, if only we change the time of our worship service or the type of music that accompanies our songs, if only we do something or stop doing something, if only we make some changes, well, people would come to Church and come to Christ and receive the Holy Spirit. Seeking to control the Holy Spirit by planning is really not that different than seeking to control Him by purchase - the only difference is the price.

And so there are two errors this passage teaches us to avoid. On the one hand, we must not be satisfied for barriers to remain between us and our fellow Christians. Instead, we must be energetic about breaking down whatever cultural barriers stand between people and the gospel. We must be bold and creative in our attempts to reach the unreached, to welcome the lost. But at the same time we must never fall into the trap of believing that just because we remove these barriers or just because we engage in outreach programs, the Holy Spirit has to be given to those to whom we minister. All we do must constantly be bathed in prayer, and thus always recognize our dependence on the Holy Spirit to move where He wills.

It doesn’t seem that Simon ever realized this second point, the need for prayer and dependence on God. Oh, Peter confronted him with his sin, and Peter urged him to repent and to pray for forgiveness. But Simon does none of those things. Instead of praying himself, he asks Peter to pray for him. And instead of desiring to be forgiven, Simon simply asks to escape the punishment that Peter said would come upon him. In short, it doesn’t seem that Simon ever gave up his desire to control God the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t seem to have had any interest in truly submitting to the sovereignty of God.

Do we? Are we willing to give up control of our lives and of our congregation to the God Who is really in control of everything anyway? Are we willing to put aside our desires and our preferences so that God’s will might be done in us and through us? Are we willing to step out of our comfort zone so that others might come to know the salvation of Jesus Christ?