Priceless

Acts 8:14-17

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.

This brief passage is deceptively complicated. It is sandwiched in between the story of Simon—not Simon Peter the apostle, but Simon, a magician. Simon is performing magic tricks for the people of Samaria, mentioned in this passage; and apparently he was pretty good at his job, because the Samaritans were very impressed— so impressed that, in verse 10, the people are quoted as saying of Simon “This man is the power of God that is called Great.” But then Philip the Evangelist comes into the picture and he starts impressing the people of Samaria with signs and miracles—but his aren’t just for show, and they’re not for money. They’re for the good of the people, and they’re in the name of Jesus. It doesn’t specify what these signs are, but what Philip was doing was convincing enough to inspire a bunch of Samaritans to be baptized, including Simon the magician himself. It’s written in verse 13 that after this baptism, he started following Philip and this new group of Christians around. Then, we have our passage for today that Elise just read for us—in which a couple of the apostles travel to meet Philip and kind of… finish the job, I guess is the implication? They lay hands upon these new converts, and it’s at this point that they receive the Holy Spirit, which they didn’t during baptism for whatever reason. And then, we go back to the magician, and this is where the real drama happens. Whatever happened during that giving of the Holy Spirit, impressed Simon even more and so he offers Peter silver in exchange for this power. Now let me tell you, Peter does not hold back: “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!” He then orders Simon to repent, and Simon does so, and presumably, continues to follow this group around and remains a converted Jesus follower.

Now why the lectionary leaves Simon the magician out is beyond me. Not only is it more entertaining and interesting, but without this necessary context, we lose the deeper meaning behind the baptism of the Samaritans and the Holy Spirit. We lose the fact that Simon is presented as the foil to Philip the Evangelist, as someone doing tricks, magic, trying to impress people for all the wrong reasons, while Philip is doing remarkable things in the name of Christ, and for the betterment of all people.

In the church calendar, the first Sunday after Epiphany is traditionally the Sunday in which we read and celebrate the story of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the wilderness. It’s about the fact that Jesus deigned to come down to our level and take part in this sacrament of love and of commitment that he absolutely didn’t need to do, as the divine child of God he truly was. Throughout my few years here, I’ve preached on each one of the versions of that baptism, so I wanted to pick a different baptism passage this year. Despite its brevity, I was drawn to this passage—primarily the notion that though this group of eager new converts had been baptized, they had not received the Holy Spirit yet. Now, as you may have been able to tell throughout my sermons here, I really love the humanity of Jesus—I even talked about this in my Christmas Eve mini-sermon—I love that his humanity means he’s truly in solidarity with us and understands our pain and our joys in a way no other human or deity could.

But since being ordained, since being given the authority to perform the sacraments, I’ve given more thought to what they mean, what we can learn and take from them. As Christianity became a state religion during the reign of Constantine, I think as we’ve seen schisms from the Protestant Reformation, all the way through today, for example, with the Methodist Church and the tragic split they’ve had surrounding LGBTQ rights; there are just so many variations and interpretations when it comes to the sacraments. In many ways, I believe they’ve been cheapened by some belief systems, made into shallow, individualistic rituals; or the universality of the Love of Jesus that should always be present in the sacraments is stripped away, and made into an exclusive ritual only some are allowed to take part in. The sacrament of Communion, for example, was, and still is in some belief systems, something that only those who have essentially, pledged loyalty, time, and money to the church could take part in. But in the earliest days of Christianity, all who worshipped together would take part in it—the entire worship service was small, intimate, around a meal in which every participant would partake. And in our church, in our denomination, we still try to go by those principles of inclusivity and radical hospitality. The Communion table, whether it is here in  the sanctuary on the first Sunday of every month, or whether it is downstairs around a meal soup and bread as it will be this Wednesday evening, everyone is invited.

Baptism, on the other hand, has had some different kinds of evolutions since these very earliest days of Christianity written about in Acts. And the debates around Baptism have been no less controversial and no less confounding. While each of the accounts vary, the baptism is one of the only events that happens in each of the four gospels. And in each account, the Holy Spirit descends and Jesus is announced, once and for all as God’s son, with whom God is well pleased. So what drew me to our passage today was this initial absence of the Holy Spirit. Because when I think of taking part in or committing to these sacraments, for me, personally, it has everything to do with feeling the Spirit move in and through me; it has everything to do with the Spirit guiding those taking part in, or being gifted any of these sacraments. And so I found myself wondering, before any of the missing context of the story of Simon the magician, what wasn’t clicking that the Samaritans needed Peter and John to travel to them to help them to receive the Spirit.

I think there’s a reason that this is sandwiched in between the story of this misguided magician. I think he’s sort of a microcosm, or an example (though kind of an extreme one), of those who have only shallow conceptions of the sacraments, so we can learn what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. Simon can only think in terms of what he knows. He knows magic, and he knows money. He knows how to get by in an unjust world, and he does it by entertaining people, and essentially tricking them. And even though he’s drawn to the words and actions of the Apostles, he’s not all there yet. In fact, he’s pretty far from it. He thinks he can buy his way into the power of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit is a gift, and it’s a gift one receives in community. Even if we all feel it in different ways, it is still the same Spirit gifted to each of us.

My favorite theologian of recent, Jurgen Moltmann saw the rise of this blasphemously individualistic spin on Christianity rising in the evangelical movement back in the 60’s. He wrote in his Introduction to Christian Theology, “‘I accept Jesus Christ as my savior’ diminishes the gospel into an introverted and self-centered individualism.” And to add to this sentiment, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, decades before, wrote of infant baptism even more strongly that it “…can only happen in a living Christian community. To baptize infants without a Church is not only an abuse of the sacrament, it betokens a disgusting frivolity in dealing the souls of children themselves. For baptism can never be repeated.” The sacrament of Communion is one that must be open to all who desire it. But the sacrament of baptism, while open to all, is also is one that must be communal. It is one that, whether it be a consenting adult or an infant brought by her loving parents, must involve a living Christian community, pledging to support to the one being baptized.

So I have to wonder, if Simon is sort of an extreme stand-in for the Samaritans misunderstanding. They were baptized in community by Philip the Evangelist, but hadn’t yet understood the gift of the Spirit. Remember, this was a brand new faith movement. There were going to be growing pains and misunderstandings; so it seems Philip had to call for reinforcements because there was something just not clicking with the Samaritans until they were gifted the Spirit—because that’s what the Spirit is. It’s an unconditional gift. We are guided and supported by it by way of baptism, we can feel it moving in and through us during the sacrament of Communion. These sacraments are both open to all, but they are only truly meaningful when they happen within the context of Community.

We live in a world in which some sects and denominations refuse Communion to those who would accept it, while taking part in private baptisms away from the church, for the benefit of an individual soul, rather than growing a community in Christ. And we live in a society that mirrors these sentiments—one that bars people from things that should be rights—healthcare, education, food, shelter—and yet promotes this feeling of exclusivity by making what were once luxury products accessible to most— like huge TVs, smart phones; even the world of fast fashion, allowing us to buy cheaply and unethically made clothing so we can keep up with trends pushed on us by celebrity culture.

In these early days of Christianity, everyone took part in Communion, around a meal, a table together. And Baptism was a once-in-a-lifetime sacrament, in which a living community in Christ pledges its support to the one being baptized. Somehow, as society changed, so did these sacraments. They got flipped. And somehow in our modern world, things all people should have rights to are scarce; and things that were once miracles of science and technology now pile up in landfills.

We’ve got things backwards. We live in a world of Simons, of tricksters who think that just about anything can be bought and sold. And judging by Elon Musk’s presence in the highest echelons of power, it seems that may very well be the case.

But there is so much good news from this passage, from this story— the first is that apparently, some of these tricksters can come around, can realize that not everything can be bought or sold… and that’s the other part of the good news. What we have here, in this community of Christ, is priceless. The love we have for one another, bound by our faith in something greater than us, in an ultimate and unconditional love, cannot be bought. It cannot be sold. It cannot be destroyed.

And while the Spirit we receive is a priceless gift, it is one we must nurture and truly commit to. It loses its meaning, its real power if we allow it to be cheapened by this world we live in which in most way is antithetical to the everything the Spirit stands for, to everywhere the Spirit would guide us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer differentiates between what he calls cheap and costly grace—

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks' wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices... [It] is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline… Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

And of costly grace,  he says,

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock… Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

 We must think of the sacraments and the gift of the Holy Spirit we can receive through those sacraments in this same way. They are beyond what this world can offer, because they represent what is possible in a better world. They can’t be bought, they can’t be sold. They are only gifted, but we must ask. We must seek. We must really commit to a life in this living community of Christ—because the values of these sacraments, of gift of the Spirit, go against everything that this consumerist society stands for, it does take work, commitment, and that seeking that Bonhoeffer writes of—it is something that must be sought again and again. It may be asked for, but it may not be bought. It may be given, but it may not be sold.

Sadly we don’t have any apostles to coming to Hartland and lay hands upon us to give us that nudge to find the Spirit, but we can work within this living community of Christ, and we can see the Spirit in one another and we can be inspired. But that means we need each other. We need this place. We need that commitment and that creativity to think beyond what this materialistic world values and offers.

And we need to take our faith seriously and really think about what it means to have been baptized into a loving community like this one; what it means to sit around a table with one another and eat the bread and drink the wine together; what it means to support and to be supported by each other. And we need to realize and appreciate that these things are truly priceless. Amen.