Good News for All

Acts 8:14-17; Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The story is told of a place which experienced a great drought. Water was so scarce that the Baptist was pouring baptismal water instead of dunking converts, the Roman Catholic priest was sprinkling infants at the baptismal font, and the Presbyterian pastor had resorted to dry cleaning.

The practice of baptism has had an interesting life over the church’s two millennia. And it all started in the Book of Acts. Two baptisms are often referred to, water baptism and Spirit baptism.

Our reading today occurs after some mighty work by Philip in Samaritan territory. His evangelical outreach resulted in quite a number of water baptisms. Peter and John hear about Philip’s good work and decide to go check it out. They discovered that the people had been baptized in the name of Jesus but had not experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. So they laid hands on the new Samaritan believers who then experienced the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The church’s problem is that these two baptisms, if indeed they be two, occur in a variety of ways in the accounts of the Book of Acts. In Peter’s Pentecost sermon he tells the crowd that “each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

Yet today’s reading implies that water baptism can exist without the follow-up gift of the Holy Spirit. But on the other side, when Peter is preaching to the household of Cornelius, in Acts 10, “the Holy Spirit fell on everyone who heard the word,” causing Peter to say, “Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water,” and they were (Acts 10:44-48).

However, when Paul arrived in Ephesus, Acts 19,  and asked if the believers had received the Holy Spirit, they claimed ignorance of the Spirit and said that they had received John the Baptist’s baptism. Paul’s preaching and actions strongly suggests that water baptism, the laying on of hands, and the giving of the Holy Spirit, are one cohesive activity.

Across the centuries different understandings of baptism have developed as the Christian faith tradition grew, developed, and went in differing directions of theology and practice. Some, including many believers who call themselves evangelicals, have held that baptism by the Holy Spirit occurs for all believers at conversion, subsequently witnessed to by water baptism.

The Pentecostal traditions have insisted that there are indeed two different baptisms, a baptism by water and a later baptism by the Spirit. Wesleyan holiness movements tend to think of Spirit baptism as the “second blessing,” associating it with assurance of salvation and complete sanctification.

Roman Catholics believe that the Spirit is initially given at baptism but only is completed by a second gift of the Spirit at confirmation, which fosters Christian maturation, and is considered a sacrament equal to baptism.

Other traditions mix these two aspects together saying that baptism for forgiveness and the conferring of the Spirit are aspects of a single phenomenon. Reformed theology, where Presbyterians hang out, has generally resisted the separation of baptism by water and baptism by the Spirit, regarding the water baptism as an outward sign, not only of the washing away of sins, but also of the inward giving of the Spirit.

When we think about the evidence that the Acts accounts give us, it shouldn’t surprise us that the church has developed multiple understandings of water and Spirit baptism. While the ideal seems to be the combination water and bestowal of the Spirit, what seems to be clearest about it all is that the working of the Spirit cannot be neatly understood or controlled. We cannot make the Spirit of God obey human rules. To attempt to do is to engage in a Sisyphean task of pushing rope or herding cats.

Presbyterian theology has described both ordinary” and “extraordinary” means of grace. God has covenanted with humanity to make God’s grace available through certain practices. Ordinary means of grace include prayer, preaching, fasting, Bible reading and study, and the sacraments of the table and the font. However, God isn’t locked into those means of only. God is sovereign and may go about dispensing grace beyond the ordinary ways as God sees fit. Huldrych Zwingli, another 16th century Swiss Reformer, said that although the grace of regeneration through the Spirit is promised at baptism, the Spirit’s operation is not confined only to baptism. We can boldly trust that spiritual regeneration is promised with our baptism, but we need not despair should God's Spirit choose to work in another way.

A second important thought arises from today’s reading: the reception of the Spirit is not a bonus supplement to the Christian life but is absolutely essential to it. For the Samaritans, John and Peter must complete the baptismal act initiated by Philip. The Christian life would be fatally deficient and deformed without renewal by the Spirit. The bestowal of the Spirit is not an extra measure of grace intended for a group of the spiritually elite but is a blessing granted to the whole church. Without the enlivening power of the Spirit, the church would not exist.

What is even more crucial about the events of today’s reading is its setting. The Samaritans shared cultural roots with the Jews, but were despised by them as having abandoned some key aspects of Jewish religious tradition. Philip crossed a religious, cultural and social boundary in his efforts to evangelize people who were outside the Jerusalem tradition.

The laying on of hands and pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Samaritans is another building block in the Acts-attested foundation that the grace of God in Christ was meant for non-Jews and Jews alike. The people of God cannot be defined by racial, cultural, language or geographical divides. The Holy Spirit is inclusive. The good news of Christ’s saving activity is confirmed by the extravagant and uncontrolled gift of the Spirit to any and all whom God calls to faith. As Jesus told Nicodemus, “God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Through baptism we are physically and spiritually made one with God’s people in every time and place. Many of us don’t remember our baptisms because our parents took the responsibility to have us baptized and raised in the faith. Perhaps we do remember it because we have been told the story so often that we have incorporated all the details into our own self-disclosing story. Some of us were baptized at a time when we made our decision to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. Whether we remember our baptism or not, the important thing to remember is that we are baptized, we are incorporated into the body of Christ.

And if we have not yet been baptized, if we have not yet declared the work of the Spirit in our lives which brings us to Christ, perhaps now is the time to think of baptism in the present and future tense rather than an event in the past. If the Spirit has convicted you, who can stop you from being baptized with water?

Shortly we will prayerfully remember our baptism in water and seek to continue to be blessed by the Holy Spirit working in you. As you reflect on baptism today and this week, think of people whom you don’t know, people who cross your path in a store aisle, a doctor’s waiting room, or in a car at an intersection. Think about the possibility that although they may be very different from you, they are a child of God and could share with you the “beloved” name bestowed through water and Spirit. Water and Spirit. Spirit and water. However it all works, it is good news for all.

Thanks be to God.

General resource: Lee C. Barrett, “Acts 8:14-17 – Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville; Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), Year C, Volume 1, 230-234.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.