A sermon on Acts 8:14-17.
Jesus was baptized, and so his followers are baptized. Luke also tells us that the Holy Spirit, like a dove, descended on Jesus in that moment.
Many don’t know that a lot of references to the Holy Spirit in the New Testament that are mistranslated. Or I should say, translated traditionally. Many of those references actually read “a” holy spirit. That is, many don’t have definite articles. When Jesus was baptized, yes, the Holy Spirit descended, but in many other places English bibles translate “a holy spirit” as “the Holy Spirit.
So today’s passage should read: “The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive ‘a’ holy spirit (for as yet it had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus).”
Even John the Baptist’s prediction of Jesus literally reads: “He will baptize you with ‘a’ holy spirit and with fire.”
On Pentecost, ‘a’ holy spirit blew into the house like a mighty wind. “A”, not “the”.
The book of Revelation speaks to the “spirits” of seven churches, a fascinating image, that congregations have unique spirits, that together a community generates something greater than the sum of its parts.
As for churches, so for believers. Your holiness is not like anyone else’s. By definition, that’s what holiness is. It means “unlike any other in the best way possible.”
About three hundred years into the church’s history, theologians interpreted these words in Luke’s book of Acts as referring to the third person of the trinity, ‘the’ Holy Spirit, and the translation into Latin actually added the definite article.
I’m not bothered by the mistranslation, because “a holy spirit” can only be “the holy spirit” or not really be holy at all. Amen?
I was baptized as an infant, and I believe a holy spirit, or perhaps the Holy Spirit, was leading me long before I was aware of it.
It was only in the early 2,000’s that I would say I received ‘a’ holy spirit, and it has been with me to greater and lesser degrees, according to my willingness to maintain the relationship, ever since. It is, I suppose, God, but it seems impious to claim, as if to brag, that God personally speaks to me. It seems to make more cosmic sense to me that God has shared that particular piece of his spirit unique to his plan for my particular salvation.
I don’t hear voices. I practice prayer and meditation. I embed myself in Christian community for worship and fellowship and study. Through these means, I am able sense God’s direction, and I try my best to follow it. Sometimes the spirit inspires me powerfully, sometimes it leads me very subtly. I enjoyed a meme I saw online: “yes, the holy spirit will make you dance and speak in tongues, but sometimes it makes you shut up, apologize, and examine yourself.” All true. It’s all happened to me, except the speaking in tongues.
Philip was led by the spirit to Samaria and by the power of the spirit did spectacular healings and exorcisms.
The apostles heard about the conversions. Peter and John were sent. First, to demonstrate their growing sense that the gospel was spreading past ethnic boundaries, and second to bring Samaritans formally into the circle of Judaism.
I suspect the term “the laying on of hands” means more than the simple act. It suggests to me a kind of personal “hands-on” attention. If there’s any message to be found in Acts, it’s that, whether a holy spirit or the Holy Spirit, the gift of spirit is mediated through personal relationships and in the context of a community’s collective spirit.
We are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, set apart for the gift of a holy spirit, which in a cosmic sense, unites with our flesh to make us children of God, becoming the “spiritual bodies” that Paul writes about elsewhere.
Why do we worship, why do we study, why do we pray? All of Jesus’ sayings about prayer,“ask and you shall receive”, for example, pertain to the gift of a holy spirit, and nothing else. That’s the only gift anyone needs. This is why Jesus teaches that it does no good to drive the demon out if you leave the house empty for it to come back with six of its friends. No, a holy spirit must come and take up residence, and then, and only then, will the body be saved.
So, if you are unsure if you have received a (or the) holy spirit, Jesus gives you the formula: you shall know your spirit by its fruits. Certain markers can be seen, and they are hard to fake. One is generosity. Another is grace. Another is kindness. The list goes on, patience, faithfulness, integrity. I know most of you, and I see these gifts in you, even if you don’t.
This is the focus of the season of Epiphany, a word that formally means “the manifestation of the divine.”
For us Christians, the manifestation of the divine is the in-dwelling holy spirit in each baptized person, and in the spirit of the congregation whenever it assembles. The hidden spirit is given a physical reality in our works of worship and service. Heaven breaks into the world, the spiritual manifests as the material.
The more we strive to relate to the spirit God implants in us, the more clarity we will have, the more peace, the more acceptance of what is, and the more power to do what we could never do by our own unaided will, provided what we do is God’s will for us. The scriptures aid us in discerning a holy spirit from an evil one, because they can often seem very similar to the unwise.
We want God to lay his hands on us, to re-form, re-shape us, create us anew. And the metaphorical hands he uses are the hands of your church leaders and fellow disciples. Church leaders who themselves were shaped and formed by others before them, who were touched by still others, going back, almost literally, to that village in Samaria, and those fishermen’s hands, and the hand of Jesus that had touched them, and the hand of God that touched him.
I want to be, o loving Savior,
like the clay in the potter’s hands.
Take my life and remold me,
I want to be, I want to be,
a brand new vessel.
Amen.
