Acts 8:14-17 Commentary

While baptism is among the most central practices of the Christian faith, it also remains among Christianity’s most divisive issues. Baptism is one of the two sacraments that Protestant Christians recognize. Yet Jesus’ followers remain deeply divided about especially when and how it should be administered.

It’s perhaps disappointing, then, that on this Sunday on which at least some of the Church remembers Jesus’ baptism, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson seems to cast little light into the darkness of the debate over baptism. Acts 8:14-17, in fact, may actually “thicken” the baptismal darkness as it were.

While preachers always want to be sensitive to texts’ context, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s brevity may offer a particularly good opportunity to perhaps more fully explore its context. In fact, preachers whom the Spirit prompts to preach Acts 8:14-17 as a standalone text might even consider including verses 1-25, if not also verses 26-40. After all, all three “sections” of Acts 8 refer to the baptism that is one of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s themes.

On the first Pentecost the Spirit lit the Church of Jesus Christ and its shocking growth. However, rival religious groups and their leaders felt threatened by Jesus and his followers’ popularity. So when they were unable to silence those followers, they arrested and tried one of them whose name was Stephen. And when he used the trial’s platform to share the gospel, they executed him.

This execution ignited even fiercer opposition to Jesus’s friends that ultimately scattered them “throughout Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1b). Yet Acts 8:3 reports that “Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.”

Shortly before Jesus ascended to the heavenly realm, he sent his followers to “all nations” to make disciples, baptize them and teach them everything he’d commanded them. Yet we might imagine few of Jesus’s friends expected to be sent to Samaria, much less make and baptize disciples there. Tensions between the Jews and Samaritans, after all, ran long and deep. While they were in some ways theological shirttail relatives, they viewed each other with mistrust if not hostility.

Yet to where does persecution chase Jesus’s follower Philip? To a “city in Samaria” (Acts 8:3). And when the Samaritans there hear Philip preach and watch him do miraculous signs, they, in The Message’s paraphrase of verse 4, hang “on his every word.” That, paired with exorcisms and healings, created “great joy in that” Samaritan city. Yet the apostle wasn’t the only person who amazed the Samaritans. Acts refers to Simon who arrived before Philip and amazed people with his startling acts.

Yet as is so often the case in the Scriptures, verse 12 inserts the great “however [de].” While Simon amazed the Samaritans, God transformed them: “They believed [episteusan] Philip as he proclaimed the good news [euangelizomeno] of the kingdom of God [basileias tou Theou] and the name of Jesus Christ.”

This, however, is one of those texts that challenges some of our theology. The Samaritans somehow recognize the great truth of God’s kingdom and Jesus’ name. But verse 16 goes on to assert that “the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon [ep’ epipeptokos] them.” This combination challenges perhaps particularly Reformed Christians’ understanding of the central role the Holy Spirit plays in Christians’ faithful reception of God’s grace.

That mystery is perhaps deepened for some of Jesus’s friends by Acts’ report of Simon the Sorcerer’s baptism. “Simon, himself” according to verse 13, “believed [episteusen] and was baptized [baptistheis].” It’s now the turn of the Wizard who’d amazed people to be “astonished” [epistato],” in this case by one of Jesus’ disciples named Philip.

News of all these extraordinary Samaritan conversions eventually reaches Jerusalem’s “apostles” [apostoloi] (13). So they send Peter and John to investigate. This may imply that the apostles’ are at least somewhat skeptical that it’s the Spirit who has done this mighty work. The new converts are, after all, those theologically shaky Samaritans.

It’s not clear what Peter and John do first in the Samaritan city. But Acts reports their first action is to pray. Verse 15 reports that upon arrival, the apostles “prayed [proseuxanto]” that the new Samaritan Christians “might receive [labosin] the Holy Spirit.” Peter and John pray that specific prayer, we read in verse 16, “because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on [epipeptokos] any of them; they had simply been baptized [bebaptismenoi] in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

This, of course, raises a basic question: how did Jesus’s apostles know the Holy Spirit had not yet fallen on those whom Philip had baptized in Jesus’s name? Many scholars now suggest that it was clear from the lives the new Samaritan Christians were living. Their baptism was done the right way – in the name of the Lord Jesus. Yet these new Christians may have shown by what they said and did that the Holy Spirit did not yet live in them.

The Spirit uses the apostles, of course, to rectify that by “placing [epitithesan] hands on” the baptized Samaritan Christians.” As a result, verse 17 marvels, they “received [elambanon] the Holy Spirit.” Yet one new Samaritan Christians somehow seems to have “missed out on” the laying on of hands that led to the descent of the Holy Spirit. When Simon, according to verse 18, “saw that the Spirit was given [didotai] at the laying on [epitheseos] of the apostles’ hands he offered them money, and said, ‘Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit’.”

It’s an interaction that may deserve a whole sermon’s worth of attention. But on this particular Sunday preachers may not need to note much more than that the newly baptized Simon’s business proposition shows that he doesn’t yet understand how the Spirit works. He, in fact, shows that the Spirit hasn’t yet fallen on him by trying to buy the Holy Spirit. Because Simon’s heart is not yet right with God, the apostles beg him to repent and pray to the Lord for forgiveness.

This is an admittedly difficult text to fully understand. But it may point us to a fundamental truth: baptism in the name of the Triune God does not guarantee the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Church doesn’t just baptize people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God’s dearly beloved people also pray for the Holy Spirit to come and fill all those who have been baptized.

Acts 8’s third baptismal account omits any mention of a tie between baptism and the Holy Spirit. In what’s likely Samaritan territory the Holy Spirit again directs Philip’s movements. This time it’s to the road between Gaza and Jerusalem on which Jesus’ disciple meets an unnamed Ethiopian government official.

As he’s returning from worshiping God in Jerusalem the eunuch is reading from Isaiah the prophet. When Philip follows the Spirit’s leading into the Ethiopian’s chariot and asks him if he understands what he’s reading, the official admits to his puzzlement. He goes on to ask Jesus’ friend to help him understand what he’s reading.

Once Philip shares the gospel with the government official, verse 37 reports that the Ethiopian asks, “What can stand in the way [kolyei] of my being baptized [baptisthenai]?” While some manuscripts report that Philip responds by asking for and receiving a profession of faith, the NIV simply implies that nothing should prevent Jesus’ long-time friend from baptizing his new friend.

After all, verse 38 tells us after the government official stops his chariot, “both Philip and the eunuch went down [katabesan] into the water, and Philip baptized [ebaptisen] him.” In imagery that points ahead to New Testament imagery of baptized people dying and rising with Christ, Acts 8:39 goes on to report that after these new brothers in Christ went down into the water, they “came up [anebasen] out of the water.”

The Spirit is active according to this account of a baptism only in the sense that the Spirit again moves Philip. “The Spirit of the Lord [Pneuma Kyriou],” according to verse 39, suddenly took Philip away [herpasen].” Verse 40, however, also alludes to the work of the Spirit in the Ethiopian convert when it tells us that he “went on his way rejoicing [chairon].”

Preachers will want to prayerfully listen for the Spirit’s promptings as they weigh how to preach this text. One approach might be to simply follow the story, pointing to the necessity of baptized Christians opening ourselves to the Spirit’s presence and guidance. Acts 8 reminds Jesus’ followers that a faithful reception of God’s grace doesn’t just involve simply being sprinkled with or immersed in baptism’s waters. It also includes a thankful Spirit-led response of obedience.

Preachers also, however, might choose to use this text as an opportunity to share with our hearers a biblical understanding of baptism. Of course, we want to let the Spirit and our own theological traditions inform that proclamation. But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson might provide a good opportunity for Jesus’s friends to learn more about or be reminded of the central place that baptism plays, by the Spirit, in the lives of God’s adopted children.

In fact, preachers might go one step farther by briefly examining and explaining their own tradition’s understanding of baptism. We might remind our hearers of when as well as to whom we think it’s important to administer it. Preachers might even explore why we choose to administer baptism the way people in our tradition do.

Yet it’s always wise to end such a message by emphasizing the unifying power of baptism in the corporate lives of God’s adopted children. In baptism, after all, God graciously unites us not just to Christ, but also to our fellow Christians.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Jon Marc Smith’s Make Them Cry includes the story of Tomas’s baptism. Tomas is a murderous drug lord who hides in the baptismal font of a Pentecostal church to elude the police who are trying to arrest him. Smith describes how Tomas “dunked himself and slicked his hair back and sprayed water from his mouth and went under again and started rubbing his skin, washing himself. He let his eyes float on the surface like a crocodile.

“Did this mean he was saved now? As in salvation, go-to-heaven, all that? That’s what these weird Christians believed, right? You go under, you’re born anew, no? Maybe somewhat saved, a percentage, half- or quarter-saved? Did his soul get some little bit of profit from thus church water?

“Probably not. Not even Tomas would let a guy like himself in a place with all those good people. Wouldn’t be fair. Tomas had never read the Bible, never listened to homilies, never paid attention, but he knew that Christianity had some pretty strict rules. A ticket to paradise cost more than a bath. Maybe you got less time in purgatory. Probably it was something like that. A thousand years off his infinite sentence or some [bad stuff].”