One Way Or Another

Acts 8:14-25

One of the more interesting details to emerge from Acts is the fact that there is no set pattern by which individuals come to full inclusion in the faith. Our reading today is a good example. “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)” (Acts 8:14-16). Elsewhere we read that the Spirit is received at the time of baptism, and occasionally the Spirit comes before baptism, but here the Spirit does not arrive until well after baptism. What then shall we say about these things?

What we can say is that faith is a fluid thing, not bound by human understanding or expectations. God has spoken to God’s people in many ways and in many circumstances, sometimes directly, sometimes in dreams or visions, sometimes by way of angles or a burning bush, sometimes through a heightened sense of awareness. When Jesus healed the sick he did not always do so in the same way; sometimes he touched the one in need of healing and sometimes he simply spoke to them, but sometimes he was not even in their presence at all. The church has never come to a definitive understanding on how it is to baptize men and women, or at what age it is appropriate to receive the sacrament, some believing that a person must be “of age” and able to profess the faith, while others believe that it is appropriate at any point in life.

The good news is that with such fluidity God is never out of touch, never left behind, never without recourse. God always has the appropriate response to humanity and we are blessed by God’s actions.

Prayer: Lord, we thank you for your presence in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

No Ordinary Bath

1 Peter 3:13-4:6

In today’s epistle reading the author of 1 Peter makes reference to the “days of Noah” when “eight persons were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you – not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:20-21). I think that the sight of a newborn child scrunching her face as water is applied to her head, or the familiarity of an adult professing his faith and receiving the sacrament has led many to consider baptism as one more cultural function performed by the church. We see it fairly often, and it seldom comes as a surprise. But when baptism is placed into the context of the flood and adjoined to the resurrection – as it is in 1 Peter – we can perhaps begin to grasp its deep significance. This is no ordinary event; this is something godly and powerful, akin to God ripping apart the fabric of creation in order to mark an individual as chosen and claimed.

Noah and his family were saved from annihilation through the waters. In his death and rising again Jesus Christ offers us the promise of eternal life. Baptism ties us to these events, to the community of faith, to all who have gone before us and all who will come after us. Baptism gives us our identity as God’s people and it cleanses us from the stain of sin. Baptism is no perfunctory obligation staged to meet cultural expectations, it is the single most important event in the life of a Christian. It is the work of God who transcends all time and space and yet draws near enough to touch each and every one of us.

Prayer: Lord, help us to recognize your presence and to understand the significance of your work in our midst. In Jesus’ name. Amen.