A Lesson Taught by God – Acts 8:14-17

A text – Acts 8:14-17

¹⁴ Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. ¹⁵ The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit ¹⁶ (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). ¹⁷ Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

A reflection:

This is a really interesting story of the early church, a story of a time the Holy Spirit came into the lives of new believers. Jesus’s twelve disciples were baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as Jesus had commanded. Philip had been the apostle to the Samaritans, and these arch-enemies (historically, theologically) of the traditional Jews had accepted Philip’s teaching, had accepted Jesus as the Son of God and been baptized. But for some reason the Samaritans had not experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. Why? Did Philip do something wrong? No, of course not. Were the Samaritans truly so awful God wouldn’t accept them? No, of course not.

Some scholars believe that the trip to Samaria by the two disciples, Peter and John, was necessary not for some kind of further baptism of the Samaritans but for a change in attitude of Peter and John and the other disciples, in order to begin to erase their prejudice against certain peoples. Peter and John needed to experience the fact that God wanted to come into the lives of even those often-despised Samaritans, because God loves all human beings so much. Peter and John needed to feel the Holy Spirit coming upon these enemy neighbors of the Jews in order to learn God’s deep desire to be in the lives of ALL people, not just the Jews.

God came to earth to build a relationship with human beings. All human beings (even Samaritans) are beloved of God. God willingly sends the Holy Spirit to live with all of us. Lest we, like the disciples, find ourselves dismissing certain people because they are of the wrong group, let’s remember that even Peter and John fell into the prejudice trap and needed to be shown that God loves everybody. And God found a way to change their minds. With God, nothing is impossible.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us the stories of the early church as the whole world was coming to know of the words and works of your beloved son. Help us to learn lessons from them about what gets in our way, what blinds us , what keeps us from having your vision of the beauty and lovableness of all people.  Amen.