Date: 10 January 2016
Text: Acts 8:14-17
Site: Bethany United Church – Halifax, NS
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). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.
Prayer
As we turn aside from all else…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
As we declare our faith…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
As we acknowledge our need…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
As we search for wisdom…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
As we listen for your call…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
As we lift up our hearts…
speak Lord, your servants are listening.
One of the great privileges of being a Minister is that you get to meet so many people with vastly different life experiences than yourself, it stretches you and helps you to understand the human condition. Another privilege is that you get to meet people who have been transformed by faith, their faith has made the difference between life and death. And so when I read the lectionary story for today, Acts 8:14-17, I immediately thought of Peter. I don’t mean the Peter who is mentioned in this reading, I mean the Peter I met in 2010. Peter was man who had a very different life than mine and he was a man who had been “saved” by his faith in God. And Peter would love this text because it speaks about the laying on of hands.
Peter came to the church I was serving because he had recently met his new girlfriend, a member of our congregation. They shared in common the grief of recently losing a partner to cancer. They were lovely together. And even though they attended very different congregations they committed to attend church as couple, he would go to her church on Sunday morning and she would join him at his evangelical church in the afternoon. I say they were different because she had only attended United Churches, always 60 minutes in length, little emotional displays from church members and most of the service was typed into a bulletin. At Peter’s church the service could be 2 hours or longer, it was not unusual to see persons becoming deeply emotional as the feeling of the Holy Spirit would overcome them.
I really liked Peter. Soon after he started coming to our church Peter asked if we could go out for coffee. Peter loved to tell his story, he would travel all over the Maritimes preaching, sharing his testimony. And so at the Tim Horton’s in Clayton Park he shared his early upbringing, a dysfunctional family, a rocky relationship with family, leaving home early to join the military, near death experiences, run-ins with authorities and authority figures, relationships that broke down. The running theme was brokenness and pain. Peter told me that his lifestyle then was almost certain to end up with him in jail, in addiction, dead.
In the depth of his despair Peter found Jesus and in language that would be consistent with Paul’s story earlier in Acts Peter had the scales from eyes removed, he saw life in a new way, loved others as he had never done so before, what was dead was now alive. Peter loved to tell this story and its authenticity was obvious by how he took responsibility for his sins, mistakes, and realized it was up to him and the Spirit to start over. This is what I love about evangelicals, they do not shy away from admitting mistakes, being a failure, whereas many of us in the mainline church can always find others to blame and become experts in hiding our misfortune. Peter was open about his brokenness, he said “you can rebuild unless you know what is there is broken.”
One Sunday Peter asked me a question, “In the United Church when do people in the pews get to come forward receive the laying on of hands?” You see Peter had been raised with no faith at all and ever since his born again experience he had only attended an evangelical church. I explained that in the United Church the laying on of hands tended to be reserved for Confirmation and Ordination. “But how do the people know that they are receiving the presence of the Holy Spirit”, he asked. I explained that in the United Church we felt the Spirit at work in our lives but not necessarily through such obvious demonstrations.
This reminded me that in the United Church, like other mainline churches, we tend to see the laying on of hands as a kind of spiritual sanction, a sense that the church and/or denomination are confirming that this person believes and practices her/his faith in a way that is wholly acceptable to God and the Church. Indeed this has been the way we have invested these persons with sound teaching and instruction so that in the end s/he could stand before us and receive the official blessing of the Body of Christ. When I was confirmed, at the age of 13, I received instruction from the Minister, my own Bible and stood before J. Wesley United Church and said yes to the various faith questions that were put before me. Then hands we laid upon me. When I was 27 Ewen, Russ Daye, myself and ten other United Church candidates stood before the Maritime Conference and answered the questions put before us, received a Bible and then received the laying on of hands. In both cases whether the church intended more than a Holy sanction or not those who witnessed the rite could not be faulted for thinking that the Church was saying, “You are ready”.
Our text this morning has a more relational tone and nuance to the laying on of hands. The writer of Luke-Acts has a story in mind as we approach the laying on of hands. The backdrop is the persecution of the church, specifically the martyrdom of Stephen. Believers who agreed to be part of the Jesus movement understood that believing in Jesus and being baptized in his name meant almost certain hardship as well as blessings. This is one of the reasons I cringe whenever I hear North American Christians complain about so-called persecution because Starbucks has no Christmas images on their cups or children can’t play Carols at their school concerts or politicians send “Holiday cards” to their constituents. In the context of Saul-Paul, Stephen and the early church apostles and disciples who were jailed, tortured and murdered this all seems so ridiculous.
And yet in the midst of this oppression, in the midst of a movement where believers gathered in people’s homes and shared resources, the church surged, people were joining in huge numbers. And our reading today tells us how the movement came to Samaria. The evangelist Philip has been sharing his story of transformation, much like my friend Peter. And the movement is on fire. And yet…there was something missing. Despite the changing of minds and the warming of hearts (a good John Wesley expression!) the growing movement felt something more was needed. And that something was the laying on of hands, specifically the hands of those who were present at the beginning of this movement, Peter and John. These apostles, who had known Jesus in some very personal and powerful way, could witness to what came next, after the believer said yes to Jesus and the Church gave its yes to the believers. In the “you are ready” there needed another step, to head and the heart there needed to be a holy connection, a bond of faith that could sustain someone through the storms of life, to help us have hope in the midst of despair.
I have often wondered what it was that gave these believers in Acts such hope. The evidence did not look good, people were being cut down in the prime of their life; believers were being rounded up by the likes of Saul, widows were still alone, those with plagues and illnesses were still sick and dying, the orphans and the refugees were still lining up for assistance. Yes there were miracles in the early church but the evidence is clear, the vast majority of the first disciples suffered the human condition just like we do, even more so because their faith was illegal and counter-cultural. And yet those believers had such hope, such faith.
My favorite story from the early church is the Road of Emmaus. You may know it from that beautiful painting, the one with the pastoral setting, where Jesus is walking through the meadows surrounded by the disciples. But the text reveals a very different story, the disciples on the run, terrified they too will be crucified. There is nothing pastoral here, and yet in the midst of that this complete stranger who joins them in the sharing of a late night meal, is revealed to be Jesus. And in the sharing they believe again, they have hope, they know that Jesus is with them, forever.
You may have heard a great sermon that brought you to belief. You may have seen a deeply compassionate act that made you feel loved and love. But receiving the presence of the One who walks beside helps us to “take up our mat and walk again.” And those who have walked the talk, who have been there in the fire and seen hope, who have heard the Word, been touched by the Spirit, and who carry the witness of new life, they can lay hands on us and remind us who and whose we are.
Some of you know that I serve a small group of believers at Brunswick Street United Church. I am there for 2 hours every Sunday night, one hour of sharing and Bible study and one hour of worship. Two years ago a woman from our little circle told us she was leaving the city to be with her partner in another part of the province. It had been a long and hard journey for this woman; family challenges, vocational challenges, physical challenges. This believer was hurting. She knew the Word and she knew the feeling of Christian love. But something was missing. We, the small circle of believers, sensed this. And so on her last Sunday with us we asked a wise woman who make a prayer shawl and we all prayed over the times when this woman had ministered to us and given us hope. At the end of our worship time, before the Benediction, we asked this woman to kneel in the middle of the circle. We placed the shawl around her neck, we laid our hands upon her and we took turns sharing our story of new life that she had birthed into our church with the Spirit’s help and direction.
We hear from her from time and time. And every time we do she recited this story, how it gave her hope and gives her hope. The pain and the hurts, they do not go away. But the joy of Jesus’ presence, at the meal around the fire, in a circle of a loving faith community, the touch of two apostles who knew Jesus and his courage and passion, they remain. May each of you hearing my voice today lay your kind hands upon those who walk the rough places of our world and may each of you hearing my voice today know the kind hands of those who walk beside you, giving you hope. Amen.