Not for Sale

Not for Sale--October 18, 2016

"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. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, 'Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.' But Peter said to him, 'May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God's gift with money!  You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you'." [Acts 8:14-22]

There are those rare occasions when the word "No" is the most gracious word that can be said.  This is one of them.  No--grace is not for sale.  No--help is not just for paying customers.  And when you try to make grace a commodity for sale, the most gracious thing that can be said is simply, "No."

You can already figure the gist of the situation between Peter (yes, that Peter, the same Simon Peter who was a central leader of the early church and one of Jesus' original twelve disciples) and Simon (often called Simon Magus, or Simon the Magician, because obviously there are a lot of people with the popular name Simon in the New Testament; it was like the name Kimberly or Heather for girls in the 1980s).  Peter and John have come to welcome in new followers of Jesus and to show publicly that they really are welcomed, even though they were outsiders.  (These new believers are from Samaria, and you probably know from enough stories in the Gospels that Samaritans were looked on with utter contempt by most Judeans in the first century, as a result of centuries of animosity between the two groups in both directions.)  Peter and John have come in their role as leaders, with the thought that they can show to the whole rest of the church (including any folks in the church who are nursing private or not-so-private hate in their hearts toward this other ethnic group) that these Samaritans really have been embraced by the grace of God and received the same Holy Spirit as everybody else who has named the name of Jesus.

This by itself is the kind of moment we need to let sink in.  This was bad politics for Peter and John--but they are not politicians (thank God).  It would have been easier to be silent and hold off on endorsing these Samaritans.  It would have been easier for them to be silent as to whether they should be included.  It would have been easier to ignore the hateful things that the members of First Church of Jerusalem had been saying about "those people..." or all the awful and Christ-less things they had surely been posting about "those Samaritans and their dangerous agenda" on Facebook.  But instead, Peter and John go down to Samaria to embrace them and show everybody--including the crossed-arm, scowling, and skeptical Christians back in Jerusalem--that the reach of grace includes everybody we thought was unlovable, unusable, unacceptable.  That by itself is a word of grace healing the world.

But there is another chapter to the story.  There was a flim-flam artist in the same town, too--Simon.  He was as good a showman as they come, and he dabbled in putting on spectacles to astound and amaze--for his living.  He was a big, loud, entertaining charlatan, and he didn't like it when someone else got more press than he did.  So he hung close to the Christians who were doing amazing deeds of their own in the name of Jesus and wanted to get access to the same power they had.  But showmen are salesmen, too, by definition--they sell the spectacle they perform.  And Simon was looking for ways he could sell more tickets.  So he approaches Peter and looks to buy the rights and the power and the whole nine yards to harness the power of the Holy Spirit, too.

Now, at first, you might think, "Come on--what's the harm? Isn't it a good thing to spread the Spirit around to as many people as possible?  And if the church made a little money in the process, so they could repave their parking lot or refurbish the nursery, what's the harm in that?  That's win-win!"  But, of course, Peter knows better.  You don't get to sell the power of God.  You can't put a price tag on the Holy Spirit.  And you don't--not nobody, not no-how--get to limit grace only to people who bought a ticket.  Nobody gets to be gatekeepers--the whole point of Peter showing up there in Samaria was to show everyone, Christians included, that God's grace and Spirit were being given audaciously and abundantly even to outsiders like these Samaritan Christians.

So Peter's answer to Simon is No.  A loud and clear No.  No to the money. No the whole notion of selling the Spirit.  No, in fact, to the whole logic of salesmen and showmen.  For Peter, there is no wiggle room of, "Oh, but Simon's really a good guy... he is always so nice... he does these great things..." none at all.  If there is a sales tag anywhere in the picture, the whole thing is tainted... yes, even Simon himself.  Peter says as much to him: "your heart is not right before God."  In other words, this wasn't just one bad idea, but points to a fundamental problem with the logic of the sales floor.  In the Kingdom of God, we don't do things that way.  In the Kingdom of God, grace will not be available for purchase.  Among the people of God, the Spirit is not buy-able--because when you buy something, you think you have control over it... and God will not give over control of the Spirit's power to any of us who would limit or leash that power only to the select few.

In order to really mean the promise that God's grace is here to heal and embrace the world--as in, everybody--Peter has to take a hard line NO position against Simon's business deals, and to dealmakers, sales pitches, business lunches, and all the rest of the trappings of that way of doing things.  Only with empty hands do we come--no money will be accepted in exchange for grace.  Only with empty hands that can open to the hands of the others--even "those people" we weren't so sure about yesterday--will we find that the Spirit has reached down already to fill and embrace us.  And then we discover that empty hands were exactly enough.

Who is Jesus inviting you to say "Yes" to, and to welcome?  And what kinds of deal-making, sales-pitch posturing are we going to say "No" to in order to let grace be free among us today?

Lord God, send your Spirit on us with our empty hands, and give us the courage to say NO to deals and sales pitches, so that your word of grace can speak a louder YES to all.