Acts 8:9-24
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
June 1, 2025
John Ortberg told of taking his first child home from the hospital. He was so awed by his newborn, precious baby girl, and so anxious to take good care of her, that he drove the 101-freeway never going over 35 miles per hour and with the hazard lights flashing the entire time.
It was, he said, the scariest moment of his life until the moment, sixteen years later, when he handed her the car keys and she slid behind the wheel to drive herself.
Ortberg noted it takes a lot of faith and courage to turn the keys over to someone. Up until that moment with his daughter, John had always been the one driving. He’d chosen the destination and the route, the car’s speed and its lane changes. But when she turned sixteen, he had to let go and lose control.
Ortberg observed we often find it handy to have Jesus in the car because something may come up that’ll require His special skill. It’s nice to have Him there – as long as He sits in a passenger seat. We like His being close so that if we feel down, He can lift us up; if we need an A in a class, He can move a teacher to grade on a curve; or if we get lost, He can get us headed aright again. But we may not like the idea of His sliding behind the steering wheel and taking over the driving.
While many of us call Jesus our Lord as well as our Savior, we often don’t want Him in the driver’s seat. We prefer to be in control of things ourselves and we fear even His being in charge. Why, He might insist on my being more generous with my money than I’d like, giving up the right to satisfy my every self-centered desire, or disciplining my tongue so I no longer deceive, rage, intimidate, manipulate or exaggerate.
The truth is that, while we often resist being used in God’s service when it’s a bother or a pain, we very much like to use God when we need Him and then dismiss Him until our next special need arises. We like to keep God under control, but always at our beck and call.
The danger in that attitude is that the Supreme Being is too big to fit into the narrow confines of our expectations and restrictions. If we are full of ourselves and keep in charge, we cannot have the Holy Spirit because we have no room in our heart spacious enough for Him.
In Samaria long ago there was a magician named Simon. A master of the occult arts, he’d developed such a reputation that, by the “amazing” wonders he performed, all of the people of the city proclaimed him “the power of God that is called Great”. Apparently, Simon relished such adulation, because Luke tells us he loved to portray himself as “someone great”.
Yet, Simon had enough integrity to recognize that “the signs and great miracles” that Deacon Phillip performed in the name of Jesus were beyond his own capabilities. So Simon “believed” (in some sense), was baptized and “constantly” followed Phillip, maybe to pick up the “secrets” of his power.
When Peter and John came down from Jerusalem to check things out in Samaria, they ended up having to pray for the new believers there that they might “receive the Holy Spirit” who, the text says, “as yet…had not come upon any of them”.
This is an atypical situation. Normally believing in Jesus and receiving the Spirit happen simultaneously. But perhaps this time, in a purposeful exception, God initially withheld the Spirit, because these new converts were Samaritans, people then despised by almost all Jews. Thus, the new Christians of Samaria needed to feel the tender, warm, intimate human touch involved in the laying on of hands for the coming of the Holy Spirit, in order to rest assured that they were no longer hated but fully accepted in Christ as brothers and sisters and as full recipients of Christ’s best gift, the Holy Spirit.
Simon was impressed with what he saw and heard observing from an outside view this laying on of hands and the coming of the Spirit. Luke, however, does not tell us what Simon saw and heard. There was more happening than what met the eye or vibrated the ear drum. This was something momentous, and the first instance of a mass conversion of a non-Jewish group to Christ. Was there in it then the same manifestation of supernatural power that there was at Pentecost? We don’t know. All we do know is that, as at Pentecost the Spirit came upon Jews from every nation in the world, so now the Spirit came upon the people of the most hated nation in the Jewish world, Samaria. We also know that Simon was so taken with whatever he saw and heard that he offered the Apostles money to buy the power that moved through them and that would, Simon thought, move through him “so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
Though Simon’s goal might seem good, the Apostle Peter was appalled by his offer. Peter discerned that only a person whose heart was “not right with God”, but bound with “the chains of wickedness”, would think they could buy with money so great a gift as the Spirit, a gift so great it could only be received as a free gift from the hand of the God of extravagant grace. Peter discerned that this magician, who wanted the power to bring the Spirit to others, had never himself received the Spirit. That’s why Peter told him, “You have no part or share of this.” Simon only wanted the Spirit as someone less than who the Spirit in reality is. Simon wanted the Spirit as a personal assistant who would help preserve Simon’s reputation as “the power of God that is called Great”. Simon does not want the Spirit but a servant to maintain his own exalted status.
No one can take charge of the Spirit, but anyone can let the Spirit take charge of their life. No one can control the Spirit, but anyone can let the Spirit control them. No one can use the Spirit, but anyone can be used by the Spirit in wonderful ways. The Holy Spirit is too big to be squeezed into anyone’s self-centered, small-minded plans and too untamed to come under anyone’s management.
To have the power of the Holy Spirit, whose designs put our best dreams to shame and whose concerns encompass the whole wide world, we have to lay down our constricting expectations and confining stipulations, and give the Spirit the freedom to get in the driver’s seat and take us wherever He wants. No one can have the Spirit who doesn’t have the Spirit in charge.
Father John Powell said he had a post-it note on his mirror that was the first thing he read each morning upon waking. It was a prayer. It said, “Lord, what have you got going today? Thank You that I can a part of a part of it!” Fr. Powell said that prayer helped him find his place in God’s plans, rather than make his own plans and try to get God in place to support them.
Praying a prayer like that, and meaning it, is the best way to prepare to know the reality of Pentecost. If we repent of trying to use God, God will use us in the power of His Spirit. If we subordinate our agendas to God’s and allow the Spirit to take the wheel and take over, we will live beyond our own capacities and be more than ourselves as we work for justice and compassion, bear witness to Jesus and share His joy and love with all!
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