On Commodities and Relationships

The Baptism of the Lord
12 January 2025

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:[9-13]14-17[18-24]
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

There is an apocryphal quote by Rudyard Kipling which he is to have uttered in 1907 in a commencement speech to graduates at McGill University. It is apocryphal because I cannot find it (except quoted by others).¹ It is true nonetheless. Here it is, “If a person’s scale of values is based primarily on material wealth, that person will be in difficulty all of his or her life. Do not pay much attention to fame, power and money. Some day you will meet a person who cares for none of these, and then you will know how poor you are.”

It comes to my mind because of our reading from Acts. It comes to mind also because while it’s long been true that every election is about the economy (regardless of other pressing issues), and while it is equally true that education is less and less about understanding the world and more and more about acquiring marketable skills, our discourse has become more crass. And that means that the warning Kipling gives to graduates no longer has the same power, at least in the way that those whose values are based on money and power are no longer ashamed of it. An apt illustration is the suggestion that a country should be run like a business. It is an apt illustration because it fails to understand that a country is not about profit or acquisitions but about people and community. You may interject that all has to be paid for, but I have not articulated any specific program or expense. All we have said thus far is that a country is about people and community, and implied therefore, that the primary focus of politics must be the concern for the people of our land, all of them, and for how we can live together as a flourishing community.

But increasingly, we have politicians who do not understand compromise and who only speak in the language of winning and losing. Their paradigm is that of winning and of acquisition, as if countries and communities did not have to be built but could be acquired or won. This paradigm has neither knowledge nor appreciation for the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes. That God’s glory is visible on the cross is anathema to them, which rules out discipleship.

This is where Simon enters in. Simon frames our reading from Acts. He is introduced as Simon “who had previously practised magic.” (8:9) I know little about magic but the way I imagine this in Simon’s case is that magic was his trade. He would sell his services to those who requested them. I imagine that if Simon had an ability to heal people, he would have done so as fee for service work, unlike the apostles and Jesus who healed because they participated in God’s mission. Fee for service: Simon’s paradigm is commerce, and when after our reading Simon sees the Holy Spirit conferred upon those baptized in the act of the laying on of hands by Peter and John, he sees not a gift of God but a business opportunity, offering money to Peter and John, “… saying, ‘Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’” (v.19)
You see, if commerce is our frame of reference then everything is a commodity and everything becomes a transaction. We are no longer readers or viewers of news but consumers, we are not patients but consumers, and no longer citizens but consumers and we demand what we think we are entitled to. But making the world transactional kills community and relationships. It is no surprise we view the world as a resource, not as co-creation or gift. And without dismissing mega churches, it is certainly true that part of what drives people to them is precisely that they can better serve consumers, for their size allows them to offer more programming and services.
In all likelihood, Simon saw nothing wrong with his proposition, in the same way that we who are accustomed to capitalism as our primary frame of reference don’t even blink when politicians call us consumers, thereby negating any sense of community. But Peter and John’s frame of reference was the Gospel of Jesus Christ, a Gospel that is not for sale, that is not a product but is a way of life, a way of life that has a preferential option for the poor, which is why it was churches who started hospitals.² And so Peter replies, “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.” (v.20-22)
Repentance then would be our command as well. We remember that repentance does not mean physical or psychological self-flagellation but nothing more and nothing less than a change of direction.

The story given us by the lectionary is a curiosity, not for it’s critque of Simon and of the corrosiveness of capitalism, but for the fact that the baptism of the Samaritans is not accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit, for it is in baptism that the Holy Spirit is given.
The fourth century church father John Chrysostom says of this curiosity that it was meant as a twofold sign, teaching us in the no-giving of the gift to Simon that the Spirit is not a commodity and that we should not treat any aspect of our lives as a commodity. Secondly it was to involve Peter, a hold out regarding the inclusion of Gentiles, in the giving of the Spirit to these Samaritans.

The theologian Willie James Jennings says that Chrysostom is onto something, the giving of the Holy Spirit is not a purely spiritual matter but requires two things, the yielding, the giving of bodies to God,³ something that Simon did not understand; and also the touching of bodies. Peter the holdout against the inclusion of the other must come and touch the untouchable Samaritans for their baptism to be complete. Not only Simon learns something in this story but Peter learns as well.
Reading Jenning’s thoughts on the passage, in particular his mentioning of bodies touching in the laying on of hands reminds me of the observation that it is easy to declare one’s love of humanity but it is something all together different to love my neighbour in their particularity.

When the story ends the baptized Samaritans have received the Holy Spirit, but the story has not yet concluded. Peter and John travel back to Jerusalem and it is not until after the conversion of Saul that Peter has his vision in which he learns that what God has made clean he must not call profane, or any other name we can think of. And so we see that subsequent to todays’s reading we find not one but two conversion stories. First Saul, then Peter. And even though we know the story, we are increasingly tribal and protective of our privilege often not sure about the inclusion of those different from us or belonging to a different tribe. But we can’t love the universal if we do not love the particular.

As far as Simon is concerned, here the story also remains open to an ending the church has often failed to be able to imagine, for Simon has been villified by the church since the Book of Acts was written. But Simon is not rejected but given a gift: That gift is the call to repentance. And repentance makes a new life possible, repentance renews the imagination, repentance offers our lives, and our bodies, and all that we have and are to God. Simon asked the apostles to pray for him and for all we know he may have done that and received the Holy Spirit like the rest of them.

The peculiar story, at least in the reception of the church, that Peter and John had to travel to Samaria for the Holy Spirit to be given to the Samaritans who had been baptized, is a story of promise, for it shows us what it looks like to love the world in the love of our neightbours, it teaches us to love the other, and it calls us to repent from the commodification of the world, and by doing so, it offers us a new way forward.

Amen.