Description
Imagining the Lectionary: Baptism of Jesus (Year C)
Reflection accompanying image “Faith check holy fire assembly point”
When can faith be said to be truly authentic? This week's Lectionary readings suggest that the answer to this question relates to both our experiences of God's presence and to our expectations concerning God's activity in our own lives, because experience and expectation
operate in a feedback loop. The lowest initial energy state of faith is that of minimal experience and low expectation. Faith is a proposition rather than a relationship. Interest is aroused, intellectual curiosity stimulated and sense made. Faith is worth looking into. The testimony of others and the witness of scripture opens up rather than closes down the mind of the enquirer. In the story in Acts 8 the role of the apostles Peter and John is to engage with people at this stage of the faith journey and enable them to transition into an actual experience of the presence of God which will transform their expectation. 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).
Continues...