A More Light Congregation

Bethany Presbyterian Church

Sermon

Today and for the next six weeks the church calendar reminds us that we are still in the Season of Easter.  So it's fitting that in every scripture chosen for the next six weeks from the Book of Acts, someone is proclaiming the Easter story for someone else, or confessing the truth of the Easter story for themselves.  In the next six weeks, culminating with Pentecost on May 23rd, we will be looking at all of the ways, and to whom, the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection is proclaimed.  My first sermon series for you was during two sequential visits to Bethany as your guest pastor that were called Easy Come, and Easy Go.  I like to think we've come a long way since then!


Our scripture this morning comes immediately after a lame man has recovered his ability to use his legs after being with Peter and John.  As scripture for a church service goes, it was surprising to me that the lectionary text did not include the exciting experience of the man as he healed.  There's nothing like a text that begins “When Peter saw it…”  It?  What did Peter see?!   In the text before today's scripture, we are told that Peter and John came upon a man who was lame from birth, who was daily carried to the Beautiful Gate at the temple so that he could ask for alms.  People knew this man.  The man asked Peter and John for alms when the man saw him.  Imagine his surprise when Peter and John looked at him intently before they spoke.  Put yourself in that lame man's position.  Imagine sitting, people passing all the time, maybe you get something from the passersby, and maybe not.  But for Peter and John to look at him intently must have been unnerving.


I have an experience of being stared at instead of an answer to my question, in a very silly story.  I was in 7th or 8th grade, it was the 70's so the long hair on my teacher, Mr. Anderson's head was all the rage, and he was quite charming and mesmerizing to my 8th grade girl crush heart.  One day in class I had the hiccups and I was really embarrassed.  I asked him if I could go and get a drink of water, and he came over to my desk, stooped down with his elbows on my desk, and stared at me.  I'm sure I blushed bright red, wanted to do whatever he was telling me to do – yes, go get a drink, no, stay here in class – but he was just staring!  After forever, during which time I did not hiccup, he said, see, “I scared them out of you!”  I was horribly shy and probably grinned my “what-do-you-want-grin” the whole time.  


So I wonder what was going through the lame man's mind when Peter and John looked intently at him before speaking?  In Acts 3:1-12 we read, “Then Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.”  And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”  And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.  Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.”


This is the “it” our text for today is referring to.  I don't know about you, but after the excitement of Easter, and the astounding beauty and life giving power of Easter, I would have loved to continue the excitement by reading scripture about this man, and share the excitement of the man jumping up and down and I could preach about the amazing miracle of healing.  


Our lesson today though begins after the healing, and we become not only witness to but part of the crowd that gathers in the portico wondering “what was that?”  The highlight for us today is not the healing, but the message that allowed the power of the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to give the man use of his legs.  The future and new life for the no-longer-lame man would be forever changed.  He has new life in Christ.  


According to this text, what gives the resurrection power is when it is proclaimed.  The power of the resurrection is that it isn't only an event, it is a remembered and continued event whose power continues every time Jesus name is proclaimed.  The scripture today is the first example of these proclamations of the power of Jesus' name in the Book of Acts.  Over the next few weeks we will read about other ways that the entire Easter experience is proclaimed, expressed, represented by acts of the early followers of Jesus.


Peter seems especially hard on the Israelites in his speech to them here.  By calling them Israelites he is reminding them of their (and his own) ancestral relation to the Fathers of their faith.  The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob – the God of our ancestors is the God who has glorified Jesus and made all of this power possible.  Peter reminds them in great detail that “you” handed Jesus over; “you” rejected him; “you” killed the Author of Life.


This is in no way the anti-Semitic statement that some Christians have turned it into, pointing to Peter, an early Christian, blaming “the Jews” for being responsible for the death of Jesus.  We have to remember that Jesus, Peter, and the Israelites were all Jews.  Even the Jesus Movement of the early first century was a movement inside Jewish communities.  Peter was not an early Christian.  The notion of being Christian didn't come about until the Roman State in about the 3rd and 4th centuries, and that's when early writings contain more divisive ideas about the Jews being “other.”  Context matters here.  Our modern Christianity has been a process, and in Peter's time it was not what we often make it nowadays.


Even though the words seem harsh, I think the tone of the paragraph we read today is more gentle than we might at first think.  It's more of a sermon to remind the witnesses to the lame man walking that the person who made all of this possible was the Holy one; the Righteous One; the Author of Life.  A reminder, not blame.   We see this in verse 17 when Peter lets them off the hook a bit by saying, I know you didn't know.  This part reminds me of the phrase, “When you know better, do better.”  Peter says, “And now friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.  In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer.”


Peter doesn't stop with explaining what has happened to the Israelites and summarizing the events that led to and followed Jesus' crucifixion.  He says that so far this has been part of God's fulfillment of what was foretold through all the prophets.  And then Peter adds, “repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.”  Peter's message to those gathered is 1) it wasn't John and he who healed the man, 2) a reminder that it was the very same Jesus of Nazareth that we are talking about, and 3) now that you know you must repent.


Knowing better isn't enough.  Doing better is the final step.  The power of God in Christ in our lives is not meant to stand alone as a singular amazing event in our lives.  Just like the events of Easter is not meant to stand alone as a singular amazing event.  It is up to us to have the experience of God, to walk again after being lame, and then tell about it.  Proclaim the power of Jesus' name.  Confess the truth of that power in our own lives.  Repent – turn from – the ways of our lives that have not included God – and notice now the power of Christ working in our lives.


Repenting though has a bad rap.  I don't believe that repentance should feel like punishment.  I believe that true repentance feels like love.  True repentance happens when we are ready to truly turn in a new direction, and we see the path ahead as better because of it.  True repentance often comes after “ah ha!” or “Oh!”  True repentance never happens just once.  Once we have repented and continue to walk in a new way, the promise of new life becomes something we feel deeper and deeper over time.  This is what I think Peter means when he tells us that we repent “so that our sins may be wiped out.”  I believe that when we repent, and repeatedly remain on that new path, our lives become so distant from the earlier sinful walk that they are no longer visible.  Not just faded; not just covered over; not just blurred; they are wiped out.


Imagine how free we would feel if we could allow the power of Christ in our lives to turn us from self-deprecation or feelings of low self-worth, into people who know that we are worth the love of God.


Imagine how free we would feel if we could allow the power of Christ in our lives to turn us from angry, where's-mine, I-win, fearful people into people who recognize the pain each of us carries and treats others by asking “what do you need.”


Trusting the power of Christ in our lives brings us freedom from being people living with insecurities to people who are generous with all that we have to give; the freedom to no longer be part of communities that blame, but to find ways to be part of communities that offer grace.


I invite us to live as if we have seen not only one lame man walk again, but many sufferings being healed, many losses being restored, many heartbreaks being repaired, many deaths being resurrected to new life.  We can notice the power of Jesus of Nazareth in the lives of ourselves and others, and proclaim that truth for all to hear.


Let us pray…

Proclamation and Confession Part I

Reverend Debra McGuire

April 18, 2021


Acts 3:12-19