Faithfulness and the New Man

Delivered at Church of the Holy Family
Wednesday of Easter Week, 2009
Propers: Luke 24:13-35, Acts 3:1-10

In the short passage from Acts 3:1-10 we are immersed in the ordinary and the routine. Peter and John are going up to the temple at the hour of prayer. Indeed, at the end of chapter 2 we are told that the believers “day by day, spent much time at the temple”. Peter and John are just going about the daily routine; it is probably not even the first time they have been to the temple that day.

At the gate of the temple lay a beggar, lame from birth, now in his fortieth year. He is laid there daily. His routine is well known. Luke even notes that the people of Jerusalem recognize him as the beggar at the Beautiful Gate. For this man the routine may have become a source of despair – a lifetime of begging, no longer even looking up at the almsgivers as they pass by.

So, we must imagine that Peter and John have seen this man before, probably many times. Yet this time when the beggar asks Peter and John for alms, Luke tells us that Peter looked at him intently, as did John.

The story continues, almost without missing a beat. It would be easy to pass over this detail. Still, Luke tells us that Peter did not just glance down at the beggar, but that he looked at him intently.

Just what went through Peter’s mind at that moment – Peter, who had been at Jesus’ side through his ministry?

Did Peter perhaps see Lazarus lying at the gate of the rich man’s house? As the beggar asked for alms, did Peter hear Lazarus hungry and pleading for the falling crumbs?

So much has happened since Jesus told that parable: the Passion, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. It is a new time.

Then perhaps Peter looked up for a moment through the gate toward the temple and saw now the temple as the house of the rich man, and Peter the servant of that rich man, nourished at the sumptuous table of the Lord of that house in the breaking of bread - Peter who has nothing of his own because the church holds all things in common, says with honesty, “I have no silver or gold,” and then with gentleness, “but what I have I give you” – and what crumbs from the table of the Lord can he possibly offer to this beggar at the gate? Nothing less than,

“In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

Then Peter took the beggar by the right hand and, Luke says, “raised him up” – for this is a story about healing, certainly, but only to point to the Resurrection; Peter “raised him up”. As Paul writes, Christ “will transform the body of our humiliation (the body of a lame beggar lying outside God’s house) that it may be conformed to the body of his glory (the healed man running and jumping into the temple, a figure of the new man in Christ) by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself (instantly this man believed and praised God).” Phil 3:21

Peter lives in a community of faithful obedience to ordinary practices, devoted to the prayers, and to the breaking of bread. It is in devotion to these ordinary things that Peter’s eyes are opened to the beggar at the gate – much as Cleopas’ eyes are opened to Jesus in the breaking of bread - and it is through faithfulness to holding all things in common that we find Peter with no silver and gold.

Let us not miss the irony: Through faithfulness Peter’s eyes are opened to notice the beggar, but through faithfulness he also has no silver or gold to give. From the beggar’s vantage it’s a bit of a Catch 22!

But it is a new time - a time not of defeat, nor of despair, but of victory. For, Christ is risen!

Thus in Peter’s faithfulness to the risen Christ, we find that having nothing he yet possesses everything, being poor he yet makes this man rich, and this beggar, whom everyone recognized but no one knew, is yet well-known as he is raised up with Christ.

Peter’s faithfulness turns an ordinary, and potentially awkward, encounter into a mirror of the Resurrection.

We must be faithful in small things, if we are to participate in the glory of God that is the resurrection of his Son. Let us go therefore and devote ourselves to Christ in every small act. Let our daily routines be set by the worship of God. Let our eyes be opened in the breaking of bread.

And may every mundane encounter be transformed by the resurrection of our Lord.

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his

disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith,

that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives

and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.