First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
7 November 2004
What We Have We Give
The sermon this morning was written by committee. Twenty-two of us read this story together last Sunday. After a few moments of reflection, each of us then offered a question or an insight we had gleaned from our pondering. And I took notes! Lots of them! Not everything that was said last week found its way into today's sermon, but every last word helped me prepare. Thanks, everyone!
Now, let's look at the story.
Note that in the verses that come right before our story opens, we are treated to a rosy picture of a small Jewish sect that seems like a great bunch of people, all of 'em happy as a clam at high tide! This is a group that is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was God's "Messiah" (God's agent, we might say), and that through his ministry, death and resurrection, he had jumpstarted a new era of hope—they called it the "kingdom." This kingdom is characterized by justice, peace, healing, liberation, joy, healthy human community, sharing and inclusion for all—the same sort of things political candidates promise us every four years, but can never quite deliver.
However, the Jesus-centered Jews in our text believed that God could deliver all this and more, that God as indeed already doing just. You could see what God was doing in their mutually-supportive community life, in the accepting, candid way they dealt with each other, in the generous, joyful way they praised God. They were not themselves the kingdom, but they were like a lab where kingdom-life could get cooked up and tried out. They thought of themselves as a vanguard, a wedge of light under a door that had been closed for eons.
We find out in Acts 2:47 that this little band has been hard at work at new member recruitment, and that it seems to be going very well. You and I might've signed up too if we had experienced the kind of preaching the apostles were doing—strong, clear words accompanied by powerful miracles! The miracles the apostles were doing were very persuasive sermon illustrations. But they weren't ends in themselves. They were "signs," pointing beyond themselves and meant to show that God was action as well as talk, that lives really could change through trusting God's promise and following God's servant, Jesus.
In Acts 3:1, Peter and John, two of the leaders of the church and good, observant Jews, have gone to the Jerusalem Temple for daily prayers. A beggar with a congenital lameness is being carried in by some family members at the same time they arrive. . Before he's even let down in his customary place by the Beautiful Gate, he sees those two prospects and starts yelling, "Any spare change?" Now, there was no safety net in the first century, no welfare system, no SSI, no nothing. There was instead a crushing tax system that made it impossible for the working poor to climb out of poverty. They just had to keep slaving away. And for the non-working poor—well, they could beg.
Almsgiving, then, was both a religious obligation and a social necessity. The Temple area was swarming with beggars and with pious folks handing out coins. One person in our group last week imagined all this giving as a kind of unburdening—people with means divesting before praying, making themselves a little lighter. Like ritual hand washing, cleaning up before you talked to God. Maybe some of these givers also remembered what the prophets who said—that God hates being worshipped while the poor are being neglected. Jesus himself said that on judgment day, we won't be asked how many times we turned up for services, but whether we fed, clothed and consoled the poor as if they were kin, that is, whether we gave 'em resources ordinarily reserved for our own families. No, there's no use praying if you're stepping over beggars on your way to church.
There's a politically-progressive, artsy Christian community down in Asheville, North Carolina I visited once about ten years ago. At that point they were meeting in a downtown storefront. They didn't want to be too far away from where the drunks and panhandlers congregated. Didn't want to contract that awful disease known as Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind Syndrome. At their Sunday celebration, the first thing they did after singing a hymn was to pass the hat. When I asked why, the person sitting next to me explained that in the Bible the poor come first with God, and so they received the offering early in the service to impress this fact upon themselves in more than an intellectual way. That was a long time ago, and I don't know if they are still doing things this way, but I do know (because someone sent me their most recent newsletter) that in the dozen or so years they have existed as a community of faith they have given away more than a million dollars from Sunday offerings to the needs of their community. (Hey! What do they know that we don't? How come they can do it and we can't...? Or can we?)
Back to the story. Peter and John hear the beggar call out. They stop. They look at him. Verse 3:4 says that they look Intently. They make the man look at them too. One person wondered last week whether the beggar might have gotten used to being ignored. Probably n one ever really looked at him like a human being. You know the way people act around street people. We tend to avoid eye contact. So there's something about this mutual gaze that's important. Maybe the healing of the beggar begins not when his legs strengthen but when three men see each other, as real human beings, and even as kin. In the dehumanizing environments many of us have to cope with, wouldn't we also find a moment of deep mutual recognition like that healing?
That's nice to consider, but in v. 5 the author tells us that the beggar was actually thinking something more basic: "Good! These guys are going to give me something!" And they do, but it's not what he expects. Peter and John don't give him alms. They even claim not to have a red cent on them. Some of us in the group last Sunday wondered why. You'd always have something ready for beggars outside the temple and for the collection plate inside, wouldn't you? Maybe they'd lost their wallets or been pick-pocketed or given everything to some other beggar. Or maybe the author of Acts, who was a writer with a theological purpose, was trying to make a point. What point? That there are things in life more important than money, one person suggested—like eye meeting eye. Things money can't buy, like a hand stretched out to help you up from your mat or out of your closet, a compassion so real and strong that it literally moves you.
And maybe the author hopes that we will be moved to ask ourselves what that "something more than money" is for us? What do we need and long for that is more than money? And what might we be able to give that money can't buy? Another person observed that sometimes we don't know that we have the kind of gifts that, if we gave them away, could make a big difference to others. Maybe we don't believe that a simple faith-filled word or gesture, a testimony of hope, an hour of our time, a good idea, our loving presence, could have earth-shattering meaning for someone. A lot of us are always dwelling on what we don't have and what we can't do, instead of on what we do have and what we can accomplish, especially together ... We have a mentality of lack and incapacity. We are too small for our Christian britches. Peter and John, on the other hand, know what they have. They think big and boldly and take huge risks. And so we hear Peter declare (v. 6): "What I have, I give you. In the name of Jesus, stand up and walk." And the beggar stands up and walks.
Now, this miracle is a sign done in Jesus' name, and (as we said before) a sign points to something else, not to itself. So what the apostles give the lame man is not just physical mobility. They also give him a particular experience of God's plan for the whole world, that wholeness, freedom and newness we mentioned before. And it really is new when people who are excluded from big chunks of ordinary life are finally able to get in the door. As one person noted, people with disabilities were not allowed in the Temple. Along with new legs, then, this man got to re-join the community of faith, and to participate in the rituals of his ancestors. The man who spent all his days outside the Beautiful Gate, got to go through it for the first time in his life. It is even possible that now that he can walk, he can work and he won't need to beg again, but we can't be sure. The story doesn't say. What we do know, however, is that a barrier has come down. And that is something amazing.
The text says that immediately the beggar got up and started walking around (vv. 7-8). That's the author's way of emphasizing how decisively God acts to change things. God is in a hurry to bestow well-being. Now, change and transformation don't usually happen so fast in our experience. It takes a long time for things that need to change a mile to budge even an inch. But they do budge! And sometimes when we look back over the years, we can see how much things have shifted. From that vantage point, huge social change and life transformations seem almost as immediate as the healing in this story. When we see how much has happened, our jaw drops!
Think about integrating lunch counters and schools. Think about women in leadership in church and society. Think about gay people getting married. And think what it would be like for a child who uses a wheelchair to be able easily, by elevator, to get to the second floor of the Parish House to join her Sunday School class. What is all this about? It's about God's will that all creation possess God's well-being and joy. "What I have I give." What did the apostles have? An experience of God. A love for the Way of Jesus. A practice of mutual acceptance and radical hospitality. A new way of looking at other human beings as kin. An urgent sense of mission. And what they have they give.. Going up to the Temple to pray: four bucks or so for the taxi. Doing your duty toward the poor: fifty cents in a begging bowl. Full human acceptance and the gift of well-being in the name of God? Priceless.
Now notice (v. 8) that the man Peter healed did not walk into the Temple. He went leaping. This, of course, would not be possible if you'd never used your legs before. (The PTs and nurses in our group made that very clear. They wanted to put together a good rehab plan for him!) This leaping business, however, is another bit of theological symbolism—the Bible says that when the Messiah's new age comes, the whole world will leap for joy. The cosmos will do its thing in a state of perpetual amazement and praise. The man's leaping sums it up: God is working God's purposes out even now!
There were several other wonderful points made by people in our group last week. Unfortunately we can't mention them all here. But because over the next two weeks we will be urging you to support First Church financially, I want to finish this sermon by reviewing four of the important points people in our group did make and offer you some questions to ponder on your own as you decide how much to give.
Well, that's all for now, but do stay tuned—this morning a group of us read another passage from Acts. A really wild one. People had lots to say about it. Things are heating up for next week's sermon! If you want to know more, ask someone who was there (raise your hands, please). And please, make a special effort to be here next week when our community will worship and eat and talk frankly about receiving and giving our gifts, especially the gift of money. And we'll do this money talk under the amazing floodlight of all the things that we have from God and give away that matter just as much as money, and much, much more.
© 2004, J Mary Luti