(Message given at Wayside Friends Church on October 24, 2021)
I’m Gregg Koskela; my pronouns are he/him.
Today’s scripture is Acts 3:1-10
One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer–at three in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, ‘Look at us!’ So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them.
Then Peter said, ‘Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.
This is our dog Alfie.
He is such a good boy. I truly love this dog, with his smooshy face that sags into a perpetual sad look that belies his true, almost constant joy.
However, Alfie has developed a problem. He is scared out of his mind…of our floor.
What started as a few innocent slips of the paw on our laminate floor has turned into full-blown anxiety. He’ll somehow forget his fear for a moment and walk one way across the floor, and then in a panic remember. Then he’s stuck, whining and unable to take three steps back across the floor to the safety of the carpet.
He often finds himself stuck in the corner by the door to the deck.
Rather than brave the floor for a few feet to get back to the living room, he will whine and claw and scratch at the door, begging for someone to let him out on the deck, so that he can run across the deck, all the way around the house, up on to the front porch, and scratch to be let in the front door.
In his anxiety, he is locked into only seeing one safe way out, one path of survival to get to the living room.
It’s frustrating that he can’t see how much harder it is his way, that he can’t choose to take the short and direct way. But that’s what pain and anxiety can do to us.
Pain and suffering narrow our vision, and kill our imagination.
That’s what we see in Acts 3. For his entire life, this lame man has known only one way of survival. It’s fragile, yet in a way, beautiful. He comes to the temple gate each day, to the temple gate called Beautiful, and the faith community begins its worship by taking care of him, providing for him, giving alms.
He’s dependent on people to bring him there, dependent on people to give him money. It’s an entire existence of being unable to control his own life, his own day, his own destiny. And yet, a beauty of interdependence emerges. A functional system develops. He’s alive. He’s still there. He’s grown to adulthood. Each day, his needs are met by the community.
I like to think that in some way he has shaped and changed the faith community for the better.
They see his humanity…at least, I hope they do. I hope they realize their connection to him, their interdependence. I hope they see that their tangible care of him through giving alms is a necessary part of their worship of God. As Dr. Willie James Jennings writes, “Before praises go up to God, the poor and lame, the sick and pained must be seen.”
There is beauty in his existence, in his survival. There is beauty in the worshipping community as they tangibly support while entering through this temple gate called Beautiful.
But yet…
Isn’t there a huge part of this that brings an ache? This system, though functional, blindfolds imagination of what could be. What has emerged is a mutually created pattern of interactions that locks his humanity into something less than it could be.
A bit, perhaps, like Alfie—unable to imagine the possibility of walking across the scary floor, but instead transfixed and focused on the makeshift solution, someone opening the door for him so he can go the long way round in the way that is comfortable and familiar to him.
The power of this scripture to me right now is two-fold.
On the one hand, I see in the lame man the negative power which locks us wounded ones into aching patterns, patterns which are mere shadows of the potential that could be there. And on the other hand, I also observe in Peter the positive power to see and imagine something wholly new and different. When God’s power flows through Peter, we see the way true healing strikes in such a surprising way as it lifts us out of the limits that are created by our pain.
First, let’s explore the negative.
The negative power of pain pushes people into survival mode, shrinking our horizons and narrowing our view. 15 years ago when I first faced a time of deep depression, I remember having to use my hands to describe it. I held them up and said, “It’s like my world is shrinking, narrowing. It’s like I slowly narrow to only see what’s directly in front of me; and I can’t see too far ahead either.”
Sometimes your world shrinks to the point where you don’t any longer even remember that there’s a wider picture, a world of options. Like the lame man, life narrows to what is right in front of you for survival: who will carry me to the gate today? Which of the people I see will spare a coin?
On a wider scale, I also think of the negative power of injustice, and the way it limits.
I think of women, who in my lifetime had to fight for the ability to have a credit card and bank account in their own name, women who still make 84% of what men make for the same job. I think of people of color who spend anxious hours worrying if their sons will come home alive from routine traffic stops. I think of transgender people just wanting to use a restroom without fear.
When denied the basics, when denied the dignity of humanity, our imagination for what could be is narrowed to the grim reality of surviving this hour, this day, this pay period.
The lame man stands for all of us in our times of pain, our times of fear, our times of paralysis when the world narrows so greatly, that we can only look for a comfortable way forward, no matter how inconvenient. We are Alfie, far more willing to go the long way around through rain and mud, rather than risk the fear and anxiety and pain of the direct path.
What about the positive “other hand”?
What I see is that the work of God, the work of the Spirit, is to first bring new imagination to us.
As humans, we can sometimes create decently functional systems. We can carry the lame to where others can help them get by. We can patch things together and make it work.
But this!
This radical in-breaking, this new walk through the truly Beautiful gate of worship…this kind of walking, leaping, laughing and joyful healing is only imagined and empowered and inspired by Creator God!
I notice that this imagination of a new kind of wholeness, this positive power: I notice it comes from God through another in community.
The bible doesn’t seem to make any negative judgment about the fact that the lame man can’t imagine something better than a few coins for his begging. Rather, the bible celebrates the beauty and the boldness in Peter! Peter observes a system that is functioning, but which limits imagination of what could be. With Holy Spirit eyes, Peter sees all that is possible, all that the lame man can’t even imagine.
This is who we can be for each other in the community of Christ!
Doesn’t that just give you chills? What could it be like for you and I to walk through life and see, IMAGINE the unlimited God-potential in other people?
Elizabeth reminded us a few weeks ago that the book of Acts begins with the disciples in their own closed-in, fearful world. All their hopes seemed dashed as their world narrowed, as they sat together in the upper room, trying to figure out how to get through the hour, the day, the week ahead of them.
They have the promise in Jesus’ words that they will receive power when the Spirit comes upon them. But until the Spirit comes, all they can do is sit in their little room, praying, rolling dice to see who takes the place of Judas.
It takes the Spirit, it takes God’s presence, it takes power to bring something new.
The power of new eyes. The power of new imagination. The power of being a conduit of God’s limitless possibilities. [pause]
This is almost 30 years ago now, but I still remember a sermon given by a friend of mine in a preaching class when I was in seminary. It was, in essence, a retelling of most of the first part of the book of Acts, as if it took place today on the east coast, and he followed around as the disciples traveled in their broken down down VW bus.
“Can we have that power?” my friend said in the sermon. Long pause. “I don’t know, but Peter does. And he was scared out of his mind a few weeks ago.”
I want Peter’s eyes. I want Peter’s boldness.
I want Peter’s connection to God, the connection that lets me break out of the constraints of the pain and injustice in our world—a connection with God that empowers me to imagine new healing and to speak humanity and hope to others.
What the book of Acts seems to try and show us is that God’s limitless power wants to come to us through each other. Wait on the Spirit, experience the Spirit, and then watch how the Spirit will go through you to connect to another.
God helped the disciples speak in other people’s first language, rooted in their particular human experience: God worked through the disciples to meet others on their terms, as Elizabeth shared in her message. The disciples shared tangible things with each other, like Luke shared last week. God is drawing near and pouring out Their Spirit on all people, as Steve Sherwood reminded us.
God’s Spirit often comes through others, with the imagination and the healing power to break us out of our blinders, enabling new ways to walk and to bring leaping joy!
This is why we exist as a church! This is why we look to experience the real presence of God!
We want to see and feel the limitless power and imagination of God opening our eyes and speaking through our mouths, drawing others into a better reality than they can see for themselves.
It’s a mutual community that’s needed. You will see healing for me that I can’t see for myself, and sometimes I’ll see it for you in ways you can’t. It’s never certain people always as the healers and others always as the receivers. It’s mutual, interdependent give and take.
Can we also be conduits of God’s power to heal, not just imagine? I don’t know…but Peter did, and a few weeks before he was scared out of his mind.
We can become a community in which God continues to be incarnated—made flesh and blood—day in and day out!
May we seek and invite the presence and power of the Spirit into our lives. May we, like Peter, see possibilities for others that they themselves cannot imagine. May we be conduits of God’s limitless imagination and power for healing. And may we make Wayside a gate, an entry point to a worshipping community that truly is the gate called beautiful.