Such as We Have We Give

(a sermon for June 2, 2024, the 2^nd Sunday after Pentecost; fourth in a series, based on Acts 3:1-10)

So here is the story thus far…

Over the past few Sundays we’ve been tracking the beginnings of the early Christian church: from eleven very wary disciples of Jesus being sent forth to be witnesses of the risen Christ; through God’s gift of the Holy Spirit that filled them up and quite literally empowered them to speak to a world hungering for good news in every known language; which led to over 3,000 (!) converts being baptized into the church, as well as to the birth of a Christian community which is marked by believers gathering together for worship, fellowship shared “with glad and generous hearts,” and acts of compassion given “as any had need.” 

Truly, by the time we come to the end of the 2^nd chapter of Acts, which encompasses the story of Pentecost and the start of the church, we are given a vision of a church that is… ideal; a vision that reflected the movement and power of God’s Holy Spirit, one that we would gladly embrace in our own time and place, a way of life that we actively seek to embody in our own church.

And yet, in our text for this morning (in fact, the very next chapter and verse of the Book of Acts), we learn that the vision is not yet complete, that as wonderful and as desirable as it sounds to us, there is still one more component of the church’s self-understanding of what the church is supposed to be; and that is mission.

Which would seem like the most essential component of all!

Some years ago now in a prior congregation, I was blessed to have been a part of that church’s very successful restoration project. It was pretty amazing, actually: what started out as a small capital campaign to put a new roof on the building expanded into a massive historical refurbishing of the sanctuary and adjoining rooms; and it was… beautiful! But what I remember is that in the months afterward, amongst all of us in the church, the pastor included, there was this palpable feeling of, okay, now what? What do we do now?  I mean, we have this amazing looking and essentially brand-new church facility, but how was that going to further our mission as a church?  What was the point of everything we’d done if not for mission?  I remember we were all kind of wrestling with that; but mostly it all came down to one very basic question: what is mission?  More to the point, what is our mission, anyway?

Well, as it turns out, that is what our text for this morning is all about.

One thing that’s very interesting about this 3^rd chapter of Acts is that from a narrative point of view, Luke (who is, of course, the author of this continuation of his gospel) sort of pulls back from the grand account of the events of Pentecost and settles into a smaller story, if you will; the story about how “one day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, about three o’clock in the afternoon.”   A very customary and familiar thing for these apostles to do; but on this particular day, we’re told, at the entrance of the temple known as the “Beautiful Gate,”  they encounter a man “crippled from birth,” [The Message] “ask[ing] them for alms;” that is, he was begging passersby for any kind of handout they might we willing to offer him as one poor and needy. 

Now, we don’t know much about this man: he’s not given a name nor is there much of a backstory about what’s brought him to this station of life; all we really can glean from the text is that being “lame from birth,” each day he’d been carried to this gate and placed there for the purpose of begging, and that apparently he’d been there doing this for quite some time; just some nameless, faceless beggar who always just seemed to be there on the fringes of the community, ever and always with eyes set to the ground and arms extended outward, crying out… crying out again, and again, and again for alms… begging for whatever spare change someone might give him… crying out with everything he had for something, anything that might help.

And here’s where the story gets interesting. You see, the tendency, back then as it is now, quite frankly, was that the first rule of not having to respond to such a beggar as this was to avoid making eye contact; if we’re being honest, it’s the same way a lot of us deal with the people who stand at the intersection down on Fort Eddy Road with their cardboard signs asking for help: because if you don’t actually look at them standing there, if you don’t actually catch their attention, then you can just as easily drive on by and get on with your busy life!

And so it was for this random, anonymous beggar at the gate of the temple.  But rather than looking the other way and rushing on by on their way into to the temple, Peter and John heard the man crying out for alms and they stopped. And more than merely stopping for a quick moment to hear the beggar’s request of them, Luke tells us that in fact, “Peter looked intently at him, as did John.”  

We should understand here that this is a very specific and, might I add, intentional choice of words! For you see, in the original Greek, the word used here is atenizo, which is where we get our word attention, and what this tells us is that Peter and John didn’t just look at this beggar, but in fact they focused their whole attention on him! 

So what we have here is Peter and John looking this beggar square in the eye, while, by the way, also fairly well demanding that he stop looking at the ground and rather “[fix] his attention on them” instead; thus treating him and engaging him as a person, recognizing him as the child of God he was created to be rather than just another beggar on the streets.

And then Peter says something very interesting.  In the very poetic language of the old King James Version of scripture, he responds to the beggar’s request for alms by saying, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.” (Or, if you’d prefer a more contemporary translation, how about this from The Message: “I don’t have a nickel to my name, but what I do have, I give you.”)

Either way, what happens next is miraculous: Peter reaches out to this man – this man crippled from birth, mind you – pulls him up (!) by his right hand, “and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong.”  So strong, in fact, that the beggar immediately starts leaping and dancing for joy; praising God for all he’s worth and, might I add, totally disrupting any semblance of a serious prayer time that afternoon, astonishing everybody who’d witnessed what happened to this now former beggar at the Beautiful Gate!

And this, at least as Luke leads us to understand it, is the moment in which mission became an essential component of the life of this new church.  What we find out is that as a result of this healing “all of [the people] praised God for what had happened,” (4:21) and that many more heard the word and came to believe, so that now the church numbered about 5,000 (!) members (Peter and John also got in big trouble with the religious powers that be in Jerusalem, but that’s a story for another time).  This was mission, and moreover a model of the mission of the church that carries on to this very day; but here’s the thing: it really wasn’t about the money; it wasn’t about the giving of alms or some perfunctory act of charity, though there would certainly be some value in that.  Neither was it an orchestrated and intentional effort on the Apostles’ part to grow the church, so to speak; it wasn’t designed as an outreach program.  And in one sense, it wasn’t even about the healing miracle per se. 

Ultimately, you see, it was the apostles’ act of sharing what they had been given with others – all others – witnessing to the power of the risen Christ in their midst.  Mission, you see, comes down to a central calling of the Christian faith: that when it comes to the Spirit’s movement in our lives, we do not hesitate: such as we have, such as we’ve seen, such as we’ve heard, such as we’ve received… we are called and empowered to give!

But it begins, you see, by paying attention… it starts with truly seeing those around us.

Not long after the completion of that restoration project I spoke of earlier, we were gathered for morning worship, and since it was a warm summer day we’d opened up all the doors to let the sunshine and cool breezes come in.  Now, you need to understand that this church building was situated next to some (mostly unused) railroad tracks, and one of the by-products of this was that over the years we were occasionally visited by folks who were homeless, transient, or otherwise in need.

Generally, we didn’t see these people in worship, but on this particular morning, at some point during the service into the sanctuary staggers this gentleman who promptly (and rather loudly) plops himself down in one of the back pews! His clothing was all ragged and torn; his hands and face were caked with several layers of mud and soot, and he reeked of tobacco and alcohol and body odor; moreover, it would have been very safe to say that he was quite inebriated.  Honestly, from my perspective up in the pulpit, it looked as though this man might pass out at any moment!  But he didn’t; he just sat there in the pew looking around at everything and everyone, even as he was seemingly oblivious to everything else going on around him!

And nobody seemed to know what they were supposed to do about this!

It’s not like this man was being disruptive or threatening to anyone else in the sanctuary; he wasn’t in any sense an intruder, and it certainly didn’t seem right to kick someone out of the church based on how they looked (or smelled)!  But that said, how were we supposed to handle this?  What if he did pass out in the pew; what would we do then?  Or what if he… well… got sick, shall we say (!) right there on the Smith Family Memorial Carpet?  Suffice to say that there was a long and protracted time of silence in that hour of worship, everybody was feeling very uncomfortable, and trust me here, at that moment nobody was listening at all to the pastor’s sermon!

But then, finally, something did get done about the situation at hand. 

One of our deacons got up from his pew, quickly walked over to our new friend… and sat down right beside him!  And after a few moments of quiet conversation, I heard our Deacon say, “Well, it seems to me as though you really could use something to eat… brother, why don’t you come with me and we’ll set you up with a cup of coffee and a muffin?”  And with that, he put his arm around the shoulder of this stranger and together they went out to the fellowship hall, where they sat down on one of the brand-new chairs they’d just bought for that room, and proceeded to share some brunch with the rest of the congregation.

And you see; that, beloved, is mission.

Now, I would love to tell you that this was the moment that changed this man’s life forever; that he immediately gave up drinking or that he found Jesus Christ while in our church pew that morning.  I’ll admit, that would certainly have made for a better story; but truth be told, I don’t know what happened to that man after that.  That’s the thing about our shared mission in the church; we don’t always get to see the fruit of our labors.

But I can tell you this: on that morning when that man came into our sanctuary, he was seen… perhaps for the first time in a long time.  He was paid attention to, and he was loved, and cared for, and fed, and for at least in one moment in time, made to feel welcome.  And whether he was wholly aware of it or not, this man experienced in the hospitality of one church Deacon the deep love of God and the profound movement of his Holy Spirit.

 It might be items collected for a hygiene kit or the canned food for a Thanksgiving Basket. Perhaps it’s a hot meal served at the Friendly Kitchen or warm socks from the Homeless Resource Center.  Or for that matter, maybe it’s you providing a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear in times of grief and pain or simply a sympathetic heart when it’s needed the most. Such as we have, you see, we give… we give in Jesus’ name.  That’s the mission of the church, beloved… that’s our mission, yours and mine, as believers… today and always.

So might it be, beloved… and so might we be.

Thanks be to God.

Amen and AMEN!

© 2024  Rev. Michael W. Lowry.  All Rights Reserved.