Hot Days and Miracles

 (from a children-and-other-people’s tale I wrote up and told during worship this morning based on Acts 3:1-11)

It was a blistering hot afternoon in the desert – the kind where heat shimmers and hovers off of everything like steam rising over a frying pan. Afternoons in this desert weren’t like Georgia is now: all green and growing and smelling like honeysuckle and apple blossoms. It was all dirt and dusty hills stretching out for miles with only a little bush here and a little tree there. It was 3:00 in the afternoon. Even the busy busy lizards had stopped their scurrying and lounged across the ground and on the stones of the long, high wall nearby, snap, snap, snapping occasionally at the flies that buzzed all around waiting to see if one would sneak up too close to them: chomp, chomp, chomp!

If you ran your hand along the stones of the long, high wall where the lizards sat you would eventually reach a lovely arched doorway and a courtyard beyond where many many people were starting to clump around in bunches to pray together. This happened every day, three times a day: at 9am, noon and 3 in the afternoon when the Jewish people gathered at the temple. The gate at the end of the long, high wall was called Beautiful. Some people said it was over 75 feet tall with huge double doors made of fine Corinthian brass that shone brighter and finer than any silver or gold ever had.

Whatever the case may be, if you looked through the lines of people streaming into the temple courts you would see a man, sitting beside the gate. And if you were to think that it looked like he had been sitting there, in that sunny spot by the gate for his whole life, you would be right. The man was born with feet that didn’t work right and ankles that didn’t move like they were supposed to. Imagine how hard it would be to walk if your feet couldn’t hold you up and your ankles didn’t move at all.

Every day his friends, or his family or whoever was around would pick this man up in their arms, cradling him like some lovely, gangly sack of potatoes and carry him all the way down the dusty streets across the town and up to the gate called Beautiful. There he would sit and sit and sit all day, every day asking for money from the good, busy people going in and out of the temple to pray. It was just him and a little shade from the wall in the mornings and his chipped, pottery begging bowl. All day long.

That day, he had had a particularly bad day and his chipped pottery begging bowl only held a few coins. His eyelids drooped low over his eyes and his shoulders slumped forwards and he had long ago set his bowl down beside him leaving his hands empty as the day he was born. He was too busy being tired and discouraged to notice the pair of men walking up to him. The two men looked like very good friends, or at least like they had known each other for a very, very long time or gone through a whole lot of life together. And if you were to guess that these men were the very Peter and John who had followed Jesus around for the last few years, you would be right.

Peter and John walked right on up to him. Peter looked straight at him. John looked straight at him. Nothing happened. So Peter cleared his throat and said, “Look at us!” Look at us… woah! So, the man raised his droopy eyelids and unslumped his shoulders just a little and looked on up at this funny pair, expecting to finally get a little something to fill up his small, empty begging bowl.

This loud man, Peter, seemed to know what he was doing, but he sure didn’t look like he had anything to fill up the begging bowl, which was quite true, as it turns out. “Sorry man, I don’t have any silver. I don’t have any gold. But what I have, I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!”

And with that, just like he had never believed anything was impossible, this loud Peter man took the right hand of the man who couldn’t walk and pulled and heaved and helped him up to his feet. Just in that instant something crazy happened! The man who hadn’t walked a step since the day he was born jumped up to his feet and started walking. His feet were strong, his legs were strong, his ankles moved as smoothly as butter on a hot skillet and his droopy eyelids sure weren’t droopy any longer.

The man was just expecting coins and all the sudden he found himself up, standing on legs that worked! As the story goes he went right along with that funny looking John and the loud man Peter right into the temple courts where he had never been in all his life. What was he doing? He was dancing and walking and jumping and praising God! Running from one side of the courtyard to the other in amazement… “Jumping and leaping and praising God!”

This reminds me of a song from when was a child. I don’t remember the verses very well, but when anything really exciting happened, exciting enough for my brothers and sister and I to jump around, this song would come to my head. One of the biggest times was when my little brother Cory was born and we were waiting impatiently to go to the hospital to see him for the first time. I remember jumping around a wooden stool in my aunt’s kitchen – round and round in circles on that linoleum floor and singing this song at the top of my lungs:

He went jumping and leaping and praising God

Jumping and leaping and praising God

In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk!

[Sing whole song together 2x]

And so the man went with Peter and John into the yard inside of the temple walls – and all the people recognized him as the same one who sat outside the Beautiful gate. They were filled with wonder and amazement at this crazy transformation: a man who couldn’t walk 10 minutes ago, now jumping and leaping and praising God?? So a big, huge crowd started to gather as the word spread and more people ran to see what all of the commotion was about.

[End of my part]

After this, Brad stood up and gave a rendition of the speech that Peter delivers after the crowd gathers and finally settles down enough to hear him. Peter says to them, “Why does this surprise you??” And then he goes on to explain what had just happened with the whole death and resurrection of Jesus bit and how it changes just about everything. He gives his hearers an incredible amount of grace when he says after all of this, “Now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance as did your leaders when you put Jesus, our friend, to death. Therefore turn, turn back. Repent from your shortcomings and come back to God so that your sins may be wiped out and the times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

This is all quite amazing. Really amazing. Peter and John were speaking to people who had helped to put their friend to death and were telling them that even they could become a part of what is going on here, they just needed to Turn. Last week during worship, Don talked about the statement that comes to his mind again and again as he thinks about these events: “So, you believe in the Resurrection…” He created a giant cardboard banner with those words that he unfurled across the front of the worship space last week. What times of refreshing can I expect, can we expect if we dare to do this? What will it look like? Probably not like this crazy, outrageous, improbable miracle… but, then again, the man who was lame since the day he was born wasn’t expecting a miracle that day. He was expecting a little money or maybe a hunk of really stale bread. Instead he got new legs altogether and became a living sign of God’s love and presence.

I also am filled with questions about this story: What about the others who were certainly out there begging with the lame man? What happened to them? Peter and John undoubtedly went to the Temple every day, 3 times a day to pray and would have certainly seen this man there before. What was different on this day? Why did they have to use some shock-and-awe miracle of epic proportions in order to get the message across? What might this look like today? What kind of hope for healing can I dare to ask for or imagine?

But for now, today, it is enough to be at a place where these questions can be asked, where the kids can jump and leap and sing loudly in many languages, and where we can tell ridiculous, improbable tales and find a little faith in the middle of them and then all go home together to eat a second breakfast of pancakes, whipped cream and frozen blueberries. Amen.