Reading Luke/Acts Together #57 – Gate Called Beautiful

Consider this dramatic episode: Acts 3:1-10. Peter and John "went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour." As pious Jews, they didn't pray when the mood struck, or when a crisis arose, but at regularly appointed times during the day – and we could stop right here and ponder how richer and closer to God our lives would be if we engaged in such a very simple practice.

But back to Acts 3: at the gate called “Beautiful” (and so it must have been!), they came upon a lame beggar, who asked them for some spare change. Peter "directed his gaze at him" and said "Look at us." I like this intriguing detail: they looked at each other, not averting their gaze, but seeing each other, as people. People ask me whether to give money to beggars on street-corners. It’s complicated… but seeing, if only for a moment, that other person as a person, precious in God’s eyes? This we can do.

The lame beggar assumed or at least hoped he'd receive a few coins. Some passers-by tossed a few his way, some didn’t. But Peter said, "Silver and gold have I none; but I give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ, walk!" And Peter took him by the hand, lifted him up - and his feet and ankles were strengthened. He did not merely stand, but "leaped up - and praised God."

With no budget, no training, no facilities, Peter and John healed a stranger who was no longer a stranger - once he was healed? or once they had looked at each other??!! Somehow this simple interaction can help us imagine what Church might look like.

There's a related story from 1200 years later that helps us see where the Church goes wrong: in the Middle Ages, St. Dominic lived a life of humility, holiness, and service. On pilgrimage to Rome, he visited the Pope, who took him on a personal tour of the gilded, opulent papal palace and the sumptuous, glittering Lateran basilica. Alluding to what Peter and John had said to the lame man in Acts 3, the pope boasted, "No longer need we say 'Silver and gold have I none.'" But the humble Dominic answered, "Yes, and at the same time the church can no longer say 'Rise up and walk.'"

Jesus calls his followers to look at people in need, to see them as people, not objects of pity or blame, and certainly not lumping them into some social category we think we have all figured out. We see them, and in some way we lift them up. Or so we can and should… But we get curved in on ourselves; we expend what we have to do church in ways that suit our tastes and interests, asking What’s in it for me? for my family? And then we wonder why the Church seems so listless and irrelevant? St. Dominic's friend St. Francis was once offered a large building for his work - but he declined, saying Without the building we are free to go about God's people and care for them; with a building we'll be distracted with protecting and maintaining the building.

We have our buildings. My question is, Can we make our gates truly “beautiful,” and not just architecturally or decoratively? Can our buildings be “beautiful” places where all people, the poor, the desperate, those who don’t look or sound like us, those who’ve been wounded by the church, those who expect nothing but judgment from the church are seen as the precious people they are?

Can we get out of the buildings and, whether we have silver and gold or not, make personal contact with strangers, lift them up, and fulfill our own destiny? Can we look honestly at how much silver and gold have fallen into our laps and ask What could God do with all this? Is this silver and gold for me and mine? Or for God and God’s struggling ones?