Acts 3 "At a Gate Called Beautiful" Scott Hoezee

A couple of years ago I read a story in the newspaper about the terrible woes of one of the mainline denominations in Canada. Apparently someone hit upon the idea of filing a class action lawsuit against the church, alleging it had violated people's rights by providing religious education in an illegal manner over the course of many years. The suit was upheld in court, and so the church found itself hemorrhaging money to the point that bankruptcy was a very real possibility. Already the church was being forced to sell off cathedrals and other assets to keep pace with the paying out of settlement sums.

So a newspaper reporter asked one of this denomination's highest ranking bishops what they were going to do. "Do you think the church is flat out finished?" the reporter wanted to know. But the bishop replied, "Of course not. When it's all said and done, all we really need is a table, some bread, wine and we will still be the church of Jesus Christ."

That statement contains a truth we often forget. It's a truth that is on shining display in Acts 3 and really throughout the entire Book of Acts. Yet this is something we may miss due to our now having so many other distractions in the church. The story is told that the great theologian Thomas Aquinas once paid a visit to Pope Innocent II. As Aquinas was ushered into an ornate room somewhere in the Vatican, the pope was counting out a large sum of money to be deposited into the vault. "As you can see, Thomas" the pope proudly said, "the church can no longer say, 'Silver and gold have we none!'" "Yes," Aquinas replied. "Alas, it seems we also can no longer say to the lame, 'In the name of Jesus, walk!'"

In many ways the story in Acts 3 constitutes the very first story of the early church. Acts 2 concluded its story of Pentecost by talking about the spiritual community of sharing that resulted from the Spirit's being outpoured. Acts 2, in other words, showed the inward reach of God's mission to the world. Acts 3, however, turns right around to show the outward mission of God to the world. The Christian life is about more than just meeting together in our own little circles. We inevitably must get at the needs of the wider world.

In this case Peter and John encounter such needs on their way to the Temple to pray. It is interesting to note that even after Pentecost the apostles remained Jews. The Jewish Temple and daily schedule of prayers were still also their house of worship and their schedule of prayer. To their minds, there was radical continuity between who they were as Christ's apostles and the larger biblical story, as becomes evident at the end of Acts 3 when Peter presents the truth of Jesus within the context of Abraham, Samuel, and Moses.

They didn't think of themselves as Christians as opposed to being Jews the way we do today. They thought of themselves as Jews who had had the gracious privilege of following God's redemptive Story to its climax in the true Messiah. So when it was time to pray, they went to the Temple. Along the way, however, they ran headlong into a sad situation: a lame beggar who daily positioned himself near a gate called Beautiful in the hopes that folks would toss a few copper coins his way as they entered the Temple to pray.

Apparently that was about as far as anyone had been willing to go. They'd give him some of the change from their pockets and then proceed into the Temple where they would pray for spiritual matters like the salvation of Israel. But did they ever pray for the healing of this man? They practically had to step over the fellow just to get into their prayer niche, but did they ever connect a needy man like this with the prayers they offered?

Most folks did not. Peter and John did. You see, these two now knew personally Jesus the Christ. They'd spent some years watching him have compassion on people like this man. They also knew that this same Jesus had the power to make a difference not just in wispy "spiritual" matters but in the concrete situations of everyday life. Peter and John could not pray to their God in Christ and ignore this man. Before they could pray, they needed to work. The One they now knew to be the Messiah would expect nothing less.

And so this man reaches out his upturned palm hoping to get from Peter and John a penny or, if he was lucky that day, maybe a nickel or dime. Peter clasps the man's hand and says, "Silver and gold have we none," and the beggar probably thought, "Cheapskate! This one is a dry well," and so had maybe already turned his head to the right to see who was next in line (hoping that he would look a bit more well-to-do than these simple, penurious fishermen in burlap clothing). But Peter wrenched the man's attention back. "However, I do have one thing and I'll give it to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!"

With a strong upward jerk, Peter pulled the man up off his mat. I imagine the man was terrified that he'd soon hit his head on the gate called Beautiful once Peter let go. Except that suddenly his ankles were not the squishy jelly they had always been but were holding him up. He took a step, and it worked. He was walking. And then running. And then jumping through the Temple.

Needless to say, he attracted a curious crowd of onlookers quite quickly. Most of the people were sure they had seen this man's face before but they couldn't place him. (Probably they had never really taken a good look at him to begin with--when was the last time you really looked into the eyes of some street person on Division Avenue?) Soon enough, however, a few folks did place him after all and when they realized what had happened, astonishment swept the Temple.

Not surprisingly, the focus of attention quickly shifted to Peter and John. But Peter squelches any enthusiasm people may have had for them personally. "Why are you staring at us?" Peter asks. "We didn't do anything. It was all from Jesus, the one whom you all killed but whom God glorified and raised from the dead." In other words, Peter tells the people that nothing magical had happened. Magic is either a sleight of hand illusion or, in the ancient sense of the word, magic is a human manipulation of spiritual powers. But that's not what Peter and John had done. Instead they had been merely the conduit, the wire through which the electricity of Jesus flowed.

That's why Peter wastes no time launching into the gospel story, calling for repentance, and making the gracious proffer of forgiveness. Did you notice that Peter almost stops talking about the miracle altogether? Today we'd splash the news of the miracle onto the front page of newspapers and tabloids. CNN and Fox News and MSNBC and Larry King would line up dozens of theology professors and spiritual "experts" to come on as talking heads only and ever to discuss the miracle over and over and over again.

Some would doubt the miracle's reality, others would allow it was possible, and a few would say that of course such things can happen and we should figure out a way to make them happen more often. Still others would cash in on the miracle, perhaps selling little pieces of fabric reputed to be cut off the clothes of Peter and John themselves. For just 15 shekels and 99 cents you, too, could own a piece of miracle cloth. Touch it to whatever part of your body ails you and, poof, you'd be well again.

Peter and John won't play this game, even as their Master Jesus never did, either. Healings of all kinds are wonderful, and Jesus did many of them himself. But as often as not they served only as signs of a greater truth: the truth of the kingdom's advent in this world. And it was always that gracious reality that Jesus wanted to talk about and have others believe. And so in Acts 3, before people had a chance to get too enamored of the miracle, Peter launches into a plea for belief in Jesus as the true Messiah through whom sins could be "wiped out," as he says in verse 19. And then, in a most lovely turn of phrase, Peter promises that if you had your sins vaporized by grace in this way, then "times of refreshing" would come. But in order to experience this great and glorious thing, you had to believe first of all the wild claim that Jesus of Nazareth was God's Christ. You had to believe that the real Messiah had wandered in from the backwater town of Nazareth.

You had to swallow the notion that although this Jesus had been killed right there in Jerusalem about two months earlier, nevertheless God had resurrected this same man. He was still alive. He was the cosmic Lord. And he had so much loving power and powerful love that it was this same Jesus who had personally healed this hapless beggar that very day at a gate called Beautiful. The people in Jerusalem had watched that buck naked, scarecrow-like rabbi Jesus expire on a cross one Friday afternoon. But now Peter is telling them that that was by no means the end of the story!

Indeed it was not. Even today the story goes on and on, and we take our places within the framework of God's grand narrative. But I said at the outset today that Acts 3 serves as a shining example of a truth we sometimes forget but that we most certainly should not forget. What is that truth? Well, ironically this core idea, and the ways by which we sometimes forget it, can be illustrated through the way the larger Book of Acts has itself been treated by scholars the last few centuries. Princeton New Testament Professor Beverly Gaventa was on sabbatical at the Center of Theological Inquiry the same time I was in the fall of 2000. She was writing a commentary on Acts and when she presented her work-in-progress to us one evening, she told us the thesis, the core contention, of her commentary. "The Book of Acts," Dr. Gaventa simply said, "is about God."

At first that almost sounded like a joke. But she wasn't kidding. That was her thesis. What's more, in the context of biblical commentaries in recent times, believe it or not, her statement, "It's about God" is revolutionary! For so long scholars have scrutinized the literary design of Acts, pondered critical narrative, historical, redactional issues, questioned Luke's accuracy, and just generally buried Acts under a mountain of side issues. But what we forget is that to Luke's mind, this whole thing is first and foremost about God. It's about the Christ of God whose power is unleashed through the church. It's about how God's power elicits healing for some, astonishment for others, and even anger for those who resist God (or who see God's power as a threat to their own power in life). But above all, it's about how accepting this God in Christ brings times of refreshing to needy, aching hearts.

The four gospels tell the story of Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. But at the conclusion of each one of those gospels the question could very legitimately be asked, "OK, but now what? What does the gospel do?" Acts is a big part of the Bible's answer to that. And the answer is that what the gospel does is change lives by the power of God. The most any of us can do is represent the living God through Christ Jesus the Lord. The most the apostles could do was be agents of God because the whole thing is about God..

Do we forget this singular truth? When Thomas Aquinas reportedly told the pope that the church had become incapable of saying either "Silver and gold have we none" or "In the name of Jesus, walk," what he meant was that as the church amasses its own structures, money, possessions, and influence on the world, just maybe all of that tempts us to forget that the church, too, must finally and always be about God. But we do forget that.

Instead we assess individual congregations based on all kinds of things that, although maybe ultimately correlated with the power of God, may not always be near the core of things. We judge churches based on their music or handicap accessibility. We come away from a worship service and we don't talk about whether we thought God was at work in that place but about how the preacher prayed too long or how far away we had to park from the main entrance. We scrutinize to see if the place seemed friendly enough to meet our standards or we complain that the lyrics of that one song were, in our estimation, just too simple. We take note of the relative affluence of the congregation, how many Ph.D's and professionals seem to be members, whether there is more gray hair than any other color (and that helps us assess whether or not it's a "dying" church).

A friend of mine often makes the observation that sometimes congregations seem a little like restaurants. All of a sudden, and for some unknown reason, certain restaurants get "hot." Everybody talks about the food there, and soon the place is jammed. It's the "in" place to be, the place to see and be seen. And then, for no discernible reason, the euphoria dies down and people start to hype a different, perhaps newer, restaurant and then it becomes the hot and in place to be. Congregations can be like that, especially in this time of megachurches. All of a sudden one particular church is just the place to go for a time, and so transfers into that congregation burgeon for a few years before it levels off some.

But when was the last time you heard someone say, "I went to Church X because there was just so much more of God there than anywhere else!" When was the last time you heard someone explain their move to a new congregation by saying they found more fruit of the Spirit, more Jesus, more God there? Aren't the reasons folks give more often based on external things? Of course, some of those so-called "external" things may well help us to experience God's presence and worship God's glory better, and when that is the case, this is a legitimate point. Most congregations are different, and I think God's Spirit uses that variety to incorporate into the larger Church the great variety of people in this world.

But the point of all this is to bring into focus that number one issue: the core notion that the church must finally and always be about God. Those early apostles had nothing else but God. They had no cathedrals of their own. No budget for mission outreach. No fancy baptismal fonts or nicely carved communion tables. They didn't have music wars because they had no music, no instruments, nothing with which to make sound but their own larynxes. They had not gone back to basics because the basics were all they had ever had to begin with! The advantage of that, however, was that nothing could distract them from the simple fact that the whole thing was about God.

Commentators note that there has never been any agreement among scholars on just which Temple gate Luke referred to as the gate called Beautiful. No known Temple entrance ever had that name. It's possible that this was the unofficial, colloquial name for that particular gate because people thought it was pretty. A few years ago we used to have a white VW Golf whose muffler went bad and it took us a while before we got it fixed. So at that time our daughter took to calling that particular vehicle "the noisy car," and that name stuck, even long after the muffler had been replaced! Similarly maybe this gate to which Luke referred had been dubbed "The Beautiful Gate" even though some scholars suspect its official name was the Nicanor Gate.

Probably that's the right explanation. But I like to think that what made that gate beautiful on that particular day had nothing to do with the bronze-work or the way the sunlight glinted just so off the burnished metal surface. On that long ago day in Jerusalem at a gate called Beautiful, it was the power of God in Christ Jesus that made all the difference in the world and so brought about an unspeakable beauty. It needs to be the same today. As I said at the dedication service last November, we now have a very beautiful new church facility. I love it and enjoy it the same as the rest of you. But it's not what people see from the outside that matters but the Jesus they must meet here on the inside. If there is to be beauty at Calvin Church, let it be the beauty of holiness through Christ Jesus. Remember, the whole thing is about God. And that is beautiful indeed. Amen.