The Gate Called Beautiful

Acts 3:11-26

I rebuffed every mortal who dared to suggest I would become a parish pastor someday. Why couldn’t they understand that this was the greatest of insults, especially during those years I posed as a sleepy teenage acolyte at the early service?! 

I could imagine working with the church - maybe at a non-profit or as a chaplain in a hospital or a professor of religious studies - but you were never going to get me wearing a collar or into a pulpit preaching a sermon. 

The joke’s on me and it’s still funny because this is a miracle. 

Like some of you, I had a hard time trusting the church - a rigid bureaucracy that self protects, an ancient institution that funded wars and oppressed people in God’s name, the mess of mortal leadership deciding when and how and where and why God is allowed to show up - I didn’t want to get tangled up with the church’s reputation for scarcity and harm.

But the Holy Spirit persists, sending people into our lives to debunk stereotypes and challenge assumptions. I was graced by faithful people older and wiser than me who loved Jesus - even more than they loved the church. 

In the classroom and in field work, they showed me how to read scripture as a source of power and healing, hope and restoration. And then the story of Jesus and his followers changed before my eyes, like the negative of a photograph, highlighting everything I’d failed to see before. And it was enough to send me straight into the heart of the church for service and preaching. 

I tell you this story because, maybe like me, you first heard this sermon from Peter as a word of judgement against the people: You handed Jesus over to be killed. You exchanged him for a murderer. You killed the author of life and acted in ignorance. 

So many passages like this one have been used to inspire anti-Semitic hate crimes, a fear of the Jews endorsed as faith in Jesus, a condemnation of those who were there in the crowds shouting, “Crucify him!”, putting Jesus in his place so they could maintain their own.

But back up with me for a minute. I want to show you why I love Peter’s speech and why I believe a message of radical inclusion is hidden in it’s lines.

Our story began with a man clinging to Peter and John. He had been unable to walk, lame since birth until just a few minutes ago. Every day, this man was carried to the Temple Gate called Beautiful - and he was dumped there to beg for his very survival. That’s right. Every day people put this man in his place - on the edges, on the ground, where he could learn that he was nothing and nobody, and that he should feel grateful for the scraps of pity that strangers afforded him. 

He was lying there begging when Peter and John walked by on their way to the Temple. But Peter stopped and looked right at the man. And he told the man to look back at him. And while they were seeing each other, Peter said to him, “I don’t have silver coins, but I will give you what I do have - the name of Jesus Christ.” 

And in the name of Jesus, he told the man to walk. Peter extended his hand and helped the man up. And it says the man held on. 

They have moved from the Gate called Beautiful into the Temple now, but the man is still holding onto Peter and John. He is at the center of the crowd while Peter tells everyone - every gawker and passerby - 

That they should not be surprised by the power of Jesus’ name. That they have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. That they are participants in the violence committed against Jesus because when the innocent are threatened, our inaction functions as a violent action. 

This man, the one they have been putting in his place so they could maintain their own, is at the center of the story, an incarnate illustration that we are all failing to live in the resurrection power of Jesus because we are still leaving our neighbors outside at the gate. Where we can pass them by. Where we don’t have to look and really see them at all. 

The people are beginning to recognize the man as the beggar they’ve passed a hundred times before and the scripture says they wonder about what this could mean. So Peter tells them.

The stain of sin on our human condition and our social systems covers every last one of us. And we cannot save ourselves. 

But it is not the only thing that covers us. The forgiveness, life, and hope of Jesus extend just as far. There is a wideness to this mercy. Peter calls it “universal restoration”, which he does not define clearly, thank goodness. It is like the mystery of the expanding cosmos, still stretching, still working to restore and reconcile all of creation to a God who does not give up, whose name has the power to bring every forgotten beggar from the margins to the very center.

Friends, there are a lot of right ways to read and interpret scripture, but none of them leave their neighbors begging at the Gate called Beautiful. None of them step over their neighbors on the way to worship. None of them keep people out, away, and in their place so others can maintain their own. 

I stand in this pulpit today to remind you that the gospel news is sneaking into your Covid Life. We are the people, so we know hurt. And we are God’s people, so we know healing, too.

Jesus’ name continues to command restorative power the world needs. And we are loved by a God will never tire of gathering all people from the edges of sin and shame into One Body, into a Holy Temple. This is the sacred story worth telling from every pulpit, every home that is sanctuary, and every body - God’s restoration and healing are still stretching. And so we help each other to stand and hold on.