Acts 3: The Healing at the Beautiful Gate

Acts 3: The Healing at the Beautiful Gate
This is the first of the healing miracles of the book of Acts. When I was a teenager, there was a chorus groups sang from this passage,

Peter and John went to pray, They met a lame on the way. He held out his palms and he asked for alms, But this is what Peter did say, “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.” He went walking and leaping and praising God, Walking and leaping and praising God. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

Quite often, those who are in need find the church to be a safer place to ask for help. The disabled man asks for money so that he can survive. Notice his location, outside the gate. In the folk theology (the kind people believe whether its biblical or not) of the day, the man is disabled in punishment for his own sin or his family. He is being punished by God. The idea is that God blesses good people and God punishes bad people, so if bad things are happening you must deserve it somehow. Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People was written to address that folk theology. Peter and John tell the man that they have no money, but they do have something else to give him. They heal him in the name of Jesus.

Two things strike me in this passage. First, the book of Acts has no problem with miracles. They pray and they happen. In fresh movements of God’s Spirit in church history miracles are often a part of them. In the revivals in Latin America and Africa today, miracles are common place. It’s almost as if the smarter and more self-reliant we become, the less the miracles occur. Do we as United Methodists have room for miracles in our belief systems? Now when we do, then we have to admit that lots of times we pray for miracles and they do not happen. The disciples of Jesus had the same problem. But do we truly believe that God can do and often does the supernatural among us?

Second, the book of Acts joins together good deeds and the proclamation of Jesus. We don’t just give people what they need, we tell them about Jesus (the thing they need most of all). It seems that the church goes in extremes where we are all talk or all action. Peter shows us the blend.

Peter then preaches another sermon. Like the sermon in chapter 2, his words are bold and confrontational. We’ll see tomorrow that they get a very predictable reaction.