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| "Draw me another."; (sermon 4/26/09) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 25 2009, 11:16 AM (145 Views) | |
| Dewey | Apr 25 2009, 11:16 AM Post #1 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, at three o”clock in the afternoon. And a man lame from birth was being carried in. People would lay him daily at the gate of the temple called the Beautiful Gate so that he could ask for alms from those entering the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. Jumping up, he stood and began to walk, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. All the people saw him walking and praising God, and they recognized him as the one who used to sit and ask for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. While he clung to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the portico called Solomon’s Portico, utterly astonished. When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. “And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." - Acts 3:1-19 ===== I want to look at this passage that we read today from Acts. In order to understand this passage better, we have to know something about the design of the Temple itself. The Temple and its surrounding area was laid out as a series of increasingly smaller and more exclusive areas, nested one within the other. All around the Temple structure itself was a large, flat, paved courtyard area surrounded by a huge colonnaded structure. The east side of that colonnade structure was known as “Solomon’s Portico.” The area inside that colonnade, between it and the Temple structure, was the “Court of the Gentiles.” This was as far within the Temple surroundings that Gentiles could go, under penalty of death. Archaeologists have uncovered a stone inscription from the Temple, advising all Gentiles that they weren’t to go any further into the complex. The inscriptions found from the inner parts of the Temple are in Hebrew, but this inscription was in Greek, the universal language of the time, so there would be no misunderstanding about this point. Just inside this area, there were gateways, entrances, into the first zone within the actual Temple itself. One of these gateways was known as the Beautiful Gate. Maybe it was the main entrance; we don’t really know for sure. Only Jewish men and women could enter through that gate, and into the Temple. Then, going further in, you would find the Court of the Men, and then further in the Court of the Priests, and finally, in the innermost zone, was the Holy of Holies, where only the Chief Priest could enter, once a year, to make atonement for the sins of the people. So Peter and John had arrived on this particular day and gone through the Court of the Gentiles, and they were about to go through the Beautiful Gate, into the Court of the Women. And it was here that they encountered this beggar, lame since birth, seeking handouts from the people as they passed by. It’s important to notice where the beggar is – he’s sitting outside the Beautiful Gate, and that’s no coincidence. In accordance with Jewish religious Law found in Leviticus, the lame, the crippled, were considered ritually unclean, and therefore, were excluded from entry into and worship within the Temple. Based on either the bad luck of the circumstances of being born that way, or as the result of some injury or illness during their lives, they were religious and social outcasts. Not part of the chosen, inner circle. And after the man is healed, he’s literally jumping for joy, and yelling, praising God, and Luke says that he entered the Temple with them. By God’s grace having been poured out on him, for the first time in his life he was able to enter into the Temple. The outcast was now literally an insider because of God’s acting within his life. Luke says that this created a big stir, because everyone recognized the man as the crippled beggar who sat outside the gate for years. So Peter began to speak to them all. First, he told them point-blank that it wasn’t through any special, magical power of his own that had healed the man. Rather, it was through faith in Jesus Christ, and the power in his name, that had healed him, and that in some way or another, this same power is available to us all. “In his name.” We say that phrase almost without thinking. We walk past that big stained-glass window, with the two big discs with those initials, “IHN,” without really considering why someone thought it important enough to put in there. In the power of his name, the lame have literally been made to walk, the blind to see. In his name, the outsiders are made insiders. In his name, we are forgiven, and reconciled with God. As Peter talked with the people, he tells them that they had all been the cause of Jesus’ death. They’d all been responsible for this rejection. Many times over the last 2,000 years, Peter’s words here in this passage have been used to justify anti-Semitism, and even persecution of the Jewish people. But this is why it’s very important to understand the layout of the Temple, and to realize where Peter is when he’s saying all of this. Luke tells us that when the crowd gathered, Peter spoke to them from Solomon’s Portico. Remember, that was part of the colonnade that defined the Court of the Gentiles, outside the Temple itself. Apparently, Peter had gone back outside the Beautiful Gate, and now he was addressing a mixed crowd of Jews and Gentiles alike, that he says was responsible for rejecting Jesus. He was laying out the fact that all of humanity has strayed from God, rejected God, tried to place themselves, and their own interests, above God. And then, after laying that all out, Peter gets to his real point – and I guess I get to mine, too. After blasting the people with having rejected Jesus, he tells them that their blame is mitigated somewhat because of their ignorance, their lack of really understanding the truth, and that Jesus’ death was part of the fulfillment of God’s plan. And he tells them exactly what Jesus said was to be proclaimed – to repent, and turn back to God, and that we would be forgiven – that, as Peter said, our sins would be “wiped out.” A clean slate. Jesus often uses that word, “repent.” It sounds old fashioned to us, and often we tend to think it means to “feel sorry” about something. There’s part of that to it, I guess, but to repent means literally, to turn in a new direction – to “rethink” our lives, our understanding of God, our relationship with God. It means to rethink our understanding of how we live with others. Who we consider outsiders and who we consider insiders – and how we understand our authority to even make that distinction. It means to rethink, based on the good news given to us through Christ, how we view our jobs, our politics, our families, our finances. How we view the environment, and if we’re being proper stewards of God’s creation. It means rethinking how we view those of other religions, and even those of no religion. It means to reconsider if our lives are truly consistent with all of Christ’s teachings – not just those teachings we’re comfortable with, but even more importantly, with those teachings that make us squirm in our seats. Reconsider. Rethink. Repent. Peter says that if we truly do this, then we will, without any question, be forgiven by God – or, the way he puts it, that “times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.” Doesn’t that sound good? Our forgiveness is like “times of refreshing.” Shedding off all the weariness, the heaviness, the grit of life. It’s a tall, cold, iced tea at the end of a hard day’s work. Jumping in the swimming pool on the hottest day of summer. That’s what God’s forgiveness is like. He was a little boy, about five years old. His mother was an art teacher. He thought she was the greatest artist in the world. No, he didn’t know anything about Cezanne, or Picasso, or Monet; he just knew that if he asked her to draw a tree, she would draw something that really, actually, looked like a tree. And his father was a pastor, so that meant sitting through hundreds of Sunday services, armed with just some empty sheets of paper and a handful of crayons, and he’d get bored, and his Mother would tell him, “Draw me a picture.” So he’d draw something, and he’d hold it up within two inches of his Mother’s face, and every time, she’d say the same thing – “I love it. It’s beautiful.” And she’d hand him a clean sheet of paper and say, “Draw me another.” After a while, though, he started to get suspicious, so one Sunday he decided to test her. He decided to draw the ugliest picture he could imagine. He drew something that looked vaguely like a porcupine, but it only had one eye, and a nose like a pig, and three long, spindly, stick-figure stork legs. And after he’d gotten the picture to what he figured was the absolute peak of ugliness, he held it up to show his Mother. She looked at it, and said, maybe even a litter more forcefully than usual, “I love it. It’s beautiful. Draw me another.” In a way, that’s what the forgiveness that Christ offers us is like, because we know that no matter how badly we mess things up, no matter how ugly a picture we make of our lives, if we really repent, rethink, and turn back to him, Jesus says, “I love you. You’re beautiful.” And he hands us a clean sheet of paper and says, “Draw me another.” His death, and his resurrection, has bought our reconciliation with God – our “times of refreshing” - and an unlimited supply of paper and crayons. Thanks be to God. (immediately followed by This. ) |
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