Peter and John were going up to the temple area for the three o'clock hour of prayer. And a man crippled from birth was carried and placed at the gate of the temple called "The Beautiful Gate" every day to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple. When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms. But Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, "Look at us." He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them. Peter said, "I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus the Nazorean, rise and walk." Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong. He leaped up, stood, and walked around, and went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the one who used to sit begging at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and they were filled with amazement and astonishment at what had happened to him. (Acts 3:1-10)
I can relate to the man crippled from birth. I wonder about those people who carried him every day to sit and beg. They meant well, I'm sure, and they did what was in their power, but it was through these relationships that the man had learned to define himself. He was a beggar for things. For coins, for money. These things sustained his life, and maybe if he were successful and the people in Jerusalem generous, these things helped sustain his friends' lives, too. Peter and John looked at him and were attracted to something, something the average person did not see. They saw some kind of beauty, and they saw his bondage. They had compassion. What did they say? "Look at us." They provoked him to seek something more than things. But he looked, still expecting only things in return -- really good things. What Peter and John gave him, in Jesus' name, was himself -- his liberty, his healing. When Jesus comes to people, people become more fully themselves. This is what fills the people with amazement and then causes them to ask, "What has happened here!?" And this sends them seeking after the Church -- Peter and John -- and Christ.
I have been that beggar, but the scarce commodity I have sought was not gold or silver but human companionship. There is a way that I have treated attention from people as a thing that I've felt I've had to beg for. And I have also known a certain sort of gaze that made me think I was going to get what I craved from some person. (And this reminds me of my post on prostitution.) But I have also experienced a gaze like this beggar did from Peter and John. It is the gaze of Christ, through the face of His Church on earth. It is Christ encountered in persons here. I can trace the impetus I experienced to pursue this Tea Party business through the provocation of a friend to find the face of Christ in my daily life, to finding that (because I was so intent on showing her it was possible!) to following that encounter in its many nuances. In the process, I have found myself "walking" on what I once experienced as lame feet and ankles. I see the Lord's saving hand, and I'm pretty astonished.
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