We talk about our Sunday readings in our Tuesday staff meetings. Sometimes we also talk about the art we will use in the service bulletin. “What do you suggest?” someone asked me. I hadn’t given it much thought — no, that’s not
quite right, I had not given it any thought at all. I said, “What about St. Peter’s shadow healing some people by an Italian artist whose name begins with an “M?”
I’m amazed with what we can remember even if some of the details are hazy. I had seen this painting in a Florence church some years ago. In the Brancacci chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine. And thanks to the marvels of the internet,
we quickly found it. The “M” was Masaccio who painted this as part of a series of paintings about Peter in the 1400’s.
Our first reading is from Acts and concerns Peter during the period following Jesus’ resurrection. To better understand what we have heard let’s begin a little earlier in Acts:
Starting with Chapter 2, Verse 46: “Day by day as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
“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 up and begin 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 him” following by just a few hours the spreading of palm fronds before Jesus. This certainly Peter had not forgotten.
Peter is probably one of the figures we read about in the Bible that we have sort of a feel for, an understanding. He’s brash, says what he thinks, impulsive — maybe even loud.
He had lost a good friend, a teacher, one he had looked up to. But Peter had been exposed to the world, his associates and most importantly to the teacher he most loved — that maybe he was a phony, maybe even a coward, wouldn’t stand up for Jesus when the going really got rough.
But his friend, his teacher, still loved him — and forgave him.
So how does he mull all that out? How does he live with himself?
So, one day going to the temple — on this day – he is approached by someone asking for alms.
But something is different in Peter. The world is changed, the world is completely changed. And Peter is changed.
But maybe not completely changed.
Peter through the power of Christ heals this man who has suffered his entire life. His friend, His teacher Jesus would have done that.
But then Peter listens and sees the reaction of the people around him to the healing. And Peter thinks where were you when he needed you, when he needed us?
Why do you wonder, why do you stare? Jesus did this — but you rejected him and asked for a murderer instead!
But then he pauses, he reflects on what he did — and did not do. And remembers Jesus great love, his great sacrifice, his pain…. for him.
And then he smiles, his voice gentles, and he says kindly:
“And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your rulers. [I don’t understand it, I just accept it,] In this way God fulfilled what he had would be passing so that “his shadow” as he would walk by would heal that person.
And maybe that’s as good a message as any for this morning.
May we so live that we know and are sensitive to — and loving — of all those that we pass — and that those we encounter know that God’s love is in our heart.
I would close with the message that I saw on a street in Beebe, Arkansas, yesterday…and let me spell it:
Christ is rizzen!
Yes, He is — Christ is rizzen!
Amen.
Richard Robertson