Acts 3:1-16
One of the impressive sights in the city of Florence, Italy, is a collection of huge blocks of stone with unfinished statues carved out of them by the great Michelangelo. In several carvings, Michelangelo had been creating the images of slaves in chains. The figures seem to be coming right out of the rock.
On one occasion, Michelangelo was struggling to transport a huge piece of marble using poles and other riggings. A bystander asked Michelangelo why he was going to all that trouble to move an old piece of rock. The artist replied, "Because there is an angel in there that wants to come out."
Why bother with stones? And why bother with people whose lives are like huge pieces of stone, with no apparent promise, future, or hope? Lives that would have been better left on the slag heap. Why not ignore them and try to find something, someone, with more prospects? Why expend so much energy trying to move them around, even to the point of having to carry them on your back? There are so many others out there who believe like most: "The Lord helps those who help themselves." (Which isn't in the Bible. It is in the Quran, and is found in a few Greek plays.) Why go to the pains of having to drag such a helpless, block of stone typed person along?
Peter and John happened upon such a stone of a man. He had been a cripple from birth. At least as long as anyone could remember. And also as long as anyone could remember, someone carried this immobilized man, laid him down by one of the temple gates so he could beg. What do you do when you see a beggar? What do you do when you see even the Salvation Army people out ringing their bells? Most people, not all, but most walk right past acting as if they aren't even there.
Here's a more drastic for-instance. In 1928, there was a case that came before the courts in Massachusetts. It concerned a man who had been walking on a boat dock. He accidentally tripped over a rope and fell into the cold water of the bay. He came up sputtering and yelling for help and then sank again, obviously in trouble.
His friends were too far away to get to him in time. Only a few yards away, on another dock, was a young man sprawled on a deck chair, sunbathing. The desperate man in the water shouted, "Help! I can't swim!" The sunbather, an excellent swimmer, only turned his head as the man floundered in the water, sank, came up sputtering in total panic, and then disappeared forever.
The family of the drowned man was so upset at the sunbather, they sued him. And lost. The court ruled the man on the dock had no legal responsibility whatsoever to try and save the drowning man's life.
It is amazing, at times, the lengths to which people will go to avoid someone one else's great need or crisis. People like the cripple at the city gate quickly become part of the surroundings--especially when they are there day-after-day. They become easy to ignore. That's what we do with people who are crippled, not just in their legs, but in any fashion: body, mind or spirit. The most we do is carry them someplace where they can be plopped down and ignored. We don't take care of them ourselves. We just carry them from spot-to-spot, and set them down somewhere they will be dehumanized.
A man was telling me about the time he flew from Denver to Wichita. He and his son had gotten on the plane, and the last person to be boarded was a young man in his late 20's. He was carried on the plane strapped to an ambulance stretcher.
They picked him up off the stretcher and curled him into a seat in front of my friend who was telling me about this. The young man was paralyzed from the neck down. He was strapped in tightly but as the pilot taxied the plane onto the runway, the force pushed the paralyzed man forward into the the seat back in front of him. The stewardess again propped him back up and the plane was soon in the air.
This was back in the good old days when there was an in-flight meal. My friend ate his meal and then noticed the paralyzed man had had his food placed in front of him, but couldn't feed himself. The stewardess' were busy with other concerns and none noticed his predicament. There sat a meal of above average airline food. But the young man had no way to enjoy it, and no one to help him.
My friend slipped into the empty seat beside the paralyzed man and asked if he would like help eating. The young man responded with a smile and gratitude. In between bites the young man talked about his unfortunate accident, his loneliness, his struggles, his faith and his hope.
I couldn't help but feel the power of that scene as I heard it recounted to me. How often we, how often I, think I am doing great service by placing some kind of nourishment--whether it be actual food or spiritual food--in front of needful others and think we've done our part. We fail to take the next step and feed, bite-by-bite, what's been placed before those who can't feed themselves.
The crippled one may recognize that the food is good, that it will satisfy their needs, but they can't enjoy it by themselves. They need someone else to help them, spoonful by spoonful; someone who will involve themselves more directly than just putting the plate in front of a person. So often we are like the lame man's nameless, faceless carriers who do nothing more than just ferry him from place-to-place so he can go on begging.
Now I know what some of you might be thinking. You're thinking, some of those kinds of people don't want to be helped. They're helpless. They are like huge stones all kinds of people have had to lug around. No one has been able to unlock the angel from within, no matter what kind of Michelangelo talents have been brought to bear on them. Some of those kinds of people, especially in our day and time are leaches on the system, you may be thinking. They could be trainable. They could get a job somewhere. But they choose not to. They'd rather stay on the public dole.
Some of that is probably true. Being lame or crippled can be an easy life. People do carry you. There are few, if any, real responsibilities. No one expects much from those who are crippled, either physically or emotionally. Crippled people find that out fairly quickly.
The lame man in our scripture story certainly didn't come to expect much from anyone else either. Just a hand out. A tidbit here and there. A small share of others leftovers. He certainly didn't expect someone to come along and throw health, wholeness or healing into his bucket. Certainly nothing as challenging as life--the challenge to get up and walk on his own two feet. We expect little from those who are lame, and the lame have come to expect very little from those who pass them by. Especially in terms of expectations.
Because the expectations are so slight, the life of ease, the life of being carried by the healthy and wealthy can be very attractive for the crippled. Real life--on your feet life--can be a scary prospect after being allowed to get away with so little for so long.
There was a man who underwent surgery after living several years in total blindness. The operation was a success to the extent that he could now see with the help of heavy lensed glasses. When he arrived home from the hospital, he was anxious to do something he had only dreamed about: take a walk through his neighborhood with sight.
After walking for just a few minutes he ran back to his house, threw himself on his bed and buried his face in a pillow. His wife asked him what was wrong. He replied, "I couldn't take it any more. The light hurt my eyes, and the colors were overwhelming. It was such a drastic change that I'd almost rather be blind again."
People who are hearing impaired, after getting an ocular implant, or having their hearing restored, experience the same thing. The noise of the world, after so much silence, can make the head feel like it's going to explode. Gradually the brain begins to help these people compensate, like we all do naturally, so as not to see or hear everything all at once. But until that happens there is real panic in the person trying to decide whether to enter the full world again.
What happens, though, when someone comes along with the promise of the power to crack the stone and release the angel that has been trapped within? What happens when someone reaches into our stony lives and grasps us, pulls us to our feet and bids us to live--really live? What happens when in the power of Jesus' name, our lives are made strong again? Without lameness, we are challenged to get on with life! What happens when we are given the opportunity to be healed, to be made whole, to no longer be on the fringe of life, but by the touch of the Savior, get up on our feet and get back into the center of life?
There was a survivor of a shipwreck who had spent 11 years alone on a tiny island waiting for some kind of rescue. Then, one day, the man spotted a ship on the horizon. He quickly lit a fire prepared for just such a moment. The smoke went up and was seen.
The captain of the ship dispatched a small boat to the island. As the boat reached the shore, the officer in charge said to the shipwrecked man, "The Captain sends his greetings, sir. Also these newspapers. Kindly read the news of the world as soon as possible and then inform the captain as to whether or not you wish to be rescued.."
Being healed, being rescued, being freed from a stony existence means getting ourselves involved in life that will be foreign to us. The promise of walking again must have been too good to be true for the crippled man. Being lame was the only kind of life he had ever known. What Peter and John were offering him, by extending their hands (and with those hands the power of Jesus Christ) was life as he had never known it before. The crippled man may not have realized what he was accepting when he took Peter's hand and allowed himself to be rescued.
So it is with all of us who are crippled by sin in one form or another. We are lame and have known no other kind of existence. To have faith awakened in us by the name of Jesus Christ, to be given strength and to be made completely well means that we must now be accountable and responsible for a whole new way of life. We will not be allowed to let our lameness be our excuse for a lack of involvement in the fulness of life. We can no longer claim any impairments as to why we are living deficiently, as to why we are living less than what we were meant and called and healed to be.
Peter said, "...what I have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!"
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