It Won’t End Like This

Scripture: Acts: 3:1-10

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. 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 astonishment at what had happened to him.

It Won’t End Like This

Langston Hughes’s critically acclaimed poem Mother to Son shares a mother’s perspective on life in a conversation with her innocent and naive son. It begins with this opening line: “Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” That opening line and the following stanzas show the depth of making it through life when surrounded by difficult pieces. It combats the misnomer that life is supposed to be easy because this mother teaches her son that life is not that at all. While sharing the depths of her struggles, she shares her process of overcoming the challenges that life has presented her with.

Crystal, in her depiction, would suggest the easiness of life with smooth transitions and no bumps along the way. To be honest, I would have loved that life for her, you, and me. But since life is not a crystal stair, the argument becomes what is life supposed to be? Seemingly, life is supposed to be full of challenges to overcome, problems to solve, and situations to get through. Though this process can be arduous, it is proof that God stands alongside us the entirety of our lives and provides opportunity for us to see His hand at work and continue to give His name glory. It is the proof of the reminder Paul received from God while being tormented with thorn, that God’s grace is sufficient for us.

Family, the sufficiency of God’s grace is a theological reality that is also a distant memory in the dark and heavy moments of life. You can choose to agree or disagree, but the reality is life has not been a crystal stair for y’all either. You may not be honest about the dark or heavy moments in your life, but the truth is you are here because of God’s grace as well. At times, it can get difficult in the dark moments to give praise to God’s name, but I have lived long enough to know and been through too much to disagree with my elders: who taught me a song that said: “Your grace and mercy brought me through. I’m living this moment because of You. I want to thank You and praise You too. Your grace and mercy brought me through.” That song, and countless others give me the reminder it won’t end like this.

I need that kind of hope while living in these yet to be United States, that despite what the conditions are, it won’t end like this. With a justice system that provides justice for only some of us but not all of us, it won’t end like this. With people fighting for their lives in the middle east and people trying to survive with inflation in US, it won’t end like this. While our children are treated like prey by people and places that are supposed to be safe, I lift my head toward heaven because it won’t end like this. Because Roman 8:28 says: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose; It won’t end like this! That motif of hope gives me reassurance, because I know God still holds the world and the hollow of his hand. Even though life, at times, does not make sense to me, God will make something out of this mess because it won’t end like this. As proof of it, I found a man in our text today, who God change the way his story ended. A man who’s issue tried to overwhelm him, and God said it won’t end like this.

To be quite honest, this text has always been compelling to me because I could not understand how in the Holy Scriptures, we could find someone who was in such an ugly situation sitting in front of a gate called Beautiful. A beautiful gate that lets others in but keeps him out. This man was in a conundrum because those who were considered lame, according to Leviticus 21, were considered impure and unable to be near the food offerings. Thus, they could not enter the temple to participate in worship. He was relegated to the Beautiful Gate, with the ugliness of his life. So, we see him seated and relegated at the place of transition. You have to have seen him before, going to and fro. We see him on our exit from the highway, inside the train station, outside of your local Wawa and the like; seeking alms or asking for money. This man was lame, the text says, from birth. He has never had the ability or freedom to be fully independent. He does not know what it means to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He does not know what it means to be fully reliant on his own gifting.

Can you imagine spending your entire life, throughout adulthood, preparing to depend on others to live? Not just having a bad day or a bad week, but your entire life is dependent on the mercy of others. He had to be wrestling with the idea that God made others more fortunate than this and leave him to the good fortune of others to have his needs met. That’s where he is, and from his birth, he was relegated to needing the support of a community. The key point for me is that he did nothing wrong. His lameness is from birth. He did not participate in an action that caused his lameness but was born into a life that could feel like a burden. But before anyone could write this man off, the text shares that despite the odds being stacked against him, he had good people around him. Our text shares that people would lay him at the temple gates daily. This text reminds me that we need to discuss the magnitude of having the right people around us during the darkest seasons of our lives. Those people are not always the people we want them to be or even expect them to be. They may not be your siblings, children, friends or neighbors but I have learned that God always provides the right people to get us to the Beautiful Gates.

But can I be honest? I have a problem with the gates. Gates are supposed to do two things: Keep certain people in and keep certain people out. In this case, the gates were responsible for securing the safety of the people who were invited into worship and into the temple courts. These people were the vision of normal. The people were privileged with the opportunity to go before the Lord in worship, while others couldn’t get past the gate. Because these same gates that kept the privileged and normal safe, kept the broken, marginalized and misfortunate out. This could just be my imagination, but from my understanding of religious spaces are supposed to be sanctuaries, or safe spaces. Better yet, the Church, the temple, is supposed to serve as a hospital for the sick, and not a museum for the well. The church is supposed to dress and care for your wounds, not cause more of them. It’s supposed to be the place where people can fall apart in the midst of the darkest seasons of their lives, without judgement or ridicule. It doesn’t feel good to know that there are people being kept out and defenseless during the seasons when they are most vulnerable. To be quite honest, I am tired of the beautiful gates:

• The American Beautiful Gates that mistreat immigrants
• The Religious Beautiful Gates that condemn the different
• The Socioeconomic Beautiful Gates that keep people impoverished
• The Racial Beautiful Gates that separate people by color
• The Classist Beautiful Gates that measure worth by wealth
• The Phobic Beautiful Gates that fuel fear of others
• The Anti-Anything Beautiful Gates that nurture prejudice
• The Exclusive Beautiful Gates that keep people out while claiming to welcome all

I, for one, am tired of the gates. I am tired of people who go past the gates and enter their normal lives, leaving people sitting outside. I am tired of people sitting abandoned at the gate. I am tired because I know that God wants the people who are on the outside of the gates to be with the people who are worshipping beyond the gate. This man was stuck at the gates because he was lame. Alongside the fact that his lameness forfeited his ability to worship, it also caused him to not be able to work. Thus, when he finds himself outside of the temple gates, he sits there asking for alms. Alms simply meant that he was asking people to have enough pity for him to give him money.

Just like this man, we will find ourselves in life situations where we are sitting outside of a beautiful gate amid an ugly situation. But when we are limited to being sat outside of the gate, Our Heavenly Father will send us the thing that we need. So, as we gaze into the focus of this text, we realize that this man is not new to this; he is true to this. He already knows how he is going to ask, who he is going to ask and when he was going to ask because his asking had become his routine. He was used to asking, as he was always at this gate. But he didn’t account for was that there would be different people to ask than he had been asking all of his life. Because as he was sitting there, the text says that Peter and John were approaching the temple at the hour of prayer. The man asked Peter and John for alms like he had done with everyone else, but the difference is that Peter and John weren’t like everyone else. If we are to live out our walk in the way that God intends, we have to be intentional about shifting the atmosphere wherever we are. Can I prove it to you?  Well, in this text, we often miss three sets of people that are present in this situation: 1) the people who carried him to the gate, 2) the people who walked by, and 3) Peter and John.

The People Who Carried Him:

These are the people who make the disability of others their responsibility. These are the people who carried him to the gate. I can assure you that there are some of these people in the room. The people who make sure that some system is in place to help those in need get through the day. We know that life has not been kind to them, and we acknowledge that life is not always fair, so our way of skewing the system is not manufacturing equality but creating opportunity for others to try to flourish in a world that is set up for them to fail. These are the people who God uses to position people who are having difficulty in reaching their God-given potential. These are the people who have enough faith to recognize that putting him outside the gate could be the very thing he needs most. Their response of placing him at the gate is not about reaching a financial goal, but also a hope that the spirit of God leaves the service and makes it to him outside. It’s a hope that the miraculous power at work inside the building changes the lives surrounding the building as well.

But what these people don’t account for is that some people don’t come to worship to be changed or participate, they come to socialize and portray that everything is alright. Thus, when people walk out of the gates or the courts of the worship experience, God is seldom on the forefront of their minds. It is as if walking past the threshold on the exit of the church causes an attention deficiency, and something else has captivated our mind. So, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year, he keeps coming back to the gates, leaving with more money but less dignity. And though we know he is tired of living like this, we still encourage him to try, pick him up and put him at the gate because we feel like that is where he belongs and that is all we know how to do with him.

The People Who Walked By:

I imagine the spot was chosen deliberately, as people had to see this man every time they went into or left out of worship. It is backed by the intention that if worshippers were not generous on their way in, they might be transformed and give on their way out. So, the people who walked by at some point should have given him something. Even if it was out of their own desire to not seem rude in their religious community or among their people. But, there is something about these people who kept walking while this man is stuck. We must be careful about the people in our community who we bless with enough to keep them where they are. The ones we have the resources for but don’t want to take responsibility for.  It may seem nice, but it is not kind.

These people who walk by are those who look down upon his situation and see him where he is without regard for where life could take him. These people help him enough to keep him in a position to always need their help again. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, all of us have been these people to somebody. We have all been the people who acknowledge that our path is different than those who we walk by and can move on without a second thought of those in our rearview. We say things like “oh, that’s just such and such from around the way.” And while we may be willing to bless them in the moment, we are not desirous or capable of providing a long-standing blessing that could change their lives. So, we walked past them to attend worship, community functions, go home or to work and etc., without the slight thought of what life is like for them. Because the most that we are giving them is what they have asked for, and not what we know they need.

Peter and John:

The blessing of this story is that God always has a plot twist to prove that it won’t end like this. Peter and John could have been those who walked by, like  others had done. When the man asked for alms, Peter and John could have had money in their pocket to give them. But it is because of the Lord’s mercy that the two preachers approached the temple without as much in their pockets as an offering. Peter acknowledged, quickly, that they were broke but not broken. It was clear to me that he asked the right people, the wrong question because Peter’s response is alarming as he charges the man to simply look at them. Essentially, Peter’s argument suggests that it’s clear that you haven’t looked at us because we do not look like people who have money. They do not look like people who can do something about his financial situation. Nor do they look like people who can make a difference. They looked like regular people. The man in this ugly situation, at this beautiful gate, is looking at them, realizing that they don’t have anything to spare and is not expecting to receive anything from them. The man thought this was the end because he wasn’t getting what he asked for. But I thank God for not limiting me to what I ask for. I thank God for seeing beyond my moment and answering the prayers I don’t have the sense to pray. I thank God that when I ask for something too small, God says no and does something else. Because this man asked for money, but Peter and John had more than that.

As my Pastor says often, “we live above our means but beneath our privilege.” He is asking for money, but God is planning to give him something that will revolutionize his entire life. He wants alms, but God wants to use these men to change the course of his life. He wants a financial blessing, but what God is going to offer through Peter is far greater than anything he could have imagined. When God charges us to be the Peter and John in someone else’s life, our immediate response is to ensure that the course of their life’s history is changed by the imprint we make that day. God is awakening something in us to see the issues in the world, our community and our own lives, and prophesy to them that It Won’t Like This! This should teach us that we have to stop treating the Peters and Johns of our life like those who walk by. We also need to know when we are called to be Peter and John in the life of others. Knowing which role you are in is a place of discernment for Peter, as he looks down on this man and says these very words:

 “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.”

This was not just a blessing; this man was a recipient of a miracle. And while we might get excited at just hearing these words, you have to take into consideration that this man has been lame since birth. He has never had the opportunity or privilege to walk before. He does not know what it means to walk. All his life he has been in spaces where People are doing something he has never had the privilege of doing. He has watched babies learn how to walk. He has witnessed as people have re-learned how to walk after injury. He has watched people regain the ability to walk after experiencing physical therapy, and yet and still, he has never done this very thing. Suddenly, he is given the command to do something that he has never experienced.

But the text did not stop there. After giving the charge to get up and walk, Peter continues with motion. The text says, Peter 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. Before he could enjoy the fullness of what it meant to walk, he walked right into the temple and immediately began to leap and praise God. He walked right into the place where he did not belong before and began praising God like he never had before. I like his response because it reminds me that as much as I have been the people, I have also been this lame man.

There as some things, some people, some history, some sickness, some places, and the like that have kept our feet from leaping. While lame, we kept asking about our sustainability in the moment but not our salvation from our lameness. But with the help of God, we went from Lame to Leaping. And that is a reason to walk where you’ve been wounded, leap where you once were lame and praise God where you were paralyzed. You may not have been welcomed when you were lame but still praise him. You may not have been cared for when you were lame but still leap. Because there is someone who saw this man sitting every day at that Beautiful Gate, in his ugliness, who are looking at that man, that woman, that child as proof that God is still able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Based on how he went straight to worship:

• This man is proof of David’s words in Psalm 27:4, when he said “One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.”
• This man is proof of with God nothing shall be impossible

So y’all I have a question that needs an answer:

• Have you any rivers that seem uncrossable?
• Have you any mountains that you cannot tunnel through?
• Because God specializes in things thought impossible And He will do what no other no other power can do.

Is there anybody in here, who has lived on the margins of life and God changed your situation? Have you ever been in a situation that you couldn’t get yourself out of, but God peaked over the balcony of heaven and said it won’t end like this? You ought to be walking, leaping, and praising God, because there may be some in the room still at the beautiful Gate with an ugly situation who need hope. And my bible say that we all have or will overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of the testimony. That is why I get excited from the testimony of the 34^th Psalm:

I will bless the LORD at all times: His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: The humble shall hear thereof and be glad. O magnify the LORD with me, And let us exalt his name together. I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him and were lightened: And their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, And delivereth them. O taste and see that the LORD is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

So, if you are still sitting at the gate, I have some good news for you from the hymnwriter, Pastor Charles Tindley, that always blesses me:

Harder yet may be the fight;

right may often yield to might;

wickedness a while may reign;

Satan’s cause may seem to gain.

There is a God that rules above,

with hand of power and heart of love;

if I am right, he’ll fight my battle,

I shall have peace someday.

I do not know how long ’twill be,

nor what the future holds for me,

but this I know: if Jesus leads me,

I shall leap someday.

Because we serve a God who looks at our terrible situation and gives us the reminder that It Won’t End Like This!