Gatesitter Scene 6 - Power and Piety

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“...as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? (Acts 3:12) The paradigm of humanity is the craving for these elements to be the source of salvation. We want POWER – lots of power, overwhelming power to FORCE change. We want to be so powerful we can intimidate others into compliance with our beliefs or wishes. We believe power is the answer to sin and pain and dysfunction, but we don't understand the way God uses power. We want power to establish our plans. We use power in the context of fear. Even our promotion of God is usually based on fear, the wrong kind of fear induced by the lies about how He uses power. In the same vein many believe that piety is the answer and the means of salvation. This belief is far more subtle and dangerous because it appears so righteous and religious. It is picked right off the Good side of the Tree of Knowledge. It sometimes promotes itself as the more noble approach to successful religious life than power. It is viewed by some as stronger than forcing others into conformity. It is usually centered in forcing one's self into religious compliance with an endless list of expectations and achievements that must be performed to satisfy the demands of holiness. It is assumed that if enough piety is generated in the life then supernatural events will begin to occur as a result to validate their accomplishments of piety. These miracles, it is believed, will be given as acknowledgment of this person's growing proximity to the perfection of God. If a person can achieve a high enough, pure enough piety before God and men then God will begin to answer their prayers more often and will endow them with power to perform miracles so that others will recognize and acknowledge their achievement of successful piety. At this point it is believed that their piety and corresponding power will produce amazement, wonder and awe in other people that will be their witness as others focus on their accomplishments. People will appreciate and honor them for their righteousness and God will be more pleased and/or less angry with them. Because the lame – now healed man was probably very aware of this theology at least intuitively, he understandably found himself clinging to the ones who had apparently healed him. As the crowd quickly thickened and the amazement intensified he felt not only pressure from the publicity of his transformed identity but felt obligated to steer all the attention and glory away from himself to not only God but onto Peter and John. It appeared that, according to the evidence and based on religious assumptions, these men must have somehow figured out the right formula of piety to unlock the power of God. Thus the crowds were ready and eager to perform their role by heaping praise and glory on these men for their piety and accomplishments. They were also eager to find out the secret formula for themselves so they too could exercise this kind of power. Thus the situation was urgent and ripe for Peter and John to clarify what was reality and what was false assumptions about religion and God's ways. At this point they seized on the opportunity to launch into a most powerful expose´ of the truth and God's real plan for His children. It was time for people to hear the real good news.

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Gatesitter Scene 5 - Focus

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He began to give them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. This is exactly what they requested of him. While it is true that he had never been presented with an opportunity to be healed before, it was equally true that he could miss this opportunity if he did not focus his attention on what was being offered him. Focus has multiple implications. Inherently focus means tuning out all other demands for attention, no matter how apparently important or urgent. Focus means actively discipling the thought and emotions to be directed at only one person or thing. Focus demands active participation and an exercise of choice, to use the “kingly” power of our will. Focus also implies an object of focus. He had probably focused many times on different things: his bitterness over being lame, his poverty, his helplessness, his parents, potential sources of income... He was likely under heavy influence of the spirit of Mammon. He was focused on doing whatever it took to try to get money so he could eek out a living. After years of fruitless attempts to better himself by focusing on different sources of help and hope for his life, he may have come to the place where he hardly cared to focus on anything anymore outside himself. Hope itself was slipping away, especially after Jesus the healer had been killed, and deep depression and hopelessness was settling into his soul like a thickening fog. Everything was now viewed through a deepening mist and there was very little reason left to even continue living. All his hopes and dreams had been swallowed up by the relentless approaching fog and he was settling into a mindless routine of just surviving to beg for one more day. So when Peter and John suddenly stopped in front of this man's lowered head and insisted that he look them straight in the eyes, it came to him like a shaft of sunlight bolting through a rift in the clouds. They asked for the one and only thing from this man that is the only thing any person genuinely owns that can be offered to another as a gift – the gift of his undivided attention. They were already giving him this gift themselves and they asked him to respond likewise. If he chose not to respond to their request because of choosing to remain in his self-pity and despondency, he would not have placed himself in the position to receive the far greater gifts they had to offer him. They did not offer him more of what he thought he needed. Instead they wanted to re-awaken the original dreams and hopes that he had now given up as unrealistic for his life. God had placed the hope for healing in his heart originally. God had inspired him to want to dance and twirl and leap for joy like some of the little children he used to observe. There had been a time in his life when he was a friend of many of the children who played around the temple area. He had listened to them and been a friend to them as they had shared their sympathy and their own hearts with him. But lately even the children didn't come around much because they found him too depressing. He was more alone than ever and wondered why God wouldn't just let him die.

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Lessons from the Gatesitter

He sat every day at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful. How very many of us also sit every day in the presence of the Beauty of God while spending most all of our time focusing on our selvfes, our crippled condition, our needs and desiring pity from those around us who enter on into His glory. We see ourselves as cripples, unworthy and unable to go to God. We are content to resign ourselves to sitting outside the gate of beauty and just beg for dropping crumbs from the rich blessings others receive from Him. We live off a pitance of the blessings of others. We may be sometimes even jealous of their freedom and gladness but believe it cannot be ours to experience. We need a Peter and John to come to us and demand our undivided attention to pry our focus away from our impossibilities to God's boundless desires for us. The lame man was living and asking for money to provide an existence for himself. He was content, though not satisfied, to eek out a bleak existence on the leftovers from others. But God had much greater plans for his life. Peter and John did not offer him more of the same. He thought that money was his need. But they wanted to break his dependence on thinking money would solve his problems to realize God's real passion for his heart. God wanted his life to glorify His Son Jesus. God's heart wanted him to run, to dance, to celebrate wildly in the presence of God's goodness. God wanted him to trust in Jesus for satisfaction instead of depending on his begging. God wanted to make him a spectacle of amazement and wonder beyond his own wildest dreams. God desired to jolt the whole city into a new picture of reality, a reality of God's true desires that He wanted everyone to accept and experience in their own lives. This experience of God's reality was already being enjoyed by thousands of animated, excited believers. But God's heart yearns to draw everyone into His powerful embrace of love. Reality ws breaking out of the fictional world of rigid religion and anything was now possible if people would just believe in God's goodness and His salvation. He wanted to pour down blessings like heavy rain if only people would just choose to believe – if we will just choose to believe.

Gatesitter Scene 4

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It would be interesting to observe the shifting sentiments and moods of the public passing in and out of the temple from the lame man's perspective. How many years had he begged outside the temple? Likely since long before Jesus started His ministry. Surely he had overheard its and pieces of conversations from passers-by about all sorts of things. If he was felt a lot of shame and was somewhat withdrawn he may have pondered his observations alone in his heart. If he was more open and socialized he may have even engaged different ones with questions, dialogging with those who were sympathetic enough to stop and converse with him occasionally. How could he have missed all the disturbing events that had so challenged the status quo of society in and around the temple. Jesus had personally emptied out the temple twice in less than four years which could not have gone unnoticed by one who begged just outside its gate. Many times Jesus passed in and out of the temple Himself and performed many acts of healing in its vicinity. If the lame man had been begging there all that time it would be very hard to miss the stories and rumors. Or maybe this lame man was new to the area. Maybe he was brought in recently by friends in hope of healing only to find out they were too late, that Jesus had been crucified and the era of miracles was apparently over. However, this idea does fit well with verse ten where people were apparently quite familiar with him. Verse two says he was set down every day at the gate of the temple implying this had been going on a considerable time. This man must have had hope stirred within him during the years of Jesus' ministry. He very possibly may have narrowly missed a number of opportunities for healing from Jesus directly. He had to have know something about Jesus and His character from all the circulating reports. He must have been somewhere not terribly far from the events of Passover weekend just past. He must have felt the cold chill of the triumph of legalism and religious traditions that were quickly enforced in and around the temple after that turning point. The hardliners and purists of Judaism likely would have taken strong measures to reinforce the rules and regulations that had been challenged and weakened by Jesus and many who had been influenced by His teachings and example. He must have noticed, if any had passed by him at the gate, the smug attitudes of the many Pharisees and priests on their pious and pompous trips in and out of the temple the past few weeks. There may have been a crackdown in the temple area and very possibly a spat of new regulations to prevent a disruption of the comfortable traditions imposed by the elite. God had to be served with strictness and exactness or the Jews were in danger of bringing down His wrath on them. The temple police may have been required to be re-trained with stricter controls instituted to prevent future outbursts of “celebration” and other such unauthorized activities from occurring in the temple. For a few weeks it appeared that the hardliners had gained the victory they so craved. “Undesirables” were barred from entering the temple area and all discussion of the subversive theology and activities of the renegade Jesus were quickly squelched. Religion was on track once again to be returned to the “old ways”, strict enforcement of the traditions of the elders and strong controls to keep everyone “in line” so they could one again focus on the true “goal” of the nation – achieving perfection and holy living, at least for the “favored” ones. While many of the leaders were openly pleased with the new strictness and reforms, much of the public was experiencing widespread despair and a more intense feeling of hopelessness. The lame man was very likely also deeply affected by this shift in public sentiment. After the crucifixion of Jesus the sense of hope and joy that had been seeping deeper into the hearts of thousands all across the country seemed to have been cruelly snatched away by an elite group of corrupt, self-righteous, arrogant men who only cared about power and wealth for themselves. Jesus was gone, despite swirling mixed rumors of a possible resurrection. His followers were very seldom seen and rumor had it they had stayed mostly holed up together in a large room where they had spent their last night together with Jesus before His death. Talk about clinging to the past! These people seemed to be desperately hanging onto must memories. No deliverance from the Romans had even been attempted by this professed Messiah. He just knuckled under both to the corrupt Jewish leadership and to the Romans when He meekly let them have their way with Him in the garden. For about two months everything was really looking grim and hopeless. The conversations of temple-goers was limited and moody. In fact, attendance of temple services had dropped off dramatically. People were bitter and angry and were even becoming much more cynical. This made begging much more difficult with sympathy and compassion becoming more and more rare among the public. Both emotionally and financially things had become very bleak for the lame man. He was barely surviving and hope was fast dying completely within his heart. But an explosion of rumors and animated comments occurred on the day of the Jewish Pentecost. And the days following that saw an upsurge in new people with a strange glow of joy on their faces frequenting the temple on a regular basis. They were gushing with praise for God and could not suppress their animation and joy. It seemed contagious and indeed their numbers were quickly mushrooming. They were eager to enter the temple and though he wasn't sure what they were doing in there, reports began to leak out of “temple incidents” and complaints of “disturbing the peace”. The Pharisees and other hardliners seemed to be even more ill-tempered than usual. Something new was definitely underway again challenging the status quo. But the lame man could hardly afford to allow his hopes to rise again. They had been disappointed and dashed so many times before and he felt he could not emotionally survive another crushing disappointment. Better to just keep his head down and accept his fate and let the world pass on with whatever it wanted to do without him.

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Gatesitter Scene 3

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As far as blessing goes, the lame man had never experienced the impartation of blessing so important to every man received at a Bar-Mitzvah. His father was not really proud of him like other fathers – after all, he was deformed. So he was not seated on a chair and lifted up and honored before all to see by his father as a special and important son. His heart was as crippled as his legs, even from birth. For when his parents saw his crippled legs at birth their anguish and feelings of repulsion began the life-long damage to his soul. Peter and John had only very recently experienced their own full “release” into manhood, not through an earthly Bar-Mitzvah ceremony but through the baptism of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. This powerful experience that had transformed them along with 118 others had really been the very first Bar-Barakah, which means “son of the blessing”. They were now overflowing with blessing, the very identity and presence of Jesus, the Son of God, living full force inside of them. Everything else was of little importance to them now. Money was valueless except as a tool to bless their rapidly growing “family”. Their primary currency now was praise for God. Their primary mode of relationship was transparent unity and openness with every person in their new family. Their primary emotion was joy – intense gladness to share life together with every believer in Jesus. They had become high-volume receivers of God's blessing and were wide open to dispensing His blessings as they were received. They let Jesus be in charge of who to add to their family, for only Jesus could know what hearts were ready and safe to bring into His body. Peter and John were simply living in joy, celebrating the goodness of God, and staying constantly tuned to their born-again spirit to know who God wanted them to invite into the family next. When they laid eyes on the lame man they saw far more than a crippled man that could use healing so he could walk like everyone else. The Spirit notified them that this man was starved in his spirit and was ripe to invite. Peter and John were together in fellowship and joy. This man was alone most of the time except for the friends who carried him around. But these friends had never carried him to Jesus like the friends of the paralytic had done. This man was ripe for a new identity as well as a new body. This man would become Exhibit A in the case for Jesus' reputation.

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