In the fishing town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, there is the most touching monument. So-much-so, when I saw it about three weeks ago I took a photograph of it, and it is now on the front of my Blackberry. It is a touching depiction of a mother and son with their arms around each other, and the monument is facing right out to sea, right out to the ocean from the boulevard that runs along the waterway in Gloucester. The monument, so I understood from talking to someone in the local coffee shop, is to the women and the children who have lost loved ones who have gone out into the fishing banks of the North Atlantic and not returned. When you look at it closely, there is a sense of expectation that when the fleet does come home and the boats do come into the harbour there is great rejoicing and someone waiting for you. It is extremely touching!
I sat and pondered this. I thought it was quite fitting that I wrote most of my Easter sermon on a table next to it. And, I thought of a story that I had read in The New Yorker some years before. Whether or not it is apocryphal one does not know, but it was a story about a boy who lived in one of those fishing towns in Massachusetts. He decided to emulate his father, and so he built his own little boat out of wood. He spent many hours crafting this, with great care and attention to detail. The boy thought very hard about when he was going to launch it. He put the sails on it, went down to the beach, and walked the boat out into the water and let it sail. To the boy’s surprise, however, the winds and the tide did not bring it around him, but away from him. The boat that he had crafted so carefully went out into the vast ocean.
Day after day he came back to the very same beach hoping that it would have been washed ashore, and it didn’t. After a month of agonizing that this boat he loved so much had gone, he decided to give up his search. A few months later, he was walking past a bric-a-brac store, and there in the window was his boat. He goes to the owner and says to him, “You do realize that is my boat. I made that boat. That is mine!”
The owner had no evidence that the boy was telling the truth and simply said, “If you want it, you will have to pay $5.00 for it.”
The boy went home, scrounged up some pocket money, went back to the store and bought his boat. He looked at that boat afterwards, and he said, “Little boat, you are twice mine! First, I made you. Now, I have bought you. You are twice mine!”
Now you know and I know that boat was more than just a boat for the boy: it was all about his father; it was all about his family; it was all about his identity. It was about the making out of his own hands something that would identify with his father. For that boy to say to that boat that he loved so dearly – an inanimate object, but one that had such great symbolic meaning – “You are twice mine!” was a powerful statement. I thought of the boy holding on to the mother in the monument in Gloucester and I wondered if he was the boy who said that his boat was “twice mine”. It is a story of happy endings and that is why The New Yorker would have published it. It is a story of great joy and celebration, something that was loved so much that is was not only made, but also bought. In many ways, Easter is like that story of that boy and that boat. Easter has been a time when in a sense Jesus says to the world, “You are twice mine! First, my father and I have made you, but I have now paid the price for you. You are twice mine!” Easter is a joyful occasion: a time of renewal, a time of reconciliation, a time of hope, and a time as I suggested last Sunday of new beginnings.
It is more than just a happy ending; it is a time of new beginnings. No where do we see that more clearly than in today’s passage. This was an incredible moment, but the only way you can understand the moment in this passage in the Book of Acts is if you understand the few verses that precede it. The disciples had, as we know, witnessed the Resurrection of Jesus. Mary had come to them, and they had experienced the empty tomb and the Risen Christ. They had waited in an Upper Room and the Holy Spirit had come upon them and they were empowered by the presence of the Risen Christ. Now we see, in one story, the first example of the power of that Risen Christ working through them.
The story that preceded it is of a man who was a cripple, a beggar, sitting outside the beautiful gate of the Temple in Jerusalem. As the beggars did, they sat at the door as the people came in to worship, collecting what were called alms. The disciples come upon one of these men, and rather – to use a pun from the English language - rather than giving him alms, they gave him legs. Rather than giving him money, they gave him the ability to walk. Peter says to him, “Silver and gold have I none. I don’t have any money, but what I give to you I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ! Get up and walk!” The beggar found that he had strength in his legs, and he was able to walk. He went away praising and glorifying God. It was a miracle.
It was a moment of new beginnings and transformation. It happens in our society as well that very often people who have medical conditions that hold them back from making and living a full life financially. In the biblical times, these were people who had to become beggars, who were dependent on the kindness of people. They sat outside the Temple to get money; they had no other means of income. The disciples decided not to give him money, but in the name of Christ, they gave him the legs to walk. They gave him the means to get up, a new beginning and a new life.
In this passage we have a sermon trying to make sense of everything that had happened in this miracle. I love what the great preacher Tom Long said, “They came to Solomon’s porch wide-eyed and astonished, lured by the mystery of healing, and what they got in return was a sermon. They came, drawn like moths to the ultra violet glow of the miracle, and what they got was the clear, steady light of a homily.” In fact, the way the story is told, the author of Acts makes it clear that the main event here is not the healing, but the preaching. This makes me feel like what I do makes sense, doesn’t it?! It was actually the preaching of Peter that makes sense of the healing. But Peter had to put things in perspective. He had to make things clear, and part of the problem was that the disciples who had helped heal this beggar were now becoming superstars.
They were becoming the religious elite. They were the rock stars of their time. People were following them because they said, “Oh, here’s the miracle worker, here’s somebody who is powerful. We will follow him.” But Peter is quick, and in the sermon he goes to great lengths to show it, and to separate himself from the true source of the healing. He says to the people, “Why are you following me? Why are you emulating what I am doing? It is not us. It is not me who healed that beggar. It is the Risen Christ! We have been witnesses to his Resurrection and we have seen what he can do, and it is the Lord Jesus who is doing, not us. We don’t want to take any credit for it.” They understood that it was not about them, but it was the presence of the Risen Christ that was doing this healing. That was the powerful moment.
There was a lovely moment in the life of G. K. Chesterton when he had just become a Christian. He was leaving a train station, and a reporter came up to him, and said, “Mr. Chesterton, I have heard that you have become a Christian, and I would like to ask you one question. If Jesus of Nazareth was standing beside you, what would you do?”
Chesterton said, “He already is!”
Chesterton knew that his faith was a result of Christ’s presence. He knew that what he believed was a belief in the living presence of Christ, not some distant or historical or mythological figure. He knew it; he felt it. Chesterton’s whole life was lived on the basis of the fact that even with all his sins and problems and doubts, the living Christ was with him.
That is why I worry at times when we, as human beings and people of faith, are always looking for the next big thing to come along, the next big miracle or be the next superstar within the constellation of Christian thought – maybe the next big preacher, maybe the next great healer – because we know that people have built their whole lives and industries around wanting to be the special ones or those who stand out. Peter is saying the exact opposite. It is not about us at all; it is about the Risen Christ and the new beginning. The healing of this broken man was a sign of the restoring power of the Risen Christ.
He had to put something else straight, because people were confused and they were thinking that maybe it is not just new beginnings, maybe there is a new God at work here, maybe there is another God at work here, maybe a God that we have never encountered before. Amongst all the many pantheons of gods, maybe there is a new god, maybe someone different. For two thousand years it seems to me we Christians have struggled with that misunderstanding. There are those who came along in the second and the third and the fourth centuries who genuinely believed that the ministry of Jesus reflected another god, and that the God of The Old Testament, for example, was a demiurge, a dark god, who may or may not have created this dark world, but now a new god is at work, a god who has superseded the old god. You even see that reflected in the beginnings of the earliest Christian community. Peter saw the danger; saw what happened, and could potentially happen. He states that it is the God of Abraham, the God of Jacob, the God of Isaac, and the God of our ancestors, who has glorified Jesus of Nazareth by raising him from the dead. It is not a different god; it is not another god.
That is why last Sunday I went to such great pains to quote from the Book of Isaiah as well as from the Gospel of Mark. There is a correlation between the God who first makes us and the God who pays the price for us, like that boy and his boat “You are twice mine!” Through the Resurrection, Jesus God is saying that humanity is twice his! Oh dear, how that has gotten lost in history! How anti-Semitism and how hatred and suspicions have been born because we haven’t listened to Peter’s sermon in Luke and in Acts. We need to hear it again. It is the fulfillment of what God did, but in the Resurrection of Jesus it is a new beginning.
It is also a new beginning that turns everything around. You see, the crowd was feeling uneasy. They remember the days and the weeks before when they had called for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. Now they hear that this Risen Christ is restoring the broken and healing and mending people’s lives and they don’t know what to do. Peter addresses it straight out and it took enormous courage. He tells them that they are guilty and made a mistake. But then in one of the most loving gestures, he tells them that they were ignorant and didn’t know what they were doing or who they were crucifying. And suggests they take this opportunity to repent and to say to God ‘We are sorry for what we have done.” It is a chance for new beginnings. It is an opportunity to right a wrong, and to set the record straight. It is a moment for people to change their views.
I think that Easter does that to us. I think it gives us the opportunity to say, “I have my doubts and have made mistakes, but give me the opportunity to have a new beginning.” To the beggar who was an outcast, who couldn’t work, who was a pariah, the Risen Christ gave him a new beginning. To the crowd who was guilty of putting Christ to death, they were given a new opportunity for forgiveness. Easter is about new beginnings, and because it is about new beginnings, it is about hope.
I love the story that I read not long ago about the famous Edward Jones who attended the funeral of Robert Browning in Westminster Abbey. Anyone who has visited Westminster Abbey knows that Robert Browning is buried in the Poets’ Corner there, and it is quite amazing to look at his inscription! He said of Robert Browning’s funeral that it was one of the most sombre and dull and deadly affairs that he had ever attended. What a contrast it was to the man! The man was full of faith and joy, and he knew Browning, a man of faith, well. He said, “I would have given anything for a banner or two to be waved, and much more, I would have given if a chorister could have come out of the triforium and rent the air with a trumpet.” Rather than something sombre and deadly and oppressive, Sir Edward wanted, in a memorial to Browning, the trumpet to sound joy and hope.
It is no coincidence that this morning at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church the trumpet is sounding! It should let all of us hear it, because Easter is about that new beginning, that forgiveness, that healing, and that restoration. It is about being, as God says to us, “Twice mine!” And you are twice his. Amen.