Dear Friends,
In these weeks after Easter, we tend to be totally absorbed in the post-Resurrection stories about Jesus in the Gospels. That’s no surprise, for learning the meaning of His presence to us today is dependent on our grasp of this unique time in Jesus’ life.
But we can learn something about Jesus by exploring the incidents recounted in the Acts of the Apostles as well, for by then, the power, the healing presence of Jesus have been passed on to His followers.
In His life before His passion, death and resurrection, Jesus, touched many people by his glance, his hands, his breath. Each of the four Gospels tell about Jesus interacting with paralytics – those who had to depend totally on others.
Luke is the only evangelist who tells of Jesus healing a crippled person – and she was a woman. Her story is told in Luke 13.10-17. Remember her? She had been bent over for 18 years, crippled by a spirit that prevented her from standing erect. She did not see Jesus as he came by. She couldn’t. All she could see was the ground. But Jesus saw her, cured her, called her “daughter of Abraham.” Though the leader of the synagogue was indignant, the people rejoiced in her cure, indeed they rejoiced “at all the splendid deeds done by him.” (Luke 13.17)
Fast forward to Acts 3.1 -10. This time the story is about a man crippled from birth. He had been brought by his faithful carriers to the temple gate to beg, when Peter and John came along. Peter looked intently at him, and the cripple expected alms. But he didn’t get money. Instead, he was cured by the power of Jesus.
And then – pay attention to this – Peter took him by the hand, raised him up. The formerly crippled man “leaped up, stood, walked around, and went into the temple walking, and jumping and praising God” and the bystanders were filled with amazement and astonishment.”
These two – the woman in Luke and the man in Acts, were freed from what crippled them and they gave witness – the man in Acts more exuberantly than the woman in Luke. Both let it be known what had happened to them through the power of Christ. There it was. Before and after the resurrection, Jesus cured cripples.
Today, Jesus cures what is crippled in our world, in us – what reduces us to begging, what prevents us from seeing and doing all we can in life to make the world a better place.
What in us or in our loved ones, or in our neighborhood is crippled? Not necessarily physically crippled but internally. Do we invoke the power of Christ to heal? Do we participate in the healing of others as we are encouraged to do by belonging to Christ?
This is an Easter message that causes us to look around ourselves to see who is in need and say as Peter did “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I have I give you…”
And give it.
~Sister Joan Sobala
