He Comes to Us Anyway – Br. Jamie Nelson
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For the past few days, we’ve been making our way piece by piece through a single story from the book of Acts – the story of Peter and John healing a lame man in the temple courtyard. Each installation of the story has been paired with gospel accounts of post-resurrection visits from Jesus.
Oftentimes during a worship service such as this, we listen first to a passage from the Hebrew scriptures and then to a gospel account about the life of Jesus. First the old, and then the new, a journey echoing the familiar pattern of linear time.
But not so this week. The order of the readings is reversed from linear time. The events we heard first in the retelling of the book of Acts occurred *after* Jesus was crucified, died, and rose again that Easter morning. It’s as if we’re glimpsing a flashback into Peter and John’s earlier life as we take in the post-resurrection visit from Jesus recounted from Mark’s gospel.
Imagine how the scene from Acts might look if it unfolded on a movie screen:
Peter and John stand before the assembly of the temple authorities – a group of 70 distinguished men of great learning, power, and influence. The two disciples’ clothes and hair are rumpled and dirty, for they’d spent the previous night in jail.
It is a public trial, with onlookers watching the proceedings with interest. One of the onlookers, one who stands close by, is the healed man, not on trial himself but testifying through his visibly healed presence.
Threatened by the temple authorities, Peter and John meet the intimidation with their simple but powerful response: “We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
But had they seen and heard?
This, here, is where the flashback to the gospel passage from Mark is inserted into the movie plot.
It’s a flashback to Peter and John gaping at their risen Lord, appearing to them in the flesh as the group of eleven disciples huddled together in fear and bewilderment. That is what they had seen and heard, that is the truth whose power could not be contained.
But why does that flashback matter? Because these men, who now so boldly proclaim that they cannot keep from speaking about what they had seen and heard, had not believed in accounts of the resurrection at first.
Because in the gospel passage from Mark, we hear that first Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, yet the disciples didn’t believe her.
Because then Jesus appeared to two followers of Jesus as they left Jerusalem for the countryside, yet the disciples didn’t believe them either.
Finally, a third time, Jesus eliminated the middlemen and showed up himself. This time, finally, the disciples saw and truly believed that their Lord had risen from the dead.
Jesus didn’t give up on them because they didn’t have it all figured out right away. Even amidst their unbelief, Jesus still revealed himself.
He came to them, and then sustaining belief followed.
That was the hinge moment in the disciples’ story, when they went from being grieving followers of a deceased rabbi to apostles commissioned and sent on a mission. Jesus sent them out to proclaim his good news to the whole of creation, and they obeyed. And, we read, the Lord worked with them and confirmed their message by the signs that accompanied it, by the formerly lame man who leaped with joy when his legs were healed.
Just like the disciples, we don’t have to have it all perfectly figured out for Jesus to reveal himself to us.
We might be filled with questions. With fears. With doubt. We might be stuck in our own locked rooms of confusion or grief. But Jesus comes to us anyway. He shows up in the midst of our messy lives and invites us to follow him.
Are there places in your life where you feel like you’re waiting to have it all figured out before you move forward?
Trust that Jesus our Risen Lord is present there, in the midst of the mess.