NOTES for Act 3:1-10

The Gospels are full of stories of healings. And the Book of Acts continues this tradition: immediately after the description of the Savior's Ascension and Pentecost comes the description of a healing performed, true, no longer by Christ Himself, but by the apostles in the name of Christ. Of course, one could explain everything by saying that one of the Synoptic Gospels and the Book of Acts have the same author. But that is only the outer side of the matter. Something else is more important: the essential connection of the Gospel events with those described in the Book of Acts. And first of all, of course, this concerns the promise Jesus gave to the apostles during His earthly ministry, the promise that they too would be able to do on earth everything He Himself did.

But this is not all. The main point is that the history of the Kingdom in the world continues. And this means that Christian history continues. Not the history of certain Christian ecclesiastical institutions, or of what might be called, rather conditionally, Christian civilization, but the history of the Church. The one with a capital C. The one that is a community of people living in the Kingdom. In fact, Christ never created any other Church. What He left on earth was precisely a small community, at first, of inhabitants of the Kingdom. Or, more exactly, of those who were to become inhabitants of the Kingdom after His Resurrection, after Pentecost; those through whom the Kingdom would continue to exist in the world, transfiguring it.

The apostles' healing of the lame man who sat at the entrance to the Temple was precisely a witness that the apostles had become inhabitants of the Kingdom: it was the power of the Kingdom, its breath, that healed the lame man. It accompanied the apostles just as it had accompanied the Savior Himself when He walked on earth. Thus His work on earth continued. And so did the history of salvation.

When reading many passages from Scripture, it is hard at once to understand and feel the atmosphere of what is happening, the mood of the people, even though the Evangelists often mention them. The point is that the writers do not put into the lines their own attitude and emotions about what is being described.

To understand, we need to stop, perhaps read the passage again several times, think, and imagine the situation. The Word of God is more alive than any other book precisely because it is not obscured by the personality of the writer and gives us the opportunity to become participants in those events.

To "read" today's passage from Acts, one must not merely read the phrase, "...lame from his mother's womb..." and understand it as we usually understand the word "lame," that is, as having the ability to walk, but with effort and pain, but also see what was actually the case. This man was "carried and laid" there, that is, he could not move about on his own. One needs to see his gaze fixed on the apostles, waiting for alms. This man, unlike other healed people familiar to us (see, for example, Mark 10:51), did not think of asking for healing.

It is striking that such a seemingly unimportant detail is indicated: the hand by which Peter raises the lame man. But this detail brings the story to life and speaks of the importance of what is happening. Surely this man remembered for the rest of his life the touch after which he was able to walk. And then the one who perceived each day, in particular, in terms of how much would be given to him that day, leaps up and goes into the temple. Before, after all, he had sat only near the temple, and no one had carried him inside, and perhaps he had not asked...

And now this man glorifies God, who for him is now connected with His Son, Christ, in whose Name the healing was performed.

We see the first healing performed by the apostles after Christ’s ascension into heaven. A lame beggar who begged at the gates of the Temple is healed, a man like the millions of his fellows who would likewise beg at the gates of other temples for thousands of years. But the point is that this beggar had not been brought there by the apostles; he had long been visible to everyone who came to the Temple.

It is well known that, among beggars, besides people who have been cast aside and are genuinely in need, there have always been many professionals who earn their living this way and have no intention of changing their way of life. The apostles risked encountering one of those who did not need healing or who, even after being healed, would not bear public witness to the healing but would continue begging while pretending to suffer from his former illness. The beggar, however, acts “impractically,” and this means that he intends to change his way of life.

The man who was healed praises God, not the apostles, and there is no ingratitude in this. The apostles themselves bear witness that the healing comes from God. In this way, the healed man testified to his faith that the power by which they could heal had been given to them by God.

Everyone—the pilgrims who had come for Passover, the priests, the Pharisees—was content with the brisk trade going on around the Temple in Jerusalem. Did the cries of sacrificial animals drown out the Temple hymns? What could be done? At least the animals were always available for purchase. A pilgrim could hardly be expected to bring them from home, perhaps hundreds of kilometers away... Did the money changers haggle, argue, and quarrel with their customers so loudly that it was enough to drive even the saints away? It was regrettable, of course, but denarii had to be exchanged for drachmas and back again... Strictly speaking, no one approved of all this clamor in the Temple courts, but everyone put up with it as an inevitable evil, a kind of tribute to the eastern temperament.

Indeed, devout Jews tolerated all this not so much out of indifference as because they were intensely awaiting the Messiah’s coming. Through the prophets, the Lord had more than once angrily rebuked Israel for its lack of reverence. The words quoted by Jesus, “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers,” belong to the prophet Jeremiah and were spoken six hundred years before the events described in the Gospel. Yet there was a widespread conviction in Israel that the Messiah, who would come soon, would arrange the Temple service and, so to speak, “put things in order.” In carrying out this cleansing, the Lord acts precisely as that very Messiah who had been awaited for centuries. This is how the Jews understand His action, and therefore they demand a sign from Him.

One cannot fail to notice, however, that the dialogue between the Jews and the Lord takes place in raised voices, and the Jews react to Christ’s action with a certain hostility. This is probably because the Lord calls things by their proper names. His words, “Do not make My Father’s house a house of trade,” do not fit at all within the bounds of tolerance and indulgence toward lawlessness and irreverence. It is important to see this, because in our time, if someone tells us about what we mildly call “disorders” in our spiritual and ecclesial life, we react just as the Jews did then, in April of AD 27. Fear and uncertainty about God’s love make this kind of truth very hurtful to people. It is useful to remember this and notice it in ourselves, lest we become like those Jews.

The Apostle Peter's answer to the lame man sitting at the entrance to the Temple in Jerusalem prompts us too to consider what we can give the world around us. The world indeed most often thirsts for “silver and gold,” which Christianity is unable to give it. Yet the fact is that deep down the world thirsts for more: it awaits healing and wants to know the truth about itself and about God. The Book of Acts gives us wonderful examples of how the Apostles bring peace, healing, and meaning to those around them. Peter and John not only heal the lame man, emphasizing that this happened not by their own power but by God's; in a few extraordinarily concise words, they also reveal to the Israelites the meaning of their history and their election by God, and point them toward the center of their longings and hopes: Christ. In today's circumstances, the Lord expects all this from Christianity, from the Church, and from us as well.