Christ's Healing on Mission - Acts 3:1-11

Let’s argue about healthcare

Access to healthcare is something we all think about. And for good reason. Our country and the field of medicine have the technology and the resources to help keep us relatively healthy. It’s a central part of our life… so much so we pay attention to medicine prices and healthcare discussions at the highest levels of government. How many of you have been in a conversation in the last month about healthcare? Yeah. Me too. How many of you have been in an argument about healthcare in the last month? Yeah… that’s how central it is to most of our lives.

I’m always fascinated by the stories of mission hospitals around the world. Many of them deal with diseases and sickenesses we’ve never heard of or don’t think much about. But things like toothaches and the flu and colds and cuts on the arms… things we really take for granted… are treated in many areas of the world as if the miraculous has happened. How many of you celebrated the end of a cold or even an upset stomach, especially after taking over the counter meds? We are constantly experiencing healing and don’t even realize it because of our technology and science.

Jesus’ mission of healing

I bring this up because today’s lesson in Acts is about healing. And it’s spectacular. But if we’re not careful, we’ll completely miss the point of what’s happening here. We’re making our way through the book of Acts this summer. We in a new home, a new community and the mission of Acts has much to tell us about what we’re supposed to be doing here.

Acts 3 is the beginning of the rest of the book of Acts. Acts 1 and 2 were the warmup, the setup.. letting us know what to expect for the next 26 chapters… the book was written to a church body somewhere in the Roman empire, quite possibly near Rome itself… certainly in or near one of the Roman empire’s major cities. And Dr. Luke is explaining to a church or group of churches just how they came to be. How did the Good News about Jesus get from there… Jerusalem to here. That’s the book of Acts. Chapter 2 is the story of the birth of the church and the great day of Pentecost… chapter 3 and following is the rest of history.

And this episode at the beginning of chapter 3 is the first big event following Pentecost. We don’t know how soon or when this takes place, but most believe at least a few months have passed after Pentecost. Here’s how Dr. Luke sets it up:

Acts 3:1–2 Now Peter and John were going up to the temple for the time of prayer at three in the afternoon. A man who was lame from birth was being carried there.

If you’re hearing this for the first time in that original audience, all the details are there. You know what’s going to happen without even reading the rest of the story. What a setup. Peter and John are going to the temple to pray. A man who was lame from birth is there at the gate. Like all great storytellers, Dr. Luke helps you anticipate what is coming. We’ve seen this act before. In John’s biography, Jesus goes to the temple and is immediately confronted with a man who had been born blind from birth. We know what Jesus does there. We know what Peter and John are going to do here. And they do it.

Acts 3:6 Peter said, “I don’t have silver or gold, but what I do have, I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk!”

And that’s exactly what happens:

Acts 3:8 So he jumped up and started to walk, and he entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God.

Again… this is the same pattern we saw with Jesus… now being a characteristic of his disciples. End of story, right? No. Just like everything else we’ve seen in the book of Acts to this point, this is where we have to stop the story and say once again… if this is the point of the story… the spectacular miracle and the power of Jesus in Peter and John we’ve missed the point. And too often that’s exactly what happens with almost all the healing stories in the Bible, whether it’s Jesus or his best friends. In fact, we’re going to see from Acts 3 that even Dr. Luke is pushing back against that idea. Yes, this is a miracle, yes this is spectacular… but just like the crowd that day, we’re almost always getting the wrong takeaway from this story.. because Peter in the back half of the chapter is going to set the record straight, and we’ll get to that in a second.

Three things before we get to what’s really going on here. All are mythbusters… first,

Jesus doesn’t promise to heal us this way.

This story is not a promise. It doesn’t contain a promise. It doesn’t imply a promise. Does Jesus heal this way? He can. Does he promise to heal this way? No, he doesn’t. Every big once in a while, there’s a news story that will hit our screens of some group or outfit that expects nothing less than this kind of healing for someone some place and some time. That kind of thinking is based on a bad reading of this text.. and other healing texts like it. Spectacular healing is not a promise the Bible makes.

And the second thing… related to the first…

This healing or any healing is not about how much faith we have, not about how much sin we do or don’t have.

Remember how we said all the same elements are here from the story in John? There, the disciples want to know about the sin the blind guy or his parents had committed for his blindness. And the flip side to the sin card is… well maybe they just didn’t have enough faith… And time and again in the Gospels, Jesus says you can’t go there with disease and sickness. It’s not about sin in a life. It’s not about faith or the lack of faith that is the line between healing and no healing. So many people and families have been destroyed with that kind of teaching. This man in Acts 3 has been born lame. And Peter is his sermon is going to tell us what our takeaway from this healing should be.

The third thing is this…

Peter’s sermon is not simply an evangelism pitch in the aftermath of the healing.

As if “yes, the guy was healed… now that we have your attention, let’s talk about Jesus.” Peter’s sermon is much more than this. Peter’s sermon interprets the healing. Peter’s sermon is providing the meaning to the healing. I can’t stress this enough. Peter is going to take us places that we will miss if we’re looking at this through materialistic eyes.

Jesus, the Divine Healer

The first thing he says is that he and John didn’t do this, Jesus did.

Jesus is the Healer in the story.

Remember how we said it’s a mistake to think that somehow Jesus goes missing in Acts when the Holy Spirit shows up? In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Wherever the Spirit is, Jesus is working. Jesus is everywhere because he’s filling everything at the right hand of the Father. This healing is Jesus acting.

And this healing isn’t simply Jesus as the divine healer…

This healing is Jesus himself as the healing.

The lame guy wants silver and gold. And instead, he gets Jesus. Yes, he gets healing… but when it is all said and done… he gets Jesus. The question for this text isn’t: wouldn’t it be great to be able to heal a lame guy? The question is: wouldn’t it be great to give Jesus to a desperate guy?

The point isn’t the physical healing

A couple of things point to this.. one is Dr. Luke’s description of the healing:

Acts 3:8 “So he jumped up and started to walk, and he entered the temple with them—walking, leaping, and praising God.”

“Walking, leaping, praising God”. Yes, that’s what the guy was doing. In fact, we have a Sunday school song for that… “He went walking and leaping and praising God, he went walking… “ yeah… that will get the kids moving and all jacked up! But again… we need to put our early church ears on. That language is right out of Isaiah 35. There’s a day coming when the lame will walk and leap and the blind will see. That phrase here forces us to see that guy who is walking and leaping as Jesus is acting, the new creation is here. The new era has dawned in Jesus. The old things are passing away… and the new things have arrived.

And that points to the bigger picture of the healing. The man’s biggest need is not walking. And oh, we are so conditioned to think that way. I wish I had all day to unpack Peter’s sermon because Peter absolutely destroys that kind of thinking about this healing. This man’s biggest need is the same as the crowd’s biggest need: Jesus.

Verses 16 and 19 tell us everything we need to know about why this man was healed that day.

Acts 3:16 “By faith in his name, his name has made this man strong, whom you see and know. So the faith that comes through Jesus has given him this perfect health in front of all of you.”

This isn’t about sin… it’s not even about having enough faith. This is about faith in Jesus. The whole point of the healing is to point both the lame man and the crowd to their need to have faith in Jesus… for spiritual wholeness and spiritual healing. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had pointing this out about the healing miracles… Peter is saying it as plain as day but we still don’t listen. We think our biggest need is physical healing. But all these miracles of physical healing are always, always, always pointing us to the bigger need… the spiritual healing. In fact, it’s embedded in this story. Peter and John say “we don’t have any silver or gold”. That is equivalent, ironically, to what is happening with the man physically. It just so happens that spiritual healing in this instance is accompanied by physical healing.

What is it that gets Peter and John and the church in trouble down the road? The healing? Kind of. That’s part of it. But it’s always their emphasis on faith in Jesus. That man was healed that day to point people to their need of Jesus’ healing… healing from sin. Healing from the consequences of sin. Healing from the power of death and the devil.

And Peter doubles down on this in verse 19… again.. right out of Jesus’ playbook:

Acts 3:19–20 “Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out, that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus, who has been appointed for you as the Messiah.”

“Seasons of refreshing” There’s that new creation language again… walking, leaping and praising is the telltale sign that seasons of refreshing are here. We’re not going to get into all of what’s happening there, but repentance is simply the other side of the faith coin. Repentance is contrition for sin… and the contrition for sin looks to Jesus in faith. It’s all bound up with this idea that the point of the healing is placing confidence and hope in Jesus.

And note this new creation is a season in which Jesus is being sent… sending Jesus. Healing is on mission. This healing of the lame man is Jesus being sent to this man in the act of healing. And that’s the very same Jesus who is being sent as His Gospel does its healing work. And this is where we begin to see just how this relates to us here in San Benito.

The Table Church as a place of healing

I could talk about this all day. Because I see this everywhere. It’s everywhere in our lives because we live in a broken world. We live in a community in need of healing. We live in a culture in need of healing. You ever look at pictures on Facebook or Instagram and think about who isn’t in the family photos? Who used to be in the family photos? Yeah. Hidden in all the posts, in all the reels and stories and tiktoks is brokenness and pain. Hurt. Suffering. People desperate to made whole, trying to make themselves whole, trying all sorts of things that they believe will make them whole and coming up short… it is pain upon pain. And that’s when we come to Acts 3 and it’s in Acts 3 that we read this:

Jesus has given him this perfect health.

Where will we find healing? Where will our friends and neighbors find healing? Where do you get wholeness when this world can’t deliver? Jesus. Again… sounds like a pat answer, but it’s not. Perfect wholeness and healing only comes through Jesus. And that’s the promise here. It’s not about whether the physical will find perfect health in this life. That’s not the promise. There is to be found in Jesus, right here and right now, spiritual healing. Healing for the soul.

Forgiveness makes the world go round. We emphasize forgiveness here because forgiveness heals. It heals our souls. It heals our sin. Forgiveness heals. Period. Why do we spend time every Sunday in confession and forgiveness or absolution? Because in Jesus absolving us of our sins, Jesus is providing the healing for us that we desperately need. That’s the first place that we provide healing for our neighborhood and for our community.

But there is also physical healing and emotional healing. Now, we cannot operate a hospital here. But the forgiveness and healing we are given in turn make us healing agents for others around us. We all have hurt. Our neighbors have hurt. Our families have hurt. There is pain. There is suffering. We can see that on our screens. There’s a lot of hurt in Hill Country right now. We all know someone in pain. We may not have silver or gold… but we do have Jesus. And I know that sounds trite. And we live in a society where the Jesus answer is considered trite. I get it. People want more than just a pat answer.

But at the end of the day, the Jesus answer is the right one and in fact, the real one. We will spend time and energy attempting in our own ways here at The Table to alleviate physical pain where we can. But we have something more here that many cannot offer… and that is Jesus. And it’s not about the pat answer. Often this means that when there is hurt, and pain, and suffering, we sit down on the ground with those who are in pain and we don’t say a word.

Jesus uses healing to expand his kingdom. He doesn’t promise physical healing. He can do it and often does. What he does promise is spiritual healing. Making people whole. Making people new creations. Making sinners into saints. As we provide healing for our community, in whatever ways that we can, we pray that Jesus will continue to expand his kingdom and connect more people to himself through the Table Church.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

Healing starts with Word and Sacrament. And I’ve come to believe this includes physical healing. This isn’t just wine and grape juice. This isn’t just bread. This is Jesus himself… meeting us in the physicality of bread and wine. People say they want to see a miracle. Then show up at The Table Church every Sunday where Jesus is the miracle for us in His body and in His blood. Providing healing for the soul. Real healing. Through forgiveness, life, and salvation. You can smell this healing. You can see this healing. You can taste this healing. Right here. Right now.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26 May the Lord bless you and protect you; may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.