Today's Season of Joy reflection on Acts 3:1-10 is by Roger Auer.
Roger was the first campus minister at Elder High School and was there for 37 years. He and his wife Mary have three daughters and currently 5 grandchildren. He was a member of the New Jerusalem Community for 30 years. He is currently on the board of Over-the-Rhine Community Housing and the Western Wildlife Corridor. He has nothing but gratitude for the life he has been given.
from Acts 3, 1-10
...a man crippled from birth was carried
and placed at the gate of the temple called “the Beautiful Gate” every day
to beg for alms from the people who entered the temple.
When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked for alms.
But Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.”
He paid attention to them, expecting to receive something from them.
Peter said, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk...”
Read the full reading here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041223.cfm
Reflection
Today's reading is one of my favorites. It was only a short time after Jesus' death and Resurrection. The two disciples already had gotten it. They knew how to build and participate in this Kingdom that Jesus spent so much of his time talking about. It reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite plays, A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer is complimenting his friend, Jacob Marley, saying that he was a good businessman. And Jacob replies, "Benevolence, forbearance, the common good. They were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business."
He did not come to this realization until after he was dead. And I believe this truth is very difficult for Americans today to appreciate. Because [for us] it's all about my success; it's all about my life being successful. The challenge of seeing mankind, in fact, as your business is something I believe very few Americans come to.
Paul gave us a pretty good idea with a pretty sweet list on how to participate in this "Body of Christ" as he called it. The only problem is that the list is about 2,000 years old. For myself, I believe we can update the list.
I was the campus minister of an all-boys High School for a little over 25 years. [In that time] I was able to make some connections because one of my jobs was to organize community service for the boys. I got to know community members and community organizations that could really benefit from some intensive help from high school students over a short period of maybe two to three hours.
One of the greatest gifts that I can still appreciate is that even though I'm retired now, I can still use those connections with the school and with the community to set up service opportunities. Two weeks ago, we got about 50 young men from this particular high school out to clean up the neighborhood in eight different groups. It was a wonderful day interacting with the neighborhood and after it was over there were a lot of smiles on the faces of the neighbors and on the faces of the high school kids.
Now maybe we do have silver and gold that we can contribute to the building of the kingdom. Or maybe we have the gift of healing; the gift of healing relationships and interactions between people of different races and different backgrounds.
Maybe, just maybe, our contribution in that way will in fact be part of building this Kingdom. This Kingdom that we
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