When I was a college student at Bethel College in Kansas we had to go a certain number of these mandatory convocation lectures. One Monday mid-morning in the spring of 2012, I was a lanky freshman sitting slouched into an uncomfortable auditorium seat.
Gregory Ellison II, a young professor from Emory’s Candler School of Theology was the speaker that day. And when it was the time for his lecture to begin, he wandered the auditorium stage wearing a suit and bowtie and baseball cap and sneakers, and took a minute or two in silence looking at the face of every single one of us couple hundred college students there. Eventually, he spoke the words of invocation:
“It is good to finally see you.”
Ellison lectured about his work crafting spaces of dialogue and radical hospitality, where the invisible could be seen and the muted heard. He shared from what would become his first book, Cut Dead But Still Alive, Caring for African American Young Men, the title of which comes from a quote by the early American psychologist William James:
“If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met “cut us dead,” and acted if we were non-existent things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would before long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily torture would be a relief.”1
In Acts we meet a man who had been unable to walk from his birth. He had some sort of community because folks would carry him to sit next to the gate where people entered the temple, and from that spot, he could ask for money. He must have been used to seeing lots of people passing by, but I wonder how many folks really saw him. Did he ever feel “cut dead but still alive” when no one turned around when they entered the temple gate or answered when he spoke or paid him any attention, treating him as a non-existent thing?
So when Jesus’ disciples Peter and John are just two of many heading into the temple, this man does what he does and tries to catch their eye out of the flow and asks them for money. And then this intense moment of mutual seeing takes place.Peter and John and look straight at this guy sitting on the ground… And not just a passing glance, we’re told that Peter looked intently at him and then tells the man to, “Look at us.” So the man looks back, waiting to hopefully get something out of this intimate stare-down.
Peter breaks the awkward silence with quite a line: “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.”
And Peter reaches out to hold the man’s right hand and raises him up. And the man doesn’t just stand upright, but he jumps and leaps and dances and heads into the temple alongside the disciples to praise God.
If the other passer-bys and worshippers in the temple had once recognized and knew who this fellow was before – they now see him, they notice him in a new way. A whole crowd gathers in astonishment and amazement and shock at what’s just happened.
In the mayhem folks congregate and press around Peter and John and this newly-walking man. And the man throws his arms around Peter and John, clinging to them and he won’t let go. What began as a moment of seeing one another has turned into a joyful, if out of control, frenzy in the temple.And Peter seizes this as an opportunity to preach a sermon, addressing his fellow Israelites gathered there in the temple portico.
A worry I have here is that within this story we can end up viewing this man who was just been healed, merely as a prop to drive the narrative forward. I worry that for all of his joyful leaping and praising God, we still receive a message that reinforces ableist presumptions about who and what is worthwhile and healthy and worth our time and who isn’t.
Is this man only made healthy by being able to walk or by being able to enter the temple on his own power, or being able to embrace Peter and John? What does it mean for him and for us to experience the health and healing and wholeness in the name of Jesus in a way that disrupts our narrow ideas of ability, health, and worth.
Clearly – Luke – the writer of Acts wants us to see the power of the Spirit at work through the disciples and Peter and John – how they heal and preach in the name of Jesus. It’s because of this miracle that Peter gains an audience to speak.
But I don’t want us to forget about this man. I wonder what his testimony is as a witness to the resurrection of Jesus. I wonder if the resurrection power at work in this story isn’t only the strengthening of this man’s ankles and the dancing of his feet and the straightening of his back and his jubilant leaping dance of praise to God…but I wonder if in that moment when Peter and John were looking at him and he was looking at Peter and John, I wonder if this was a mutual vision they all shared, a joint witnessing together of Jesus’ resurrecting life.
They each saw and beheld each other as beloveds of God in that moment. And after seeing each other like this – through the world-altering lens of Jesus’ resurrection – the way you live from then on out is transformed.
You can no longer walk past, pretending to ignore anyone who is asking for food or money or a caring look of loving recognition or a hand of compassion. You can no longer pretend that what you’re doing is something you’ve achieved through your own power.
When you’re a witness to the resurrection – the only sermon there is to preach is the sermon that Peter preaches, making clear that its not his own power or piety or words or prayers that enabled this man’s transformation and praise. When you’ve witnessed the resurrection – you live your life pointing to the power of God, who has the power to raise the dead to life, including yourself.
We all can be witnesses to the resurrection.
Like those first women who witnessed the empty tomb, we might not fully understand what is happening in front of us.
Like the startled disciples who reached out and touched Jesus’ torture-scarred hands and feet, and gave him a piece of broiled fish to eat, we might only be able to marvel in shocked joy at the abundant life right in front us – the pungent smell of fish, the roughness of scars still tender.
We witness the resurrection anytime that we stop and see and hear and touch where God is working right in front of us. To follow Jesus is to be a witness to his resurrection.
And to be a witness, to really see someone, to pause long enough to witness God at work – is to enter into an vulnerable and uncomfortable space.
Midway through that lecture on visibility, justice, and belonging, during my freshman year of college, pastoral theologian Gregory Ellison II paused and invited us students into a vulnerable exercise.
We were to turn to one another and find a partner. And for a whole minute, sixty straight seconds, we were asked to look each other in the eyes. Professor Ellison invited each pair of us to really see each other, noticing, beholding, with as much focus and care as we could pack into a whole minute.
I had scooted into late to the auditorium and wasn’t sitting with any of my friends, so I turned to someone I knew a little bit but not very well. At first there was a lot of awkward laughter and nervous giggles as people partnered up. Things quieted down a bit once we began the minute, you could hear the crinkles of smiles on folks’ faces as they received the caring smile of another. But as the seconds wore on, growing interminable, rustling and shifting grew. A minute is a really long time to look straight on, eye-to-eye, face to face.
Some eyes began to water, overwhelmed by the experience of being seen by another. We all let out a big collective breath when the long minute was over. I can still remember exactly who I sat next to that day in that lecture.
“It is good to finally see you. Peace be with you.” Jesus says to his disciples.
“It is good to finally see you,” the unnamed man of Acts 3 says to Peter and John when they stop at the temple gate and meet his gaze. “It is good to finally see you,” they say back.
When we stop and pause – even for just a minute of vulnerability, sixty seconds of compassion – we can see and hear and touch where God is working in front of us and within us. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a witness to his resurrection.
By God’s grace and power, not our own, may we all stop long enough to glimpse, to touch, to witness the risen Christ in our midst, in whatever disguise he presents himself in, and may we say with love back to him, “It is so good to finally see you too.”
- Quoted in Parker Palmer’s forward to Gregory C Ellison II, Fear+less Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017), viii. ↩︎