Silver I Don't Have, but Stand Up

Every morning, the same hands carried him.

The man could not walk. He never could, not once, not since the day he was born. So every morning his friends lifted him up and set him down by the temple gate. It was a beautiful gate. People even called it that. Beautiful.

And all day long the beautiful people walked through it.

They came with their good legs and their busy feet, hurrying in to pray, hurrying back out to lunch. And the man sat by the gate with his hand held open, hoping. A coin. Maybe a coin. Maybe two.

Nobody looked at him. He sat right where everyone passed, and everyone passed him by. He was the floor they stepped over, close enough to the beautiful gate to hear the singing inside, and never once through it.

Then, one afternoon, two men came up the steps. Peter and John. On their way to pray.

The man did what he always did. He held out his hand. "Please," he said, not even looking up.

But Peter stopped. Peter looked.

"Look at us," he said. And the man looked, and his heart leaned forward, the way a heart does when it lets itself hope for a coin.

"I don't have any silver," said Peter. "I don't have any gold either."

Oh. The man's hope began to fold itself back up small.

"But what I do have, I'll give you," said Peter. "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, stand up. Walk."

Long before, in a crowded house in Capernaum, Peter had stood beside Jesus and heard him say those very words to a man whose friends had carried him in through the roof. Peter had never forgotten the sound of that man getting up.

And now Peter reached down. Down to the floor everyone stepped over. He took the beggar by the hand, the same hand that had been held open all those years, and he pulled him up.

Something happened in the man's feet. And in his ankles. A strength he had never, ever felt, rushing in like a river finding a dry, thirsty place.

He stood. The man who could not walk was standing on his own two feet at the beautiful gate.

And then he could not help it, he began to leap. Up and down, up and down, laughing, jumping, holding on to Peter, holding on to John, and right through the gate he went. Inside. Leaping and praising God in the temple, where he had only ever sat outside.

Everyone knew him. That's the beggar. That's the one by the gate. And now look at him. Dancing.

This is what Jesus does. He bends down to the one on the floor. He takes the overlooked hand and says, you. Stand up. Come in.

The last one at the gate was the first one leaping through it.

And he would not let go. He held on tight, Peter on one side and John on the other, walking and jumping between them into the courtyard called Solomon's Porch, while the whole city came running to see a man they had only ever stepped over.