These three readings we have just heard, have a very important message for us--it is an Easter message, but not an obvious one. It took me a while to sort it out, and then it took my breath away. I began to understand it by reflecting on Peter's first miracle, described in the 3rd chapter of Acts. I think this event may have been as much of a turning point for the disciples as Pentecost itself. Of course it must have been an amazing experience to have the Holy Spirit come rushing in like a mighty wind, and then resting like fire upon the disciples, enabling them to speak in foreign languages. A few days or weeks later, Peter discovered WHY they had been given the Holy Spirit. As he and John went up to the Temple to pray, they encountered a man lame from birth, who lay on a mat everyday at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. When the disabled man asked Peter for a handout, Peter offered what he had to give: the healing power of God's Spirit. It may be that Peter was almost as surprised as the disabled man, when he stood up from his mat, and walked, and for the first time, entered the Temple, leaping and praising God.

This event created quite a stir in the courtyard of the Temple, because all the Jews there had seen the disabled man sitting at that gate for years and years. They gathered around him, and of course, he pointed to Peter. Today's reading was the speech Peter made at that moment. Notice first that Peter would not accept any credit for the healing: it was emphatically NOT by his own power or piety that the disabled man was healed. The healing was accomplished by "the faith that is through Jesus" (namely Jesus' own faith in his Father) and also by the disabled man's faith in the NAME of Jesus. Notice, second, that it must have been the Holy Spirit guiding Peter to offer healing, because we don't hear of any healings by Peter before this. It seems to me that the two reasons why the Holy Spirit was given are evident: both to heal, and also to attract the attention of people to the good news, so that their hearts will be open to faith. This is the first of a series of healings recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, which are important because they provide evidence of the continuity between the healings Jesus did in His earthly life and the healings done through faith in the Name of Jesus since His resurrection.

Another important aspect of this event is that these two disciples understood God's intention to save us all. Peter and John, and St. Luke, saw that this was the God of the disabled, the God of the mentally ill, the God of the prisoner, the God of the homeless . . . as well as the God of the sinner. The good news is God's intention to heal ALL that is broken and amiss in our lives, and to restore us to the fellowship of God's Kingdom, God's household.

We are given an interesting hint about that process of healing and restoration in the first Letter of John. This John, who is probably a different person than the author of the Gospel, begins by saying "we are GodŐs children now" -- that is, we have been adopted, we have been welcomed to God's table in God's kingdom. We are inside the context of God's care. But interestingly enough, that is only the first step in a spiritual process, because "what we will be, has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He is revealed, we will be like Him . . ." (3:2). This hint captured my imagination, with the thought that each of us has an identity beyond who we are in this life. There IS something more that will happen in the next life, something that includes who we are on earth, and yet is expanded and enhanced and even glorified.

As I reflected on this hint, I realized I have already experiences something like this becoming-more-than-I-am, and many of you have as well. I am thinking of several turning points in my life when someone invited me to do something which I thought was beyond my ability. When I was a freshman in high school, a friend suggested I run for Student Council, which seemed impossible to me. Without any expectation of being elected, I put my name in, was elected, and grew into a new identity as a school leader over the next 3 years. Ten years later, when I became active in St. Mark's on the Mesa in Albuquerque, I was invited to take the position of Director of Christian Education. Although I had my degree in theology, I knew nothing about children, and nothing about Sunday School: NOTHING!! That rector, Charlie Fish, was taking a big risk with me, because I had no idea how to do that ministry. But somehow, I figured out how to do it, and with the Spirit's guidance, gradually became the lay minister that my title proclaimed. Much more recently, in 1999 the Bishop asked me to serve as chair of Diocesan Council. I was quite sure I could not do the job the way Kevin Philips had, and I had no other picture of how the chair should lead. What was even more troubling, is that I have neither education, nor interest in financial matters. Yet, because it was the Bishop who asked, I agreed, and gradually found Wendy's way of leading the meetings, and overseeing the financial decisions that we made together. I have a strong suspicion that each person here could tell at least one story from your own lives like these: whether you were chosen for an athletic team, or won an award you didn't expect, or led a group, or given a responsibility . . . someone saw something in more in you--some potential for greater responsibility, for creativity, for leading or teaching or doing some particular thing for which you'd never have put yourself forward.

These kind of experiences, John is telling us, are similar to what will happen in the next life. Despite our weaknesses, our sins, and our wounds, we will be given a larger identity, a purified self, which is like Jesus in some way that is just beginning to develop within us. St. Paul means the same thing when he says that we will grow into "the measure of the full stature of Christ" (Eph 4:13). This is a great hope that we are given: that who we are, is not yet fully developed at age 60 or 70 or 80 or even 90. There really IS continued growth in God's love and service, as we say in the Rite I Prayers of the People.

All of this paved the way for me to recognize something new in the Gospel reading. Here we have St. Luke's version, very similar to the one we heard last Sunday from St. John, of the disciples in the upper room suddenly experiencing the presence of the Risen Christ. Because they were frightened and doubtful, He invited them to look at his hands and feet, and to touch them. Then comes one of my favorite verses: its says "in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering". This is the very reaction you and I have when we are expecting bad news, and good news comes: "I can't believe it!" we say. Often that means, I'm afraid to believe it; or, I don't deserve good news; or, I don't want to be disappointed when the news changes again from good back to bad. Life experience may lead us to believe bad news more readily than good news. In order to convince them, Christ offered to eat something, as proof that he was not a ghost.

What I hear in this conversation, is the struggle of people who have only 3 categories to choose from: either Jesus is alive, in which case he can eat the fish, or he is dead, in which case they are hallucinating; or he is a ghost, which is frightening. They have no other concept or category for what they are witnessing. This is the reason Jesus immediately begins to remind them of the "words" about him, written in Moses, in the prophets and in the Psalms. St. Luke says, he "opened their minds to understand the Scriptures". To me, this means two things: first, that the scripture references to the suffering and resurrection of Jesus, are NOT self evident. Some guidance and interpretation are necessary, which is what I tried to give you in my Easter Sunday sermon. Second, it means that He is introducing a 4th category, a new concept of who He is now: not a ghost, not a dead man, not alive in a mortal body, but alive in a spiritual body.

This is the exact point at which I recognized something I had not understood before. The spiritual body of Jesus bears the marks of the mortal body. These resurrection events tell us that just as Jesus is not a ghost, so also he is not a spirit: He is, or He has, a spiritual body, and that body bears the marks of His suffering. The choice Christ made, to empty himself of divinity, to enter fully into human nature, is in His essence, it is who He is, and therefore the marks of the nails are visible on His spiritual body. What happened can be expressed by saying that Christ conquered death by INCLUDING it in the larger reality of God. Death still exists, but it does not end our lives; it is merely a transitional state on the way to that larger identity that we heard about in the letter of John. How else could we understand this, than by the witness that Christ appeared to the disciples WITH the visible marks of his death?

What this means for us, I think, is a new appreciation of the claim made in many places in the New Testament, that Christ knows our weaknesses and our sufferings, that He shared the fears and losses that we have faced (Heb 2:14, 17), in order to destroy the power of death. This means that we will be like Him: our wounds will be included in the next life, but healed; and like Him, our wounds do now (and will then) contribute to the healing of others. So I will use the words of 2006 to say, we are all disabled, either physically or emotionally, or spiritually, and Christ is our Disabled God, who has suffered death, and behold, He lives! This is our hope and our faith, that we will follow Him through death into a new life, bearing our particular wounds, AND, God will call forth from each of us, our true identity, the full image of God which even now is growing within us.