All Beggars

Seeing how we all beg for things besides faith

04/24/2019

Acts of the Apostles 3:1-10 Peter and John were going up to the temple area for the three o’clock hour of prayer. And 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.” Then Peter took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles grew strong. He leaped up, stood, and walked around, and went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God.

Have you noticed the proliferation of people who are begging on the street corners of Fort Smith? Apparently, this is a wide-spread phenomenon because I see people begging when I visit my brother in Fayetteville, and go see my parents in Little Rock. The poor people stake out their street corners like Catholics stake out their church pews. God help you if you accidentally stand on someone else’s corner or sit in someone else’s pew. Now, as a purely personal matter, I do not give money to people who are begging on the streets. But at the same time I do not want to judge or condemn anyone who does give alms to the poor like that. Each person has to follow the dictates of his or her conscience.

Whenever I see someone begging, though, I always think of Acts 3, our first reading, where Peter and John come across a beggar on their way to the Temple. Peter’s words pop into my mind when he said: “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.” And the man was miraculously healed. But more importantly we read: “He leaped up, stood, walked around, and went into the temple with them, walking and jumping and praising God.” In other words, even more than restoring his physical health, the miracle healed the man’s spiritual malady. He received the gift of faith which is more precious than silver or gold. That’s what I wish I could give the preponderance of people begging on all the street corners of our country: the precious gift of faith. They need faith more than a five dollar bill.

But folks, before we jump on our high horse and look down on the beggars asking for alms, we should ask ourselves: what are we begging for before we jump up and go to church? We may not be sitting on street corners, but in our hearts we have desires and demands we make of God before we accept him in faith. Just like the beggar who wants a fiver more than faith, so let me mention a few things we may prefer to faith in God.

First of all, we can all put a higher premium on finances than faith. I feel this temptation as a pastor. I worry about paying the bills, keeping the lights on, the landscaping lovely, and buying new heating and cooling for the church. That’s why we don’t turn on the air conditioning in the hot summer months in order to inspire people to give more in the collection. That’s called “sweat equity.” Parishioners do that too by working extra hours on Sunday instead of going to Mass and resting on the Lord’s day. We are not unlike the beggars who want financial security more than faith.

Secondly, we may be more persuaded by the discovering of science than the demands of spirituality. When scripture comes in conflict with science we sometimes stand on the side of science. I am certainly not advocating a fundamentalist or overly literal interpretation of the bible. However, we seem to have far more faith in scientific theories than in sound theology. We put more credence in the words of men than in the Word of God. Isn’t this the tragedy of our atheistic culture? Like the beggar on the street corner, we ask for scientific proofs for our faith before we will jump up and walk into the temple to worship.

Thirdly, we beg for peace and prosperity rather than sacrifice or suffering before we come to faith in God. If God does not answer our prayers for healing, or for a new job, or for longer life, then we will not believe; our faith is shaken. I sometimes wonder if this is why some families choose not to send their children to Catholic schools because we do not have all the amenities of other schools. The main thing we off our students is faith, like Peter said to the beggar: “I have neither silver nor gold but what I do have I give to you…” Could this be why Catholics choose other churches to attend that offer all kinds of programs and powerful preaching? We, too, beg for sermons that do not put us to sleep, and we go where we can get them. We are not that different from the beggars on the street corners.

Let me leave you with a quotation from Pope Benedict XVI. He asked a provocative question and then he answered it. The pope emeritus wrote: “What did Jesus actually bring if not world peace, universal prosperity and a better world?...The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God…It is only because our hardness of heart that we think this is too little” (Jesus of Nazareth, 44). In other words, whether we are sitting on the corner of a street or sitting at the corner of a pew, we are all begging for something more than for faith.

Praised be Jesus Christ!