In those carefree college days we used to gather at Nancy and Baron's house and march around the living room with their children singing the Sunday School song that included the refrain, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." (Acts 3:6 KJV)
Simple enough. Simple faith. Profound lesson, for children, and if we wish it, for ourselves. The message is not magic. It is not our triumph; not the triumph of the disciples; it is the triumph of God acting in Christ through the Holy Spirit by the mediation of the faith of his followers. Yes we have a part to play. It is in his name that they, and we, also followers, can act.
Our actions may not be so simply triumphant, not so easily written off as so much magic and miracle. We may not have magic hands or the message so clearly impressed into our heads, as these who had just witnessed the resurrected Christ in all his majesty.
We do know that he is here, is not dead but risen, and active among us through - stay tuned throughout the Acts of Apostles - the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God that enlightens and empowers us.
How is God active in the world today? Through his people, and mysteriously beyond their knowing. He is always ahead of us, working, laying the tracks that lead inexorably to the fullness of life.
It will be a strange journey. Now we know that more than perhaps we did before St. Patrick's Day.
The strangeness is not unprecedented; in the passage from his Blitz-time poem "For the Time Being", W. H. Auden included words that we sing in the Hymnal 1982 #463: He is the Way...
... and strange and foreboding as the path before us may be we do not tread it alone. He is with us.
And we shall know him, in the breaking of the bread, and we shall, feel him or not, walk beside him, every step of the way.
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