Weddings are such artificial confections, but all funerals have a unifying element of truth–we are all prone to die.

The manner and time vary, the seeming finality does not.

Unless…

Unless Jesus is right.  Unless He is the resurrection and the life.  In that case the things we take for granted about the finality of the grave may not be all there is.

I went to a funeral recently.  An untimely one.  The priest gave the family a final story from Acts 3–the silver and gold I have none story.

Only he did not tell it right.  Instead of the healing of the beggar and his resultant joy–physical, exuberant, unmissable dancing and jumping! The priest says that Peter says he will be there and pray.

Don’t get me wrong–Christians being there and praying is getting to be miraculous and rare, it just isn’t what Peter said or did.  At least not all he did.

The thing that Peter did for the beggar was public, miraculous, transforming, and unmistakable.

And powerfully reminiscent of his Master.  When Peter heals the beggar he signals that we are in AD now.  He lets us know that any narrative that portrays Jesus just another victim of Roman torture is incomplete. 

He lets us know that the flood of the miraculous has gushed into the ordinary.

A flood that should wash through every wedding and every funeral with the insistent song of redemption and resurrection and eternity.

Nothing quiet here.