Epiphany VI: The Crux

The Kiss and the Capstone

The healed one in Acts 3 is “over forty years old.” For centuries, this detail has been treated as a biographical footnote. Yet this is a clue that something deeper is at work — the very Crux of the Matter.

The scandal is not that the Bride finally walks.

The scandal is that she is the very Branch — the Stick — John and the prophets have watched over for centuries.

If Peter’s lifting of the Bride is the cornerstone of the story, then her union with the Bridegroom — sealed with a kiss —becomes the story’s capstone.

Christ is both Bride and Bridegroom.

Their marriage, witnessed by John the Forerunner and all who follow him, locks this seal into place — as a capstone binds and steadies an arched gate. This living, eternal marriage redeems and restores the fourfold harmony of Creation.

What took so long?

A human child forms for 39-40 weeks before birth.
Seem in this light, it is no coincidence that this long-hidden life is already past forty when she takes her fiancé’s hand and rises — leaping as a gazelle — to stand beside Simon Peter and his lead hand, John.

The Golden Lampstand — beaten to resemble the Amygdala — was kept in the Holy of Holies, glory too radiant for the people to bear.

Simon Peter himself, shaped by this concealment, hesitated to recognize that she and he together were the Christ, the living rock — and that when he carried her, the Cross of Jesus, he was carrying her: the Almond Branch of sacred memory — ‘”killed” and “crippled” in public, to be raised and restored to life on the third day.

Thinking as a man — as if he were merely Simon the Magus and not the Rock — Simon Peter supposed, as did John’s followers, that one fit to carry the Cross of Jesus ought to have gold and silver, or be a king like Solomon, or at least be a prophet like Nathan who knew firsthand how she became tarnished with sin.

So Simon Peter denied that this man could be him — a Pharisee, an ordinary faithful Israelite who heeded the word of God, eating, drinking, and singing in fishing villages, on roadsides, and in taverns.

This was not merely disturbing or perplexing. It was preposterous.
God is eternal. Humans are not.

Simon Peter was still buried in human thinking.
He could not imagine possessing eternal life — or bearing the responsibility of an eternal father called to raise a divine human family.

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Yet in Lystra, lightning strikes — the veil tears — and the one compelled to carry the Cross is suddenly recognized. (Mark 15:21)

The crowd, hearing the Pauline proclamation flash as lightning, identify Barnabas — Joseph of Kyrene—with Zeus, Jupiter, the god of thunder, and the Pauline speaker with Hermes, the lightning-swift divine messenger, Mercury the bright morning star. (Acts 14:12)

So as Jonah long ago did, Simon Peter hesitated to accept such a divine calling. (Matthew 16:21)

Now that Simon Peter has taken her hand and she stands before the people, leaping as a gazelle, the astonishment of both the crowd and the authorities must be calmed — lest a shipwreck lose her anchor and jettison her precious cargo.

And so, with that first public taking of her hand, she is publicly betrothed. The work of preparing the Father’s hands and sharing the Good News begins — for each newborn Christian must learn to walk the talk, first on dry land and then on stormy seas.

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This is the sixth in a series of Epiphany reflections. Now that Lent has begun, Epiphany VII turns to Simon Peter’s judgement of Ananias and Sapphira — paving the way for the Cross.

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