ONE WAY
OR ANOTHER!
When we read this account of Jesus healing the paralytic, it is
tempting for us to focus on the miracle of Jesus making a crippled person walk.
And while that part of the story is important to us as a reminder that God’s
power is not limited in any way, not even by our physical challenges, the way
in which our evangelist Mark tells us the story we also learn several other
important things about Christian discipleship.
This
morning as we examine this passage, I ask us to set aside any wonder or
skepticism we may feel regarding Jesus’ ability to bring about physical
healing, and to focus our attention on another part of this account: The
actions of the paralytic’s friends. The efforts of these people to
bring their friend into Jesus’ presence were extraordinary; some might even
call their taking the roof off of Jesus’ house in order to bring their friend
to Jesus extreme.
Aside
from the claim that Jesus has power over the physical world demonstrated by his
physically healing the crippled man, even setting aside for the moment the
rather shocking first action of Jesus when he seemed to ignore the man’s
physical condition and said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven”, the
actions of the friends in this account are instructive for us in our own search
to be faithful disciples of our Lord. As we consider the actions of
the friends we learn that our faith in Jesus Christ calls us and empowers us to
try new, different, and even by some standards extreme measures to bring others
into the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The text
tells us that the friends removed the roof and “dug through it” in order to get
their friend to Jesus. In the ancient near east, and even today in some places,
the roofs of homes were made out of a mixture of clay and straw spread over a
tightly woven thatch. Once this base was in place, sod grass was grown over the
top creating a roof system that was water tight and long lasting.
It is
entirely probable that this type of roof was used on Jesus’ house in
Confronted
by an account such as this one of people so passionate, so determined, so
intent, on bringing their friend into Jesus’ presence, it is fair to ask
ourselves this question; Do we have that level of
passion about our Lord?
There is
nothing in the text that says these friends were in any way great people of
faith. There is nothing that says they were particularly faithful people, or in
any way specially gifted. They were simply people who knew their friend needed
to be in Jesus’ presence, they believed in Jesus’ ability to help their friend,
and so they figured out a way to make that happen.
These
friends were willing to take some risks, to try some something different and
unusual to get the job done. What about us? I am sure each of us knows people,
or perhaps just one person, who needs to come into Jesus’ presence; to come for
healing from the Lord. Now in the case in the text the person in need had a
physical challenge. However, when the man actually came into Jesus’ presence
let us take note that his physical challenge was not the first thing Jesus
healed. The first thing Jesus did was assure the man that God loved him; that
his sins were forgiven. Only secondarily, did Jesus effect the physical
healing, and then only to reinforce the point that God is primarily interested
in having us know that we are loved and forgiven as his children.
It is
important to understand that this course of events does not make light of the
man’s physical condition, it does however, make the point that in Jesus’ view
the man had other issues that were at least as important as his obvious
physical frailty.
There
are so many people in our world today who live lives of “quiet desperation”.
Many are people who live without a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
They place their trust in material wealth, or in the altogether fleeting pleasures
of the physical senses. They need to be in Christ’s presence.
Then,
there are people who at one time or another have lived in relationship with
God, but through various negative experiences in the fellowship of the church
they now exclude themselves from the fellowship of the saints. They need to be
in Christ’s presence.
Or take
for example, the people around us who have been so consumed by the temptation
of self-reliance; a temptation that is so prevalent in our culture. Such folks
have been persuaded by the belief that reality is only that which can be
measured and examined by the physical senses. Such people need to be in
Christ’s presence.
Then,
there are those who can be described as seekers. These are people who feel the
tug from God to a life of faith, yet when they risk the return to church after
years of absence they find they no longer speak the language of Christian
worship. They feel the hymns make no sense, or that the liturgy is needlessly
complex, or that the sermons are disconnected from issues they face, or that
the people they often find sitting in the pews are more interested in what they
are wearing and how much money they make, or even the color of their skin
rather than in communing with the God of the universe who has reached out in
the person of Jesus Christ to let each of us know that we are loved and cared
for in ways which run counter to our human understanding of love.
There
are, of course, so many other examples of people who are hurting, of people who
need to be in the presence of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, the question remains,
Are we passionate about our Lord? Are we willing to take a few risks to bring
our hurting friends into a healing relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ?
Our
challenge is to discover ways to “dig through” the figurative roofs which are
blocking our friends from coming into Jesus’ presence. We need to be sensitive
to the criticisms of those who have had a bad experience at church. We need to
listen to those who say that worship can happen in more ways than our
traditional model, which by the way about 350 years was considered radical and
extreme by some, and a fruitless innovation by others.
We need
to be in conversation with the world around us; to be aware of the needs of
people in our community, and not just their needs but also their hopes and
fears for today and tomorrow.
As we
seek to be creative to spread the good news of God’s love and forgiveness in
this time and in this place we will need to balance the call for change with
the call to maintain long traditions, and we need to hold both the call for
change and the call for tradition against the standard of what scripture calls
us to do - primarily to spread the gospel of God’s good news of love and
forgiveness.
The
honest truth is that change is always at least a little scary. There is comfort
in familiarity and reassurance in knowing what is coming next. Yet let us keep
in mind the unusual actions of this man’s friends in our gospel passage this
morning. They knew this man needed to be before Jesus, and they were willing to
do something that was certainly not traditional, certainly not expected, and
certainly a little scary. They tore a part somebody else’s house to get at
Jesus.
As I
think about the challenges we face in this time and place to follow in their
footsteps to bring hurting people into the presence of Jesus, as I think about
the possible changes we need to make and the risks we will need to take, let me
share an old Persian legend. Perhaps this legend can help us picture frame the nature
of the task we face as we seek to be faithful in this time and place.
As the
legend goes a spy had been captured and sentenced to death by a Persian
general. As the moment of execution drew near, the general ordered the spy
brought to him for the final interview: The general said, “You have one last
choice: Will you take the firing squad or the Big Black Door?”
This was
not an easy question. The prisoner hesitated, then
announced that he preferred the firing squad. Moments later shots rang out in
the courtyard, announcing the grim sentence had been carried out. The general
turned to his aide and said, “That’s how it is with people. They almost always
prefer the known to the unknown. It is characteristic to be afraid of the
undefined. Yet he had a choice.”
“What
lies beyond the Big Black Door?” asked the aide.
“Freedom,”
replied the general, “and I’ve known only a few brave enough to take it.”
As Jesus
told the paralytic long ago, and tells us today if we have the courage to
listen, God has forgiven us our sinfulness. We are free to live faithfully if
we have the courage. Moreover, God has also forgiven the sinfulness of our
hurting brothers and sisters. Now if only we can have the passion and
creativity to share that good news with others as we walk through the “Big
Black Doors” of opportunity God presents us with in this and place. So may it
be for us today. Amen.
Reverend Marc V. Mason
Feb. 19, 2006
Trinity Presbyterian Church
Travelers Rest, SC