The True Miracle
Mark 2: 1-12

August 19, 2007


Well, as far as I know, in today’s Gospel reading, we heard the first account of a breaking and entering. Jesus is in his home with many, many people crowded around. They’ve surrounded the house and even the inside is packed with people. I imagine it was like the old newsreels with thousands of fans crowded around a hotel that is housing the Beatles. And then here come these guys that are desperate to have their friend meet Jesus. They’ve heard that Jesus had done miraculous things. By this time in his ministry he’d already performed many miracles and so quite a bit of attention was bestowed on this man from Galilee. Their friend is paralyzed and so they’re carrying him on a makeshift stretcher. When they get there they see that they’re going to have to wait a long time to see him if that ever happens at all. They’ve come a long way, gone to a lot of effort and they’re not willing to give up. They instead get creative. Somehow, they manage to skirt the crowd and climb up onto the house and drag their friend, stretcher and all, up with them. This next part is my favourite. Imagine you and some friends are having a nice visit at your house when you see someone pulling back the wood and shingles off your roof. The next thing you see is the people above lowering some guy on a stretcher with some rope to come to rest right there on you’re kitchen table. I’d probably be mad about my roof being ruined and start worrying if it was going to rain but I bet Jesus had a good laugh about the whole event.

Have you ever been frustrated? I’m not talking about slightly annoyed that something isn’t going your way; I mean feeling totally out of control over something that is happening to you or a loved one? This has to be one of my biggest fears; to have to sit back and do nothing while someone I love is hurting. I’ve been in that situation before and it’s horrible. I was paralyzed; I couldn’t see a way to move.

What are we paralyzed by in our lives? Of course this can happen because of a serious injury particularly to the spine but I’m talking about metaphoric paralysis. What is it that stops us in our tracks? What causes us to not live our lives fully? I’ve already mentioned feelings of great helplessness. What about fear? Have you ever wanted to do something but didn’t because you where afraid? I’d bet we all have. I can understand fear and believe it to be a very healthy feeling. I’m afraid of burning myself so I use oven mitts. I’m afraid of being in a car accident so I drive responsibly. Fear is good until it becomes paralysis. When fear takes over life and stops us from fully participating in God’s creation, then fear is no longer useful.

What about the cities and countries we live in? Many things can paralyze communities. War, famine, a breakdown of social structures, even ineffective or unjust governments can stop a community from growing and thriving. I used to work with a man from Columbia who moved to Canada to escape terrible violence. It wasn’t civil war or the widespread terrorism we hear on the news. People would just disappear. Few would ask about the missing person or raise a fuss because then they may be next. Few would ever want to do anything that would make them stand out from the rest for fear of drawing to much attention to themselves. This was a country suffering from paralysis.

Could this story from Jesus’ life have something to teach us about those dark times? Maybe we can find wisdom in the characters of today’s reading.

How does our friend the paralytic help his situation? What can we learn from his actions? As far as I can tell, not very much. He’s just going along for the ride, depending on the kindness of others to help him along. The story doesn’t even make it clear if he wanted to go. Don’t get me wrong; I believe this person was truly unable to help himself but, again speaking metaphorically, haven’t we all known people who are paralyzed by indifference. People that just don’t care enough to move. You’ll often hear phrases like “it’s not my problem” or “my vote doesn’t count anyways”. It was totally up to his friends weather or not he would meet Jesus.

I think everybody should have friends like the four carrying the stretcher. These folks wouldn’t give up. They decided they where going to help their friend and nothing was going to stop them. This tenacious group was willing to tear the roof off what would have been seen as proper behavior. This is dedication to the cause. These are the folks that even today make the world run. Is it easy to climb up and renovate a roof for your friend’s health? No, just as it’s sometimes difficult to sit through meetings to make sure your church functions. Sometimes it’s writing a letter to a politician to make sure your wishes are known. It would be easier to be a friend with someone’s who’s healthy but these four like so many people understand that giving a bit more than what’s easy keeps our world from becoming paralyzed.

So at this time in the story we have a person dropped down to face Jesus, it’s time for the miracle part of the story that we’ve all been waiting for. The paralytic is on the kitchen table, his friends are looking down expectantly thru the hole they made and then Jesus speaks, “Son, your sins are forgiven”. Sins, why are we talking about sins? The man’s paralyzed and Jesus is talking about sins. Was Jesus missing the point? Did he not know the pressing issues that caused his friends to act so desperately? The reaction of the scribes that where present gives us a hint. They where outraged! Sure this man had been performing miracles, he had already cured a leper and calmed a stormy sea, that was forgivable, but to forgive sins, that’s blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. Sure, Jesus did cure the man of his paralysis, but this was so much more than the healing of one man. When he stood up and walked out into the community you could hear people saying, “We have never seen anything like this” and they hadn’t.

Up until this point, sin was a serious business with many complicated rules that had to be followed. There are chapters and chapters of the Bible devoted to how to atone for your sins to bring yourself back into God’s favour. This is an example from the book of Numbers:

“When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall be clear. But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.”

There are sacrifices and rituals, things you can do only on certain days and there’s the constant risk of being unclean in the eyes of God. The ever present worry that you are without God’s approval.

What Jesus did changed all that. This was new; a miracle that changed the world. A paralytic walking? No, forgiveness through Jesus. In that seemingly simple act Jesus gave us the message that God’s forgiveness is automatic and guaranteed. Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find. No longer must the person from the Gospel or anyone else be paralyzed by sin. We are liberated from the bonds of our own imperfection by the promise that we are loved every second of our imperfect lives. This was the real miracle; the one that we live out every day.

Preached by Jim Tenford
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan