Mark 2:1-12
It’s been said that every good sermon is a little bit heretical. That is, the preacher cannot in fifteen or twenty minutes say everything that needs to be said. Some things—important things, true things are left out. You don’t get the whole picture on any given Sunday. That’s the case today.
And it was the case last Sunday as well. Recalling Jesus’ time of testing in the wilderness, I preached about being “Alone in the Broken Places.”
And after worship one member greeted me and said that, yes, it can feel as though we are alone, but she told me of going through a difficult time in her own life in which she was not alone—she always had the sure sense that God was with her.
Only a heretic—or a preacher trying as always to say something without saying everything—would suggest otherwise.
And what I also didn’t explore last week, but want to look at this morning, is the reality that while there are certainly times when we find ourselves alone in the broken places—alone, that is, except for the God who is with us at all times—there are also times when we are together in the broken places, when we are accompanied by others.
Two stories in The New York Times last Thursday get at this.
One told of Vincent Gasquet, a pizza chef in the French Alps. At night, he is one of about 80 volunteers who search mountain passes for migrants trying to hike from Italy to France. The migrants attempt to cross each night through sub-zero temperatures. Some wear only light jackets and sneakers, and one man recently lost his feet to frostbite. “Ninety percent of them have never seen snow in their lives,” Gasquet said. “Some of them say, ‘We’ve seen it on TV,’ but on the TV, you don’t feel the cold.” One night he found four young men from eastern Africa shivering behind a snow bank, while another stood in the street. He hurried them into his car and drove them to a shelter.
The work is risky. Helping anybody enter or travel in France without valid paperwork is technically illegal. “It’s not my place to say whether or not I want migrants in my country. That’s a job for the politicians,” Gasquet said. “All I know is that I don’t want people dying in front of my door.”[i]
Together—together in the broken places.
The other story was more troubling and came from an even more broken place.
It reported: “All of eastern Ghouta is underground.”
That’s how one aid worker described the situation as thousands of people fled into basements in the rebel-held suburb of Damascus this week.
Eastern Ghouta is under a brutal aerial assault by Syrian government forces that has left more than 200 people dead in recent days, including many children.
For hours on end, families wait out the bombing underground.
Save the Children and the United Nations refugee agency estimate that some 350,000 civilians are caught up in the siege.
Footage from local activists shows women and children gathered in basements, playing and cooking to pass the time.
Many see the basements as the only haven in a hostile environment. They had little chance to evacuate, as the area has been blockaded for months.
Shadi Jad, a young father who had been in a basement since the beginning of last week, put it this way: “Honestly, I feel the shelter is a grave, but it’s the only available way for protection.” But Mr. Jad, who is hiding with his wife and eight other families, also said that being in close quarters had also drawn his community together.
“We share stories, try to keep the fear away by telling some jokes,” he said. “The shelter makes the relationships deeper.”[ii]
Together. Together in the broke places.
Basic human compassion leads us to be with others in broken places: with migrants on the French border, or, as even some of our members are finding themselves, standing with detained immigrants at the Hardin County jail in Eldora.
Basic human compassion allows us to better understand and feel the anguish and fear of those underground in Ghouta or those who deal with threats simply for being who they are, even in our city and our nation.
Suffering and strength, brokenness and healing—we’re all in this together.
With the stories from France and Syria in our hearts and minds, let us consider the story from Mark’s Gospel that we heard this morning.
Look at what happens when Jesus returns to Capernaum. For some time now he has been going around the region of Galilee, healing the sick and casting out evil spirits.
Now he back in town. So many men and women show up that they pour out of house, blocking the doorway.
They want to see Jesus. They want to hear him. They want to be near him. In their excitement, they don’t even notice four people coming up to the house carrying a paralyzed man. If their eyes were open to all that was going on in this place, perhaps they would say: “Look, here comes someone being carried on a mat. We should move over and let him in.”
But our self-interest can keep our eyes closed. Our self-interest can keep our hearts closed to the brokenness around us. The crowd listens to Jesus, but no one gets out of the way.
Yet even now, in spite of his limitations, this man has something that we all need. He has friends. And his friends do what friends do—they find a way.
A blocked doorway calls forth a creative response.
In first century Palestine houses were usually a single room. Often an outdoor stairway led to the roof. The roof itself was made of wooden beams overlaid with branches and covered with mud.
Up the stairs these friends go, ripping the branches off the roof and digging through the hardened mud.
It's a strange sight. Bits of the ceiling start to drop around Jesus and the people crowded into the room. Then suddenly daylight comes streaming inside. And finally a paralyzed man is lowered down in front of Jesus through this makeshift skylight.
I’ve heard people say that when God closes one door, God opens another.
Maybe.
But when that is not the case, some of us will just dig a hole in the roof. How good it is to have friends like that!
There is a word for the boldness and determination that these friends show. Jesus calls it “faith.” Faith not a matter of having complete knowledge about the person and character of Jesus. Faith is not a matter of “believing” this or that. Faith is a way of living that sees beyond what is readily apparent and moves toward what might be. Faith strips away impediments; it digs deep.
Life can be hard. Life can be hard for all of us. We all have our broken places. We all come up against our limitations in hearing, seeing, walking, speaking, standing.
We have difficulty hearing the truth.
We have difficulty seeing how things really are.
We have difficulty walking in the way of Jesus Christ.
We have difficulty speaking up for those who are being hurt.
We are often simply unable to stand up for what is right.
We are all broken in some way.
We need one another.
Together. Together in the broken places.
But there is a problem here—a problem that we might not see at first. It is the problem illustrated by the crowd of people who just can’t—or won’t get out of the way. It is the problem of—well, yes, it is the problem of sin.
It always is, isn’t it.
And this, of course is the nature of the problem: we are separated from God, we are separated from one another, we are even separated from the best in ourselves. This separation we call sin.
Jesus seems to understand this. Look at what is happening.
We might expect Jesus to touch and heal this man. That is probably the hope of his friends.
But seeing the boldness and determination of those friends—what he calls their faith—Jesus turns to the paralyzed man and says: “Your sins are forgiven.”
Your sins are forgiven?
This man is paralyzed!
In his book Letter to a Man in the Fire, the novelist Reynolds Price writes about his own struggle with spinal cancer that was expected to kill him within eighteen months. He says:
In the first weeks of my return from radical surgery and ensuing depression, I experienced what I can only call a vision. It came on a morning just before my five weeks of radiation began, and it took the shape of an utterly real dawn encounter with Jesus on the shore of the Lake of Galilee and then waist-deep in its water. As his disciples lay sleeping around us on the shore, Jesus silently beckoned me into the lake and, with handfuls of water, washed my ugly spinal wound and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” My own immediate silent response was characteristic of my managerial impatience—“Forgiveness is the last thing I need.”
Since I was so obviously in the hands of a known miracle worker, I wanted my ten inch tumor out of me and gone. So I dared to push past forgiveness and to ask Jesus if I were healed—“Am I also cured?” Plainly it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why the Son of God would have chosen to wash my particular wound in a teeming world of dire sickness. But after a pause that signaled reluctance, Jesus said, “That too” and walked away from me as the encounter ended.[iii]
These friends are determined. Jesus sees their faith.
But they do not get what they are seeking.
Something else—something other than what is sought is needed here.
The psychiatrist Robert Coles recalls a conversation he had with Anna Freud about a broken, elderly woman with a long and troubled psychological history. Now Dr. Freud was certainly not a traditionally "religious" person. But near the end of their discussion, she paused and said: “What this woman needs is forgiveness. She needs to make peace with her soul, not talk about her mind. There must be a God somewhere, to help her, to hear her, to heal her. . .We certainly aren’t the ones who will be of assistance to her in that regard.”
Now, over the years, I’ve talked with a lot with people about forgiveness. What I’ve heard is this: Forgiving is hard. Being forgiven is hard. In a sense we’d rather not talk about it because the subject brings up so many incidents of betrayal and guilt and hurt and disappointment—you know, the stuff we’d rather not bring up in polite company.
Fortunately, we are Christian congregation and therefore we are not polite company. We know brokenness in our lives. We know ourselves as alienated from God and others and the best in ourselves. We know ourselves as people forgiven by the grace of God.
When we experience the forgiveness of God, when we forgive others, when we accept the forgiveness that others offer we are brought through our separation into new relationship, new community, new possibility.
Much to their surprise and ours, the paralyzed man, his friends, the religious leaders, the women and men crowding around the house—all have come into the presence of the One who will forgive as well as heal. All of Jesus’ healings are symbols of a much more profound authority and of the forgiveness which restores people to communion with God and each other.
This is the thing: we are all in the broken places. We are caught up in the warfare that drives children underground, the hatred that seeks to root out immigrants or leave them to freeze in the snow. We are ill and isolated. We are in the broken places.
And in order to be together in such places, we need the forgiveness that bridges our separation from one another, we need the forgiveness that makes friendship and community and healing possible.
Keep listening: Jesus finally says to the paralytic the words that the friends first expected, the words that the religious leaders might tolerate: “Stand up and take your mat and go to your home.” The sunlight streams through the hole in the ceiling. The crowd moves back. And, Mark’s gospel tells us, “He stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them.”
“Which is easier to say?” Jesus asks. “Your sins are forgiven, or rise, take up your bed, and walk.” Maybe there is a connection between the two—between healing and forgiveness—that we need to continue to explore.
We find ourselves in the broken places. We find ourselves together in the broken places because we know both the faith and the forgiveness that connects us with each other.
[i] Rescuing Migrants Fleeing Through the Frozen Alps By ELIAN PELTIER and ELOISE STARK FEB. 22, 2018
[ii] When No Place Is Safe: Sheltering Under Siege in Syria By Megan Specia and Hwaida Saad Feb. 21, 2018
[iii] Reynolds Price, Letter to a Man in the Fire, 1999, pg. 50.