A Sermon by Thomas R. Henry

February 19, 2006

Text: Mark 2: 1-12

Twelve years ago I had an interesting experience on the Broadway bus in New York City. Some of you will remember. I was in New York for a clergy conference and had gotten on a bus headed south from Riverside Church toward Times Square. At 58th and Broadway another passenger got on. A middle-aged man. Dressed in a fur hat, combat boots, large woolen mittens and red long underwear. It was June. And there was an empty seat next to me. He looked around, evaluating his choices for seats. There were 11 other empty seats. I had counted quickly. But I knew he had already decided. He would sit down beside me.

Why me? Why does this always happen to me? I like to be inconspicuous in strange places. Why do those who want to draw attention to themselves always choose me on the bus or the subway? Is there something in the movement of my eyes? Do I twitch?

I thought about the man in the long underwear again as I read the Gospel lesson for today. I know, I tend to get strange thoughts when I read these scripture lessons. Maybe it’s because I have read them over and over in order to be able to write 36 years worth of sermons. Anyway, today’s lesson is the well-known story about Jesus healing a paralyzed man. We likely have all heard the famous command that comes from this story: “Take up your bed and walk!” Well, those are Jesus’ words as recorded in the King James translation. The new translations say: “Stand up and take your mat and go home.” Frankly, I like the old translation better. But my attention was actually caught a few verses before that famous statement. What got me thinking about the Broadway bus ride was the commotion that went on as the four friends of the paralyzed man tore the roof off the house in order to lower him down in front of Jesus.

See, I can almost imagine Jesus saying to himself: “Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?” Especially the Jesus who is portrayed in Mark’s Gospel. In Mark, Jesus would almost always follow one of his miracles by telling those who witnessed the miracle not to tell anyone else. Of course, they always did, and attention to Jesus’ wonder-working powers grew by leaps and bounds.

On the day of this particular story, Jesus was in teaching mode. There were people around him listening. He needed people to pay attention to what he was saying and not just to his miracles. He was teaching. When up on the roof there arose such a clatter, and down through the roof came a man on a mat. There were people who had climbed up there and torn a hole the roof! And the next thing you know, they were lowering a man into place at Jesus’ feet.. Talk about becoming conspicuous! Talk about calling attention to yourselves!

The scripture says that this paralyzed man had four friends who were trying to carry him to Jesus for healing, but they couldn’t get through the crowd, so they went to Plan B. You know the old saying: “When God closes a door, he opens a window?” Well, in this case, God opened a roof. Or at least those four guys did. Ingenious. Tenacious. Outrageous!

Outrageous behavior. It makes most of us uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable. In this instance, it certainly disrupted Jesus’ lecture series. Yet, Jesus is pretty cool about it. He doesn’t grab his cell phone and call 911. He doesn’t run out the back door. The scripture says that he “saw their faith.” He saw their faith, not just the faith of the paralyzed man, but, even more so, the faith of the friends. In fact, who knows if the paralyzed man himself even knew about Plan B. It was the friends who did something outrageous. On his behalf.

“There is no greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for a friend.” Jesus said those words, but that was another time in another Gospel. Nevertheless, even if the friends in Mark’s story had never heard those words, that’s what they did. When one way was blocked, they took another. They didn’t say to their friend, “Too bad, guy, guess we can’t get you in. Too many people.” Instead, they did something that most certainly would be illegal now and most likely was illegal then. They tore a hole in the roof of someone’s house. In effect, they could well have been laying down their lives. They could have been hauled off to prison. I will stop here for a moment to say that I am not promoting illegal behavior, but sometimes it takes behavior which seems outrageous, and is most definitely uncomfortable, to get help for a friend. To get help for someone or some people who are otherwise helpless. Who are being unjustly treated. Who are otherwise forgotten.

Jesus “saw their faith.” And he responded to their faith. He told the paralyzed man his sins were forgiven and the man picked up his bed and walked. It is this part of the story that preachers most often preach. And most likely Mark told the story to show that in Jesus was the power of God, not only to heal the body but also the soul. For in Jesus’ time, it was believed that sin and suffering were directly related as cause and consequence.

So, Jesus not only healed the paralyzed man, but he also said, “Your sins are forgiven.” He not only took care of the symptoms, but also the root cause of the suffering, as it was then understood. And as it is sometimes still understood. We now know that human sinfulness can cause suffering, suffering for ourselves and for others as well. Actually, most often in a second-hand smoke kind of way. We may or may not be directly responsible for our own sufferings, as cause and consequence, but in some way we all contribute to human suffering. We all need forgiveness, and we need healing. All of us. Jesus knew that. He knew that, and so he responded to the faith of the friends. Their faith, which was at work overcoming evil by doing good. And in this case, by doing something outrageous.

In the story, however, it was not the hole in the roof that the religious authorities thought was outrageous, but the fact that Jesus would dare to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” That made him more than a miracle worker. That made him God. They soon forgot the outrageous behavior of the friends up on the roof and concentrated their discomfort and anger on the outrageous behavior of Jesus. He had the power to forgive as well as to heal. And that made these scribes, these keepers of religious law, furious.

As Christians and as the Christian Church we don’t have the power to forgive sins. God has that power. But we are the friends. The friends who are willing, if necessary, to use outrageous means to get help, not just for ourselves, but for one who cannot help herself or himself. We are the friends who will find the means to get people to the healing they need; to the forgiveness they need, to the justice they need. Even if it means laying down our lives by standing up for them.

A couple of weeks ago PBS aired a documentary titled Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Pacifist, Nazi Resister. It told the story again of the 33 year old German pastor and teacher, who in July, 1939, left a comfortable and safe teaching job here in the United States, in order to return to his homeland. And how this Christian pacifist became involved in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and was hanged for it just a few days before the war ended. To be a friend to his people, he did something outrageous, clearly outrageous.

We don’t know what happened to those four guys up on the roof. Maybe nothing. Maybe they were taken to jail. Maybe they got off with just having to pay for the roof repairs. But they risked whatever it was to get help for a friend. They were pretty outrageous.

And I still have to say that outrageous behavior makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know what it would take to get me up on the roof, but I do have to think about that just about every day. And I always think about it as I am baptizing a child, as I did as I baptized Miles Patrick Davidson today. I thought about it again as we said those words: “We are, by this affirmation, inseparably bound with him.” For Miles, today, we at St. Pauls become the friends. For his parents, for his sister and brother, we become the friends.

When the paralyzed man took up his bed and walked, the people standing around were amazed. They said, “We have never seen anything like this.”

I had never seen anything like the man in the red long underwear, fur hat, combat boots and mittens either. That is, not until the 42nd street stop, when a young man in a black tuxedo got on the bus. Sewn to his tuxedo were hundreds of white plastic forks. He, too, looked around for a seat. And I thanked God for the man in the red underwear.