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SERMONS

The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
February 19, 2006

Epiphany 7b Mark 2:1-12

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
-- Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of US (1872 - 1933)

The Slogan Press On certainly solved the problems of one individual on this day that Jesus was speaking to a crowd.

From the first chapter of Mark, we already have a sense of what Mark is trying to establish and tell us:  Jesus is a hero of a new kind, who works through powerful deeds and words.  He has cured the demon possessed, healed Simon’s mother, healed a leper, and cultivated the crowds; the people are clamoring for Jesus.

In this morning’s Gospel a few more moths are coming to the light.  The people are hungry for something new, something life-giving, in this old, old world.  The crowds press upon Jesus, and as they do, the mood in Mark is shifting.  “No good deed goes unpunished,” some have said.  And the deeds and words of Jesus are drawing the attention of the religious overseers of the day.  Jesus’ magnetism draws the very thing that will be his undoing – the paranoia of interested parties.

However, that is not the extraordinary aspect of this event.  The extraordinary glimpse we are given is the beginning of the “koinonia,” the “ecclesia,” the first church.  We have a glimpse of the kind of faith and love that can change the world, as a paralyzed man is given the one thing he cannot give himself: hands and feet that can place him in the presence of the savior.

This seems to me to be an ideal glimpse of how we might live as family of faith: doing for one another what we cannot do for ourselves, becoming one another’s salvation.

At times we are called to be with the four friends of the paralyzed man.  Acting upon faith when others are paralyzed, confined, trapped, and unable to act for themselves.  Yes, we are faced with the crisis of holy foolishness, chopping through the roof, chopping through, the peer pressure, chopping through the mythologies of the modern world, chopping through the many veils of this world to bring someone the assurance that they are loved, and God means to heal them.  We become the feet and hands of those who cannot carry themselves.

And there are other times.  I have been the person on the mat, lowered from the roof by the faithful hands and prayers of others.  These are the other times which are much more difficult for us; we, the ones who are capable, go-getters, the ones who make things happen, rather than have things happen to us.  It is hard for us to be carried by those who love us, and who have faith in Christ on our behalf.

You may have heard me say, I have not met the person who is living the life that they thought they would live; so that each of us, at some point in our journey on this earth, will face our days on the mat, paralyzed, utterly helpless.  We will be carried by others, and we will be healed by another.

The invitation of the Christian life is for us to become persistent for one another’s healing and goodness.  To be persistently about the task of giving to one another that which we cannot give ourselves single-handedly.            

As we become one another’s hands and feet, as we face the day when we too must be lowered from the rooftop, we become the people whose faith makes us one body with the one who holds all life and all death in his hands.           

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.””