Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Every church I’ve ever served has had some controversy from time to time about its prayer list. The prayer list is the list of names that we read aloud in worship at the prayers for the church. Prayer lists can grow very long, very easily. We average about one hundred and thirty five people in worship here between the two services. Each person is intimately connected to fifty or more people. Fifty is a conservative number. We could easily be connected closely to 10,000 people in this parish alone. We are all interconnected, by and in faith, to a very large, loving entourage of loving support.
In today’s lesson, we see a man who has been brought to Jesus by four men carrying him on a stretcher. We know almost nothing about this man except that he couldn’t walk, he is a paraplegic. Sometimes paralysis like this is caused by traumatic injury, sometimes it is congenital – people have the condition from birth. All that we know is that this man is loved very much. These buddies of his, we don’t know if they are his brothers or members of his extended family. Maybe they had worked or soldiered together, or played on a soccer team or the first century sports equivalent. All we know is that they will stop at nothing to get him to Jesus. Jesus has what this man needs. They climb up on the roof, remove the shingles or straw and they literally lower him on ropes down to Jesus. They get right in Jesus’ face for the sake of their friend.
This is a crowd that won’t take no for an answer! No obstacle is too great because their love is so great, their faith is so great. They recognize that in confronting Jesus, they have met their creator in some real sense. Jesus has God’s power to recreate and to regenerate.
Jesus says to the man, “Your sins are forgiven”. This causes a scandal because those present have been taught that only God can forgive sins. Jesus’ words cause us trouble too because we don’t believe as people in Jesus’ day did, that poor health, disease, misfortune or physical illness are sent by God as a punishment for disease. Every Pastor, priest, rabbi or man all over the world still fights this latent “Illness is a punishment for sins” theology.
To prepare for Easter, I’ve been reading a wonderful book by William Willimon former professor and chaplain at Duke University, now Methodist Bishop of Alabama. One of Jesus’ most often quoted sayings is “The Kingdom of God has come near you, or the kingdom of God has come to you”.
The Kingdom of God is a complex metaphor. The actual Greek word would be better translated as the “reign of God”. What does this world “reign” mean? Reign is antique language for governance. A King or a Queen reigns. It can also mean rule or preside over. It has a legal dimension but it also means to protect and defend. Where the King rules justly, the people prosper. When the all powerful, all mighty God reigns– there is potential for things to exist in a perfect, pristine state, To be in a pristine state things are pure, whole, unmarred or untarnished by the wear and tear of life and the aging process. There is an innocence and a sinlessness to them.
In order for a paraplegic person to walk, the nerves in their body must grow back together. They have to re-knit, so to speak, so that energy, electrical impulses can flow back and forth in them to the brain. Jesus simply does this for this paraplegic man by using a vocal scalpel and vocal sutures. “Your sins are forgiven”. He declares him whole and as the French say “Voila” – he is whole. Being forgiven by God is theologically the equivalent of being re-created whole. Just as sin breaks relationships and destroys them, forgiveness recreates and regenerates them. All of this done in love.
This paraplegic man was lucky; he was blessed. He was deeply connected to a community of love and support. He took life from them he gave life back.
In my second parish, a woman named Barb came regularly to our healing service. The parish there had had a healing service for ten years when I got there. (They were 7 miles from Gettysburg Seminary so they always benefited from what was happening at the church’s “think tank”.) Barb was one of those people you never forget. She was light-hearted and quick to laugh. She saw and remarked on the ironies of life that add so much richness, color and depth to relating to others. Barb had been a nurse at the county nursing home for 20 years and she knew thousands of people in Adams County, PA. People loved her and she loved them.
Barb got a bone cancer called multiple myloma. Her doctor, an oncologist at York Hospital, initially gave her a year or less to live.
Barb, however, was a fighter. She loved life passionately. She wanted to live to see her daughter get married. She wanted to live to see her grandchild born. She wanted to live to see another Christmas. When I would visit her when she got too sick to come to church, our visit would be interrupted by as many as five phone calls which she would answer and say, “My Pastor’s here, I’ll call you back”.
She was impish and playful. She said to me once, “Promise me one thing, Pastor before I die”, I replied, “Anything Barb!” She quipped, it was November of 1992, “Promise me you’ll vote for George Bush on election day”. Then she laughed hysterically.
Barb lived in all 9 years from the on-set of her cancer. It did finally take her life but she was also 74. She told me once, “You know I’m living on your prayers, this Holy Communion, and the prayers of those who love me”. She was, and she did. Yet the Kingdom of God had come near her.
Invite it to come, also to you.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor John