Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship ·February 19, 2006
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, you have convened us, called us together as a part of your community of faith in this world. Yet there are others of your beloved children for whom you are seeking and searching. Help us to invite and welcome, as our beloved sisters and brothers, all who seek your presence and your healing touch, for your sake, and in your name. Amen.
Scripture
Mark 2:1-12
A few days later, when Jesus returned to Capernaum, word got around that he was at home, and so many people came together. They gathered there and there wasn’t any room left at his home, not even outside the door. He was preaching the word – his message – to them when a paralyzed man, carried on a stretcher by four men, came to see him. But because the crowd was so large, it was impossible for the man to get to Jesus. So, they uncovered – made a hole in, dug through, stripped away – the roof above Jesus and lowered the man down on his stretcher. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now, some of the scribes, teachers of the law, were sitting there in the house, and they thought to themselves, “How can this man talk this way? I mean… that is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins.”
Immediately, Jesus, inwardly aware of what they were thinking, said to them, “What? Why does this bother you? I mean… which is easier to say to this paralyzed man? ‘Your sins are forgiven, or rise – get up, pick up your mat, your stretcher – and walk.’ But to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, I say to you, I command you, I order you, arise, get up, pick up your stretcher, your mat, and go home.” And immediately he got up, took his mat, walked out in front of everyone, and they were all amazed, shocked, astonished. And they were praising God together and saying, “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Message
When It’s Time to Knock a Hole in the Roof
Rick Frost
It’s so good to see so many of you here today. It’s a good group, a little frozen, but a good crowd. You know, it is always good to see a crowd when Jesus meets with others. I think it is quite a credit to Jesus, how wonderfully he draws so many people, all kinds of people, in all different kinds of conditions, with all their various needs. Talk about diversity! That’s what Jesus does. He welcomes and becomes close. What a great crowd to sit at the feet of Jesus today. I’m delighted and proud to be a part of it.
I have a great story for you today. If you are one of the regulars, then there’s a very good change you have heard this story before. I think I’ve heard it at least a hundred times. It doesn’t matter. It’s a great story. It just gets better as the years go by, because there is always something new, something fresh, something life-giving when we really hear the Word of the Lord.
Mark, our teacher today, says that Jesus has been out and about doing what Jesus was placed on this earth to do. He has been teaching. He has been preaching. He’s calling people to follow him. Along the way he incidentally touches, cures, heals some folks. People are starting to respond. Crowds are gathering. The word is out. This is an amazing phenomenon. He teaches with authority. He gives orders even to evil spirits, and they obey him (Mark 1:27).
In our story today, Jesus comes back to his home in Capernaum, and very soon the word is out that he is in town. Lots of folks, evidently, are showing up on his front door step. They are hungry for what he has to offer. They’re eager to sit at his feet. It is wonderful, evidently, just to be in his presence, and this house, evidently, is packed. All the seats are taken.
It’s sort of reminds me of Christmas Eve around here. People are sitting here on the chancel and just about everywhere – around the sides, out in the narthex. Crowds of people!
Mark says, “Jesus has a gospel, a message. He has some good news. He has some things that a large, growing number of people want and need to hear.”
“The time has come,” says Jesus. “The kingdom of heaven, the reign of God is at hand. Repent. Turn around. Believe. Live a better way, a new way (Mark 1:14).” People, evidently, must be nodding in agreement, and they flock to wherever he is. Just his presence draws people like a magnet.
Meanwhile, according to our story, a sick man, a paralyzed person, blessed with some really good friends, shows up. No doubt, he has heard about Jesus. He’s heard about the healings somehow. He gets friends to take him to Jesus, to take him to the healer.
Everybody in this room knows about that. I get a terrible pain in my stomach, and I go to the emergency room. Connie is bowled over so much she cannot walk, and Karen and Claude take her to Jeff Parker for surgery. Charlie has a torn retina, and LaVern takes him to St. Louis to have it sewn back and put together. Margo is going to have stints placed in her arteries, and Neal is going to have his hip reconstructed and replaced on Tuesday. Max is going to have his spleen removed on Friday. The list goes on. We know what it is like to be sick. We know what it is like to be broken. We know what it is like to want and need health. In fact, we seek it out. We try to find persons we believe can help heal us.
So here is this paralytic with a problem and his four friends, who are carrying him on a mat to Jesus. The problem is, the place where Jesus is has become packed. He can’t get in. There is no room for him there. So, as you already know by hearing the story, not to be dissuaded, the four friends take the man upon the roof, on his mat. They tear a hole in the roof and lower this guy all the way down to the feet of Jesus.
Now, did you get the subtlety of what happened in that Scripture? Bold action! That’s what faith is, folks. Biblical faith is a verb. It’s action. It’s not just a series of thoughts or concepts that one thinks is correct. Biblical faith is bold action.
Here is a sick man with his four friends. And, by the way, never underestimate the power of faith-filled friends. Everybody has faith-filled friends. Almost everybody in this room certainly does. If you want to learn about the power of faith-filled friends, just get around Susie Moore. Susie will tell you, even if you don’t want to know, about the power of faith-filled friends and how that has just buoyed her up and enabled her to do things that are very difficult. Here is this sick person with four friends – faith-filled friends – and they act boldly in an effort to help this person regain health and wholeness.
You and I see that every single day. We seek out people who practice the art of healing. And that, as anybody in the medical profession knows, is exactly what we are talking about. It is an art. It uses the best science that we have at the time, and it applies that science in an artful way. All we are doing whenever we engage in any kind of care is enabling the healing process that is at the center of all life to happen.
So, here are these people, looking for somebody who practices the art of healing and boldly ask them to take bold action. We ask them to put us under anesthesia. We ask them to inject chemicals into our bodies, and we ask them to cut us open and to close us up. We ask them to radiate the bad stuff and not to harm the good stuff. We do all kinds of things all the time, and we involve ourselves in varying degrees of risk, and we act boldly. And that, biblically, is faith. That is trust. That is bold action, and it is very, very powerful stuff. Powerful stuff!
According to Mark, Jesus recognizes this bold action of this sick man and his four friends. He sees that and even says it is faith – biblical faith.
Now, what we expect is a word of diagnosis. Just like when we go to our doctor when we’re not feeling well. We have this concern and we expect a word of diagnosis. We expect a healing touch. We expect a procedure or a prescription, and we expect to be restored to health, if at all possible. But what we get in this story is not that immediately. It comes a little later, but what we get first is a pronouncement. Do you remember what it was? The pronouncement was from Jesus: “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
Isn’t that interesting? “Thanks, Doc, but I prefer the medication.” Can you imagine going to your doctor, and your doctor saying, “My friend, your sins are forgiven?” It is probably not going to happen.
The question today: What does sin have to do with sickness? What does forgiveness have to do with healing?
The answer: Sometimes, absolutely nothing. But there are other times, folks, when it has everything to do with it. Because everybody in this room knows that sometimes the actions we do, the inactions, sometimes threatens, even destroys our health, our well-being. Sometimes, if we are, in fact, guilty of wrong doing, guilty of being abusive or harmful, or unfair, or destructive, or criminal, or even evil to ourselves or to other people, if that guilt has not been resolved, it can literally eat people up. I have seen it happen. Guilt is not to be messed with, folks. It’s real. We don’t play with guilt.
Some years back, one of my dearest friends had a problem. He had a really big problem. He had a propensity to mishandle money. This man was born and raised with next to nothing. He had, in fact, a heart of gold. It was a heart of caring, compassion for others, the likes of which I have rarely seen. This man had a heart of gold, but he could not, for some reason, handle real gold. He couldn’t handle his money. He couldn’t handle his family’s money. He couldn’t handle other people’s money that had been entrusted to him. And the guilt, the real guilt, that accompanied the horror and the shame, when that problem was uncovered and confronted, was more than he could take. The tragedy for me was that Jesus, the Son of Man, has the power and the authority to forgive even that, but his shame, evidently, was too great. He couldn’t seek that forgiveness. He couldn’t ask for it. He couldn’t receive it. And you know the choice he made.
What does sin have to do with sickness? What does forgiveness have to do with healing? Sometimes, folks, it has absolutely nothing to do with it. But sometimes, it has everything to do with it. Wow!
A sick man is brought to Jesus. Jesus sees his faith. He sees the faith of his friends, and somehow, Jesus being Jesus, he discerns that this paralyzed man needs something even deeper than healing. What he needs more than anything else is forgiveness, and so he says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
And as you remember in the story, that sparks controversy. Some of the people in Jesus’ house that day knew their Bible pretty well. They knew that no human being has the authority to forgive sins. Your doctor cannot forgive your sins. Your therapist cannot forgive sins. Your family and friends cannot forgive your sins. You cannot forgive your own sins. Only God has the power to forgive sins. But they didn’t know he was God. They just saw a man, Jesus. They didn’t know he was incarnate. They didn’t know he was “God with us.”
But Jesus read their minds. He read their reactions and said, “What? Why are you thinking those things? I mean… Which is easier, folks? Is it easier to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘get up, pick up your mat and go home’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…” He turns to the sick man and says, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”
And in the final scene, the man gives evidence of his cure. He gets up. He walks out, in front of everybody, and everybody is astonished, blown away. Mark says all were praising God and saying, “We have never seen anything like this.”
Wow! It is a powerful story. It is a fresh story, and it’s a new story. I think it’s a powerful story about Jesus. And it’s a powerful story about us. I think it says:
1. When our faith-filled friends and we give evidence of our faith by our actions, Jesus has the authority to forgive sins and to heal the sick. Miracles can and still do occur.
2. I know that you already know there are many levels of healing that can and do take place in people’s lives when we reach out to God, and when God reaches out to us in Christ Jesus.
Let me give you an illustration. When illness stuck her down in mid-life, she was laid pretty darn low. Confined to a wheelchair, she was told, “We have done all we can do through medical science and medical practice. There is nothing left.” And yet, in faith, in great biblical faith, faith that has the ability to expect, to hope, to imagine, to reach out for something more, in that kind of faith, she said one day, “You know, I wonder what God has in mind for me now?” (That’s awesome!) “I can no longer use my legs. I wonder what else God would have me use? Would you be willing to help me figure out where God is calling me now?”
So she took a computer class at the university. She began a small business enterprise online, and she developed it into a very successful and profitable phenomenon, still going on today.
Some say it was a miracle. I say it was faith healing. That word that gets so poorly and awfully used in the world today. I think it was faith healing. I think she received the miracle of faith, the miracle of inspired imagination to expect and want something new and different, whatever that might be. Every time I hear that word, faith healing, she is the one I think of first of all.
Well, like I said earlier, it is good to have all of you here this morning. You are a good group, and I think it is quite a credit to Jesus that you are here today, because he and his Spirit wonderfully draws so many people – all kinds of people, in all different conditions, people just like us – closer to him, nearer to him.
And we, here at Broadway, are making room. We are under construction, because we believe that part of our job is to provide whatever is needed to help those who want to get closer to Christ to do so. It’s just not fair for us to keep him to ourselves.
So my question today is: What is it that you need that Jesus, and only Jesus, can provide? You know, it’s a little late in the game for me, but I am astounded to be part of that arm of the Church, who, quite frankly, has forgotten if we ever knew much about the authority and the willingness and the ability of Jesus to do some rather phenomenal things.
I started making a list. I started with today’s text. Some things that people – people like you and me and us – might just need that only Jesus could provide. I started out with healing, and forgiveness. Then I went on to compassion, and justice, and peace, and then I found and thought about righteousness, and freedom, and direction, and strength, and mercy, and relief, and truth, and comfort, and joy, and encouragement, and empowerment. I thought about the ability to be reconciled with God and with other members of our family, with people in society. Faith, hope, love. Wow! The list goes one.
Whatever you need, not want, but whatever you need, whatever paralyzes you, whatever paralyzes you or somebody you love… Whatever paralyzes our community, our nation… Go ahead. Knock a hole in the roof so Jesus can touch you and make you new and make you whole again. I mean… it’s just not fair for us to keep him to ourselves. We have to make room for anybody who wants to receive.
And we all say together… “Amen.”
Benediction
Build us up God. Build us up – mind, body, and spirit! Let the light of your love shine right up into heaven, radiating brightly from the hole in our roof! Amen.
