Isaiah 43:18-25 | Psalm 32:1-8 | 2 Corinthians 1:18-22 | Mark 2:1-12

Does this story about the paralyzed man seem familiar? I remember this story from Sunday school, second grade. We had worked since Christmas on a sugar-cube house. Which we believed resembled a house from the time of Jesus. We had made little paper figures and colored each one and peopled the house. Then one Sunday, the teacher read us this story of the paralyzed man. In the course of the story-telling, she took a stick, a ruler, and at the perfectly timed moment she punched a hole in the roof of our sugar-cube house. It was disastrous. Not only since we were unprepared to see our months of work vandalized but because the whole house caved in on top of Jesus and every other poor paper person.

Fortunately Easter came early that year; it was also the year I joined the choir. But over the years I have many more reasons to remember this story intimately. In fact, I resemble this story. Do you resemble this story too?

Play with me for a minute. Put yourself in the paralyzed man’s place. Unable to move. “God I cannot move.” “Yes.” Our fingers locked in place. Unable to shake our heads. You have no voice, no choice when the four strong people tell you they have come to carry you away. “My friends are trying to move me.” “Yes.” Just imagine the long, rough ride through the hot dusty streets. Imagine rolling around on the pallet uncontrollably as they try to push their way through the crowds and realize they can’t. Imagine your fear as they decide to take you up on the roof and in desperation bust a hole in it and shove you and your pallet through it. Amid the shouts, dust and falling debris they lower you down. “Oh God, I am afraid. I am going to fall.” “Yes.”

This story is larger than that.

Focus for a minute on those who put you in this situation, those people carrying the pallet. The writer of the Gospel Mark tells us quite plainly that, “Jesus was moved to attend to the paralytic because of the faith of those who carried him.” The paralyzed man? It had nothing to do with his faith. It was when Jesus saw their faith. The faith of his friends. Oh, thank God for friends like that. It is a true thing that we can do and must have friends like that. But this story is larger than that.

Recall the reaction of the scribes, the educated ones. They said in so many words, “Who does Jesus think he is anyway? Only God can forgive.” In this Gospel, Mark loves to write about the blindness of those who think they see. Loves to reveal the stupidity of those who think they know. These scribes believe they see and know it all. Jesus throws them a left hook, saying, which is easier, to forgive or say get up and walk? So which is easier?

Perhaps the most unfamiliar, most uncomfortable part of this Gospel has to do with the linking of sickness and sin. Jesus sees the paralyzed man and says, “Your sins are forgiven.” Why?

In Jesus’ time the understanding was that indeed if you had done something wrong you got sick. Sickness and death were divine punishment for wrongdoing. We might sit comfortably in our modern medical understanding and know that sinfulness does not necessarily cause medical illness. But how many of us faced with devastating illness say to ourselves, “Why me? What did I do?” Cultural and historical differences then not withstanding. There seems to be a black hole of despair that we share when dealing with either sickness or sin. But this Gospel is not meant to reinforce that ancient understanding that sickness and sin are linked. This story is about how in either sinful or sick conditions it is easier to heal our bodies then it is to let go of sin.

Did you notice that the paralytic did not get up and walk right away? Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.” He continued to lie right there. How many times have we been paralyzed in our sin, our spiritual limbs frozen? Our fingers locked in place unable to even shake our heads. Unable or unwilling to move does not make the slightest difference. Just paralyzed.

How many times, especially in the dark of night do we let what happened resurface, come back to haunt us and keep us awake at night? It seems we never really let go. In this we share with our ancient ancestors. Like them, which of us listened to Isaiah when he cried out the word of God: Behold I am doing a new thing. Don’t you see it? I will give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. And where are the offerings of praise? All that is offered is your sin. God is just not interested. God will not remember the sin. Thank you Isaiah. Can we do it yet? It really is easier to get up and move. We know that is hard, if not at times physically impossible. But it is easier to get up and move then to believe our sin is forgiven.

Here is the good news. God has done a new thing. Our sins are forgiven one hundred percent, over and out, done! God does not and will not remember our sins. Even when, like the paralytic we stay frozen in place, grace comes as we are able to bear it. Grace comes and gently breaks our frozen minds of stone with a much simpler and more direct command. Get up! Go Home!

So here we are. In God’s house. Lent is just around the corner and the devil keeps creeping back into my mind, “Aren’t we suppose to be focusing on our sins?” The Good News is larger then Lent. Yes, of course we should acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness. We cannot even begin to know our sins until we have acknowledged we have sinned. But the depth of our knowledge of the mystery of sin only resembles the truth of sin as much as that second grade sugar-cube house resembled a real house.

Our Father in heaven did not wait for us to repent before he sent the Christ. Jesus comes. And as Christians we are called to repentance, but not for ourselves alone and certainly not for our personal, private, individual sins and therefore salvation.

The friends, who carried the paralyzed man to the rooftop, didn’t care a hoot for their own suffering, and like them we are called to be friends of the world. Called to be friends. This is an image of the church in her glory. The proof in the pudding that God will not remember our sins as Isaiah promised is Jesus. Jesus is the new thing. The eternal, living, flowing water no matter what wilderness, what desert, what paralysis our sinful conditions might find us in. Jesus is God’s “Yes.”

Can we do it? “My God I can’t move.” “Yes.” “My God I have been paralyzed here for years.” “Yes.” “My God I am tired of this pallet.” “Yes.” “Oh God, I moved. I can move.” “Yes!” Be amazed and glorify God. Amen.

Mrs. Margaret Watson