Gated Community
Mark 2:3-12
May 7, 2006
I think that miracles happen. I've seen miracles happen. I know that miracles happen. But, I think they mostly come hard. I think they take a lot of work, need a lot of help, and require many to step up and in against the empire in order that there might just be enough pressure to make a creative space where something new can grow. Today's miracle story is just one of these times.
We're smack dab in the middle of Eastertide! It's the 50 days that follow Easter. A time when we consider what the resurrection story means for us? A time when we consider how it is that the Christ is alive and well within us and around us. It's the time for shaping your vision that you know when you see him, exploring your heart that you know when you feel him, using your lives that you know when you're being him. Hallelujah! Jesus' body was not in the tomb, our story does not end there but rather within the hearts, lives, words of the women who flee from that dark place in excitement and fear for the unknown which lies ahead. And it is here that we find ourselves this morning.
Jesus was at home. He'd been out talking about what God meant to him, sharing his vision of what the faith community could be. He'd been out talking and teaching how he interpreted the Scripture and how to wear it. And then he went back home. And, people had been hearing about what he was doing beyond their town and they all came to see him. His relatives, his friends, his teachers, the religious leaders who had taught him in his town as a child, everyone came to see him. And they filled up his whole house, the courtyard, the interior rooms, the doorways, people were spilled out everywhere to see him and see if what they were hearing could possibly be true. I imagine it to be a house filled with joy, anticipation and hope…To see a loved one you hadn't seen in some time. To see a loved one who left in his trail crazy, wild stories of healing, hope, wild relationships…It would be a house filled with anticipation, attention and the words of Jesus floating around throughout.
There was a man who lived in Jesus' town. He had to beg for his food as he could not walk. However, people had been mostly kind to him and he considered his whole community part of his family. They all had helped him at one time or another. He had heard about Jesus leaving their town to go out and teach what he believed about God. Everyone was talking about him and if he had the right to be a teacher. Everyone was talking about him and the things he was teaching. It made him chuckle about how stirred up people were about his teaching, just because he named his own experience of community. It was his best secret he thought. And, as Jesus was gone, they all began to get reports about healing stories. This didn't feel funny to him. This felt frightening and hopeful to him. Why didn't Jesus begin the healing at home? Why couldn't he have spent time with him before he left? He knew him, had seen him most of his life…Why had he gone away to do these things? He wasn't sure about any of that but he was sure he was going to start talking to people about it, challenging them to bring him to Jesus, whatever it took so they might see it for themselves…What would it mean to be healed? What would it mean for his life to be healed?
By the time that Jesus came home, the man who could not walk had convinced a small group to let him be a test case. To let him be the one that showed the home town what Jesus was up to. He used his voice, his smarts, his logic every day since he'd made the decision, to craft a call within each heart of a small group of people. He thought about each person and what it was that they desired and worked his own healing into that awareness and by the time Jesus came to town, a small group of people had bought into the project and they came for him. It took four of them to carry him on his mat the rest walking in a crowd around him. But, when they got to Jesus' house there was no getting in. No one would budge from their own place, all wanting to hear and see for themselves. But, his group was so caught up in the moment when they spied the steps that led to the rooftop they all took off at once. A couple broke away from the small group to locate where in the house Jesus was speaking then reconnected with the group on the roof. “Right over there!” they shouted in unison. I was so caught up in the moment, cheering them on, we tore right into the roof, removing the tiles and then digging through the adobe, removing one section after another until the hole was big enough. Several others took off the moment we began digging to find some rope, enough to tie on to three sides of my mat that they could lower me down. They were tying the rope on as the last pieces of roof were dug out. Everyone was sweating, exciting, and holding their breath. Jesus' brothers and father came to yell at us for ruining their roof and part of the group was holding them back. But, it was all too late because in spite of all the commotion I was being lowered down into the room where Jesus was and at last I saw him.
Now what Jesus says has set off years of second class citizenship for non able bodied people, for hundreds of years. When people take the Bible literally and not metaphorically, so many shaming and dangerous things can come to be. The text of terror this week is “Son, Your sins are forgiven” When in reality so much more is going on here if you just dig a bit into the time and the context. Jesus is in his hometown after creating a firestorm of talk about how he's reinterpreting the Torah, how he's challenging the Law, how he's hanging out with all sorts of unclean people saying they are blessed people of God. All have come to see if he is capable of the things that they've heard. Some have come to scold him. Some have come to defend him. Some have come to denounce the stories as crazy gossip. Some have come to make him listen and come to his senses. All have come to see and hear for themselves. And, all who have gathered in this house understand themselves to be the holy, chosen people of Israel , the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob. And each one of these people know that they live under God's blessing. But, sometimes they think things or do things that make them unclean to God. Then, they must return penance for these things, going through rituals at their home, synagogue or temple depending on the severity of what has happened before they will be acceptable to God again. These rituals were taught to one generation after another. These rituals were part of the whole community. Everyone understood this is how things worked, they were the family values of the time. They were things that seemed as common as our greeting one another by shaking hands, our beginning a conversation with a greeting, our singing of the Happy Birthday song on someone's birthday. These rituals of forgiveness made up the very fabric of their culture and community and everyone understood what to do and how to do it. And then Jesus came home. Jesus came home, the man came through the roof and Jesus forgave him with one word. Jesus, put himself on the same plane as God when he did this. Only God was allowed to forgive sins. And yet, Jesus just forgave this man's sins!
Immediately he sensed that they were mad and whispering about him behind his back. What if I started acting like a God? Wouldn't you be outraged? Wouldn't you be upset at my gall for saying I am God? Then acting like God and making a statement as if I was God? This is how the people in the room felt about Jesus! Some felt like he'd gone too far, some were curious, some were outraged, some were afraid. But, Jesus does this to challenge the very function of the Law and what it was to be used for. Jesus, as he perceived their anger, disconnection asks what would be harder. And, he gives them two impossible choices…forgive this man's sins or tell him to pick up his mat and walk? And, both seem impossible to the audience, don't they? So Jesus picks the one that people will remember, that is outwardly visible to prove his point. We can forgive and heal ourselves from any kind of sin with just one word from God, you are forgiven.
Now Jesus also doesn't say you are forgiven and the story ends. He says, “Pick up your mat and walk.” He makes the man accountable for his own work of forgiveness. I also think it says something that a group of people came to him with this man. It took the community to help him. And, when they arrived they were outside the gate. It was as if they didn't know the code to get in. But, the group came up with a creative idea of how to get the man in.
We must be able to take responsibility for forgiving ourselves. For naming and owning this power that Jesus made available to us. That the most life changing experience we can have, is not overcoming a disability, is not being gated out and having to come down through the roof and ceiling, it's allowing ourselves to be forgiven by God and taking that work on ourselves. If we could only allow this transformational power into our lives we change the world because we experience the world differently. Let us pray