Mark 2:1-12
February 20, 2000
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco
I read the daily paper to expand my knowledge about the world. In fact, I sometimes deliberately read the “business and entertainment” sections so that I might be more informed about areas of life that I’m less involved in. We modern people like to think of ourselves as those with unlimited, expansive worldviews.
This past week, I read that according to FOX, “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” is totally tasteful and not sleazy because the viewers will also meet the groom’s friends and family members—including his mother—backstage. Or how about the first artificial satellite to orbit an asteroid? The NEAR spacecraft (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) was going around Eros on Valentine’s Day! Or in the business section, Alan Greenspan said and I quote,
“With foreign economies strengthening markets already tight, how the current
wealth effect is finally contained will determine whether extraordinary expansion
that it has helped foster can slow to a sustainable pace, without destabilizing the
economy in the process.”
I understood that, didn’t you?
We see ourselves as those who stand at the summit of human development from which we are able to have a view unrestricted by tradition, the past, superstition, and prejudice. We read the morning paper and become free from our superstition and prejudice.
And yet, here at the beginning of the new century, we as modern Americans feel, not that our consciousness has grown, but that it has shrunk, restricted to what can be tasted, touched, researched, and understood. Although we might have more trivia and facts in our heads, we are increasingly finding it more difficult to believe in God.
And on top of that, as members of the Christian community, the world thinks of us as those with limited worldviews. They see that our vision is limited to the confines of what the church believes. We are seen as those whose brains have been unduly constrained by religious traditions and commandments. Do you and I see ourselves as constrained and contained in our thinking?
Amazing Imagination
Today’s Scripture Lesson suggests otherwise. At Capernaum, where Jesus was at the home of Simon Peter, many people gathered to hear him teach. There was no more room for anymore people to come in. Even the space near the front door was occupied.
Now if I saw that there was no more room, I would say, “Maybe I’ll come back later.” But these four friends of the paralyzed man wouldn’t accept that constraint. There’s got to be another way for them to help their friend see Jesus.
Using their creativity and imaginations, they climbed the stairs on the side of the house, brought their friend on a mat up on the roof too and started digging a hole through the thatched and mud roof. (If that were the new roof that I just put in, I would be pretty upset.) I would think that there would have been mud and branches falling down on everyone inside, but let’s not worry about those details. So the paralyzed man lying on a mat is lowered by his four friends with ropes down to where Jesus was. When Jesus saw this, (how could he miss it?) he saw the committed faith of the four friends and forgave the man’s sins. They have never seen anything like that before.
This shows amazing imagination and faith. These four friends were not unduly confined to traditions, the past, superstition or prejudice. They believed that Jesus could make a difference in the life of their friend and they did something about it.
Many of us know this particular healing story in our childhood. We love this story of the crippled man whose friends so earnestly wanted him to be healed that they were willing to dig a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus was among the crowd.
But today as grownups, our childhood love for this story is now filled with grownup questions of “Why?” “How?” and “What’s the point?” With adulthood, comes a kind of demystifying the world. What we once accepted in faith, now needs to be explained, with lines drawn between the impossible and the possible. A childhood story full of mystery and wonder now seems flat and requires satisfactory answers. We want the kinds of answers we are used to when we are reading the morning paper!
The Faith of the Friends
The world in Mark’s Gospel is different from ours. It’s not that that world was more naive, primitive, pre-scientific or less sophisticated. It was a world in which people had faith. Not merely faith that Jesus could heal people, but faith that God intended this to be a better world than it was—a faith that God hears, cares, and acts in their lives.
Jesus acted in this paralyzed man’s life before he even asked for forgiveness. When Jesus saw the great faith of his four friends, he said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” There’s a good chance that the paralyzed man didn’t even share the same faith of his friends. But the people in the world of Mark’s Gospel had the faith that the unimaginable can happen.
I’m wondering if our problem is not so much that we do not believe that people can be healed by faith in Jesus. But rather that we lack the faith that more good could be happening in the world other than the good things we do or manage or understand. What usually happens is that we ask God what we believe God might do. We only expect God to function in the capacity of how we believe in God.
The paralyzed man’s friends had faith. They believed that God would release their friend from a life of victimization and incapacity. They dug through the roof and lowered their friend on a mat to see Jesus. Before the modern elevator was invented, the friends had the imaginative faith to lower their friend down from the roof to see Jesus!
Jesus, the Forgiver of Sins
Some scholars believe that the man’s paralysis was the result of guilt. Guilt is a crippler. It hinders our worship of God and handicaps our relationships with family and friends. We see that the man’s paralysis wasn’t cure by Jesus’ first words that his sins were forgiven, it took some more words, “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” With that, his cure convinced the man that God really has forgiven him.
When you come to see Jesus and you noticed that a large crowd is there already, do you stop dead in your tracks and become paralyzed? Is there guilt that paralyzes you from getting close to Jesus? We want to be close to Jesus like how the friends of the paralyzed man wanted him to be close to Jesus. But we got there too late. All the good seats have been taken. And we draw back. After all, face the facts, accept your fate like I’m sure the paralyzed man already did. This is the way things are.
We usually resign ourselves to a hopeless situation because we can’t imagine anything other than our situation. We lack the imagination to project ourselves out beyond the boundaries of the present, into the new world not of our creation. So we too are the crippled people with paralysis because we can’t imagine that God intends this to be a better world than what we can create, manage or contrive. We need Jesus to forgive our sins so that the paralysis will end.
Although the scribes accused Jesus for blasphemy when he forgave sins since that was understood to come only from God, Jesus healed the man by commanding him to stand up, take his mat, and to go home. The people all said, “We have never seen anything like this.”
Are we able to expect a better life? Are you willing to long for more? Instead of relying on our own informed capacity such as reading the morning paper, would you reach out to God as God has reached out in Jesus Christ to us? That is faith. Faith is the ability to imagine more. When we imagine more, people would say, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Faith Healing Stories
One of the more controversial commercials that aired during the Super Bowl was Christopher Reeves who has been paralyzed from falling off riding his horse. Sponsored by an investment company that wants to encourage people to believe in the future, he gets up from his chair and starts walking to receive an award in spinal cord injury research. Although we might find this computerized fantasy more imaginative than we like, it is faith. Faith is the ability to imagine more than we are seeing today.
Here’s a real story.
When illness struck her down in mid-life, she was laid low. She was paralyzed from the waist down, now living a life confined to a wheelchair. By many standards, she was at the end.
“We’ve done all that medical science can do,” the doctor told her. “There’s nothing else to be done.”
And yet she said, “I wonder what God has in mind for me now. Now that I can no longer use my legs, I wonder what else God wants me to use. I’ve got to figure out where God is calling me now.”
She took a computer class. She began a business designing web pages for charitable organizations. Even though she began her business as a means of helping others, she was very successful, and the business was very profitable.
Some said it was a miracle. Some said that, though she never got a miracle of healing, she was still given a true miracle.
I think she did get a miracle. A miracle called inspired imagination. A miracle called faith. You see this woman had a “faith healing”—where her faith in God healed her heart to imagine new possibilities. I’m sure her friends must have said, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Our Imaginative Faith
Late last year, as your pastor I was like the paralyzed man. With the retrofit construction going on, I never imagined that God would be calling so many of our new friends to life-long discipleship. Without our baptistry and sanctuary, I couldn’t imagine how new members might join our church. But what I didn’t comprehend was the fact that there were many more than four friends whose faith believed that God is still caring, seeing, and acting in our world. My faith was renewed in December when we baptized 10 new members and accepted a total of 11 into our fellowship.
We have never seen anything like this before!
The work of the retrofit is progressing and it is becoming exciting to begin seeing where things will be. The vestibule will have ample space. The classrooms will be bright and spacious. The church kitchen will turn out many delicious dinners. But the one new addition that I have heard time and time again that is hard to imagine is the elevator! A Star Delta elevator stopping at four floors, carrying people young and old, able and disabled, paralyzed and forgiven to all the programs in our church. It is hard to imagine, but it is now becoming a reality.
We have never seen anything like this before!
I can envision our little brick church on the corner of Waverly Place and Sacramento Street growing in both numbers and in spirit in the months to come. People will be curious to see how imaginative we were in our retrofit. People will be eager to see in our lives—both in word and deeds—how our faith has led us this far in our Christian journey. And maybe when they come to our church, they will discover that the sanctuary is full and that there’s no more room. Even the space outside the front door is occupied.
And some of them may begin digging a hole through the gravel and black tar of our new roof to come and see Jesus. Of course, I’m not suggesting that they literally damage our new roof, but I am suggesting that it may get kind of messy and challenging. Whenever our imaginative faith is leading us to new and creative ideas to achieve good results, it will become messy.
And we will say, We have never seen anything like this before.
And finally we probably will continue to read the daily paper as a way to expand our worldviews. We will continue to store up trivia and facts of life that will broaden our understandings pushing us beyond traditions, the past, superstition, and prejudice. And we might still believe that we have unlimited capacity to learn and see many more new things in our lifetimes.
But let’s not forget that we need the faith of the four friends who believed that the world is better than it was. We need that faith in God that God intended this world to be a better world than we can ever do to manage or contrive it. It’s not and never will be how we are able to imagine what the world is like, it is always God’s grace and merciful love of forgiveness that he has for the world that helps us to see. Even with our daily dosage of the newspaper’s front page, we need to trust God to surprise us with miracles of goodness.
And if we are ready to come to God lying paralyzed on our mats and with the love and unimaginable faith of all of our friends lowering us down to see Jesus, we have the faith to believe that Jesus will say, “My sons and daughters, your sins are forgiven. I say to you, stand up, take your mat and come home to God.”
And we will all with our eyes and mouths wide open say, We have never seen anything like this before.
Let us pray.
O Lord, free us from the limitations that we have when we only believe that we know everything already. Open our hearts to imaginative faith to believe that you have always intended our world to be a better place than we can ever fathom. In the name of Jesus Christ who made all things new, we pray. Amen.