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Yet Another Sermon on the Radical Inclusivity of God
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| 2/20/2006 |
Yet another sermon on the radical inclusivity of Jesus
Preached at Christ Church by The Rev. Timothy Safford
Feb. 20, 2006
When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, `Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, `Stand up and take your mat and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" -- he said to the paralytic-- "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!" The Gospel of Mark 2:1-12
In today’s gospel, Jesus heals a paralytic man who then gets up and walks, but we need to not focus on the central miracle and then miss the power of the details. Jesus is teaching in a house in Capernaum, the town where he has healed the sick, exorcised the demon, and cured the leper. He is sharing the word of freedom, release and inclusion in God’s love and mercy while never releasing any of us from the reality that sin imprisons us the most in cells that we construct for ourselves.
Four people carry a paralytic man to Jesus, I would assume friends, but the text does not tell us. It is unclear if the paralytic man is there by his request, or the action of these four. But no matter. There is no entrance for the paralytic, as the doors are crammed with people. They can stand and hear, but not the paralytic. He might only be laid down in the street, where he no doubt lives. Maybe his four carriers might hear and pass the word along. But of course, something more ingenuous happens.
With the gospel of Mark, the action is always in the small details more than the central event. He has no name, just the paralytic man, so Mark wants us in hearing the passage to confront our own feelings about the paralyzed. When I see a person in a wheelchair, especially a quadriplegic, or a person with great physical need from a birth defect, I am sorry to admit that I will feel that pang of uncomfortable-ness that I pray the person does not see in me. We do better with the modern software loaded into our old hardware not unconsciously blaming the “other” for the condition they have that makes the dominant person distressed, but that reflex of sin is never far from us.
Part of this reaction is human nature, but we have learned enough to know this anxiety, unchecked and un-admitted, fuels racism, classism (or elitism), and sexism. I don’t like to recite the “ism’s” much, but they are sins, for they create division in a humanity that is equal before God. When we separate each of us from the other, we separate from God, and this is sin. We talk so much about reconciliation, for that is about “minding the gap” between God and ourselves. When we close the gap between each other we are then reconciled to God. We believe, as a matter of our faith, that Christ closed the gap between God and a fallen humanity, therefore we must close the gap between we who consider ourselves “the primary” and those we have deemed “the other.”
My favorite prayer from Morning Prayer is the last prayer: “Christ stretched out his loving arms onto the hard wood of the cross . . that we all may come within his saving embrace. . .” But I know that I am always looking to see who is being embraced right next to me, and if I am comfortable with them. When we step back reflexively from the other, we step out of that embrace.
In the King James Version, the translation for this passage does not use “a paralytic man,” but as one “sick with palsy,” meaning paralyzed from birth, a person with no real function of his limbs, a distorted face, and difficulty speaking. St. Mark asks us each to confront our own reaction to a person who thus suffers. We do better in 2006, or we should, than they did in the day this story happened. This paralyzed man who also is palsied has evoked the “other” reaction all his life. He has been walked around, shunned and hissed at. In his culture, he has been blamed for his condition, full of the sin that caused God to do this. It is his fault, or his parents. He brings shame to his house, his street. That’s why I have always wondered if it is friends who carry him upon his dirty mat on which he lays each day, or just neighbors who want to get rid of him, make him somebody else’s problem.
At its core, this is not a story about a healing, but about the same tendency we have today to exile and condemn those who are “other,” but can do nothing about being “other.” And in this category, in contemporary terms, I list those who are culturally, racially and sexually different than those of us considered “standard,” or “primary.”
Let us not miss the detail that the door is blocked, there is no ramp, and no one steps aside and says, “let us make way for you, a child of God, that you may come and hear the words of the Master who speaks of your freedom, your liberation.” And let us not forget that our own church, especially our Neighborhood House, can be as unwelcoming to such a person. And let us remember our own lack of will to make Neighborhood House easy and safe to welcome in the palsied and other, leaving us like those who crowd the doors in the details of this story who do not make way for the one carried.
But the four who carry the paralytic man are like Rosa and Martin, like Elizabeth Cady and Sojourner, like Frederick and W.E.B., and like Bishop Gene, in that they refuse to be shut out, to be told they cannot come in, that they are somehow wrong for the dignified assembly. The four climb with their heavy weight, remove the palms of the roof, and then dig through the dirt of the ceiling a hole large enough for the paralytic man to be borne through (pun intended) into the presence of Jesus. Jesus does not see the faith of the palsied one lowered, who at this point must be frightened and confused, but the faith of those who have been creative and radical enough to change the rules of exclusion into the possibility of inclusion. Jesus speaks simple words to the one who lies before him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
But Jesus is not forgiving sins the paralytic has committed, is he? No he is forgiving him the sins that those who blocked the door have put upon him, the sins of how he has been excluded because he is different for nothing he himself could control. In forgiving his sin, Jesus is taking away the sin of being different, strange, spare, and marvelously but uniquely different--for being simply the other that makes the dominant like me uncomfortable.
And then Jesus chastises the scribes, who have the front row, who are never excluded, who are always in the right, and always given deference. Jesus is telling them that sin is what you put on the other, not what the other has upon him for being simply alive.
“Take up your mat and walk,” Jesus tells the paralytic, and in a moment, he is resurrected from every projection that those paralyzed by prejudice and hatred and certainty have projected upon him. He is free, for the first time, to walk toward the sunrise into a future that God has imagined for him, leaving behind those in the confines of a house with exclusive walls and a hole in the roof, certain that they are the chosen, but truly paralyzed by a sin that will only keep them warm in the emptiness of their lives.
Jesus Christ speaks to us this day, over the centuries, through the details of the Gospel of the Mark: “Do not make the same mistake of the scribes. Do not be paralyzed in certainty that we are without sin when those who we see as different can’t get in to hear the words of liberation. Tear the roof off the place, if need be. And take up the pallet, and walk into the sunrise of God and the new day prepared for us.”
If we do, we’ll be the amazed, and join the chorus: “We have never seen anything like this.”
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