Hee Haw

My aunt used to tell this story and I thought she had made it up.  It starts like this, “Once apon a time, in a coreign fountry, there lived a very geautiful birl; her name was Rindercella. Now, Rindercella lived with her mugly other and her two sad bisters. And in this same coreign fountry, there was a very prandsom hince.”    I loved to here my aunt tell the stole whory but my favorite part was when Rindecella “slopped her dripper.”  I would laugh and wait for that line and then laugh some more.  

Another Good Story

Like my aunt the writer of Mark was a great story teller.  He didn’t go in for spoonerism.  He wasn’t out to entertain.  But he was nevertheless a master.  We see that in our section of his Jesus-narrative that we just read.  

In a mere 12 verses  Mark spins a great tale.  With just 212 words in the Greek he sets the stage, introduces a problem that creates other problems that are resolved when Jesus acts.  Lets walk through the drama.

Here is the setting: Jesus-having gone on a preaching and healing tour of neighboring villages- returns to his home in Capernaum, people gather and Jesus teaches them the Word.  

After setting the story Mark introduces more characters and a problem.  There are men who bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus.  Their friend can’t walk.  He has a problem that is keeping him from life.  This might have excluded him from the worship and life of God’s people because sickness was associated with sin.  These friends want Jesus to heal their friend, however there is another problem.  There as so many people listening to Jesus they can’t get their friend in the door.

Now Mark doesn’t tell us this, but they must have been teenagers.  Who else would think of going up on the roof?  Who else would raise the roof of the man who you want to heal your friend?  Who else would come up with such a crazy idea and actually do it?  Teenagers or not, they solve the problem and end up lowering their friend to Jesus.  In faith they let him down and Jesus looks at him and loves him and says, “Your sins are forgiven.”  That takes care of part of his problems but it isn’t what they were expecting.  They were expecting Jesus to bless and heal their friend by setting him free to walk out the door.

The teachers of the law were also surprised and disturbed.  Mark tells us that they asked the question any Bible-reading person should have asked, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  Who can forgive sins?  God and nobody else can wipe away sins.  A priest can make an offering for sins.  A friend can forgive you for the consequences of sin, but to take away sin, that is God’s job.  So when Jesus forgives this man sins there is a problem.  Jesus is claiming to do something that God alone can do.  

To resolve this problem, what does Jesus do?  He creates another problem.  He asks, “Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?”  Which is easier?  What do you think?  

The answer to the question is on the one hand, it is easier to say get up, take your mat and walk.  That is the case because it can be empirically verified.  If Jesus says it and the man does it, then you know he has authority as a healer.  But if Jesus says your sins are forgiven he is working in the realm of the heart, in the hidden plane of our relationship with God.  On the other hand, both are easy for Jesus.  He can forgive and he can heal.  And to let them know this he does both.  He won’t accept the either or choice.  He wont live in the forced logic of those who think that this guy is either crazy or a liar.  Instead, he acts as the Lord who heals and reconciles, who forgives and frees.

When Jesus acts to heal, the man gets up in front of them all, takes his mat and goes home.  Then you get a final line of comic understatement.  They were amazed and said, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”  This is true.  They nor anyone else has seen God come in the flesh to forgive sins and restore creation.  No one has ever seen a man do what God does with and for and as God.

Words and the Word

There is one more word that I want to look at.  In verse 12 the writer tells us that the crowd was amazed when Jesus forgave sins and healed the paralytic.  They were like the fans at the Duke-Carolina game when Rivers hit that 3 pointer.   They were like those fans but something more was going on.

Let me explain the more by using a contrast.  When Jesus healed the man in the synagogue by casting out an evil Spirit the people were amazed.  They were shocked, fascinated, and filled with wonder.  Mark uses the Greek word thaumazw to describe that experience.  In our story for today the writer uses the word existasthai.   The word means  that they were in a state in which things seem to make little or no sense; they were out of their minds.  In the synagogue they were amazed, here at Jesus’ house they were undone.  Their circuits were fried.  Their categories were exploded.  The way they held things together and made sense of the world was simply over powered.  

This is what happens to people in the Bible when they experience the presence of God.  Remember what the Lord said to Moses when he ask to see God face to face.  In Exodus 33:20 the Lord says, “No one may see me face to face, if you see me you must die.”  Here at Jesus’ house that is precisely what happens.  When the people see God in the flesh, the teacher who is a healer who is their savior, their whole frame of mind must die.  Their way of seeing the world must be crucified and resurrected.  The old must pass away.  God the Father sends the Son into the world full of his Spirit to heal, to forgive and to undo.  

This is the basic rule of salvation as comes to us from Jesus: He undoes people to redo them in love.  In other words, each of us is a restoration project that has to tear down before it can rebuild.  That is why Jesus said things like ‘whoever wants to save his life will loose it and whoever looses his life for me will save it.’  This is pictured in another way when Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.’ But then when the seed of your life dies, it can produce a crop of 30, 60 or even 100 times its size.

Let me take a step closer and be a bit more direct.  When Jesus comes then or now he comes to break us down.  He comes to reveal that we aren’t a bit different from the paralytic.  Like the man on the cot we need to be healed.  Like that man we need people to bring us to Jesus, to lift us up on the roof, to do the work of removing obstacles and to lower us to the point that we know we need healing in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds and in our relationships.  Jesus comes and show us that we are not strong enough or smart enough solve our deepest problems.  The things that live in us and in our hearts simply can’t be mastered and remade by us.   And then there is stuff that simply has to die so that there will be space for God to do something new and life giving and beautiful.  Your anger, your resentment, your jealousy, your self-concern and self-centeredness have to be undone before the Spirit can bring to life a new and more vital self that is turned out to God and open to others.

Because God loves us he will undo us.  He will send Jesus in the power of the Spirit to break down our lies, to undo our ‘strengths,’ to confuse us and in turn restore us.  This means that church should be a bit scary.  It should shake us up.  Make us uncomfortable.  Kill us and just so bring us back to life.  

Modern Tendency

We need to remember that so we don’t reduce church to a self-directed project of spiritual fulfilment.  We need to remember that so that we will let God undo us and remake us in the image of his Son.  We need to remember that and let God crucify us so that he might raise us up into new life.