Sermons
December 17, 2023 (3rd Sunday of Advent)
“You’ll Never Walk Again.”
Mark 2:1-12
Ordinarily I would begin by asking, “What does this story have to do with today’s Advent theme, which is joy?” But I think Chuck answered that question for us.
A formerly strong, hardworking man has an accident that leaves him trapped in a body that no longer works properly—and Jesus sets him free from that bondage. That accident isn’t somehow the consequence of his sins—but Jesus also sets him free from bondage to sin.
How would you respond if that happened to you?
You’d heard the doctors say, “Nothing more to be done; you’ll never walk again.” Despair and bitterness are your constant companions from that moment on; you lie awake nights turning over the “if onlys” and “why mes” in your mind, perhaps raging at the circumstances you’ve found yourself in and can’t get yourself out of, maybe finding someone to blame and wishing you could get some revenge—but you can’t, of course, because you can’t move.
This guy is luckier than some folks in his situation, though: his friends haven’t abandoned him. Maybe they still visit regularly to commiserate with him, wishing there was something they could do beyond that.
Then one day, there is. A man named Jesus, who had made something of a name for himself in the last little bit, teaching and healing and casting out demons, is in town, staying with friends to unwind after a few busy weeks.
Of course, given the reputation Jesus has gotten, having a quiet weekend to rest and unwind is a pipe dream. As soon as word gets out that he’s in town—a lot of scholars imagine that his home base in Capernaum is the house where Peter lives with his family—people start coming to see him, and before long it seems like the whole town is trying to get in the house. It’s packed, and people are crowding around the doors and windows to try and hear what Jesus has to say. The people who are close enough to hear him relay his words out to the ones in the yard.
And the paralyzed man’s friends say to him, “You know, maybe this Jesus fellow can do something for you.”
He’s skeptical; after all, trained doctors haven’t had any luck making his useless arms and legs work again. But he has heard the stories about Jesus, so he lets himself get caught up in his friends’ enthusiasm, lets them bundle him onto a stretcher, lets them carry him right through the streets of Capernaum to Peter’s house where Jesus is staying.
They’re in for an unwelcome surprise, though, when they get there and realize they have no hope of pushing their way through the crowd that has gathered, no hope of getting in the door and close to Jesus. But the man’s friends aren’t about to let a small thing like that stop them. The house has a stairway up to the roof; a lot of houses there had stairways like that, so people could go up there to enjoy a fresh breeze on a hot day, to sleep under the stars when the house wouldn’t cool down of a summer night. They carry him right up those stairs to the roof—a roof probably made of mud or clay piled on top of branches and maybe bundles of long grass or reeds—and they start taking the roof off.
They dug through that roof, no doubt raining mud and sticks and all kinds of debris down on Jesus and the people trying to listen to him teach. Some people sneeze, others try to get out of the way, everybody asks, “What’s going on?” But nobody really has an answer.
As the mess gets worse, and they start to see daylight through the roof, Jesus gives up and just watches the commotion, watches as a man on a stretcher is lowered down to him with ropes. The man’s friends drop the ropes and peer through the hole in the roof to see what happens.
Jesus looks up at their expectant faces and recognizes the length they were willing to go to help their paralyzed friend.
It’s not because of his faith—the text doesn’t say a thing about his faith—but theirs that Jesus turns to him and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Immediately—ever notice when you’re reading Mark’s Gospel that he really likes that word?—the despair, anger, bitterness, and desire for revenge vanish from the man’s heart like a morning fog when the sun hits it.
The people don’t turn away; Jesus may have pronounced his sins forgiven, but the man still can’t walk. They know Jesus can heal people, so they wait.
But while they’re waiting, a group of scribes, who seem to be wrapped up in their rules about what people can and can’t say, who can and can’t do certain things, start to complain to one another. Jesus overhears—or maybe he just knows; he is the Son of God, after all—and asks them a question, like a good rabbi would do.
“Which is easier,” he asks, “telling someone that God forgives their sins, or commanding them to get up and walk when they’ve been paralyzed for a long time?”
And then he does just that: “I say to you” (whenever Jesus prefaces anything like that he is declaring the authority God has given him), “stand up, take that stretcher with you, and walk right on out of here.”
I have a hard time imagining that he just sedately walks back home. It seems to me like he might have been running, leaping, dancing, shouting with pure joy—and his friends may have had a hard time keeping up with him.
It’s likely that Mark wants us to focus not on the healing itself, but on Jesus’ authority to heal and to forgive sins. I think he wants us to realize that Jesus, great teacher that he was, wasn’t like any other rabbi who was teaching then, or before, or since. He’s right, of course; but I’m not here to lecture about Christology today.
This man, paralyzed for reasons the text doesn’t get into—although Chuck describes him getting run down by Roman horses—walks out of that house rejoicing.
He didn’t get there on his own. He had friends who were willing to do whatever it took to get him to Jesus, to get him forgiven, to get him healed, to bring him joy. It was their faith in Jesus that saved him.
And it occurs to me to ask all of us to think about something.
Do you know anybody who needs to meet Jesus, anybody who needs the forgiveness, grace, transformation that only Jesus offers? Do you know someone trapped in anger, who has lost hope that things will ever get any better for them? Do you long to see their hurt, their bitterness, their despair turn to joy?
Well, then, to what length would you be willing to go so that they can meet Jesus?