Paralysis
Rev.
Mark Porizky
Mark
2:1-12
When
he returned to
People
often forward thought-provoking questions to me on the Internet. This
week I received an e-mail with these mind-numbing inquiries:
Why
do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? Why is the third hand on the
watch called the second hand?
Why
do "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?
Why
is it called "after dark" when it really is "after light"?
Why
do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?
I
love those kind of questions. Another
favorite is Bozo's question, "Do you walk to school or carry your
lunch?"
I
like the one I heard on the radio this week: “which is hotter, the new
Quiznos pork loin hoagie sandwich...or men who like cats?”
Sometimes
I like to ask classic hard questions like, "What's the meaning of
life?" or "Why is there so much evil in the world?"
Well,
Jesus asked hard questions too. Today's passage from Mark centers around
a very difficult question, "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic,
‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, Stand up and take your mat and
walk?’"
That's
not really an easy question to answer, as we will see.
This
question emerges early in Mark's account of Jesus' earthly ministry.
Look in verse 1, and you will see that Mark places Jesus "at home."
At whose home, we are not told. But the crowds packed into the house so
tightly that no one else could squeeze through the door.
Imagine
Jesus preaching in a stuffy room with others peering in the windows and the
doors, when suddenly Jesus was interrupted. Sticks, dirt, and other
roofing materials began to fall on him, and all around him. “What’s
happening?” thinks both Jesus and the crowd.
Suddenly
the room where Jesus is speaking grows quiet as more and more roofing material
fell until finally a shaft of sunlight pierced the room. Surely, Jesus
had quit trying to preach by this time, and He joined the crowd as they stared
at the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Then
they all saw the paralyzed man being lowered in a blanket through the hole in
the roof. When the man finally came to rest on the floor, I imagine that
one of the men on the roof poked his head through the hole and said, "I'm
sorry to interrupt, master, but the crowds at the door were jammed.
There were too many people for us to get our friend through, and this seemed
to be the only way to get to you."
Don't
you imagine that Jesus was impressed with the determination of the four
friends and with their creativity? They could have given up when they
saw the crowds and just carried the paralyzed man back home. They might
have postponed this meeting to another day. But no, they seemed
desperate to see Jesus right away, and not for themselves, but for their
friend.
I
am impressed with the four friends' determination. They would let
nothing come between them and Jesus. When they saw the crowds jamming
the home, they must have first tried to force their way in without success.
Then they stepped back and examined the situation. They began to
"think outside of the box," as a modern motivational speaker might
say. And they broke through to a creative solution to their problem.
We
immediately think about the destruction of the roof, don’t we?
But the typical roof in those days consisted of boards, sticks, and
dirt on a flat surface that was sometimes used as a porch. It would not
be unusual for there to be a stairway or a ladder leading to the roof where
people might sit in the cool of the day. The four friends knew that
making a hole in the roof could easily be done and could easily be repaired.
Whoever of the
stretcher-bearers had conceived of the roof caper was using what today we
could call "lateral thinking." In problem solving, it means that
when you tackle something head on and can find no solution, you go around, you
move out laterally in your thinking to get around the problem—to find the
solution by methods so unusual that almost nobody thinks of them—like
chopping holes in roofs to lower patients down to the doctor.
Sometimes such problem-solving is called “thinking outside the
box.”
An
example: A downtown office building has only two elevator shafts and lots of
offices. Every day during rush hour, these elevators are greatly overcrowded,
and people have to wait—(forever, it seems)—waiting to get on an elevator
either up or down. Many complaints come into the office of the building
manager, who realizes he has to do something to provide better elevator
service. Some companies are threatening to move elsewhere.
The
building manager looks at the obvious solutions. Build another elevator shaft
in the old building? Not a chance—too expensive—quite impossible from an
engineering standpoint anyway. Get the companies to stagger the working hours
of their employees? They had already tried that and it didn't help
much—there was too much outside traffic coming in.
So the obvious was no
solution. The building manager had to go around the obvious, laterally, and
came up with a most workable solution. Unless you know the answer, you
probably would never guess it, just as most of us would not have thought to
take the paralytic up to the roof.
The building manager simply
installed full-length mirrors beside the elevator doors on each floor. He knew
of the inherent vanity in most people. While waiting for an elevator—if you
can study yourself in the mirror, or study someone else, you are quite content
to wait for a car, even wait for quite a while. No more complaints. Vanity,
vanity, all is vanity, it says in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.
Friends, the whole Christian
story is perfect lateral thinking. Who comes to save the world? A mighty
military leader to slay all the enemies of goodness and peace? Does God send a
political leader whose celestial diplomacy decrees peace once and for all?
That would be pretty obvious and would not work because it has never worked
and I don’t believe it ever will.
So how does God do it? God
sends a child—a baby.
The
lateral thinking is so wide He does not even make the child of noble birth,
which would impress the right people. The child is born in, of all places, a
stable where the common wayfarer beds down his horses. And the child grows
quietly, unnoticed by the world, until at last he is made ready to declare his
divine ministry that has indeed saved the world—although it may take a few
more generations before humanity truly learns the fact of it.
In
God's lateral thinking, God doesn’t come by the front door—God removes the
roof. So I think Jesus felt quite an affinity for these four men and their
paralyzed friend. They were trying
to get to Jesus through any way possible.
Just like God was trying to get through to humanity—any way possible.
Thus, when Jesus looked at
this paralyzed man, he saw something that we do not see. He saw that the
man needed forgiveness. I suppose it was one of those times when Jesus
looked deep into the heart and knew the man's deepest needs. And Jesus
first said to the man, "Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now, friends, that was the
kind of lateral thinking that Jesus' enemies simply could not handle. They had
been so used to always coming in the front door of their orthodox, traditional
thinking that they couldn't stand this kind of departure from it. These were
the scribes who were sitting there, "questioning in their hearts,"
as the story tells us. They said, "Why does this man speak thus? It is
blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"
And
Jesus said, "Why do you question thus in your hearts? Which is
easier—to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise,
take up your pallet and walk?"'
That
question of Jesus is really a rather profound question, "Which is easier,
to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up
and take your mat and walk?’"
It's
a question that I ponder from time to time.
The
assumption of our times is that it is easier to say his sins are forgiven,
that it is easier to forgive this man’s sins than to heal him. You
can't prove that a person's sins are forgiven, but it is obvious to all if he
fails to stand and walk.
But
I wonder. Which is really easier?
I’m
beginning to believe that physical
healing is far easier than forgiveness. I have seen patients who have
had open heart surgery walking about in a week, well on the road to recovery.
Debbie Green has surgery for an appendicitis on Tuesday two weeks ago.
Here she is today! (Irwins)
Sometime
next month I will have the anniversary of my first, and most excellent, bike
crash. Riding with seven others, I
flipped over the handle bars, bounced off my head, chipped my front tooth, and
separated my shoulder. I still
have this very cool looking spot on my shoulder where the skin is permanently
discolored to remind me of the accident. But
I have no memory of the pain from that physical accident.
I
also have a scar that looks like a small thermometer running up the small of my
back from where I had back surgery for a ruptured disk in 2003.
But the pain that was associated with a ruptured disk is easily
forgotten. Too quickly I return to
lifting things I should never lift again. If
I remembered the pain I would never go near a snow shovel, or a heavy box.
But sometimes I do, like two Sundays past.
Foolishly, really, the physical healing has been completely forgotten.
On
the other hand, I still remember the pain and hurt from people who hurt me
fifteen years ago. I still struggle every day with that forgiveness.
There is a woman in Miami I struggle every day to forgive, even as I believe her
hatred of me will never allow her to forgive me. Frankly, as miraculous as
surgery and healing is, it seems to be child's play compared the difficulty of
real forgiveness. Healing may come
by merely submitting ourselves to the surgeon's knife or merely by swallowing
the pharmacist's pills. But
forgiveness? Forgiveness is
hard work and costly.
Hebrews 9:22 says,
"Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins." Most
folks will take that verse very literally and say that God requires actual
blood, whether it was the lambs sacrificed in the Old Testament times or the
blood of Christ. But I believe it speaks of a deeper truth. It says that
forgiveness is always costly, and that's exactly what we experience in our
lives.
Jesus
asked hard questions, and he leaves us today with a troubling one: Which
is easier, to forgive a man or to heal him? Which, indeed!
Dr Karl Menninger, the famed
psychiatrist, once said that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric
hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the
next day.
Bernie Siegal, in his book Prescription
for Living, tells the following story:
I
saw a woman with breast cancer learn about the power of love. She’d grown up
in an abusive, alcoholic family and felt bitterness toward her parents. When the
young woman developed cancer, she decided to change her attitude and love her
parents in spite of the harm they had done to her. Her mother moved into her
home, and every morning as the woman left for work she’d tell her mother she
loved her. The mother never answered.
One
morning, after about three months, the daughter was late for work and rushed out
of the house. Her mother went to the door. "You forgot something," she
yelled.
"What?" the woman
asked.
"You forgot to say I
love you."
The woman and her mother
embraced and cried. They healed.
Friends,
What is breast cancer by comparison?
Says
Jesus, “Which is easier to say, “Yours sins are forgiven,” or to say,
‘Stand up, take your pallet and walk?’” (Pause)
And
so I’ve added another prayer request to my spiritual growth list:
Lord, work with me where I am paralyzed by unforgiveness.
That is so much more important than any physical ailment that ails me.
Will you pray with me?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church,
Web Site: SAPC-CT.HOME.ATT.NET
Office Email: SAPC-CT@ATT.NET
"Permission to use is granted provided use is not for publication."