An Epiphany Sermon Preached by Rev. Jean Lenk

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. ²So 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. ³Then some people^* came, bringing to him a paralysed man, carried by four of them. ⁴And 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. ⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ ⁶Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷‘Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ ⁸At 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? ⁹Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say, “Stand up and take your mat and walk”? ¹⁰But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.’ ¹²And 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!’

“Bring Your Friends”

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Jean Niven Lenk

at the

First Congregational Church of Stoughton

United Church of Christ

Here’s a question for you: who were the “fab four”? That’s right, the Beatles. We’re showing our age! In this morning’s scripture lesson from the Gospel of Mark, we meet another “fab four” – the four fabulous friends of the paralytic, who make an extraordinary effort to bring their friend to Jesus.

Can you imagine what first century life must have been like for someone who was completely paralyzed? The paralytic lives out his days confined to a mat; his entire world has shrunk to a space only three feet wide and six feet long. He is totally dependent on other people to feed him, carry him, clothe him, and clean up after him. And nothing can be done for him – no surgery or rehab or occupational therapy to help him gain even a little independence.

Even worse, in Jesus' time it was thought that a person’s illness was caused by the person’s sin. Many of the psalms allude to this idea; the words of our Call to Worship, from Psalm 41, read, “Heal me, for I have sinned against you.” And so, the paralytic is considered not only disabled, but also sinful, and he is shunned by the community, pushed to the margins of society, and there seems to be no hope that things are ever going to change for him. Except, he has those four fabulous friends.

Those friends have heard about Jesus, about his healing power, his forgiveness of sins. The four friends find out that Jesus is in Capernaum and decide they must bring their friend to Jesus – an act which requires commitment, planning and effort.

We don’t know if the paralyzed man wants to be healed, or if instead he has made peace with his condition; in fact, we don’t have a clue as to what this man wants or how he feels. We only know that his friends want to help, they want him healed, and nothing is going to stop them.

But when they get to the house where Jesus is preaching and teaching, the crowds have blocked the door. There is no such thing as handicap accessibility – no special parking spaces, no ramps, no reserved seating. And so the four carry their friend up to the roof of the house, and open a hole in that roof, and then lower him down into the room where Jesus is. And the text tells us that when Jesus sees “their faith” – the faith of the four friends, he says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven… stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” Go to your new life; go out healed and whole, go to live life in the fullness God intends.

Jesus heals the paralyzed man, not because of his faith, but because of the faith of those four friends who bring him. The Greek word ordinarily translated into English as “faith” is more appropriately translated “loyalty.” It describes people who pledge themselves to another person “no matter what” – a caring community.

But consider the paralyzed man’s situation in the context of today. We live in a culture that values success and self-reliance and cultivates judgmental boundaries around what is “acceptable.” So we put up facades that tell the world we “have it all together” and that our lives are “practically perfect,” when the truth is that we, too, are paralyzed and confined to our own kind of mats, unable to live life in all the fullness that God intends. Our paralysis may be in the form of an addiction – to food, to gambling, to alcohol, to drugs. Maybe our paralysis is emotional – uncontrollable anger or a guilty conscious, a lack of confidence, or an inability to trust or to forgive or to love.

Rather than reveal our imperfections and vulnerabilities, we retreat behind the lie of our facades, and in doing so, we shut ourselves off from our caring community, putting up barriers against the very people in the very places who want to love us, to hold us in our brokenness, and help us back on the road to wholeness.

So many of us try to muddle through, pretending that there is no paralysis in our lives. But the man in our story couldn’t do that. His infirmity was out there for all the world to see. And it was because he was vulnerable and laid bare his brokenness that his friends could help him.

We don’t know when we might become paralyzed – physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. And when those times happen, it will be God who will carry us when we are unable to move by ourselves. Friends are often the agents of God’s healing grace, whether they know it or not, and by both their love and their actions, they make possible what would have been impossible without them.

Jesus is moved by the faith of the four friends. He sees in them a little of what God intended when God made human beings – a caring community. And that’s what the church is called to be. We are to be a community caring for others, helping those who are paralyzed in body, or mind, or spirit to be liberated by the healing love of God. That’s what a church does; we facilitate the opportunity for healing.

Who do you know who needs the kind of healing Jesus offers? Bring them; bring your friends to Jesus, just as the paralytic’s friends brought him. Because that’s called being the church, and as the church, we are called to be a healing community -- because we ourselves have experienced God’s healing love first-hand and want to share it, not only with each other, but also with others beyond these walls. Jesus calls us – indeed, he commands us – to go out and make disciples, to be a caring community, to share the Good News.

Good News – in Greek, the word is euaggelion, the root of the word evangelism. Ooooh – there’s that word again. We practically shiver when we hear the “e” word, don’t we? It conjures up uncomfortable images of people going door to door, telling us we have to believe what they believe or we won't be going where they’re going. That kind of exclusive evangelism can distort the Gospel message and serves to separate rather than draw people together.

You’ve heard me say before that the word “evangelism” literally means the “message of the angels.” And we are the angels who are to spread the Good News – news that so many people are needing, wanting, waiting to hear -- that the love of God has the power to heal us and transform us and make us whole.

Studies show that 50 % of the unchurched people in America have a holy yearning, a spiritual itch for something deeper in their lives. They can’t exactly put the yearning into words, they cannot fully name the itch, but they know it has something to do with meaning and purpose and God and faith and being part of a community of believers, part of a church.

We live in a world that desperately needs the message of Christ. There are so many who yearn for healing, who ache for forgiveness, who long to pick up their mats and walk, and find the hope and wholeness God wants for the human family.

Over the past couple of years, this church has gone through a process of identifying our core values, and they include respect and acceptance, caring and compassion. These core values describe our desire to be a healing community in the world, and they beautifully express what a church is to be about. We are to be instruments of God, conduits of holy healing, helping people to be made whole by bringing them closer to God and connecting them with Christ and with a community of faith.

That’s what we do through our visits to people in hospitals and nursing homes; we do it through our prayer shawl ministry and our Caring Committee; we do it through our healing services; we do it by praying together, for each other and for others; we do it by reaching out to friends and neighbors and co-workers and people we don’t even know, inviting them into this caring community. This is how we extend our arms and touch people with the love of Christ. And I hope that in the months and years to come, we will find new ways to reach more of the 41% of people in Stoughton who have no faith community.

Just as each one of us has received the message of God’s healing love, we are called to go out as angels and share that message with others. Tell your co-workers, your neighbors, everybody, about God’s grace and forgiveness. Bear the message of Christ’s healing love. And, like those four fabulous friends in this morning’s Gospel story, bring your friends to Jesus, invite them to this caring community, so they, too, can experience God’s grace, forgiveness, and healing love. Amen.