Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
Mark 2:1-12
Today’s lesson is one of my favorite
stories, probably because it’s one of the first stories I remember from
Sunday school. I remember getting one of those light cardboard pictures. The
picture was of a house. Jesus was standing inside the house surrounded by a
crowd. On the roof of the house were four men. There were two slits in the cardboard
into which slipped the tabs of a picture of a man on a stretcher. You could
release those tabs and the man would go down, pull the tabs and he’d get
pulled up. Up down, up down—a little spiritual elevator. Aside from that
special visual aid which apparently worked it’s magic this is actually
an intriguing story. Typical of the gospel writer Mark it lacks any fine detail
but it offers multiple ideas on which to preach.
We could talk about Jesus being at home and attracting the crowds. We could talk about the forgiveness of sins. We could talk about miracles. We could talk about Jesus authority, the controversy with the religious leaders and healings…All these things would make for wonderful discussions. But today I want to concentrate on those four wonderful friends who brought the paralytic man to Jesus. I don’t often go back to my original Greek but I did for this text. When Jesus is presented with the man the text says, “When Jesus saw their faith.” It doesn’t say “when Jesus saw his faith….”. The pronoun is plural referring to the friends not singular referring to the man with the paralysis. I think that simple pronoun has a world of meaning in it. And particularly has a world of meaning for us today, right now. As I began to research and explore the idea of spiritual friends this week I became rather frustrated. Almost everything I could find talked instead about “community, (the way we are called to be together and care for one another).
Now don’t get me wrong “community”
is an important and valuable piece of our Christianity. But I think there’s
a bit of difference between community and friends. For one thing, community
is the larger entity, friends the more personal. We belong to a community at
Holy Spirit and hopefully we have care and concern for one another but within
that community we also have friends.
Friends are those people who know you well—know your idiosyncracies and
faults and care for you anyway. Friends are those who not only comfort you but
challenge you when need be.
Within the church we can get so concerned about the downside of friendship which
is the development of cliques and exclusive groups that we shy away from the
very healthy and positive understandingof friendship. So on to these friends.
There are basically three things to notice about
these friends. First, the paralytic man is unable to walk so his friends bring
him to Jesus. We’re not given any information on whose idea this was, the
man’s or the friends but either way the friends are crucial to the interaction.
To me this typifies what we are about when we lift our friends in intercessory
prayer, when we bring before God the needs and hurts and pains of others. There
is no doubt that there are times when we find it hard to pray, when we feel
distant from God. Scripture acknowledges this. The Psalmist writes, . Paul admits
in Romans, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not
know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too
deep for words…” The spirit works the mat carriers in our lives. But
these friends do more than that. The second thing to notice about these characters
in our story is that they are willing to get their hands dirty. These friend
go the second mile. I love these guys. They’re creative and imaginative.
Standing at the back of the crowd they realize there’s no way in. When
I was in Israel we went to Capernaum. We stood in what some think was Peter’s
house. Who knows if this is Peter’s house but it was an excavated village
from the time of Christ. What strikes one most is how small and compact the
village is. A house is one or perhaps two rooms which may very well share a
common wall with the next house. The passageway in front of the house is certainly
not large enough to be called a road—maybe a lane or a path. The reason
that tradition suggests that this particular house is Peter’s house is
because it faces out onto a sort of a village square where perhaps ten or fifteen
additional people could gather. So the crowd we’re talking about is not
hundreds of people. To get through even this small crowd would be practically
impossible because the quarters are so cramped there’s not where for the
people to go.
So these four friends get the idea to go up to
the roof. In Israel there are often stairs to the roof—I imagine people
used the roof as a little patio or deck a cool place to sit or sleep in the
cool of the evening. They decide to dig through the roof. This probably means
removing some wooden planks and a whole lot of clay—a messy business. Friendship
often is…a messy business.
I have a couple of friends who have a pact that if anything should happen to
one of them the other will run over to their house and clean out their refrigerator
lest someone else should see it’s condition. Friends know the faults, the
failings, the vulnerabilities of each other and yet continue to care.
I have in the course of my pastoral career been
part of two interventions, that is planned opportunities for family and friends
to confront someone with their destructive behavior. Both times I have been
awed by how well friends have been able to express their concern and love, to
see the good in their friends even after many incidents that engendered anger
and hurt.
This brings us naturally to our third observation about these friends. They
are willing to risk. Many commentators looking at our lesson today consider
it’s main point to be more about the controversy that ensues than about
the healing. The scribes, the religious authorities are there on the scene.
Mark has a wonderful tactful way of saying, “Jesus perceived in his spirit
that they were discussing these questions,” but honestly it doesn’t
take a rocket scientist to realize that the attention Jesus was receiving was
a blow to these authorities. The crowds that Jesus drew for his teaching and
wonders were taking the wind from their sails.
This was a small city—nobody would want to be on the bad side of the authorities but the friends take a risk. The care they have for their friend out weighs their concern for their own status and well being. No doubt it wasn’t a calculated, conscious assessment. We don’t always count the cost or guage the opposition when stepping out to help a friend and yet we risk. We risk because our care, our love is greater than our fear.
Amen.