The Power of a Seed

Text: Matthew 13:1-23

I think one of the greatest mysteries of all time is how a seed grows.  I'm sure biologists have this one all figured out.  You take a seed put it in a moist environment.  The outer shell begins to decompose which lets off gases which coupled with the moisture produce some sort of enzymatic reaction in the seed and it shoots out something called a radical which becomes a root.  Then a sprout develops and the seed is consumed into a plant that grows and in turn produces more seeds. 

The dandelion is one of the most fantastic examples of this mystery.  If it weren't for the lawn care industry the dandelion would probably be the most dominant plant on earth.  The shear power of its growth is amazing.  At my former church we paved our dirt parking lot.  The next spring dandelions were pushing up through the asphalt out in the middle of the thing.  Dandelions have the power to push through 4 inches of compacted gravel and 3 inches of compacted asphalt.  If someone could find out how to tap into dandelion growth as a power source, I think the world’s need for power could be met quite easily. 

Here's some science for you.  The first law of thermodynamics is that “energy may be transformed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.”  If you apply that law to dandelion seeds, it becomes mind boggling that in those tiny little seeds that parachute around throughout the spring and the summer there lays dormant enough power to grow a plant through gravel and asphalt.  That's utterly amazing and what's it say about our God who created it.

I think Jesus himself was quite impressed with the mystery of seeds and how they grow.  If you consider the latent power in a small seed, it’s ability to transform and grow a plant, and its ability to in the end produce an astounding number of more seeds; it is no wonder that Jesus compared the word of the kingdom of heaven to a small unassumingly insignificant seed. 

The Parable of the Sower is about the power of a seed, a seed that Jesus explains is the word of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus wants us to know that the kingdom of Heaven is like a seed and its power to grow.  Just as seeds have this latent power in them to transform, grow, and reproduce so also Jesus, God the Son become a human, is a new seed planted into the creation that has within itself the power of God’s very self and his love for his creation that will end the disease of sin, end death, and in the end make all things new.  Jesus, God the Son become physical matter is a new seed that the Trinity has planted in the entirety of the physical universe that has the power of God to and will indeed make all things new.  Jesus, God the son become human, is the seed of a new humanity that through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit has been and will continue to grow as the Kingdom of heaven.  

 The seed of new creation, Jesus Christ God the Son become human, is by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit becoming the plant of the kingdom of heaven which is bearing in our midst the fruit of more seeds, which are people like you and me in whom the Holy Spirit is living and working to make us more like Christ Jesus until the day when we are all raised from the dead and all things will be made new and filled with the knowing of God.  Jesus is the seed, the word of the kingdom, who died and was raised and who is being transformed into a new humanity filled with the Spirit of God.  By the Holy Spirit’s work among people just like you and me right now humanity is being transformed to be like Christ.  The Trinity's work in us Christians is as powerful indeed more powerful than that of a dandelion that can burst through asphalt.

            In, through, and as Jesus Christ God has reconciled all things to himself and by the continuing presence and work of the Holy Spirit God is transforming all things to become like Christ Jesus until in the end the great harvest of the New Creation happens and all things are made new.  That’s the seed and as Jesus said it is the word of the kingdom of heaven, a new word spoken by the Trinity, a word that will come to fruition just as sure as creation itself came into being.  The word of the Kingdom of heaven is a word of God about which the prophet Isaiah said, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

This seed, the word of the kingdom of heaven is going on at all times in all places in all things.  After all the sower is very wasteful casting seed everywhere with no strategic plan for greater yield other than it will grow where it will.  As this seed is a word, a word that is spoken, so it is that somehow we hear it and what we hear is a summons, a call to stand before the Triune God of grace and find the answer to the question of who are you God.  Many people are hearing the summons and wrestling with that question these days.  There are many sociologists of religion who say that there has been a great spiritual awakening going on globally since the mid 1960's.  Yet, oddly in Europe and North America people have been awakening with a hunger for things spiritual but have not turned to the Christian faith, or more precisely the Church, to find the answer to who it is that is calling to them.  There are many people outside the church who say they know there is a God who is personally present in their lives and that their lives would be incomplete without the sense of purpose that this God brings to them.  They pray and have experiences of God.  In these people, the seed of the word of the kingdom has been sown, sown by God himself.  Therefore, we can say that the Holy Spirit is indeed at work in this world in people who are outside of anything having to do with church and is calling them to faith.  Just ask anyone who has been involved in missional church planting.  The Holy Spirit was already there preparing the soil so to speak.

The question that then follows is where does the seed grow from there, from this simple uninformed and often misinformed experience of God.  If the seed that has been sown is indeed the work of the Holy Spirit sooner or later these people will look to Jesus to find their answers for it is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring us personally to Jesus not simply to spirituality.  This places a huge responsibility on us in the church.  For if the Holy Spirit leads people to Jesus sooner or later those people will cross paths with a Christian because you can't have Jesus without the church.  Therefore, we in the church need to be darn sure we are giving them the right Jesus. 

I think that the number one way that the evil one snatches away this seed that God has sown in so many people is by using the church and Christian hypocrisy to run them away.  We have to make clear to all people that Jesus has wonderfully called them to discipleship and that they can come to him and learn and be changed and healed along the way.  We need to be clear that the one who calls them is fully found in the community of believers.  Jesus cannot be known apart from his body, the fellowship of his disciples who are wrestling with the Scriptures and holding one another accountable to growing and becoming more Christ-like, a true community where mutual self-giving love is the rule, a community that worships together, prays together, and ministers to one another, and together serve in charity. 

The Holy Spirit calls people to meet Jesus in Christian community.  He calls us beyond our own private experiences into the place where two or three are gathered in Jesus name and he is in their midst.  We in the church need to make sure that what we are offering in our fellowship is loving, cross-shaped community that looks and feels like Jesus and leaves you knowing you've been in his presence. 

So on one hand this word of the Kingdom of heaven is a call to Christ and his community.  But on the other hand, this very same word can turn people away because it is costly in personal terms.  Jesus places demands on our lives.  As the Apostle Paul said we cannot continue to live according to fallen human nature and have the new life in Christ.  As Romans 8 says we must live according to the Spirit.  Christian hypocrisy, indeed the seed snatcher, becomes most evident when we in the church say we follow Jesus but we ourselves don't yield to his Spirit who is at work in us, when we don't let ourselves be changed by grace and the result is that our Christian fellowship winds up being nothing more than a judgmental Jesus club that celebrates with joy when things are going well but as soon as we find ourselves in a situation where we must stand on faith we forget we ever knew Jesus and start blaming and scapegoating our ordained and penny-pinching and fighting over finances.

Our lifestyles are our greatest barrier to the growth of the seed in us.  In all honesty, if we are not yielding seed bearing fruit, it is because we are refusing to let our lives come under the scrutiny and transforming power of the Holy Spirit who brings us too not just them to Jesus and makes us look like him.  In all honesty we conduct our lives more by the values of our culture than the teachings of the Scriptures.  Growth in Christ occurs, fruit bearing occurs when we yield up every corner of our lives to the refining fire of his great love and his will and power to heal us and make us more Christ-like.  We must remember that as the followers of Jesus Christ our way of life doesn't look like what our culture calls being good, comfortable, and successful people.  Those are weeds.  Our way of life is the cross. 

Sometimes we get stuck in our walk, in our growth in Christ and we'll stay that way for years.  And oftentimes were stuck because we've plateaued at a point of where there are some things in our lives that we just aren't going to yield up to the Spirit - values, core beliefs, unforgiveness, regrets.  This is the point where we have to sincerely ask ourselves what are my weeds, not my needs but my weeds, and find a couple of prayer partners to help us let go and let the grace of God in. 

Good soil for the Christian is simply not letting ourselves stand in the way of the Spirit's work in us as individual believers and as a community of disciples.  Good soil is prayer partnership.  If you look at the church's that are sincerely growing in Christ, not just in number but in Christ-like-ness they will all have in common this thing of small groups, small groups of two or three or more friends in Christ getting together sharing their joys, sharing their hurts, confessing their sins and praying together and who also have a dramatic, loving effect in the lives of their neighbours.  So, the question is what would it take for you yourselves to get together in smaller groups that we pray and minister together.  Moreover, what are the weeds that prevent it?  The seed that has been planted in us is more powerful than a dandelion.  The weeds in our lives are as powerful as a dandelion and will become as noticeably out of place among as a dandelion growing in a parking lot.  So pick up the cross, deal with the weeds, and let the kingdom continue to grow, indeed here.  Amen.

Even the Wind and the Sea Obey Him

Text: Mark 4:35-41

Presbytery met this past May down at Camp Kintail on the shore of Lake Huron.  A massive storm came off of Lake Huron that Tuesday afternoon.  I was riding with the Owen Sound Rep Elder down HWY21 and all was fine until just south of Southampton when the wind began to pick up and dark clouds began to gather over.  Just south of Port Elgin we got a good view of a "Day of the Lord" storm laying it on the Bruce Power plant.  I started to have those apocalyptic sorts of thoughts that you have when big thunderstorms are putting it to a nuclear power plant.  I think the plant itself even lost power.  Storms are scary.  I couldn’t image what it would have been like to be out on the lake underneath that storm in a little twelve-seater rowboat.  I probably would have panicked to death or in the very least soiled myself.

Well, it was in such a storm as that we find this little group of believers, the Twelve Disciples, the fledgling church, in a small boat with Jesus.  It had been a long day and for some unknown reason Jesus wanted to go across to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  So they got a boat (but no pony to ride on the boat) and started out, several other boats accompanied them as well.  Jesus takes advantage of the opportunity and falls asleep on a pillow in the stern of the boat.  The disciples soon find that they are more or less on their own in the middle of a big lake with a Jesus who’s checked out.  And wouldn’t you know it, its right then while Jesus seemingly has his guard down that a great windstorm arose causing monstrous waves to break over into the boat and it begins to fill.

The way Mark tells the story we are supposed to think that Creation, or at least the chaotic unknown elements of Creation, the wind and the sea, have personally decided to come after the disciples with the intent to destroy them.  The wind and the sea and storms often showed up back then in a particular genre of writing known as apocalyptic of which the Book of Revelation is one.  They represent the unknown and its destructive powers sort of like what we mean when saying things come flying at us out of left field.  What will the disciples do in such a massively overwhelmed with fear kind of moment?  Indeed, what can they do?

Now, I said Mark is telling the story here in such a way as to make it sound like the wind and the sea are coming after them, like the Creation itself has got it in for them.  I say that because Mark says Jesus rebuked the wind.  He rebuked it.  He did not just command it.  He rebuked it scolding it as we would someone who has done something terribly shameful.  We’ve all had days where it seems the world is out to get us.  Indeed, here it seems the creation is out to get the fledgling church.  The same creation that Paul says in Romans 8 is groaning in labor pains and eagerly waiting the day when the children of God will be revealed and it will be set free from the futility of death.  We see here just how deep sin, our sin, affects the whole universe.  Human sin affects everything to the extent that the creation itself would try to destroy the children of God who signal its liberation from the futility of decay to which it has been subjected because of sin, our sin.  We like to think of the creation as non-personal, meaning impersonal and unable to relate.  The Bible seems to say otherwise.  What that “otherwise” might be is a topic for another day, but for now it is safe to say that Mark is portraying the Creation here as out to get the fledgling church, doing something it should not be doing for which Jesus rebukes it.  That's your interesting thought for the day.

   Moving on, the disciples believe they are going to die.  They are utterly powerless before these chaotic, uncontrollable elements of creation.  No technology is going to save them.  They are utterly powerless.  They are perishing.  So they go to the sleeping Jesus with the complaint, “Teacher, we are perishing and you don’t seem to care.”  I think life gets that way at times.  Things can come out of left field and the next thing we know life is careening in a half-million different directions and none of them look safe and we are powerless before it.  And then, where is our Lord in the midst of it…asleep on a pillow?  That’s early church code for enthroned way far off in glory.  We, like the Twelve complain, “Jesus, we’re perishing.  Don’t you care?”  I think that is a legitimate complaint. 

Well, as a matter of fact he does care and this is what he does and I have to warn you that the next couple of verses (actually the whole vignette) are full of code words and phrases that the early church used to describe its situation and its beliefs.  Jesus comes wide-awake, rebukes the wind, and calms the sea and it is a great calm not a ripple on the water.  That's early church code referring us to the day Jesus finally returns and puts things to right and also to the fact that he does now for us in his time and in his way put things right in our lives in a way that gives us a new start when things otherwise seem to have ended, a way that causes or learns us to lean on him in faith, a way that creates in us a deeper trust in him and his steadfast love and faithfulness. 

Then he turns to the disciples saying not, “Why are you so afraid?”  But rather, “Why are you so cowardly?  Do you not yet have faith?”  Cowardly, Jesus calls them cowardly.  The Greek word there isn't the word for afraid.  It is the word for cowardly, deilos.  A word was used in the early church for Christians who renounced faith in Jesus Christ in order to escape persecution, for turning away from Jesus in the midst of those struggles that test our faith, for turning away from Jesus rather than going to him when he seems so obviously asleep on the pillow.  I think what Jesus was expecting from them was their standing firm in the face of the storm because they knew Jesus was in the boat with them; indeed, high expectations for so early in their relationship.  They did the next best thing and confronted the sleeping Jesus, something I'm quite prone to do.

After this rebuke to disciples Mark says that the disciples were filled with great fear or as the Greek says afraid with great fearful awe.  Fearful awe is also early church code for worship, worship that arises when we find ourselves utterly depending on Jesus for life come what may.  Before they were looking at the storm but after seeing Jesus and experiencing the calm they worship.  This experience taught them to worship in the face of fear.  True worship arises from us when in the midst of the storms we realize that Jesus really is with us and our lives really are in his caring hands.  The hymn How Great Thou Art attempts to capture this fearful awe.  That worship is the stilled waters of what once were howling winds and a raging sea.  When it seems the world is out to get us, indeed like the creation itself is out to get us, we worship.  Worship and faith go hand and hand.  Standing firm in prayer, waiting, and worshipping, reminding ourselves who Jesus is and realizing he may be asleep, but he's still in the boat and will not leave us - that's the way to deal with worry, anxiety, fear, and faith-trying circumstances.

Worship begins with this question the disciples asked, “Who then is this that the wind and the sea obey him?”  Who is this Jesus who can take the most messed up of circumstances and turn them to good for us.  Who is this Jesus?  The point of this lesson that Jesus took his disciples out on a stormy sea to learn is that Jesus is himself God.  The Jesus we meet by the working of the Holy Spirit is God and as I like to say there is no other God hidden behind Jesus who is other than Jesus in the way he is towards us, steadfastly loving and faithful.  God may have to tell us we’re being cowardly at times but even that is meant to move us to worship, to calm, to peace, to restful assurance of the loving care with which God regards us, as we are his beloved children.  So, friends, stand firm.  Whatever may come Jesus is still in the boat.  Life quite often feels like all Hell is breaking loose around us and Jesus, if he’s there, he must be asleep on a pillow somewhere in the back of the boat.  But he’s still in the boat and he is God and he absolutely will not let anything separate us from the great love he has for us.  Stand firm and remember who he is and stand waiting in fearful awe for what he is going to do for you in his great love for you.

Mark wrote this Gospel for a Christian community that was being persecuted for their faith and in danger of turning away.  This passage as much as any in the Gospel of Mark reflects this.  We may find this difficult to relate to for none of us here is in danger of dying because of our faith in Jesus Christ.  But, the text still has a message encouraging us to be faithful while faith is being tried, when it seems Jesus is asleep on a pillow.  The trial of faith that we face today is staying faithful while our faith is not being overtly tried with the threat of persecution.  This I think is more difficult.  What threatens our Christian faith is a religion of overly individualized belief amidst a culture of comfort.  What’s at stake is the local congregation.  There is no such thing as the Christian faith without the fellowship of believers gathering together to worship, pray, learn, and serve together.  The trial we face is very subtle, because we believe hook, line, and sinker our culture’s teaching that faith is simply individual belief and one’s own inner experience and the fellowship of believers is not necessary for that.  That’s cowardly.  How can we learn and gain the courage to love one another without each other.  Mark wrote his gospel to this group of perishing Christians who were in danger of doing the “cowardly” thing of renouncing faith and returning to life as everyone else lives it.  He wrote it to get them asking again, “Who is this?”  Many churches today are perishing and are deep down preoccupied with complaints.  To them Jesus seems asleep on the pillow and their hearts are bent rather to ask him “Don’t you care?”  The thing to do instead of letting our hearts become filled with complaint is to just go ahead and start asking, “Who are you, Lord?”  Get preoccupied with that question and you will find out exactly who Jesus is, that he is God and even the wind and the sea obey him.  Amen.

Is He the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit?

Text: Romans 8:1-11

Is He the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit?

What happened?  Why do we say Holy Spirit now and not Holy Ghost?  If you are like me, I went through catechism class when I was eleven or twelve and memorized the Apostles' Creed saying "I believe in the Holy Ghost" and then one new hymnal and three or four ministers later we're saying Holy Spirit with no explanation given other than we're just trying to sound more current because Archaic language makes new comers not want to come back.  There has to be a better reason than that and guess what?  There is and so this morning we'll sift through that a bit. 

Now I warn you, we will be doing some theology this morning, but...this, the Holy Spirit, truly is an important topic especially for us Canadian Presbyterians.  A good many of us are finding out particularly here in the Presbytery of Grey-Bruce-Maitland through the Natural Church Develop process that we are weak in the area of our spirituality, our relationship with our God.  So, as part of the remedy we need to dip into the world of theology for it is a profound fact that what we believe about God has a dramatic effect on how we live our faith.  If that is the case, then our weakness in the area of spirituality must derive from a lack of knowing the Holy Spirit and his work. 

So, since this is a dire matter let's dive in real quick and get some basic facts.  First, the Holy Spirit as we meet him is the breath of the new life of the new humanity the Trinity spoke into existence in, through, and as Jesus Christ who as God the Son become human lived, died, was raised, and reigns and will return and all this for us.  Second, by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit God the Father draws us to Jesus and there the Holy Spirit really present with us graces us to know Jesus personally and to share in Jesus' very relationship with God the Father.  Third, by the gift of the Holy Spirit the Father and the Son have adopted us into their relationship so that we know the steadfast love and faithfulness of the Father as Jesus himself knows it and like Jesus we desire to do our Father's will in love and gratefully.  Fourth, by the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us we are a new form of human existence, humans with a new heart that the Old Testament Prophets looked forward too and which the New Testament simply describes as "in Christ".  We formally were "in Adam" but through Baptism we have died and been raised from that old life into the new life in Christ graciously available and abounding in, through, and as the presence of God the Holy Spirit.

Well, with that groundwork laid on to the topic at hand and why the change to saying Holy Spirit rather than Holy Ghost starting with why we said "Holy Ghost".  Well, if memory serves me English speaking churches picked up the word Ghost primarily because that’s the word the translators of the King James Version of the Bible chose to use believing that's the word 16th Century English speakers could best understand.  The Biblical Hebrew and Greek words, "ruach" and "pneuma" both mean either "breath", "wind", or "spirit".  "Spirit" should not be confused with "soul" which is who I am as a person in all my totality - mind, spirit, and body - before God and others.  My spirit is how I have effect on others, if that makes sense.  If I have a kind and gracious spirit others will be affected by me in that way.  My kids would probably say I have a grumpy spirit because I'm grumpy all the time with them.  Speaking of the Holy Spirit in this way, the Trinity in his Love has a will and a plan for his creation and us.  The Father speaks it.  The Son is the Word that is spoken.  The Holy Spirit is the breath that comes along with that Word that makes it heard and come into being. 

That said, I am predisposed to say that the translators of the King James Version simply mistranslated.  But, I don't speak 16th Century English so let's give them the benefit of the doubt.  So doing, one good argument for saying Ghost instead of Spirit is that a ghost seems more personal, meaning more like a person, whereas using Spirit can depersonalize the Holy Spirit into just being a force like an esprit de corps or the spirit of the times.  Taking personhood away from the Holy Spirit simply reduces Christianity to being nothing more than spirituality or spiritual awareness which nearly always devolves into "me" just being hyper-aware of myself and calling that an experience of God. 

The Holy Spirit is God relating to us as a person.  He is how we know God.  By the Holy Spirit we experience ourselves to be relating to God the Father with and through Jesus personally and so we relate to God the Trinity as a friend.  Friends communicate, get to know each another, and learn to trust each another.  We call this prayer and are encouraged to learn to pray without ceasing.  Yet, when it comes to God we are in a friendship with a person we cannot see and so we need the Scriptures and Christian fellowship and there we find God revealing himself to us in, through, and as Jesus Christ as a friend who is sincerely motivated by love for us, who is gracious towards us, and who will stop at nothing to heal our broken lives even to the point of disciplining us, a process which will culminate in our realizing that he has died for us.  Therefore, thinking of God the Holy Spirit as a ghost who is in our lives and who finds ways to communicate God’s grace to us would seem appropriate.  That is the upside of the ghost argument. 

On the down side, well, a ghost is a disembodied spook.  The Holy Spirit is not the Holy Disembodied Spook of Jesus Christ.  To say that is a denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, one of the core facts upon which our salvation rests.  Jesus still has a human body…a resurrected, glorified, yet scarred body…and it is in this body that he stands before the Father ever adoring him, ever worshipping him, and ever praying for us.  The human body of Jesus the incarnate Son of God is the new humanity in which the Holy Spirit brings us to share.  If physical humanity is not by the work of the Holy Spirit in union with the Son of God in Jesus, the crucified one Resurrected and Ascended, then we have no place in him.  He has no new human "being" to share with us and we cease to be his image here on earth.  The Holy Spirit is not the ghost of Jesus Christ because Jesus is not dead. He still bodily lives. 

Well, we’ve talked about the word Ghost.   Now I would like to broach the use of the word Spirit.  To do this let's think about a corporation.  Did you know that every Presbyterian Church in Canada is a corporation?  An interesting thing happens when people incorporate.  When a corporation comes into existence, legally speaking and I would say spiritually speaking as well, a new corporate person comes into existence.  This corporate person takes on a personality and a particular way of acting towards and affecting others.  The Shell Corporation has its own personality and distinctive ways of being towards the world than Exxon does.  Nestle and Wal-Mart are their own persons.  So, also is the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and even this church.  Even our families are corporate persons.  When people form groups those groups all have corporate personalities, spirits that have unique effect on others. 

When speaking of the church we must say that the spirit of a congregation must become like that of Jesus Christ.  This congregation has it’s own corporate personality, its own spirit which must yield to the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is the spirit of Jesus Christ.  This does not mean that he is the ghost of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit is the corporate person that is the relationship which God the Father and God the Son share that affects us.  It is by the personal presence of the Holy Spirit among us and in us that we are brought into that relationship.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of our adoption, our incorporation if I may, into the life of Jesus Christ and his relationship with God the Father.  Later, in Romans 8 Paul speaks of our adoption into the family of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit dwelling in us makes us to say "Abba. Father."  We now share with Jesus his inheritance of all things. 

The life of the Spirit we now live is fuelled by our knowing in every fibre of our being that we are the beloved children of God the Father whom he loves as much as his own Son who gave his life for us to save us from sin and death and who gives his life to us through the Holy Spirit that we may rise up and live anew and differently "in Christ".  To live according to the Spirit rather than according to the flesh, as Paul puts it, is to live life utterly reoriented by the gobsmacking of encountering the reality of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God personally.  Speaking for myself, the most grounding certainty I can grasp onto in my life that brings everything back when I'm a mess and feeling hopeless and like a failure is the Holy Spirit making me to know that God is with me and utterly loves even me as his own child and I can trust that...I can trust that come what may God loves me and everything works out accordingly.  Therefore, I strive to live one day at a time, one moment at a time in response to that love.  I pray you all know this for yourselves too.  Amen.

What If Jesus Really Is God?

Text: Mark 2:1-12

Probably the most difficult move I ever had to make was the move from Marlinton, West Virginia to Caledon, Ontario, the move from “small town” to “no town”.  Marlinton had a population of 900 and was located in Pocahontas County, West Virginia and it was the first place in my adult life that I ever felt at home.  It was small town.  Everybody knew who you were even if you didn’t know who you were.  Gossip did a better job of people in line than the one town cop they had.  My church was the downtown on the main corner church and that meant I couldn’t help but get involved in local things.  I was in the Rotary Club and president of the Ministerial association.  I spearheaded a downtown youth center that involved nearly every church and civic organization in town.  I also got roped in to being part of a group that was doing some county redevelopment think-tanking.  My church was beginning to be known as the fun and fellowship, vibrant church in town.  I made some really, really good friends.  I was somebody and I was doing a lot of good in that town. 

And then divorce happened and I simply had to get out of there.  My ex-wife said she didn’t want to be a minister’s wife anymore and eventually left.  The people in Marlinton were spectacular in their care and support for me.  I will forever be indebted to a handful of the friends I had there who opened up their homes to me while I transitioned out.  Then, and this was eleven years ago, I wound up in Caledon, Ontario.  I took a small church in the hopes that we could redevelop and it would blossom, which it did but not without its tensions and it never really grew numerically.  I was in Caledon just shy of ten years. I was given a surrogate Canadian family, made a few good friends, got married again Caledon, and had kids yet though all that Caledon never really got to be home for me.  I don’t mean to be rude, but Caledon isn’t a place a person can find home in.  It’s a huge tract of land with several small communities strewn throughout.  The small towns there have transitioned into bedroom communities for Toronto area commuters.  With every estate sale the established farming community was giving way to wealthy retirees whose social lives were still in the GTA.  Good friends were hard to make because there were no ways to really meet the people, people who really didn’t have the time or energy to meet their neighbours anyway.  I went from being somebody who was pretty well connected and doing a lot of good in a small town to anonymous in no town. 

In the midst of that move I lost my home and I dare say that I’ve not known home since.  Real community is a cherished treasure that is hard to find.  Our lifestyle here in North America breeds isolation like mould in a petri dish and it’s largely due to our pursuit of comfort through wealth. You folks up here know what it is to get snowed in for a few days.  It has its effects on the soul particularly when it happens on a weekly basis but you know spring is coming.  But, imagine what its like to be in isolation and not really know that you are.  I think many to most of the people in North America suffer from that.  Anxiety and depression smoulder within and we don’t really know why.  Did you know Canada has the highest per capita rate of people on anti-depressants in the world?  Yet we don’t ask why.  For the most part we’re doing everything we’ve been told to believe we’re supposed to do in life and doing it good.  We’ve got all the stuff we’ve been told to believe we’re supposed to have and we’ve worked hard for it.  That’s nothing to be ashamed of.  We’re comfortable and we work hard, but something is missing and I venture to say that it is real friendship.  Real friendship and that’s assuming we really know what it is is hard to come by and so is the time for it.  And so we see the effects of social isolation widespread across this great nation.

Looking at our passage today from Mark’s Gospel, isolation is one of the things I think of when I meditate on this paralytic.  I imagine that isolation would have been a huge factor in his life.  He lived in a small town.  Archaeologists figure that Capernaum in that day would have been a bustling little village of about 1,200 people or about 150-175 households.  I suspect that the man was not born without the use of his legs, but rather had some sort of accident.  In the blink of an eye maybe a fall from a ladder and his life turned upside-down.  This sudden change for the worse would have of course had the superstitious religious among them wondering what unforgivable sin he had committed for God to have smitten him so harshly. 

That is certainly how the scribes would have viewed him and anyone associated with him.  They would have viewed him as “unclean” like they did lepers and anyone else with diabilities.  He would not have been allowed to come to the synagogue or to go to Jerusalem to the temple because the religious authorities wouldn’t have allowed him in the presence of God in an unclean state.  You see, the Priests and the Scribes back then pretty much viewed their faith from the perspective of sin management and determining who’s in and who’s out with respect to God and the community.  They made the man to be a social pariah.  Anyone who helped him would have incurred his uncleanness too and would have had to stay separated from synagogue and other people too for designated periods of time.  I suspect this man stayed pretty much out of sight behind closed doors or worse begging on the side of the road at the edge of town. 

Isolation would have been a huge reality in his life.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like to go in just a moment from being an honourable, working, productive part of a small community to being cut off, shamed, and forced into isolation and having to be carried on a mat everywhere you go.  Then to make matters worse, the Scribes and Priests, the people who should be pointing you to God for hope and supporting you are pointing the finger of judgement at you and saying you’ve done the unforgivable and you are God forsaken.  Your sin has become unmanageable and therefore you must be cast out.  It’s like waking up in Bible-thumper-ville.

I ponder this paralytic and what it meant to him for Jesus to say to him first, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  If you remember from last week’s sermon Jesus saw these four friends carrying this paralytic to him so that he might be healed and in their act of unconditional love and faithfulness he saw the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament faith fulfilled.  Forgiveness isn’t an act of pardoning a list of offences nor a process of catharting anger and resentment against those who have made us victims.  Forgiveness is bearing with one another in our weakness and doing what we can to bring one another to Jesus were we might be healed of sin and its effects on us.  Jesus saw these four men doing that and stated the obvious, “Son, your sins are sent away.” 

That pronouncement brought about a dispute with the religious authorities because Jesus had done something only God could.  So, Jesus upped the ante with them and asked which is harder: to tell the man his sins are forgiven or to tell him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk.  And then just to prove his authority to do that Jesus tells the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.”  And the man did.  Jesus raised him to new life.  The Greek word for rise is the same word that’s used for raising the dead.  Instead of the shame of having to be carried around on a mat, he becomes able to carry his own mat.  He can go home now.  Everything he lost due to an accident, a cruel belief in superstitions about disabilities, and the pronouncements of religious authorities was now restored.  The forgiveness enacted by these four faithful friends resulted in this paralytic becoming a sign of what it’s going to be like at the resurrection.  When we are all raised from the paralysis of sin, death, and evil and made to be truly at home.

This leads me to ask a question, a rather rhetorical question: What if Jesus really is God? And indeed, I not only believe he is, I know he is.  If Jesus really is God then we must accept that there is no unknowable God hidden behind Jesus who is really just an angry and offended God who only cares about who’s sinning and who’s not, a fickle tyrant who is deeply offended by our actions and has therefore penalized us with death yet loves us enough to kill his own son in our place provided we’re smart enough to make the decision to believe that. 

If we’ve seen Jesus, we’ve seen the Father to quote John’s Gospel.  God is forgiving, healing, life-giving.  He gives us “home”.  If Jesus really is God (and he is) then God really is like Jesus.  For us, the church, this means we have to carry on like those four friends who carried the paralytic and not like the religious authorities with whom Jesus was ever at odds and who in the end had him killed.  So much of North American Christianity comes across like we’re only concerned with sin management and who’s in and who’s out.  At least that’s what you hear when you talk to people outside the church.  WE really need to be the ones carrying people in their weaknesses to the One whom we know can heal them.  That’s the way Jesus is so therefore that’s the way God is and thusly that’s the way we are to be with each other and with our neighbours.  Amen.