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.
