“Is God On Our Side?”
7 Epiphany B –
Mark 2: 1-12
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
If you read the title for this sermon, “Is God On Our Side?”, and are expecting to hear a word about where God stands in the turmoil and troubles in the
But if you came here to receive a word of hope or a sign of comfort to help you live in this time when the dogs of war are howling and straining at their leashes, you came to the right place. If you understood the title of this sermon to ask, “What does God promise when my life is filled with chaos or suffering, or pain?” then you will not, I pray, be disappointed.
In fact, you have already received the hope, the comfort, the peace you are looking for. You have already been told that God is on OUR side. The words and acts of Jesus in today’s gospel of Mark declare in no uncertain terms that God is on our side. That God is on your side.
“But whose side is that?” Jesus today reveals himself as the God who is always on the side of the suffering. Or let me say that slightly differently, Jesus today reveals himself as the God who is ALWAYS AT the side of the suffering, regardless of the cause of the suffering.
That is the case in his miraculous healing of the paralytic today, and in fact, it is a common thread running through virtually all of the miracle stories. Karl Barth says it this way, “The important thing about [the people Jesus miraculously heals] is not that they are sinners but they are sufferers.” He doesn’t ask the paralytic, “what sins have made you unable to walk?” before he heals him. He doesn’t see the man’s current paralysis in light of his life history – good, bad, or indifferent.
Instead, Jesus sees this man only as he is at this present moment – a man who cannot walk, who is not whole, who is not the creature God created him to be. And in that present brokenness, Jesus stands at the paralyzed man’s side and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” and then “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” Simple words. But to a paralyzed person, these words are the end of suffering and the beginning of new life.
This is really good news, isn’t it? And yet there is something really about it that nags at us. Something that makes us, like the scribes in today’s gospel, want to say, “But what about . . .” The problem with the gospel, that makes it not just nagging but down right offensive is -- there’s no but room.
The scribes “buts” concern the identity of the one who forgives sins: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” It can’t be this guy, this flesh and blood carpenter’s son. In fact, the scribes get so hung up on Jesus’ alleged blasphemy, that they completely miss the connection between Jesus’ power to forgive sins and his power to heal.
No buts about it, the scribes observe but they do not SEE. They are blind to the one who is right before their eye. They cannot believe the God who is literally and physically present at THEIR side forgiving and healing a suffering stranger, no questions asked. The real miracle here is more than the fact of Jesus forgiving and healing the paralytic. The real miracle, which the scribes can neither see nor believe, is the Word of God made flesh and standing at our side: a God who is for us.
The truth is we have our own “buts,” our way of pushing this God at our side out of our personal space making him a more comfortable, more distant God that isn’t quite so close. So we have the God in the clouds with harps and white light at the end of a long tunnel – this ethereal God is not strange to us.
The God who accuses, punishes, and rectifies us because of his disappointment with us, this God is not strange to us. The friendly God who is filled with human notions of love and kindness is not strange to us either. None of these Gods are the God made flesh revealed by Holy Scripture in the person of Jesus Christ.
The God who healed forgave and healed the paralytic is a new thing, something beyond our knowledge and experience, that yet walks and talks and heals and prays among us. So he must come as a God of miracle who stands on the side of the suffering. He comes as a God known only through faith.
Consider the faith of the friends of the paralytic. “Some” of these friends brought the paralytic to Jesus. But they could not get through the crowds around the house to get close to Jesus. So four of them climbed up on the roof and burrowed through the thatching, and then lowered the paralytic into house where Jesus get close enough to forgive and miraculously heal him.
But everything about this scene is backwards or seems to be. The paralytic and the friends are kept separate from Jesus. So they go up, above Jesus, looking down on him. They raise their friend to Jesus, they lower him – I almost imagine this more as a burial – lowering a body into a crypt, a place of suffering of death – which is exactly where Jesus is living and preaching, yes, and healing. For the paralytic, this crypt, becomes a place of new life.
But it was the faith of the friends, especially the four, that is necessary for the miracle. This episode is like a variation on the Footprints poem. Two sets of footprints on the beach, yours and Jesus at your side. Then hard times one set of prints – when Jesus carries you, not leaves you.
In today’s text, there would be four sets of footprints on the beach when you were paralyzed and could not walk. It was then that we carried you. And when the way was blocked we lifted you up. And when we still could not reach Jesus, we furiously dug at the hardened mud and palms and reeds of the roof until our fingernails were torn and bleeding. It was then we found ropes and lowered you to the one we believed could help you in your suffering.
When the miracle was finished, the people said “we have never seen anything like this.” But I wonder if they had ever seen anything like the display of faith by the people who brought the paralytic to Jesus? The story of the paralytic’s friends is the story of prayer lived out. It is interecession enacted.
Did the paralytic himself believe? We don’t know for sure. We do know that he was suffering with paralysis. We know that his friends carried him and then lowered him to Jesus’ side. We know that Jesus forgave his sins and healed him.We do that after he was healed he obeyed Jesus command to stand up and go to his home.
Do we believe? Sometimes we don’t know. We know that we suffer from all kinds of things. Some of our doing others not. We know that our brothers and sisters in Christ carry us. They bring us again and again to Jesus’ side. He forgives us and heals us through his word and sacraments. And we can stand once more and go home, in obedience to his command. That’s the God who is on our side. The God who desires to do the same for everyone who suffers – which is, of course, everyone.
Miracles, like the healing of the paralytic, are the gospel in action. The church of Christ CLC is the gospel in action. The Church is a miracle? Yes. We are called to be like the friends. It’s like the theme Christ for All. We at CLC are called to be Christ for All. We are called to carry others, like the paralytic’s friends carried him. We are called to give glory to God when we see what he has done through this community of faith. We called to support and grow this community of faith so that God can be ever more glorified and praised.
The challenge, the opportunity Christ for All presents is precisely to live out this gospel story today – to believe, to carry others to the presence of Christ, to give glory to God, to live each day trusting that the forgiving and healing power of God in Christ Jesus is here with us and for us, today.
Is God on Our Side? Yes! Not only on it, but at it. Not only our side, but your side.
= = =