"A Ministry of Access and Advocacy"
February 19, 2006: 7th Sunday after Epiphany, Year B
The Rev. John MacIver Gage, pastor
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.newlights.org

Scripture:
Mark 2:1-12
When [Jesus] returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So 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. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And 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. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" At 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? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven', or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he said to the paralytic—"I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And 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!"

May God speak through these words and make from them a holy word for us today. Amen.

Sermon:
He couldn't remember the illness that had stolen his body from him, not really. Once in a while, snatches of memory flared in his nightmares with the hiss and pop of sparks flying from a campfire. They flared and were gone. Waking in the night to pain stabbing downward hard through his neck. Endless, timeless fevered hours. Wracking chills in the midday heat. His mother's face hovering close, so sad, as she held another compress to his head. Lying there, whimpering, wondering, Would he never die? Would it never end?

But it did end, eventually, and he didn't die. As abruptly as it had come on, the illness left one morning. He awoke cautiously, coming at consciousness sideways. But his mind was clear. He gasped at the sudden, shocking absence of pain. At last, after so many days, he felt... he felt... nothing. That was odd. He felt sure he should feel something. So slowly at first and then with increasing urgency, he sent his mind racing through his body, addressing each limb in turn, asking it, ordering it, begging it to rise, to move, to... anything. But nothing. Panic seized him with claws that bit through to the bone. He opened his mouth to scream.

Only he didn't. Again, nothing. So he threw the entire weight of his will against his jaw, but his lips barely parted, and the sound that came out he didn't even recognize as his own voice. It was hardly a whisper, really more like the rattle of air in an empty jar. Just like that, his body was sealed off, stolen, and his life split in two parts—back then, before the illness and now, forever, trapped, silent and still.

Still they were good to him, he supposed. They looked after him as well as they could. They cleaned him nearly every day, and dribbled watery yogurt down his throat. And they talked to him to keep him company, bringing him drips and drabs of the local doings. At first. But gradually they retreated in the face of his overwhelming suffering. He became a thing to them, then, no more sensible than a stone. Even inside himself, where once he had paced like a lion in a cage, his mind hardly stirred now. He lay every day where they put him on his mat near the door, the sun marching steadily across his still form, while they went about their everyday lives, chit-chatting and arguing and laughing among themselves as if he were not even there.

That's where he was, of course, the morning he heard about him, the healer come over from Nazareth. There was considerable excitement in the house about that one—Jesus, they said. Neighbors kept ducking in the door, clucking on about how he'd done this or that: He was supposed to have touched a leper and cured him, That's now what I heard, it was some old woman with a fever, No, it was a man possessed by a demon, and right here in the middle of our very own synagogue, my husband saw him do it, Well, we know what that's worth then, No really, he did... The gossips swirled in and out around him, skirling up little clouds of dust that settled on his skin when they'd gone again.

His heart lifted within him when he heard that name, Jesus, Yeshua, "God saves." A common enough name—he knew three Yeshuas in his neighborhood alone—but for some reason, mention of this man set his spirit stirring again like a fresh breeze through the leaves. God saves. If only he could get to this Jesus, get to him and see him and touch him, then... then.... Just as swiftly as it had arisen, the breath left him. What utter foolishness! Get to him? How? Get up and carry his pallet? Ha! No, he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Or ever again. Would he never die? Would it never end? No one was there to hear his faint coughing sobs or see the tears making tiny muddy streaks down his dusty cheek.

The commotion in the street grew more raucous. A crowd surged past the door, chattering like monkeys. Here and there in the hubbub he caught that name again, Jesus, Jesus. For all he knew, the man himself might be passing in the crowded street outside. But of course he could see nothing from where he lay, just a forest of feet shuffling off somewhere to the right, down toward the center of town and the big houses there around the square. Soon they were gone, and the noise faded away, and the hard light poured in through the doorway once more, striking him like a physical blow. His faced burned with pain and frustration and anger and despair. Can not even God hear me here?

Just then, a cool shadow fell across his eyes. Four shadows, actually, four figures. A friend from his before life stood there in the doorway, looking down at him, framed by threes face he didn't even recognize. What did they want with him? And as he watched in confused disbelief, his friend knelt down beside his mat and asked him, o you want to go? Do you want to see him? Do you want to see Jesus? Then he leaned in close, practically putting his ear against his lips, close enough and still enough and long enough to hear the single wavering word he could muster in response: Yes.

It took all four of them, and they had to jury rig a kind of sling to lift the mat and his dead weight with it, but they got him up and out and into the street. By the time they did, the morning's crowds had become a mob choking the streets leading to the house where Jesus was staying. The four bearers had to constantly twist and turn just to keep the bed level. Even from that distance, they could see people spilling out of the doors and windows of the house like a sack of flour filled to bursting. They begged and barked and bullied the crowd around them to make a way forward, but to no avail. Would no one help their friend? Get in line, came the answer. Take a number! There were just too many, too many others. There was no way. His heart sank once more. To be so close and be denied! Well, they might as well take him home...

But then they were moving once more, moving away and around and behind the house where Jesus was. And the mat tipped and swayed dangerously as they hauled him up a ladder to the roof. Have they gone crazy, he thought. I wanted to die, but not like this, dropped like a pot to break on the paving stones below! But somehow they managed not to drop him. They even got him up onto the roof, where he was now sure they were crazy as he watched them begin pulling up the very tiles of the roof itself. But as he watched, disbelieving, he began to understand what they intended. They are making a way for me where there was no way. They will get me in to see Jesus, even if it means tearing the roof off to do it!

By now a hush had fallen on the crowds in and around the house. Who could talk? They were stunned. They stared mouths agape as this troop of madmen attacked the roof tooth and nail. They watched as the four friends worked feverishly to dislodge tile and mortar and dirt to create an enormous hole—a bed-sized hole—in the ceiling... of the mayor's house. And then, as if that weren't enough, they lowered another sickly man on a sleeping mat right in front of the out-of-town celebrity healer they'd all been so eager to see for themselves. This Jesus, from Nazareth, just stood there, covered now in bits of plaster and tile and dust, and looked up at the four on the roof and then down at the one before him. Then Jesus knelt down beside the mat and spoke quietly to the man. Once he had, he leaned in close, practically putting his ear against the man's lips. A long moment passed as Jesus listened.

What words passed between Jesus and the man, the crowds could only guess. Even the four friends couldn't hear. But that was okay, because this was his story, after all, not theirs. Theirs was only a supporting role. Regardless, they didn't have long to ponder, because just then the man on the mat stood up on his spindly legs. He wobbled there for a moment like a newborn colt. His face was a perfect mirror of the crowd's own shock and surprise, his mouth a perfect O. But then the man sprang into action. Aware of the wide eyes of the mayor and the rabbi and the elders and so many townspeople on him, the man picked up his bed, threw it over his shoulder, and walked out of the house and away down the street toward his own house... tears streaming down his cheeks as he lifted his voice, strong and full now, and sang.

Friends, as I've said before, we enjoy a great deal of privilege as the world counts such things. Most of us are relatively well educated, healthy, and wealthy, compared to so many millions around the world. We enjoy positions of respect and authority in our society. We have voices that command attention, if not all the votes of the electoral college. But these gifts are not given us for our benefit alone. If we are followers of the way of Jesus, we are called to share his ministry of access and advocacy, the ministry he inherited from the prophets of ancient Israel, who urged the care of the widows and orphans and resident aliens in the land. We are called to use our privilege on behalf the poor, the infirm, the elderly, the young, the marginalized, the foreigner, the immigrant.

To be clear, we are called to care for, not take care of the "least of these" our sisters and brothers. Christ's call is not to paternalism, but first of all to presence. We are not to lord it over those in need, no matter how gently, like that Victorian image of Lady Bountiful, dispensing charity from her lily white hand. But we are called to sit with, listen to, reflect with, and struggle alongside the very most vulnerable among us. And where we can, when we can, we are called to use our privilege to create opportunities for their faces to be seen, their voices to be heard in the halls of power. We are called to open doors, and, if necessary, raise the roof so all of God's children can be seen and heard and valued as equal partners in creation.

I believe these four folks who carry the paralyzed man to see Jesus in today's gospel reading understand their privilege relative to him. They understand that they can walk, while he cannot. They can speak and be heard, while he can not. They can engage the world in ways he cannot and take risks he cannot imagine. As a result, they can afford the hope he has long since given up as just too costly. So when the opportunity for healing and wholeness arrives in their midst in the person of Jesus, they go to the man and kneel beside him and offer their privilege in service to his need. And at his word they go to work making a way for him there is no way, no way at all, even though it means bringing down the house.

Today, I pray God will similarly inspire us to use the privilege we have been given in the service of others. I pray we will be renewed in our desire to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and create opportunities for the powerless to have access to power and advocate for peace, justice, and compassion for all, whether that's in the context of the marketplace or the church or the courthouse. For you see, no roof fashioned by human hands—no corporation, no denomination, no administration—is safe from God's irresistible power to transform and God's gracious will to redeem, to liberate, to save God's beloved children. You have heard it said that whenever God shuts a door, God opens a window. Well, I say to you that whenever human beings shut a door, God rips out the roof. Friends, God calls us to share in this great work of renovation. The only question left is: Do we have our work gloves on?