Mark’s gospel is primarily concerned with
showing us who Jesus is. It’s sort of a mystery novel at the beginning we are
told that this is the good news of Jesus the messiah. In Mark’s version of
Jesus baptism and temptation we are given a heavenly perspective of who Jesus is
then in Jesus ministry we glimpse what it really means that Jesus is the
messiah and the Son of God. Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God and we see that
this means that Jesus has authority to heal, he has authority to free people
from demonic possession and in this encounter with the paralysed man we see
that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. Not only does Jesus deal with the
consequences of our fallen world he also deals with the root problem as well.
“Your sins are forgiven’. It’s a gift freely given. And as we hear from the teachers of the law,
people who know their scriptures only God can do that.
The other thing that this passage does is
that for the first time we see that Jesus comes into conflict with the
religious authorities and leaders, this is going to be a theme that repeats
itself through out the gospel. When Jesus says to the man ‘your sins are
forgiven’ they immediately realise that he claiming authority that only God has
and this is blaspheme, only God can forgive sins. The jewish religious system
had a well defined sacrificial system to make atonement for sins but to freely
forgive sins this was not for man to do but for God to do. Like all people when
confronted by Jesus claims about himself or what he showed by his actions and
teaching they had to ask the question who is this person Jesus. Is he a liar,
or mad, or bad or is he the messiah. Jesus shows his authority by healing the
man.
I want to focus on some other
people in the story, because I think we need to see their example for us today.
That’s the group of people we only know as friends. We don’t know their names we don’t even know
how many of them there were, there we at least four. But we do know they had a
friend who was paralysed and they hoped that Jesus could offer healing and
wholeness to their friend, so they decided to bring him to Jesus. We don’t even
know if he was a willing participant in this venture, maybe when Jesus said
your sins are forgiven he knew that deep down inside this man was saying all along
‘I’m not good enough for this, I deserve to be a cripple for the things I’ve
done wrong, who is God to have anything to do with me’. But they brought their
friend to Jesus and he was healed and made whole. I want to look at what these
friends have to tell us.
The first thing we know is that they had
faith in Jesus, when Jesus looks up probably with dust and dirt in his hair
from the tiles and mud from the hole they had made to lower their friend
through. It says that Jesus saw their faith. It’s the first time in the gospel
that faith and healing are connected. They believed that Jesus would be able to
help their friend. Maybe they didn’t fully understand who Jesus was, they may
not have been able to give their paralysed friend a detailed understanding of
Jesus they just knew he could help. They had faith and as it’s a good
illustration of what James says about faith, that you see a persons faith by
their action. They didn’t just have a set of beliefs about Jesus a set of
confessions about Jesus rather their faith moved them to want to bring their
friend to Jesus. It spurred them to action. We can believe a lot of things
about Jesus be devoted to him yet how does it spur us on to want to see Jesus
bring healing and wholeness into the lives of the people in need around us.
Does our faith in Jesus extend to seeing him as a source of help and healing
and life for people we know even those who seem to have no need.
Secondly, they were a people of love. They
must have loved their friend, honestly hoped the best for him . They knew him,
perhaps they had been people who brought him food, carried him out to the place
where he could beg for alms which was the only avenue of revenue open in their
society for him. Possibly given him
money themselves and cared for him, done the things that he could not do for
himself. When Jesus came back to the town, they could have been like the other
people and rushed to hear what Jesus had to say, but instead they thought of
their friend and went to get him. I’ve often heard many impassioned pleas for
evangelism and mission but at the heart of seeing people come to Jesus is not
that we believe its our duty to so these things rather its our love for other
people. The great commission, ‘Go into all the world and make disciples out of
every nation teaching them to obey all I have commanded you and baptise them in
the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit’ is not just a cold order but
rather an expression of the love that Jesus has for us and his great
commandment that we are to love one another as Christ has loved us. The most
effective form of evangelism is not mass evangelism or door to door or street
evangelism its showing love to people around us in need befriending them and
loving them enough in the context of a friendship to bring them to Jesus.
Thirdly, they worked as a team to get their
friend to Jesus. They pooled their resources, their skills their determination
and their energy to see this person they had cared for get to Jesus. It took
four of them just to move him. Often we tend to think that sharing our faith
with others is a personal thing, it up to the lone ranger super Christian type.
But you know maybe you and I will simply be the person who finds the rope we’ll
need or who points to the stairs and allows the other people to carry a friend
up to get to Jesus, it’s a team effort.
But some of the greatest things we can do is to welcome people to be
part of us to belong before they will believe, to invite them to make friends
with us and then they will make friends with Jesus. As a church you know I hope
we are here for each other and able to be with each other to show Christian
love and bring our friends to Jesus.
Fourthly, it wasn’t easy to get their
friend to Jesus. AS they got to the place where Jesus was they found that the
door was blocked and the place crowded with other people. Maybe it was like the
one day Cricket games this summer and there were security men at the door
checking bags and the size of drink containers. But there was no way through
the crowd to Jesus. When we bring our friends to Jesus we will meet obstacles.
You have to say that there are many people who are kept away from Jesus because
of the people standing round him. We need to live with the criticism that the
best advertisement for Christianity is Christians and at the same time the
worst advertisement for Christianity is Christians. People often can’t see
Jesus because we are in the way. You know its not easy brining friends to meet
Jesus but he is the one that we know is a light for them and its worth the
effort.
Fifthly, To get their friend to Jesus they
needed determination, ingenuity a plan and the right tools. In the near east
the roof’s of the houses are flat and there is a staircase up the side of the
building, in the heat of the day people will live in the breezy air on their
roof, Sort of an ancient near eastern version of outdoor summer living. The BBQ
not on the patio it’s on the roof. So
they thought what if we went up there and broke though the roof and lowered our
friend down. And in the reply of a well known Kiwi beer billboard may be we’d
say “yeah Right”. But they loved their
friend so much they thought of ways of getting round the problem. They would
have needed to get either some sort of tool to break through the tiles and mud
and rope from somewhere and they did. They maybe even would have thought about
well whose going to pay for the damages to the house, we don’t know. We often fail in bring our friends to Christ
even when they have a need that Jesus can meet because we don’t have plans we
get put off by obstacles or we don’t have the right tools. We don’t have enough
holes in the roof for them to go through.
There are lots of good tools available like
Alpha and pamphlets that set out a gospel message or good books and bible study
groups available, but you know they in themselves don’t bring people to Jesus
and often we get caught up in thinking about the tool rather than the goal of
getting people to meet Jesus and be made whole. We think we’ll you know people
are suspicious of the tools, people who use them come across as insincere used
car salesmen. Notice the use of plans and tools only comes well after having
faith and showing love. Do we think of
the tools in the hand of a great craftsman making a table or a sculpture a
thing of beauty and say man you used those tools on that piece of wood rather
than you have a vision of beauty and you know how to apply the tools with love
to create it.
Finally, the friends were rewarded that
when they bought their friend to Jesus it was Jesus who ministered to him and
made him whole. In fact Jesus did so much more than they expected. He not only
met the man’s presenting need his paralysis he also healed his soul and his
relationship with God and the community round him. They brought their friend to
the place where he could see Jesus and Jesus was the one that ministered to
him. It was their faith that enabled that to happen.
There were three groups of people in this
story who gathered around Jesus. The crowd who came wanting to hear him preach
the word and maybe they too were hoping that Jesus could meet the needs they
had in their lives. There were the religious teachers of the law, who were
there to check Jesus out and see if he would fit in with their religious
understanding of the world and then their was this group of friends who saw
someone they knew who was in need and brought them to Jesus and the challenge
for us this morning is well which group do we fit in which group around Jesus
are we going to be.
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