Mark 2: 1-22
January 19, 2020
Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber shares a confession in her book, Accidental Saints.
She tells the story of a man who attended her church in Denver, Colorado.
Bolz-Weber explains that Larry made her uncomfortable … not because of anything that he had done in the past or in the church, but because of things like where he lived … his age … his baggy pants and his bad breath. Things … she said … people usually base their judgement of others upon.
Larry had been attending the church for some time when he was diagnosed with the brain tumour that eventually claimed his life.
When he died, Bolz-Weber wanted to comfort Larry’s widow, but realized that she could not effectively minister because of the guilt she carried toward Larry.
She needed to confess to another pastor … to seek forgiveness for what she had done … before she could minister to Larry’s wife.
Bolz-Weber met with another pastor and confessed to what she had done … she had excluded Larry from a congregational email invitation to a church retreat.
She didn’t want to spend a couple of days seeing his baggy pants or smelling his bad breath at the spiritual retreat.
The pastor reminded Bolz-Weber that Jesus died for her sins … regardless of how large or small … and that through grace she was forgiven.
And after she was told this … Bolz-Weber set out to minister.
After spending some prayerful time off alone, today, Jesus and the disciples return to Capernaum.
He is teaching in a home and the house and the surrounding street are crowded.
Four men bring their paralytic friend to Jesus so that he can me healed. But there are so many people in the way that the men have to climb the exterior stairs to the roof … maneuvering the mat and the man up the narrow steps.
Once up there, the four men claw their way through the roof and … when the hole they created is large enough … they lower their friend and his mat down into the room.
Jesus looks at the man and says:
“Son, your sins are forgiven. … I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”
The audiences who first heard this story two-thousand years ago believed that sin and moral shortcomings were the cause of personal misfortune and of ailments such as paralysis.
But this story … the effect of forgiveness within it … turns that belief around … that where there was hopelessness … the forgiveness that is a function of God’s love brings hope and restoration.
The four men witnessed pain and need … and they acted to ensure God’s promise is felt and realized. Now, we call that outreach. But a better word … a word that stretches through the centuries … is love.
The men didn’t care if the they could be considered unclean or sinners by association … they simply acted out of love and brought their friend to the one they believed would heal him and bring him new life.
that led to this man walking amongst them.
This life … a life of discipleship … a life that serves as an example of others … as an invitation to others … began with the words:
“… stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”
People hearing Jesus’ instructions in this passage tend to focus on the effect of the act of forgiveness … the freedom it offers …that it offers a promise of restoration … of a new life that isn’t affected by guilt or shame … by things done or left undone or things said or unsaid.
And certainly … it’s a valid take-away from this lesson.
For the moment, I’d like us to consider another facet of the story … something that’s easily overlooked in amongst all the drama and theological weight of the passage … the mat … the man’s sickbed.
Jesus tells the man to “take your mat” when he goes home.
Is it because Jesus thinks it’s rude to leave the sick bed behind in another person’s home? Is it because the bed might contaminate others in the room and result in the need for even more healings?
Before he was healed, the mat was a sign of the man’s ailment and served as his identity in the community. It symbolized his brokenness and that brokenness defined the community’s view of his worth.
You can imagine the effect the sight of the man walking the streets would have on the community. People would have taken notice … they might even hear the story of the four friends … they might seek out Jesus for their own healing and to feel the boundless love
Carrying his mat serves as a symbol of what faith and love can accomplish … the new life of promise that is inherent of God’s love … a reminder of the forgiveness we receive.
I imagine that Bolz-Weber carries her experience with Larry as a type of mat since the day he died.
The mat can also be a reminder of what was accomplished by faith.
Carrying the mat also means that the man is better prepared to help others in their brokenness … to use the mat to comfort or carry others.
What we carry with us, our personal mats, can cause us to close our hearts to the world … keeping grace to ourselves … stored away … in skins that are dry, cracked and unable to accommodate more … finally breaking and losing whatever contents it might hold.
But these mats can be a sign of what’s possible … the personal baggage we lug along with us … can also inform our relationships and our service to others.
That the pain we have felt, the trials that have tested us, the injustice we have seen or endured, all serve to give us perspective … to inform our sense of empathy and compassion … they should cause us to pause before we act or we speak … that they inform our witness to the effects of love and the actions of others in our lives.
Our own sense of brokenness allows us to more effectively minister … more effectively heal … in our outreach to others. To realize that we might not see the mats others lug around, but that they are there nonetheless … and prepare our hearts to carry and share God’s expansive love.
When we recognize the mats we carry … and recognize that others carry mats of their own … our hearts and our lives are better prepared for life as disciples.
Allowing these hurts to inform our own sense of forgiveness … allows us to more fully and deeply appreciate the love we have received and that we share with others through our service … a service that we first joined in baptism and which, I pray, we live out each day.
Today’s reading is among those that are designated to be read on the day marking the baptism of Jesus.
And it might seem strange that nowhere in this story does Jesus get baptized … there is no mention of him being in the Jordan River … in fact there is no mention of water being poured or splashed or dripped.
But the reading does illustrate the life of faith … the life of community … that we are called into through our baptism.
Through baptism we are called into discipleship … to support and to love others … to minister to their needs and help them through life.
That … in a nutshell … is what we each promised little Ronan this morning. That we are committed to him … to Kim and Ray … and everyone guiding him through his life.
Don’t overlook the fact that four people brought Ronan to the fount this morning … just as four men brought the man to Jesus.
Through baptism, Ronan joins us in the family of believers … through baptism sins are washed away by love.
And through baptism … Ronan is called beloved … loved and called to love … just as each of us here has been.
Because through baptism … we are forgiven … and through forgiveness we are told to roll up our mats and go and show what love can accomplish.
AMEN