The Sons and Daughters of Man

Mark 2:1-12

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

Mark 2:1-12 (NRSV)
¹When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home.  ²So 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. ³Then some people^£ came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴And 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. ⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” ⁶Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷“Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸At 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? ⁹Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—¹¹“I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” ¹²And 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!”

The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible

First

Parsons Technology, Inc.

Cedar Rapids, IA

Sermon:

          What a marvelous story of friendship.  Four fellows struggling with the stretcher of their paralyzed friend to get him to Jesus.  However, once they reach the house where Jesus is teaching, they can’t get to Jesus because of the crowd.  Just imagine all these people listening to Jesus and his radical understanding of their relationship to God based upon loving the neighbor as the self and them not moving aside to help a paralyzed man be healed. Maybe they were seeking their own healing and weren’t about to give up their place in line, I don’t know. 

However, what would we do without such friends as this man had?

You will remember Jackie Robinson as the first black man to play Major League baseball.  In his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson faced venom nearly everywhere he traveled.  Pitchers threw fastballs at his head.  Runners spiked him on the bases; brutal epithets were written on cards and spoken from the opposing dugouts.  Even the home crowds in Brooklyn saw him as an object of reproach.  During one game in Boston, the taunts and racial slurs seemed to reach a peak.  To make matters worse Robinson committed an error and stood at second base humiliated while the fans hurled insults at him.  Another Dodger, a Southern white man by the name Pee Wee Reese, called timeout.  He walked from his position at shortstop toward Robinson at second base, and with the crowds looking on, he draped a friendly arm over Robinson's shoulder, a quiet expression of support that spoke volumes and became a moment of healing in a national wound in American Sports.  (eSermons.com 02/16/2006) 

Friendship can be very, very healing.  Thank God, for friends with courage and perseverance who value us beyond the superficial. Yes, thank God.

Well, back to our story.  These four men in our story today are not to be outdone by the crowd so they climb to the roof of the house, wrestle their paralyzed friend up on the roof, and dig through the roof of the house to lower their friend down to Jesus for healing.

Once the man is presented to Jesus, notice what Jesus focuses on.  Jesus says that it is the paralyzed man’s friends’ faith that is the source of his healing.  At this point, we see a subtle shift in Jesus’ healing motif.  Now it is people’s faith that becomes the source of eliciting God’s healing.  More importantly, we see that one person’s faith can become the source of healing for another.  This puts a completely different light on friendship doesn’t it?

As Jesus looks at the man, lying there paralyzed, he steps in to a controversy that will eventually get him killed.  According to the religious leaders of the day, what Jesus says and does next is blasphemous.  Jesus will defy religious and theological conventions along this line on several occasions until he is tried by his religious leaders and sent to the Romans on charges of sedition to be crucifixion.

Now, we think such violence based on religious beliefs can only happen in an ancient story where people aren’t very enlightened.  However, that kind of thinking is erroneous.  Think of all the fanaticism in various world religions to day that spark violence, punishment, and craziness, including Christianity.  The first thing that comes to mind is the recent reactions in the Islamic world  to the Danish news paper that printed unfavorable cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. 

Jesus lived and ministered in this kind of reactive environment.  The next time you see those violent demonstrations on TV in the Middle East, know that you are looking back into history and into the face of the life and times of Jesus and his ministry. We could also dredge up news footage of various Christian demonstrations of violence if we chose.

In this light, let’s look at the cow patty that Jesus steps in when Jesus says to this paralyzed man, “your sins are forgiven”.  In this statement, he opens up a can of worms whose consequences he will not escape. 

Since the understanding of cause and effects in the natural world were not very sophisticated in Jesus’ day, the unusual or radically different often took on tones of either the divine or the demonic.  So, if some one is sick—abnormal—their sickness or disease would be viewed as either divine punishment or the consequences of their having committed some sin, which gave opportunity to the demonic.  What I am saying is that the demonic or the divine are more often a manifestation of human ignorance than causality in Jesus’ day.  Moreover, sin is not always the source of diseases or demonic possession in many of Jesus’ healings and exorcisms.  Yet, I caution us to remember that many diseases and disorders are the consequences of human sin.

Therefore, what we hear next is that if Jesus has the power to exorcise demons in the first chapter of Mark he ipso facto has the power to heal the underlying causes of the demonic.  However, in Jewish theology only God could forgive sin.  Here Jesus is saying he recognizes that sin is the source of the man’s paralysis, therefore, he is says, “Son, your sins are forgiven” and the man is healed.  Whoa!  Did you catch the subtly of this theological hair splitting?  Don’t worry, Jesus did.  He plainly responds by saying, and I paraphrase, “Hey, you knot-headed, scholars, in saying that the man’s sins are forgiven I am in fact saying to him be healed.  If I have the power to heal diseases and infirmities, then I have the power to address the source of the paralysis, which in this man’s case is sin.”

The implications being that these religious scholars were so concerned over splitting theological hairs that they missed what had happened right in front of their faces--a paralyzed man was healed, returned to health, and one would hope returned to a productive life.

Notice also, that Jesus didn’t offer a scriptural defense for what he said or for what he did.  Remember, in Mark, chapter 1, the people were amazed that Jesus taught and acted with an independent authority unlike the quibbling and quoting of the religious scholars of the day.

          Jesus, in effect, goes on to say, and I paraphrase again, “Okay, I will show you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins by saying to the paralyzed man, who up until now has not said or done anything, get up, take your mat, and go to your home”, and the fellow did so.

We hear once again of the crowd’s amazement, “We have never seen anything like this!”

The term Son of Man is one of those confusing insider-terms in the scripture.  Without going into a long dissertation, let me say that Jesus uses this term for himself more than any other term in Mark’s Gospel.  I would also make clear that Jesus sees himself as a human being with a divine anointing, like other prophets and holy men of scripture.

Mark, however, who writes after the resurrection, uses the term Son of Man in a much broader understanding, which recalls the glorified, heavenly being from the book of Daniel.  This heavenly being in Daniel will appear as a human being—son of man—at the end of the world to judge the nations.  Mark’s twist on this heavenly being may be a play off of son of man—a human—and the Son of man as a divine human being.  Jesus, for Mark,  is that divine being who is now in the world.  Jesus must suffer and die for his divine work, be buried, raised from the dead, and be glorified in death only to return at the end of time as the divine Son of Man, who will judge all nations.

In reading between the lines in Mark’s source materials, Jesus sees himself as a human being, anointed by God to proclaim God’s good news and with the power to back up his claims.  Mark and his audiences, however, would have understood Jesus differently.

If my insight into Jesus’ humanity is true, as I believe it is, then it raises some questions, doesn’t it? 

The obvious question is, if we—the sons and daughters of humanity, are anointed or baptized by the Holy Spirit of God then why aren’t we out there proclaiming the Good News of God and why aren’t we healing and exorcizing? 

Yes, I know, we hold a more scientific and naturalistic understanding of mental and physical illness than did Mark.  Nevertheless, there is still enough wrong with the world that is clearly the results of human sin for the Good News of God to cure.  That is if the sons and daughters of man will step forward and live in the power of God’s commission.

If we, the anointed, the baptized, the empowered, assume the responsibility to love our neighbors—befriend them with our faith--we should be healing presences in the world. 

If we the anointed, the baptized, befriend the angry, the hurt, the ignorant rather than seeking to control them or dominate them, then we can heal them with the power and presence of holy friendship.

Curing the Sick

On the 9th of August 1993, a 31 year old Sophia White burst into the nursery at the USC Medical Center, in Los Angeles, carrying a 38.  She was looking for Elizabeth Staten, a nurse who White thought had stolen her husband.  The wife fired six shots, hitting Staten once in the wrist, and once in the stomach.  The nurse fled through the emergency room, and White chased her, firing one more shot.  While in the ER, another nurse by the name of Joan Black did something strange.  She walked up to the woman with a pistol in her hand, and blood on her clothes, and put her arms around her, and hugged her.  If the nurse thought that she was going to hurt herself or someone else, she would just push White’s arm back down.  She told her, "I’m sorry you are in pain.  But, everyone has pain in their life, and I can help you work through it.”  She was disarmed by a hug.  Later Black told the Associated Press, "I saw a sick person, and had to take care of her”.  (eSermons.com 02/16/2006)

We can befriend the sick and afflicted even if it is only to drive them to the hospital or to a doctor’s appointment so they can be healed or treated.  We can push past people’s unwillingness to accommodate the sick, afflicted, and handicapped by supporting legislative and practical efforts to accommodate the handicapped.  That means don’t park in the handicapped spaces without proper authorization.

We can push beyond people’s discounting the sick, afflicted, and marginalizing them because they are ill.  We can tear through the roof of government inefficiencies and the indifferences of medical bureaucracies on behalf of family members and friends to insure they get the medical attention they need.  We can confront the inequities of our health care systems and our government’s misallocations of our tax dollars.  We can report those health facilities that fail in their responsibilities or nursing homes that deliver poor or abusive patient care.

If we, the sons and daughters of man, will address the moral corruption and decadence in our society and among our leadership with courage and determination then we can heal those paralyzed by addictions, ignorance, neglect, and personal irresponsibility.

If the sons and daughters of man, we, the anointed and empowered by the Holy Spirit, will live and proclaim the Gospel of God in Jesus Christ, and be willing to do whatever is needed to provide opportunities of healing and wholesomeness then we can heal the crippled condition of humanity.  We can be God’s mediums for healing the consequences of sin in people’s lives and in the life of our society. It can also be our faith in God that becomes the source of healing for others even when they have no faith or have lost theirs.  Friends of God, isn’t that amazing?  Have you ever seen or heard of anything like this?