First Presbyterian Church
Through the Roof
Sermon for February 19, 2006
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our psalm reading is found on page 514. Psalm 41 asks for healing. It isn't clear from the verb tenses if the psalmist has asked for healing and has already been healed, or if the psalmist is still waiting for God to act. The psalmist despaired that even a close friend has turned away. Even in that despair, the psalmist relies on God to help, remembering God's kind intention for the poor. The psalmist connects being happy and healed with God's favor. Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 41.

1 To the leader. A Psalm of David. Happy are those who consider the poor; the LORD delivers them in the day of trouble.

2 The LORD protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. You do not give them up to the will of their enemies.

3 The LORD sustains them on their sickbed; in their illness you heal all their infirmities.

4 As for me, I said, "O LORD, be gracious to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you."

5 My enemies wonder in malice when I will die, and my name perish.

6 And when they come to see me, they utter empty words, while their hearts gather mischief; when they go out, they tell it abroad.

7 All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me.

8 They think that a deadly thing has fastened on me, that I will not rise again from where I lie.

9 Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me.

10 But you, O LORD, be gracious to me, and raise me up, that I may repay them.

11 By this I know that you are pleased with me; because my enemy has not triumphed over me.

12 But you have upheld me because of my integrity, and set me in your presence forever.

13 Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen.

This ends our reading of the psalm. Let's listen to the choir praise God.

Anthem

In our reading from the gospel according to Mark, Jesus has already gathered four disciples, cast out an unclean spirit, healed Simon's mother-in-law of a fever, and cleansed a leper. The reports about his actions made it difficult for him to travel openly, so he stayed out in the country for a while. You can follow along on page 36 of your pew Bibles, but we'll be using my translation. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Mark 2:1-12.

1 When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. 2 And many gathered around so that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them.

3 Then they came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4 And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the rabble, they unroofed the roof above where he was; and after having dug through it, they lowered the bedroll on which the paralytic lay.

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Child, your sins are forgiven."

6 Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 7 "Why does this guy speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

8 Immediately Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were questioning among themselves; and he said to them, "Why do you question in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, Rise and take your bedroll and walk'? 10 But so that you may know that the Son of Humanity has authority on earth to forgive sins" -- he said to the paralytic --

11 "I say to you, Rise, take up your bedroll and go to your home."

12 And he rose, and immediately took up the bedroll and went out in front of all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

This ends our reading of God's word. Let us pray. Loving God, you have so made that we cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from your mouth. Give us a hunger for your word, and in that food satisfy our daily need, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I didn't pay much attention to this story of the paralyzed man until my religious studies professor retold the story when I was in college. She said poor people in those days carried a body bag, like a sleeping bag, with them. They slept on it, sat on it, and when they died they were buried in it. She retold the story by saying “they brought him to the roof, and dug through the dirt on the roof to make a hole, and lowered him in his body bag through the hole in the dirt. Who did he see when he got down there? Jesus, who told him to rise. Another meaning of that same Greek word ‘rise' is ‘resurrect'.”

I've never found anything that indicates that people were buried in their bedrolls, so I can't verify all of her version or not. But the rest is all there in the text. The four friends dug through the roof--when Luke tells the story, he said they moved the tiles aside-- but Mark definitely uses the word dig. The roofs of small houses were made out of dirt covering beams and branches. They periodically added plaster on top and rolled the roof with heavy rollers to compact it all so it would be watertight. The friends did make a hole, and they did lower him on the pallet, and they did see Jesus, who did say “Rise, take up your bedroll, or pallet, and go home.”

There are echoes of death and resurrection in that story. But that's not Mark's only point. This isn't just another healing story.

It is the first time in Mark that Jesus is accused of blasphemy. The scribes are angry and accuse him of blasphemy because he is forgiving sins. He isn't actually forgiving sins, he is pronouncing the man forgiven. The priests were the ones who proclaimed forgiveness and cleanness after the appropriate sacrifice was completed, and proclamation was done by the priests. The priests were the ones who were supposed to know when God had forgiven someone. The scribes were the ones who knew exactly what sacrifice had to be made for which sin or uncleanness. This paralyzed man had made no sacrifice, and no scribe or priest was consulted.

So naturally, the scribes accused him of blasphemy. They had to protect their turf and their livelihoods. We can't point the finger just at the Jews for being narrow-minded and dogmatic. People in power of all faiths have this same problem. Church leaders today accuse their critics of blasphemy, or at the very least, of being unchristian. Politicians accuse their critics of violating the constitution or at least of being unpatriotic. But in new testament times, the church leaders and the politicians were the same people, and so the charge of blasphemy was especially dangerous.

That charge stuck. At Jesus' trial, the high priest accused him of blasphemy; the penalty was crucifixion.

Jesus didn't blaspheme against God; he challenged religious traditions and religious leaders, as well as social traditions and political leaders. He critiqued people in authority. But he did it non-violently. He did it with words, with healing, with food and with love. It was dangerous for Jesus to do that, but he didn't count the cost.

In psalm 41, the psalmist complains that his friend abandoned him, but God would be faithful. In our gospel lesson, the paralyzed man wasn't abandoned. In that society, sometimes people thought a person's illness was evidence of God's disfavor, but his friends stuck by him, and carried him to a place where he could get help. And isn't it interesting that when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” The paralyzed man was forgiven, we don't know what for. His friends' faith made a difference somehow. Their reward was seeing their friend healed. That was good enough.

I read part of a book written by a woman named Linda Crockett who visited El Salvador during the civil war there 20 years ago. She visited a displaced village made up of women, children, and elderly people. They had been terrorized by the military, accused of being part of the resistance simply because they had planted and harvested a crop and lived on the land. The soldiers took their food and prisoners. One prisoner was a grandmother who had tended the babies and made tortillas while the others worked in the fields. She was imprisoned, raped and tortured for months, then returned to the community as an example.

Linda wrote “After her release, the old woman could no longer function. She sat and stared blankly or mumbled incoherently. She would become suddenly terrified of men she had known since they were children, cowering before them and pleading….She was filled with guilt because she had made false confessions under torture, agreeing that her community was connected to the armed resistance movement. Like many survivors of trauma, she could not sleep at night. Holding a small candle, she stumbled from shelter to shelter, begging forgiveness from each family she might have betrayed.

When I asked the community what they did, I was stunned by the response. A peasant in a faded shirt answered quietly, ‘We healed her. It cost us a lot, but we healed her.'

I caught my breath. Here was a community of poor peasants who acted on their deep faith in a God of healing to accomplish what highly trained professionals often cannot –healing a severely traumatized torture victim.

The man explained that no one knew exactly how to respond, but they were certain of two things; she needed to be listened to and she needed to be held. Working with that simple framework the people of the community organized themselves so that someone would act as a companion to the old woman twenty-four hours a day.

They talked with her, encouraging her to spill out the pain, the rage, and the grief. They rocked her like a child….They accompanied her in the deepest sense of the word, allowing themselves to become the targets of her displaced anger, shame, and fear, refusing to abandon her even when her fragmented mind imposed the images of her torturers upon the faces of her friends…

Eventually, she recovered from her trauma and was healed, able to resume her previous responsibilities in the community of preparing food and tending children.

The healing of this wounded woman took a great toll on the community. Their very survival depended on the labor of each person in the fields. Every day that someone sat with the woman was a day of lost labor, which meant less food for the community. They had no assurance that the time they were investing in her recovery would restore her.” 1 But they did not let their fear stop them from doing what their hearts told them to do.

I hope you all have an experience of friends holding you in prayer. I appreciate being in your prayers. I've seen hurting people come into this church and find love enough to help. I've also seen people in such depression and despair that they don't listen to the kind words that are offered, but hear condemnation instead. And so they go away, leaving hurt people behind. And so we who are left behind encourage one another. We can't do more than we can do, but we can do what we can. I hope our church can be like those four friends, willing to dig through a roof, to do what we can to help hurting people heal. Amen.

1 Crockett, Linda, “A Woman Healed,” the Other Side, May and June 2002, p. 43-5. Linda wrote The Deepest Wound: How a Journey to El Salvador Led to Healing from Mother-Daughter Incest.