I have always wondered why it is that Jesus wandered all around Galilee and down to Jerusalem to spread the word. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to have stayed in one place and shared his message with one group of people? Well, here we have the answer to that question laid out before us. Jesus had come back to his hometown and had been in his house teaching and sharing. And his roof is destroyed by some people who want to get close to him. No wonder he went someplace else, when he came home his house was destroyed.
Now, of course, we know that this isn’t the real reason Jesus traveled around to spread his teaching and healing. Rather, he had a message to share and he wanted to get it out to as many people as possible. But it is quite amazing that people were so excited about what it was that Jesus had to offer that they would work so hard to get close to him. It seems that this is such a far cry from the world today where Jesus and his teaching seem to many to be irrelevant to their lives and what they do. But we will learn today, like the paralyzed man and his friends, that Jesus offers something more relevant to our lives than we even realize.
I. Paralyzed
Today’s scripture again gives us a view of what it means to share Jesus with those around you. We are introduced to a man who needs Jesus. We are told that he is paralyzed and therefore unable to make it to Jesus on his own. So a group of his friends make it their business to bring him to Jesus. I wonder if they knew what they were getting themselves into. I imagine that at first they were just thinking that they were going to bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus and that would be it. I imagine that they initially figured that they would be doing a small favor for their friend and left it at that. Their initial sacrifice for their friend was just to spend some time with him, taking him to Jesus. They probably would have gone to listen to Jesus anyway, so all they were really doing was bringing along a friend. But even if they didn’t originally plan to come hear Jesus, they were just giving up some time from their day. No big deal.
But then, perhaps, as they came closer to the house where Jesus was teaching, they realized that their job was going to be a bit more than they expected. For there was a crowd around the place where Jesus was. The crowd was so great that they could not get in close enough to see Jesus. Now, if it had been me, I probably would have given up at this point. I would have said to my paralyzed friend, “Sorry, it looks kind of crowded; maybe we could try again later. This is his home, after all. He’s sure to be back here sometime in the future.” Bringing this paralyzed man to Jesus would perhaps be a bit too much work for me. Or perhaps I would have stood at the edge of the crowd with my paralyzed friend and listened to what Jesus had to say from a distance. At least this way my paralyzed friend could have heard Jesus.
But the friends in the Bible didn’t give up the way I probably would have. They felt that there was more that they could do. They found a way to lift their fried up to the roof of the place where Jesus was preaching and they dug a hole in the roof of the place and then they lowered their friend on a mat down to Jesus.
These friends were gung-ho about getting their friend to see Jesus. They carried him up to the roof and then they broke a hole in the house, just so they could get their friend to Jesus. I hate to admit it but their fervor puts us today to shame. The energy they put into sharing Jesus was much more than we are often willing to share. A few weeks ago we looked at the story of Philip and Nathanael being called by Jesus. If you remember, we saw that it wasn’t enough for Philip that he himself had found the Messiah; he felt the need to share Jesus with his friend. So when Jesus told him to follow him, Philip ran off to find Nathanael and bring him along. And when Nathanael questioned the truth of Philip’s experience with Jesus, Philip responded by telling Nathanael to come and see Jesus for himself. Philip showed us the idea of “come and see” evangelism where we give people the chance to have their own experience of Jesus.
In today’s scripture we are seeing these friends also exhibit “come and see” evangelism. They have experienced something special in Jesus, though we aren’t told exactly what that is, and now they are bringing their paralyzed friend to experience the miracle that they believe Jesus can bring him. They know that their friend needs to experience Jesus and they are going to make sure that they do everything they can to give their friend the opportunity to do so.
One reason this church has a history of supporting missions, one reason that the Covenant has a history of supporting missions, is that we see something in missions like the sacrifice that these friends made. Missionaries leave their homes, their countries, the comforts that they are used to, and head to a foreign land, learn a foreign language so that the people they are going to will have the opportunity to come and see Jesus in their own language, in their own culture. We find value in this and therefore make a point of doing what we can to support missions as we can. And we realize that not everybody is called to evangelize in the same way. In today’s scripture we see that some men brought a paralyzed man to Jesus, with four of them carrying him on his mat. There were more than four of them, but four of them went to the effort of carrying him, the others found other ways to be involved, probably by being the ones who destroyed the roof of Jesus’ home.
The question I have for us today is how are we involved in bringing people to Jesus. Yes, we support and pray for missions across the world, but what about those in our own lives who need to know Christ? How are we reaching out to them and encouraging them to come and see Jesus? How are we bringing them in?
II. Sins Forgiven
When this group of men brings their paralyzed friend to Jesus, he is welcomed by Jesus and Jesus proclaims his sins forgiven. What an odd thing for Jesus to do, forgive this man’s sins. Doesn’t he have more pressing needs? Doesn’t he have something that is much more important to him than problems with his spiritual life? You wonder if this is what this man’s friends expected when they brought him? Yes, they were bringing him to experience Jesus, but I’m sure they had in their head a certain thought on what that experience of Jesus would be. I’m sure they were bringing him to Jesus so that he could be healed. But instead Jesus chooses to do something else with this man. Instead Jesus chooses to forgive his sins.
Now the odd thing about this story in the Bible is that it never really does much with the paralyzed man. We never get his thoughts about any of what is going on. We don’t know whether he asked his friends to bring him to Jesus. We don’t know what he thinks of having his sins forgiven. We are even told that when Jesus forgives his sins, he is doing so because of the faith of those who brought the man to him. I like to believe that this is because this man’s experience with Jesus is a personal experience, one that we don’t necessarily need to know about. I choose to believe that this man is touched very powerfully by having Jesus tell him that his sins are forgiven. There is no real scriptural basis for this. But I don’t believe that Jesus would have dealt with this man in such a way if it wasn’t something the man needed in the center of his being.
Maybe he lived in guilt. Maybe there was some sin that plagued his conscience. Maybe it was just the fact that everybody in the culture around him assumed that he was paralyzed because of some sin in his life and therefore he was used to being treated as a sinner by everyone he came in contact with. If this is the case, shame on those around him for making him feel so worthless. But whatever the cause for it, Jesus chose to interact with this man by forgiving him of his sins. And what a powerful gift Jesus was giving this man.
It’s a gift that Jesus offers each of us as well. We can turn our sins, our trials, our temptations, our pains and our problems over to him and know that he will take them away from us. Jesus can see what it is that we really need and Jesus can give us that very thing. This man needed to know that he was forgiven, and Jesus did this for him.
III. Healed
This story of Jesus and the friends and the paralyzed man would be a great story if it just ended there. The friends bring the paralyzed man to Jesus and Jesus reaches out to him and forgives his sins. He has had a special experience with the Messiah. He now knows Jesus in a special and personal way. But this is not the end of the story, not by a long shot. You see, people think that Jesus is taking the easy way out by forgiving the man’s sins. They think he is blaspheming by claiming to do something that only God can do. They think that what he says really has no meaning to it. So Jesus does something else for this man. He tells him to get up and roll up his mat and walk. The man does this very thing.
Jesus brings healing to the man who is in need of it. Not only did Jesus deal with the man’s spiritual needs by forgiving his sins, he also dealt with the man’s physical needs. He reached out to the man in the midst of his problems and gave him a solution.
But the Pharisees and teachers of the law got it backwards. They thought that the walking was the important thing while the forgiveness of the sins was just words. But Jesus knew what was really important. And I imagine that the man who had been healed, no longer the paralyzed man, but the healed, forgiven man, also knew what was important. For he had experienced the grace and the love that only Jesus can bring. And the reason he was able to do so was that his friends, this group of men, went to the effort of bringing him to Christ.
Again, I ask whether we are willing to go to that same effort. Again I wonder if we are willing to make the same sacrifices that these men made. Are we willing to put our energy and our time into bringing those around us into contact with Jesus? Are we willing to focus our lives on sharing the wonderful God that has lavished us with grace and love? Let us find new ways to reach out to those around us who haven’t had that experience with Jesus. Let us find new ways to bring them into his presence so that he can touch their lives with his. This is what we are called to be about as his church. This is what we are called to be as his disciples, his followers. We are told that God loved the whole world so much that he sent his Son to it. You know how that scripture ends… so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God wants to reach out to the whole world, and God has given us the opportunity to share him with everyone around us. Let us find new ways to do this very thing, let us find ways to bring those who need him into his presence so he can have that relationship with them. Let us continue to find ways to say to those around us, “come and see your Savior.” Amen.
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