Mark 2:1-12
Epiphany 7- Year B
The Message has a helpful clarifying line. After noting the two choices of remaining within holy speak or keeping everything within the language of the world, Jesus says, "Well, just so it's clear that I'm the Son of Man and authorized to do either, or both..."
What a lovely place to be - "either or both." Of course this is going to be confusing to some whose limitation or fault is with a beginning construct of "either/or" or "this is the one way." Here we touch base with the Quantum Dao. Here we have the opportunity to participate in appreciating the larger and the smaller, moving beyond that which is only our size.
We affect that which has been forever and that which just this moment came into being. We can heal through the physical, cellular approach of Western medicine. We can heal through the energy field approach of Eastern medicine. We can heal through nature and spirit. We can heal through touch and word.
How many ways there are. In having our eyes opened to that which we have not experienced before, and yet is so beautiful in its presence - In concert with the scripture - we gratefully affirm, "They rubbed their eyes, incredulous - and then praised God, saying, 'We've never seen anything like this!"
May you, this day, rub your eyes - an grow in your appreciation of a new way to follow the old desire that all may be saved.
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Mike (Reader)
Mark 2:1-12
I love this story of communal healing--how friends will go through the roof to bring their friend to Jesus. For his part, Jesus says, "Your (plural) sins (singular) have been forgiven." As a healer and exorcist in Mark, Jesus seems to be about healing the internalized oppression and casting out the Roman legions. Tough to preach to U.S. audiences.
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Wesley (Author)
So how do we preach this one? I will do a part of that through action. Here the sermon of words will be short. A sermon of act will be extended through an invitation to note which friend or situation most needs your bringing them to Jesus, no matter what the obstacle. After a moment of silence, to sort through this, the invitation will be extended to come to the altar and offer your friend or situation to G*D. So often we come to receive the body and life of Jesus - it will be good to come forward not to receive, but to offer.
Mike, I'd like to hear how you plan to do the tough work of preaching this moment in your moment. And, yes, this goes for others as well.
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Marjorie (Reader)
I liked what Mike said about healing internalized oppression - seems to be a pretty good definition of "paralysis" to me.
There is a lot of paralysis in the Church and church communities today, mine being one.
As we try to deal with pressures that are beyond us, fear and incomprehension can paralyze, making us fearful to move ahead in trust and faith that God will find a way. The "either/both" approach, while encouraging has its own trap too, because when I as an individual or we as a congregation are paralyzed, sometimes we choose to do both, which adds to our load and our dilemma. Here I have to find recourse to the Isaiah reading: Do not remember the former things - see! I am about to do a new thing! God calls us, through the prophet, to an excited anticipation of the "new thing" that is coming into being. Sometimes that is a motivation that will cut through our paralysis.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/february2003.html
Religious folks, some scholars and some not so much, have a whole constellation of rules and regulations about what is officially G*D's domain and what is not. In this story the issue of forgiveness is G*D's alone. Human beings are apparently not sufficiently created in the image of G*D to be able to forgive. Oh, they can pass on a word about forgiveness, but it is not theirs to pronounce on their own authority.
What is your locus of authority for forgiveness?
In days and chapters to come we will find the disciples specifically invested with the power and gift of forgiveness (John 20:23).
As we look at the world around us today, what are we still putting in G*D's arena alone? Are we thus shirking out "duty" as G*D's partners to live out the image of Christ in our situations? Is G*D really the only one who can set aside warring madness? Is G*D really the only one who can soften the heart so we don't daily rape mother earth and we do feed the hungry and clothe the cold?
Progressive prophets arise! We have nothing to lose but our chains of conformity to cultural confinement. Rejoice in being G*D's mouthpiece and image. Sing out in that great getting up morning. Intone a completion of the past as it is healed and forgiven and moved beyond. Hum a contentless song that opens us to seeing things we've never imagined.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/february2003.html
"The content of faith is not some or other proposition about Jesus; this Jesus has repeatedly rebuked. The content of faith is rather this holy impatience, this all out, go for broke, determination that the lame be made to walk. . . .
"It is not hard to see why the clear meaning of this episode has been assiduously covered up by ecclesiastical exegesis. The words of Jesus' opponents, 'Only God can forgive sins,' are repeated with mind boggling and pious regularity by those who suppose that they are followers, not of the scholars, but of Jesus! This is possible only by a kind of exegetical slight-of-hand that substitutes the religion of the experts for the word and deed of Jesus. In this, as in so many other respects, the Christian scribes have succeeded in remaking Jesus into the founder of the sort of religious tradition that he meant to abolish! The word and deed of Jesus is as destructive of religious Christianity as it was of religious Judaism." [from The Insurrection of the Crucified by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.]
Again and again we read these stories from the perspective of giving Jesus more than every benefit of the doubt so we can turn them into propositions about forgiveness rather than faithful deeds. What challenge is present here to your usual way of hurrying through this story because you think you learned it in Sunday School?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/february2006.html
There are times when I am the paralyzed one. It is then necessary for me to trust my friends to carry me along.
There are times when I am one of many who help to carry someone who is paralyzed in one way or another. It is good to be in concert when doing this as folks pulling in different directions are helpful neither to the other carriers (in a good way) or to the one being carried.
As we continue with this passage, it is important to remember the action implied in miracles involving faith. Whether the faith is on the part of the healer, the friends, or the ill, it is a faith that refuses to stand down from an understanding that the future can be different than the present.
May you be steadfast in your future orientation.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/february2006.html
We last left Jesus, having changed places with a leper, wilderness wandering. He has quietly returned to Capernaum. Eventually word leaked out that he was back and a crowd re-gathers to hear teaching, not receive healing. At this point, one of the folks who was either not present during Jesus' extended healing the last time he was in town or had contracted some paralytic condition between then and now was brought by faith-full, faith-active friends.
Emboldened by unnamed friends, Jesus asks us to hear beyond our words to the action of life. A better question than whether it is shorter or easier to say, "You're forgiven" or "Stand; walk" is whether you can hear and see and experience each in the other. This is astounding work.
You may be led to practice this new way of listening and speaking this week. It will be a translational challenge for you and those you interact with to speak divinely in regular life and to speak commonly in ritualistic situations. There will be those who will respond that you are taking a larger jump than they are able to do and, one way or another, label you a blasphemer or just crazy. You may get scared of the possibilities and back away. There will be those who will be thankfully amazed at being able to reframe their life. You may find a rebirth of action in your own faith.
Here are two additional thoughts:
For whom will you make a new backdoor to fuller life? For whom will you activate your intentions? Having identified someone or someones, what is your plan to participate in their healing and the blessing of those who are witnesses to it?
Contrast this scene with that of Job and his friends. On a scale of Job's Friends to the Paralytic's Friends, where do you fall?
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At this point it dawned that we are not on the story of the Paralytic's Friends, but the Friends of Jesus (Moses and Elijah) who come to him to say the easy thing, "Stand up; Head to Jerusalem."
In the first story, the crowd is transfigured – amazed and glorifying G*D. In the second story, Jesus is glorified.
Now we have a three-way scale between Job's Friends, the Paralytic's Friends, and Jesus' Friends. Oh, it was so much easier when I was dealing with only one layer instead of trying this three-dimensional scale. Wouldn't it be easier to just have to deal with one pericope or the other and forget all this trying to hold them together in a both/and approach? I suppose, but not nearly as fun.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html