Friends in High Places

February 23, 2003

Mark 2:1-12/

Have you ever had one of those moments when you realize what God has in mind for you might be far different than what you are aiming at and hoping for? I believe that through out our lives there come any number of these moments when God’s visions for our lives become apparent. This would be all well and good except that some times these moments are so far from what we are hoping for or expecting that we almost cannot comprehend them.

I think that all of us have these moments. For some these times are more dramatic than others. The great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described one such moment when the incongruities between what he wanted for his life and what God was asking of him were poles apart. It was during the Montgomery bus boycott. Not yet thirty years of age circumstance had thrown him into the middle of a firestorm in which he became the leader of the boycott and the target of great hatred. Even as he and his colleagues had hoped for an incident that they could exploit in order to start to break the rule of segregation in Montgomery they never expected what was to come. About forty five days into the boycott King had emerged as the leader and he was receiving hate mail by the bushel load, about forty pieces a day. And phone calls, some twenty a day. One night the phone rang very late and the voice of what sounded like Satan threatened him and his wife and his two month old baby. King shuddered and was more unnerved than he had ever been.

This was not what he wanted. Dr. King was desperately trying to do the right thing. He believed like the rest of us, naively, that the right thing would always be obvious and easy and agreeable to all. The trouble is that it rarely is and for King it certainly was not.

He made some coffee trying to recover his nerve. And he realized that this was way more than he bargained for. He realized this was not what he wanted for his life. He realized that he was putting his baby and his wife at great risk. He realized that what he was doing was wrong and in his anguish he decided that he must quit the boycott and save his life and his family.

He was a good man. He wanted to do right and in this moment it seemed that right was to not continue the boycott. How could he and have the kind of life he really wanted?

He was also a man of God so in his anguish he prayed. It turned out to be one of those moments. King reports that this was the first time that he felt the real personal presence of God. This is when the God that he had read about and studied and prayed to and even loved came alive in a way he had never known. And God spoke to him, Martin stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, and then King says he felt better and stronger and knew that he could face whatever was to come. This moment was to buoy him through the most difficult passages of his life. King was one of those rare people who could understand and obey his God and he did.

I don’t know if I could take such a difficult road. Presented with the same decision I know I would opt for the safety of my family. I too would wonder about the incongruity of God’s vision that would ask that I risk so much. It was a test of faith like all these moments are. King rose to the moment and the world was changed because of his faith.

It is that kind of faith that God is always after. In all kinds of ways, whatever we are doing God is looking for such faith.

This is the kind of faith that is displayed by the four people in the Bible story who want their friend healed. These guys will stop at nothing to help their friend. We are not told why. We don’t know if the ill person was important. We have no idea why these four would be so devoted to him. We don’t even really know what was wrong with him. But we do know that these guys were going to get him healed. How they do it is almost comical. This is the second chapter of Mark so the news of Jesus healings would have circulated but he would not be well known. So these guys are going on a hope and a prayer but it doesn’t matter they are convinced and committed. They will do what they need to.

That might be the top and the bottom of faith. You will do what you need to no matter what. But they cannot get near Jesus so they do what they need to. They haul this guy up to the roof and let him down into the room where Jesus is healing and preaching. Jesus sees that their faith is great and the obvious moment has come, their faith will be rewarded and their friend will be healed.

But Jesus looks at the man so stricken that he cannot get up who must depend on friends to move him if he is going to travel anywhere and Jesus says to him “Your sins are forgiven.”

What? Your sins are forgiven? That is not what these guys dragged their friend up to the roof and dramatically let him down in the midst of the great healer so that he would forgive sins. Who, at this point, even cares about his sins? He needs to be made physically well. He needs to get up and walk. He needs his life back. And Jesus is talking about sins?

Now it may be that Jesus is trying to make a point about himself and his divinity. The story certainly does talk about that. But that is not the issue for me. What I think is important is the difference between what every person there expected Jesus to do and what Jesus did. Because here it is again one of these moments when God’s vision is so different than any human expectation.

The incongruity is glaring. Who talks about sin anymore? Who worries about forgiveness? But we are very interested in physical healing. We have great hospitals and universities devoted to physical healing. Billions of dollars of research are done every year to promote and discover physical healing. We are concerned with health and we would be shocked if Jesus with an opportunity to heal someone turned to him and said “Your sins are forgiven.”

But this is the difference, perhaps the greatest difference between our expectations and the divine. Jesus said it himself as reported in the first chapter of Mark. Just when people were really starting to be aware of who he is and what he can do and so flocking to him for healing he tells his disciples it is time to move on so that he may preach in the next town because that is what he came for. Jesus is not as interested in healing as he is interested in preaching. It is really incredible. A sermon is one thing but healing that is a miracle. Not for Jesus. Healing is not the aim of his ministry in fact he says in this passage that healing is only a means to an end and the end is exactly what he is after when he forgives the sins of this man.

Sin is the problem not disease. Sin is the problem because sin is not all those little things we do wrong, those are sins. Sins are merely the symptoms of sin which is the actual distance between a person and God. Forgive sins and that distance contracts.

Now it is true that God wants us to be whole physically. That is why God has given us the gift of healing but the truth is that healing does no good unless our sin is addressed. Unless we grow unto God healing is in vain. Unless we grow in spiritual maturity healing can often be just an opportunity to continue our lives away from God.

As odd as it seems Jesus was not nearly as interested in our physical well being as he was our spiritual well being because our spiritual well being will actually bring us life, true life.

What are you committed to? What do you think God is committed to for your life? I actually think that we are all aware of what God wants we may just be a little afraid of the challenge. The kind of commitment that faith demands is trouble. It is sometimes as burdensome as dragging someone up to the roof. It is sometimes as scary as what Dr. King faced. But always it simply is what is best for God and so it is best for each of us. For it is here that we begin to live perhaps for the first time. It is a wonderful opportunity; in fact it is a greater miracle than even physical healing, living the life that God wants for you. I pray that we all might find the strength. In Christ Jesus. Amen.