November 25, 1979

Today, I want us to really experience this story of Jesus and the paralyzed man; not just think about it but feel it. First, wiggle your toes. I’m serious: wiggle your toes just to make sure they are still working. Now, turn your legs off. Pretend that you can’t move them. Imagine that you have not been able to move them for a long time. Day in and day out, you’re stuck. Getting out of bed, going to the bathroom, dressing, going to the table, everything is a struggle and ordeal. Because you are so limited in what you can do, some days and nights seem to last forever. Most of the time things are so boring and monotonous. You just can’t get up and go like others. Others,yes, others. People are nice to you, but you can tell they really don’t feel comfortable around you. Your helplessness bothers them. Secretly you resent them a little. After all, they take their functioning legs for granted. You’re paralyzed.

One day, you are propped up in your chair looking out the window, experiencing the torture of hour-long minutes. Four of your friends knock on the door and come in. They have heard about a strange but wonderful man by the name of Jesus. He is said to bring health to sick bodies, sanity to crazed minds, and God to godless people. Quickly, they tell of their plan to carry you to see him. Before you have a chance to argue they scroop you up on a stretcher. You’re bumping along the street feeling very horizontal in a vertical world. You try to ignore the stares and gasps of people as you pass. In your chest and stomach you begin to feel rising excitement that maybe, just maybe, this Jesus guy is no fake but the real thing. They turn the corner, and you are in sight of his house.

But the house can hardly be seen for your position. Flat on your back, all you can see is people around his house, in the yard, choking the doorway and windows. Your excitement almost turns to nausea: you can’t get in. Even your four friends at each corner of your stretcher look at each other questioningly. After all this trouble, they are going to turn around and take you home. But, wait, one of them has an idea. “Suppose,” he says with a wrinkle in his eye, “we go up on the flat tile roof, make a hole by removing some ties, and then ever so gently lower the stretcher down in front of Jesus. He would have to do something then.” The idea scares you. For an instant you start to beg to be taken home. But then you decide that you have come this far; you’ve got to give it a chance.

Not long after this, the hole has been made, ropes have been secured to the four corners of your cot, and you are on your way down feeling very much like a human trapeze. The first thing you notice is the warmth inside. The body heat of all the people crammed in the house has raised the temperature. Next you see all the people looking at you: some laugh at your stunt, others appear angry, most just look. Finally, all that fades into the background when you see that face and those hands, and you hear that voice. Jesus looks up at your friends peering through the hole they have made in his roof. It seems that a faint chuckle of approval comes out of Jesus at what they have done. He then simply gives them a little nod of approval. Now, now, he looks at you.

Oddly enough, he says, that your sins are forgiven. Suddenly you experience a tingling feeling starting in your feet and moving up your legs. It feels like the pin prickling sensation you get when your foot has gone to sleep and wakes up. Firmly but not unkindly, he instructs you to get up, pick up your stretcher, and go home. For a crazy second, you start to tell him to forget it. You’d rather stay on your safe pallet than face the scary walking-around-world without the security of your “condition.” But you don’t. You get up. Hurriedly, hardly believing what has happened, you push your way through the crowd carrying that which moments ago has carried you.

Now, wiggle your toes. End of fantasy. There is some truth about us and Jesus Christ in our life here. Let’s get at that truth by looking at some words this story hurls at us.

Paralysis. In Jesus’ day, it was believed that many physical illnesses were the result of a wrong or sin committed by the person. While Jesus made it clear that God does not punish people by crippling, blinding, or making them sick, he did seem aware of connections that we only now are coming to realize. Today, we are becoming more and more aware that there is a connection between our emotional, spiritual health and our bodily health. We have discovered how worrying and tension come out in high blood pressure, coronaries, and ulcers. There are even cases when a person suffers paralysis or blindness with no apparent physical reason. The mind so overwhelmed by a trauma, depression, guilt, or fear may express itself in the physical. Most of us have known of cases where doctors do all they can and explain that the person’s will to live will decide whether they can make it. Although we do not believe that God punishes us by making us sick, we humans do a good job of punishing ourselves, sometimes unknowingly with illness. Human beings are psyco-somatic unities: mind, body, and spirit are intertwined. We, therefore, really don’t know whether the man Jesus healed was basically sick in his body or spirit, whether he was physically or morally ill. What we know is that the power of Jesus’ love made him whole and well. The New Testament word for salvation - “soteria”  - means not just salvation from sin but being made “whole” and “healthy.” So, Jesus said: “Your sins are forgiven, you don’t have to punish yourself any more, get up, and walk!”

We may think all this is well and good, but after all we are not paralyzed, our toes work just fine. Well, maybe we aren’t paralyzed. But then again maybe we are. For what I have been getting at is that paralysis is not just of the body. In fact, I see a widespread malady in your life and my life which I call “walking paralysis.” It is the paralysis we often experience in our emotional, our spiritual, and our relational lives. Sometimes we find ourselves unable to move and locked in by a dead-end job or life situation. Sometimes we are immobilized by a problem, guilt we feel about something, something we fear, or someone we hate. Try as we may, we can’t seem to move away from it. It saps us. People can get locked into relating to daily members in ways that cause more put-downs than put-ups. Most of the time”walking paralysis” is not dramatic at all. In fact, blahness is one of its symptoms. Life is not particularly up or down, just a monotonous, mediocre middle. In order to escape the pains of life, some of us give up chancing great joys, and we settle for feeling nothing much. You see, your and my toes giggle just fine. Yet most of us in some way or another are paralyzed. Walking paralysis. It kills you in inches. 

And “walking paralysis” is not just a personal disease; it is also a social disease that infects the way groups in society and nations relate to each other. For example, world hunger is in part a social form of “walking paralysis.” World hunger today is not the result of too little food in the world. There is enough food. In fact, this God-given green earth produces 3.5 pounds of grain per person per day. That’s a lot of Fruit Loops and corn flakes. The trouble is that ⅓ of us are overfed and belching while the stomachs of the other 2/3s of the world population growl from hunger. In a little article about what we can expect in the 1980s, the famous architect Buckminster Fuller has said that for the first time in the history of the world, ‘survival of the fittest’ is an outmoded and old fashioned idea. Because of the earth’s resources - even though limited - and human technology, we now have the capacity for an earth that can take care of everyone. The question is whether we will move from the old way of hoarding to the needed way of sharing. Or will we remain paralyzed by our selfishness? For a people who put men on the moon to say we can’t get food to a hungry child is to admit the “walking paralysis” of selfishness which scourges and scars God’s earth and people.

The Faith. Mark makes a point to say that Jesus noticed the faith not only of them to be made well but the faith of the four friends also. Faith is one of those words we do more talking about than living about. I feel certain that both the paralytic and his friends had their doubts about what they were doing and what Jesus could do, if anything. I don’t know of any true faith that is not tested, pushed, and stretched by doubt. Still, they took a chance and let the faith and hope win out in them. Being cynical and expecting nothing may be a safe way to exist. Bt you must have the faith to take a chance to really soar and live. They went for it, and Mark says, it made all the difference.

There is a story of a man who fell over a cliff while mountain climbing. Midway down, he caught on to a little bush. There, hanging on for all he was worth, his feet treading the air, he called out: “Is there anybody up there who can help me?” Instantly, a deep voice reverberated: “Yes, I’m here.” “Who are you?” the man called. “Why, I’m the Lord. And if you have faith in me, then I can help you.” The man answered, “Sure, I have faith in you. Now, get me out of this mess!” At that point the Lord said, “If you have faith in me, then let go.” The man hung there silently for a moment thinking, then he called out: “Is there anybody else up there who can help me?”

Maybe the reason we have trouble moving away from our problems, fears, guilt, and grudges, is because we are afraid of letting go of old ways.The old way of dealing with my family, myself, my job, or whatever may not be all that great, but at least it is a familiar rut, a comfortable discomfort. To overcome “walking paralysis,” we at some point have to stop trying to impress God, others, and ourselves and leg to and trust that they might simply love us for ourselves instead of for our accomplishments of who we pretend to be. Faith is listening to and letting God and others move us away from old paralyzed ways to new ways of loving each other. Legs and lives which have been paralyzed have to be moved if they are to be made well. Try a life move of faith with yourself, your loved ones, and your God! 

The Friends. I heard William Sloane Coffin say in a sermon that the friends of the story make him think of the church and Christians at their best. What is the role of the church and Christians if not to get people to Christ, the Lord of Life? I don’t mean pious, syrupy, and fanatic preaching to people. I mean that the role of the church is to get people in their need to that which can meet their needs. In a way, we can see the paralytic representing all of us hiring humans being brought to the one who can heal our hurts - our minds, bodies, and spirits. Sadly, when we humans need all the help we can get from others to put our lives together, we so often put each other more down than up.

Charles Shultz’ Peanuts have a way of telling us the truth about the way we treat each other. One day, as he is eating a sandwich, Linus becomes fascinated with his hands. He says to Lucy: “Look at my hands. Why someday these hands may do great things: surgery, paint a masterpiece, or write a great book. What do you think about these hands?” To this Llucy deadpans: “They’ve got peanut butter on them.”

Think about it. What are you doing to…for…against…people around you? Do you see anything which makes them feel loved, secure, encouraged? Or is your normal response to see the peanut butter on their hands? What comes out of you? Criticism, disinterest, poking fun, talking behind the person’s back, or some other put down? How we humans hunger for and love people who make us feel special. When we try to get people to their best selves, we join Jesus who brought out the beautiful in the most watery people. The job of the church is to help people get what they need: food, hugs, the good news that they can trust their living and dying to the Father of Jesus Christ. As we try to be God’s church, we need to constantly evaluate what our worship, study, and fellowship are doing for people. Are we challenging people to throw down their walking paralysis crutches with their internal hangups, their relationships with others, and with their God? The mission and social concern efforts of our church to get food to hungry people like the Cambodians, and aid to the victims of natural disasters are part of our trying to meet the needs of humans paralyzed by pain in the name of Jesus Christ.

The Responsibility. I have a strange hunch that the paralyzed man, for just a moment, had second thoughts about wanting to be made well. Why? Because Jesus said get up, pick up your stretcher, and get on with your life. The paralyzed man could no longer lay back feeling sorry for himself and letting others haul him around. Most of us know people who have an – as the saying goes– “enjoyed bad health” for years. They manage to get a lot of attention with their woe by moaning and groaning. You wonder if they would know what to do if their problems with their health, finances, husband, or children ever got any better. Wait a minute, even you and I do this at times. We know how to make people feel sorry for us or lay guilt on them to get them to do what we want. The paralyzed guy made whole by Jesus had to hang up his crutches and start taking responsibility for his life. Mark didn’t tell you all that Jesus said. He told the guy to get up, take the cot home, get some boards and nails, and come back to fix his roof!

We have been talking about being paralyzed by our problems: guilt, fears, or relationships with husbands, wives, and family members. Most of us don’t realize how much raw life energy takes to worry, feel guilty, or fight with people. Guilt, hostility, fears, and grudges literally take away the emotional and physical energy we have to give to life. If you can let God take away your guilt with forgiveness and you can chance new ways of loving with those intimate enemies in your family, then you are going to discover that you have a lot more energy and strength to simply enjoy being alive. You are going to be a lot freer to help others get what they need from you for their lives. You’ll experience the thrill of doing some carrying instead of always relying on people to carry you.

To continue our medical metaphor a bit more, if you are looking for a tranquilizer to make the world and its problems go away, then don’t look to Jesus Christ. Whatever else he is, he is no numbing tranquilizer. He is an injection of raw caring power into the lives of stiff, self-centered human beings. He will take the walking paralysis of your fears and hangups away, but then he will push you to use your muscles for bringing some honesty to business and government. He’ll wake up you in the night making you look for ways to feed the hungry and help the kicked around people of the world.

In closing, let’s sum up the four words: paralysis, faith, the friends, and the responsibility. First, few of us escape situations in our lives where we can’t seem to move away from our own. Each of us has the right and need, at times, to be on the stretchers. Second, no one is probably as paralyzed as the person who can’t admit it. Let go, and by trust and faith let God and others love the pain out of him. Third, the friends made us think of the church and Christains who try to get people in their hurts to the One who can take those hurts away, be those hurts: hunger, loneliness, or guilt. The question was asked: What are you doing to people around you? Putting them up or putting them down? Fourthly and finally, once we are freed from our hurts, we have the responsibility for getting on with our lives, throwing away the crutches and excuses, in order to do some carrying of others. 

What’s your choice? You can’t have both. Cot or Christ?