ISAIAH 43:18-25

PSALM 32:1-8

2 CORINTHIANS 1:18-22

MARK 2:1-12

Sermon – 2/23/03

Healing and Community

Prayer: The Collect for St. Luke’s Day.

What might you do for a friend in order to bring that person to a life-changing experience with Jesus Christ? What might you let some friends do for you to help in your healing by Christ?

Today’s Gospel tells the answers to these questions for five people. Jesus was preaching in his home in Capernaum, and both the house and the area outside were packed so tightly no one could get or would be allowed by the crowd to get inside. Even someone bearing a stretcher. Apparently, the people had not heard much of Jesus’ preaching, since they didn’t have enough love for God and their neighbors to make room for someone in dire need!

But the paralyzed man on the stretcher – who never speaks in this entire story – had four friends who did not give up! They carried him up on the roof of the (one story) house, dug through the roof, and lowered the stretcher through the hole to get their friend to Jesus.

Apparently, these four friends had vowed to “get him to Jesus whatever it took.”

Moses had the faith to obey God’s commands and, by God’s power, part the waters so that the people of Israel could go through the Red Sea to freedom and new life. These four friends had faith that Jesus would and could help their friend – faith enough even to cut a hole in the roof of Jesus’ home in the belief that he would welcome them because of why they were doing it!

The Gospel says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ [And later he said] “Stand up, take up your mat and go to your home.’”

“When Jesus saw their faith.” He makes no judgment about the faith of the paralytic. More typically, Jesus’ healings in his ministry were in response to the faith of individual people who came to him, like the leper in last week’s Gospel. But Jesus did not – and does not – require faith on the part of the person needing healing in order to heal that person. For this man, his need and the faith of his friends were what Jesus responded to.

Most commentators focus (like the scribes who were eye witnesses) on Jesus’ startling declaration of forgiveness of the man’s sins and this is Jesus’ first announcement that he has that power. And this man (like the rest of us) needed forgiveness; often, a person’s most visible need is not their greatest need, as Jesus well knew.

But I’d like to focus today, in my third in this three-part series on healing, on the role of community in healing.

This man had four friends who were willing to carry him up on a rooftop and cut a hole in the roof in order to get him the help he needed. Putting physical strength aside, how many people would you be willing to do something like that for, something way above and beyond normal duty? How many people do you have who would lift you up (literally or otherwise) when you really needed it (physically, emotionally, spiritually or whatever)?

Everybody needs to have four friends such as this man had, and to be such a friend for others. In fact, I believe that one reason Jesus Christ started building a community of disciples is that not nearly enough people experience a real community of caring. One could, indeed, live in the most densely populated state in the United States today and still feel very much alone.

“Lifting people up” doesn’t have to be physical, although sometimes that’s needed. This kind of healing ministry – caring for people and bringing them to Christ (with your prayers, your words, or maybe with you car to bring them to church) can make a real difference.

I remember that when I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education as a student chaplain in a major hospital – something Jason Wells will be doing this coming summer – we were told to visit the patients in our assigned wards who were facing surgery and if they had no one who would be at the hospital to see them right after their surgery, we students were to say, “I look forward to seeing you when you get out of surgery.”

Otherwise, that surgical patient might believe that literally no one cared whether he or she lived or died...and the patient might give up and die “on the table.”

“I look forward to seeing you.” “How are you, really?” “I miss you.” “I was just thinking of you, so I called.” Simple things to say, really. Simple things that can make a huge difference.

Sometimes, people we know will have calamities happen to them: illness, accidents, death of a loved one, divorce, job loss, whatever. All Christians can reach out to “lift them up” by following these simple three step instructions.

Step One: “Show up.” Either literally – show up at the funeral, visiting hours, perhaps at the hospital (if so for a brief visit), or call or send a card. People who are suffering are not contagious although often they are treated that way! Talking to someone who’s been laid off probably won’t endanger your job, sending a card to someone who’s in the hospital won’t give you what she or he has, calling someone who’s bereaved won’t jinx your family! But you might be amazed by how some people who have suffered a calamity have lots of people withdraw from them just when they need community more. That’s O.K.: those are “fair weather friends”. It’s our opportunity to be “all-weather friends.”

So, Step One: “Show up.” Step Two (and this is harder than it sounds), “Try not to say something really stupid.” I expect a number of us have had really stupid, hurtful things said to us at some point, including by people with really good intentions but who “didn’t know what to say.”

So here’s a few all-time “zingers” to avoid: one, “it could have been worse.” Ever heard that? Who cares if it could have been worse? Isn’t whatever happened bad enough? This sounds like an effort to console the sufferer – but it isn’t, it’s an effort by the people saying it to console themselves. If you really need to/want to console yourself, do so out of earshot of the person who’s suffering! Take seriously the suffering of the person you’re talking to; saying “it could have been worse” belittles their experience.

Second “zinger”: “I know how you feel.” I don’t think so! Even if you personally have been through something very similar, the similarities are for the suffering person to identify, not for us to proclaim. It’s crucial for someone who wants to participate in this kind of healing ministry to listen, really listen, to the suffering person, and not to make a snap judgment based on superficial similarities. What the sentence “I know how you feel” really says is “I don’t want to learn how you feel.”

Third “zinger”: “It must be God’s will.” This sounds like faith, but it’s really bitter fatalism – not what a suffering person needs to hear. Remember the Lord’s Prayer – when we pray “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That means that God’s will is not, yet, done perfectly and all the time on earth, and to argue that it is – especially in a time of horror – is highly presumptuous and nearly blasphemous.

It is not God’s will that 96 people died in a night club fire in Rhode Island. There are reasons for that tragedy and the reasons all have the names of human beings attached to them.

Saying “It must be God’s will” is an effort to get control over a situation which is out of control, rather than admitting that in a broken, fallen world wherein people have free will, lots happens that is not God’s will.

There are lots of other “really stupid” things people say; our Youth Confirmation class filled a sheet of newsprint with some of them. The basic rules are listen, listen to what the person is saying and wants to say, not to what we as friends might want to hear so we feel better! “Consolation” based on assumptions doesn’t console anybody. President Lyndon Johnson once visited a military hospital during the Viet Nam War and was trying to “cheer up” a bed-ridden soldier by telling him how he’d soon be able to go home and resume his old occupation. “By the way, soldier”, he finally asked, “What did you do before the war?” “Mr. President,” the soldier responded, holding up his two completely bandaged hands, “I was a watch-maker.”

So show up, try not to say something “really stupid” – and then if you want to help, ask what kind of help they want and respond accordingly. Bringing casseroles a convalescent is allergic to is not helpful. Let’s not be like the legendary three Boy Scouts whose “good deed for the day” was taking an old lady across the street. (It took three of them because she didn’t want to go.) And if you want to help within the church family, as well as among the other people you know, sign up for one of our “Inreach” ministries. Many of you already have (on your Time & Talent sheets) and I’m very happy to announce that we are finally ready to launch “Inreach ministries” in a systematic, ongoing way within the parish with Carolyn Hales and Patti Patullo as Co-chairs of the “Inreach” task force, which will meet for the first time tomorrow night at 7:30p.m. in the Bolmer Room.

Some of these ministries are straightforward, like “offering a ride to church”, “bringing a meal to a convalescent”, “helping with a meal at church after a funeral”, some ministries may be more open-ended, and others are still emerging. Training will be offered for certain ministries. All of us can be helpful by “showing up” for each other, really listening, helping in ways help is wanted and needed, lifting each other up in prayer (and sometimes literally) – and by letting ourselves be lifted up by others in the parish family when we need it.

Reaching out with Christian love and accepting Christian love from others can bring healing in ways that are definitely within our abilities, as guided and empowered by Christ, and can open us all up further to healing by Christ in ways far beyond our expectations. May we all be and have such friends as had the man who was healed in today's Gospel.

(The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard)

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church