St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Pictou, NS February 19, 2006

 

Spiritual Paralysis: Cure!

 

Isaiah 43:18-25

2 Corinthians 1: 20 (18-22)

Mark 2:1-12

 

There is a great theological truth embedded in the Isaiah reading that seems to be overlooked by many: a truth that could change your whole life.

                                 

I guess it is a consequence of our self absorption that in our view of ourselves and God we make a mistake of not acknowledging what the prophet said so many years ago.

 

You will hear people making statements that they believe or don’t believe in God, or they don’t know if they believe in God, or they doubt they believe in God.

 

The shocker that God speaks through Isaiah is that: even though we may abandon God, even though we may stop believing on God, God never stops believing in us!

 

Even though we give up on God, God never gives up on us!

 

God remains faithful to us, even when we are unfaithful to God.

 

Because God doesn’t usually answer our concerns with intermittent lightening and thunder bolts, we make the wrong assumption that we alone determine our relationship with God. We assume it is a two way street with other people, but we err when we determine our relationship with God happens all by ourselves.

 

As Isaiah stand in the ruins of Jerusalem looking at all of the desolation, God speaks and says, “I am about to do a new thing;”

 

In other words, we see destruction in our lives and God says, I am going to do something new with what you see as an end, because I see it as a beginning.

 

“I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert…

I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people.”

 

Through the prophet we are reminded of the “why” and the “where” we came from: God describes us as “the people whom I formed for myself”

 

We were created by God, for God, and God says that position does not change with our activities. Even if we reject God, God still waits for our relationship to be reconnected.

 

As we humans have problems with each other, so does God and God’s anguish is clearly stated: “Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob;

But you have been weary of me, O Israel.”

 

But God’s position is clear:

“I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake,

and I will not remember your sins.”

 

God is totally disposed to being connected with us, no matter what.

 

There is a great, powerful, single mindedness in God’s faithfulness to us.

 

The exact same position is held by the son of the Father in his faithfulness in his calling to love, teach, and heal people.

 

Jesus Christ took a lot of flack during his ministry: the people in charge didn’t like him because he was a threat. His arrest and crucifixion was not just an event, it was the culmination of years of negativity, entrapment, and relentless cynicism and criticism by religious leaders.

 

What was Jesus’ response to all of this negativity and criticism - to proceed forward with his mission in spite of criticism? He forged on with his teaching, his loving and his healing.

 

In the Gospel of Mark we have this story where Jesus was talking at a house and there were so many people the place was filled to overflowing. You couldn’t get close.

 

A man was paralyzed and needed healing. His friends brought him to the house, but they couldn’t get close. So they take him up an outside stairs, tear open the roof and lower him down. Jesus.

 

“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son your sins are forgiven.’”

 

Folks, this was not “a love in!”

 

This was not a cozy, warm and fuzzy “ceilidh” with everyone smiling and laughing, with fiddles playing and people happy that a healing was taking place!

 

Blasphemy was a serious charge, (punishable by death) especially when made by powerbrokers like the scribes that were sitting there.

 

If Jesus was like some of us, he wouldn’t have healed the man. Had he been self-absorbed, he might have just said, “You think you are all so smart, the YOU heal him. I’m outa here!”

 

Instead, Jesus spoke to his critics’ criticism grounded in his faithfulness:

“Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?

Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your mat and walk?’

But so that you may know that the son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins (he said to the paralytic) I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”

 

Before you think that you have heard this story before, remember who didn’t criticize Jesus in this story?

 

-the four friends and the man healed!

 

Faith spoke to faith: the faith of Jesus Christ responded to the faith of the four friends and the man who needed to walk.

 

The man in this story was physically paralyzed; he couldn’t walk. With the faith of his friends, he was able to get to Jesus and be healed.

 

What is more frequent in our lives today are different kinds of “spiritual paralysis:”

-we feel frozen to make any changes in non-life giving relationships,

-we can’t see ways of personally moving into the future,

-things happen and we just don’t know what to do next.

 

Whether it is dealing with church decline, relationship issues, drug charges in the high school in Alma, health issues, or whatever in our lives that seems to paralyze us the answer has been and always will be to exercise our faith options.

 

We need to use our faith just as Isaiah did, as four faithful friends did for their paralytic friend, and for what we need to do today for the future of our church, our community and our young people.

 

67 year old John Moore from Windsor, Ontario had bad heart disease. He couldn’t walk 10 or 15 feet without getting angina. He was so weak he could only walk a few steps. He went to St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto for a pioneering gene therapy study. Millions of genes were injected into his heart last August; he started feeling better in September. They won’t tell him if he has a placebo or the real thing, but he has improved remarkably and dramatically. Now he does a couple of kilometers a day on his treat mill and is packing for a two month trip to Florida.

 

National Post, Friday Feb 17^th 2006 p. A9. His doctor says:

“He’s gone from being a cardiac cripple, literally to leading a normal life,” says Dr. Duncan Stewart, director of cardiology at the University of Toronto and St. Michael’s Hospital, who heads the trial.”

 

There is a lot of faith examples in this story:

-the faith of researches that a healing solution could be found,

-the faith of health care people and institutions and benefactors who donated and believed,

-the faith of a man like John More who let them inject millions of genes into his sick heart with a process that had never been done anywhere in the world before, ever.

 

(I wonder if the doctor said, “Take up your treadmill and walk.”)

 

Faith has been and always will be the cure for our spiritual paralysis.

 

While Dr. Stewart will not confirm that John Moore had the real thing and not the placebo, there is a new experiment coming up with “genetically enhanced cells.”

 

“I told him to put my name down for that one too,” Mr. Moore says.

 

It appears that Mr. Moore has become a man of boundless faith.

 

Faith is adventuresome, takes risks, and tries what hasn’t been done before.

 

Faith loosens the power of paralysis and activates our lives. Mr. Moore’s wife Phyllis said, “We got a lot of living to do yet.”

 

The same of true of our church and our lives: with the power of our faith, there is a lot of living yet to do.

AMEN                   Rev. Alan Stewart