Text:  Mark 2:1-12                                                                                               W 7 Epiphany

Coming to Jesus

            In the name of him who forgives all yours sins and heals all your infirmities, dear brothers and sisters in Christ:  In the Gospel reading for this morning, we’ve come full circle in a way.  Over the past several weeks, we’ve been hearing about how Jesus first launched his teaching and healing ministry in the city of Capernaum.  And now, several months later, he has returned to this starting point that is the hometown of at least four of his disciples.  Doubtless he intended it to be (at least in part) a time for rest and recovery for himself and the disciples.

You will recall that he had to leave Capernaum because the throngs of people seeking miracles of healing became so large that he could no longer teach there.  So he moved on, leading his disciples from town to town in order to reach new people with his message of salvation and the coming Kingdom of God.  For Jesus, the teaching aspect of his ministry was always far more important than the healing part; and his miracles of healing were intended primarily to illustrate visually the sort of unseen spiritual healing that takes place inside when people hear and believe his Gospel message.  We saw a vivid example of this last week when we met for worship, and we heard the story about how Jesus healed a man of the dreaded disease of leprosy.  We saw how the living death and isolation of leprosy was a perfect analogy to the effect of sin in our lives – and how that Jesus takes it away from us with a touch that transfers the infection of guilt to himself.

After Jesus cleansed the leper, he strictly commanded him not to talk to anyone about the healing, but to go immediately to Jerusalem and perform the rituals required by the Laws of Moses.  But the man disobeyed, and went around blabbing to everyone about what Jesus had done. This had the sad effect of complicating Jesus’ ministry.  Word spread so far and wide that the crowds seeking healing became so large that Jesus was forced to stay away from populated places, or enter them incognito, so that he could continue his main mission:  to teach, and to heal souls through his teaching.

            And strangely enough, that’s what we find him doing in Capernaum when he returns there.  Apparently he had returned without it being known initially – maybe he even got a day or two of rest.  But our text says that eventually the word leaked out.  This time, however, we find the crowd in and around the house not clamoring for miracles as before, but rather straining to hear him teach. The house is packed, and people are spilled out into the street and crowded around the windows and doors just to hear his words of divine wisdom.  At last, it seems, they’ve got the message – and Jesus is allowed to spend some time doing what he came to do.

            But even for Jesus, good things aren’t allowed to last. Here comes the four men carrying a paralyzed man – and here we go again with the demand for healing miracles. But this time Jesus decides to take advantage of the healing opportunity to make his point crystal clear.  When, after some creative problem solving, they set the man in front of Jesus, he hammers his message home by first forgiving the man his sin.  It causes an uproar among those who haven’t yet figured out what he’s been showing them all along; but by then miraculously curing this man of his paralysis, Jesus makes it obvious to everyone: “I do the healing you can see to prove to you that I have the power and authority to do the much greater healing that you can’t see.  My ministry is about the forgiveness of sin.  Before it was pictured in what I’ve been doing.  But in case you didn’t catch it, now I’m making it just as explicit as it can be.”

And now, finally, they get it.  We’re told that the people were absolutely amazed; and in the parallel accounts of this miracle recorded by Luke and Matthew it’s clear that the people are not so much awed by the healing, remarkable as it is; but what astounds them is the revelation that they’re sitting in the company of a man whom God has granted the authorization to cancel sin.  This whole thing with Jesus, it dawns on them, is a lot bigger than we thought.

            But by now, we’ve amply made this point; and so what I want to do this morning is look at another aspect of this story that’s maybe a little less apparent, but still extremely important for understanding our Christian faith.  Yes, we see taught here the forgiveness of sin that comes by faith in Christ Jesus; but in this story we are also giving a glorious picture of how it is that we come to Jesus and to faith in him.

You see, one of the hardest things there is for people to accept is just how completely helpless we really are when it comes to matters of the spirit. It’s part of our fallen human nature to want to take credit for having done something – however small it may be – that contributes toward the attainment of our eternal salvation. Now, in most religions it’s obvious. You get the disciplines, rules, laws, decrees, pathways … whatever it is they call them, that tell you what you must do to achieve a happy existence in the great beyond.  It’s all on you:  one way or another, your salvation is in your hands.  With the Christian faith it’s exactly opposite.  Christianity is all about what God in Jesus Christ does for you. Salvation is by God’s grace alone, without any merit, worthiness, or achievement by those who are saved.

This is portrayed wonderfully by the paralytic in the story.  He’s completely paralyzed.  He cannot make his body move.  Perhaps he had a severe stroke, or maybe it’s more likely a spinal injury to his neck.  Whatever happened, it’s left him without the ability to do anything but lie there.  He is completely dependent upon the goodwill of others (and ultimately, of course, God).  And the point is:  that guy is us.  He is, in a spiritual sense, anyone who does not have saving faith in Jesus.  We are by nature spiritually motionless, powerless, and unable to go anywhere or do anything we want.  And with respect to our souls we cannot feed ourselves, wash ourselves, or improve our situation in any way.  We’re just about as stuck and hopeless as we can be.

But you’ll notice that his coming to Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with him. He never says a word in the whole story. We’re not told whether he wanted to go, if he didn’t care one way or the other, or if even if he was asking to be left alone.  And it ultimately doesn’t make any difference because he is not even remotely in control of the situation.  He is entirely in the hands of these four friends or family members who are carrying him to Jesus.  It is their faith, not his, that brings him forward.

And since we’re looking for the spiritual significance of this story, we can see in these four fellows the true spirit of evangelism.  Their determination and diligence is especially noteworthy. They aren’t going to let anything or anyone stand in their way.  We see too that there’s a big difference between bringing someone to church and bringing them to Jesus.  I fear it’s the case too often that this crowded house in the story is how outsiders view the church:  Jesus is someplace inside.  He’s saying something, but we can’t quite make it out standing where we are way back here.  All we can see are peoples’ backs turned to us.  And I think that this is where many would-be evangelists give up too easily. They get a person this far and say, “Now it’s up to you to find Jesus.”  These four guys in the story aren’t like that.  They know they have to get their friend into personal, face-to-face contact with the Savior. It’s that pressing need to bring their friend to Jesus that leads them to the roof. 

            And here a bit of an explanation is in order.  Most of the homes in Capernaum were made of stone – black basalt, as a matter of fact.  The roofs were flat, and were normally used as a sort of patio or deck. In the hot summer months, most people would probably take their meals on their roofs to catch the cooling breezes. They would probably sleep up there too. And there would usually be an external set of stairs that led to the roof; so it wasn’t a big problem for these guys to carry their friend up there.  They had a much bigger challenge getting through the roof.  Assuming it was typical, what you’d have would be wooden beams maybe three feet apart.  Over them would be laid a thick layer of palm fronds and straw, maybe four inches deep, and that would be overlaid by hard packed clay, maybe three to five inches deep. It made a roof that was cheap, efficient, and that helped keep the house cool in the hot Mediterranean sun; but it didn’t make a very good entryway into the house.  We read that the men literally had to dig through the roof.

So picture this:  because of the beams, what they ended up with was probably a hole about three feet wide and six feet long – just big enough to lower their friend through on his portable bed.  And if you had been standing on the roof with them, the whole scene would have looked exactly like … a burial to you, wouldn’t it?  There’s a reason for that.  In a spiritual sense that’s precisely what’s going on here:  the man is dead and must be brought to life.  So he is buried—but he is buried with Christ – or rather into Christ.  Jesus has preceded him into the grave as it were.  And there, buried with Christ, Jesus speaks to him the words that give life:  “Your sins are forgiven.”  It’s Jesus’ upcoming death and burial that gives him the authority to say that.  And the power of his word creates faith and brings the spiritually dead to life.  Then, and only then, after the man is made spiritually alive, does Jesus say, “Now, get up and walk.”  So it is with us:  we cannot walk with Christ until we are made alive in Christ by faith and the forgiveness of sin.

There is in the downtown area of the city of Cincinnati an old Baptist Church with this inscription carved into the stone above the front doors:  They will not seek; they must be sought.  They will not come; they must be brought. They will not learn; they must be taught.  Now, those of you who know me must know that this is a major concession on my part; but those old Baptists had it right on.  They understood that the man without the Spirit is dead:  that he is powerless to come to Jesus or to faith in him – but that it is Jesus, working through his word, who gives life and salvation by creating in the unbelieving heart the faith that saves.  They understood that faith in Jesus is a gift and miracle of God.

I wish I could say it were true today; but unfortunately, the vast majority of Baptists in our country no longer believe what that inscription says. They have over the past hundred years or so since that church was built, like so many other evangelical Christians, been seduced by the popular notion that it is within the power of fallen sinners to seek Christ and to come to faith in him.  This unscriptural idea is stated in various ways.  People are told, for example, that they must “decide for Jesus”, or “make Jesus the Lord of their lives”, or that they have to “choose Jesus”.   I can recall in my college days, there was an evangelism campaign going on with the theme “I found it”.  For several weeks you’d see signs, advertisements in the school paper, posters, and people wearing T-shirts proclaiming the message, “I found it.” It was all designed to get you to ask what it was that they found.  The answer was Jesus Christ and his salvation.  And okay, it was kind of cute; but the theology behind it was this same wrongheaded notion that says the natural born sinful nature has the capacity to seek and to find salvation in Christ on its own.  That’s just wrong.  And the Bible makes it clear:  You don’t find Jesus.  He doesn’t need to be found; he’s not lost.  It’s the person who doesn’t know him who is lost and needs to be found. Jesus is the Shepherd.  We are the lost sheep.

And please don’t misunderstand me:  I’m not trying to pick on the Baptists or any other of the many churches that have fallen into teaching this sort of thing.  But I am concerned that this very popular but mistaken idea is always spreading, and that it is now making inroads into our own religious community. If we are not careful, we could fall for it just like others have.

Why is this a concern?  Simply stated, it takes the work of God, the creation of faith and trust, which comes by the word of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and makes it the work of fallen man – man who is helpless and dead in sin.  This alone is bad enough:  that we would attribute to people the work of God; but it also has potentially dangerous consequences with regard to what we finally rest our faith upon. And maybe this will help explain: imagine the plan of salvation as a chain.  Each link in the chain is a part of the plan:  the creation of the world, the gospel promise, God’s actions in the lives of the patriarchs, the messages of the prophets, the birth of Christ, his suffering and death, his resurrection and ascension, and so on.  We recognize these links as the work of God alone; and as such they are absolutely unbreakable.  We can trust them not to fail.  Now, the last link in the whole chain is the faith of the individual. It’s what connects you to the chain and keeps you from falling into the pit.  For the person who sees this last link as another of God’s works, there’s no reason to fear.  That link is as strong as the rest.

But for the person who believes that he is the maker of the last link, it becomes a good deal more worrisome.  A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; and recognizing that, where do you suppose such a person will concentrate his attention?  On that last link, of course.  Instead of looking at the rest of the chain by which God creates and strengthens faith, the person’s full focus is right here on what he believes to be his own contribution.  And he’s left wondering, “Will it hold?  Do I have enough faith?  Did I really accept Jesus? Did I really give my life to Christ?”  And you see, that person is no longer looking at Christ; he’s looking at himself!  It’s gets even worse for him when he tries to answer the questions.  He can’t see his faith.  And so he has to look for the evidence or proof of faith in his life: “Am I living as a Christian ought to? Am I doing enough for God?”  If he answers “yes’, he’s deceived himself and fallen into self-righteousness; if he’s honest and answers “no”, he’s led to despair.  But either way:  he’s no longer trusting in Christ for salvation.

            Which is why it’s important that we maintain the truth that in a spiritual sense, we are the paralyzed man.  We must be sought, brought, and taught by God – and we must be buried with Christ.  And as a matter of fact, it’s an awful lot like this paralyzed man that most of you first came to faith in Christ:  you were carried to Jesus – probably by four people:  your parents and the couple who agreed to serve as your sponsors.  You were essentially powerless, unable to do anything toward your salvation; but in the water of Baptism, you were buried with Christ.  You joined him in his death for your sin.  There he gave you his own Holy Spirit, he gave you faith and trust in him, and he raised you up to walk in the faith that he created in you.  You can be confident of it because it was all his doing. Through the water and the Word, and by the faith that he gave to the people through whom he sought, brought, and taught you, he made you his child and heir.

            And one final thought:  now that Jesus has forgiven your sin, given you faith, and set you on your feet, he’s made you one of the guys whose mission it is to carry others to him.  Remember: they are paralyzed.  They cannot and will not come on their own.  It’s God’s work to give them faith; but he does that precious work through people like you and me.  Let us do it cheerfully, and with great determination and resourcefulness like the men in the story, so that many more may come to Christ.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!