Forgiveness Frees
Last weekend was our SJMC Silver Lake Snow Weekend – with yes, just enough of a snow base further North to feel like it was a snow weekend with some outdoor fun, even with the warming weather. I even cross country skied! I love this weekend in so many ways – the games, the conversations, the relaxed environment, the FOOD, oh the Food! It is a wonderful intergenerational community building event for our congregation – age 3 to age 84! One of my favourite parts of the weekend every year is our worship service together. There is something about gathering more informally in a semi-circle in front of the fireplace and having the freedom to explore Scripture together in creative interactive ways. We have even moved the service to Saturday evening the last few years, which gives it that sacred evening vesper environment.
This year, like we often do, we explored the same Scriptures that were shared here in the sanctuary last Sunday – the stories of the healing of the man with leprosy, and the man with a withered hand. We divided into 4 intergenerational groups around tables, with 2 groups on each Scripture. Janet led us through the Scriptures focusing on the verbs in the story, inspired by the book by Anna Carter Florence entitled ‘Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God’s Word in Community’ (William B. Eerdman’s, 2018). Janet did a wonderful job describing the process in this week’s pastoral newsletter. Each group had the Scripture passage and flipchart paper and markers, and they underlined all the verbs, and listed them by which character had which verbs, and what we noticed about them. Who is passive and who is active? What verbs did Jesus have? What do we notice? I loved how engaged our children and junior youth were in this process – with some of the groups even having them doing the writing on the flipchart paper! Then each group rehearsed – blocked out, or acted out the scene, based on the verbs, even changing out verbs to see what difference that would make. At the end, we asked the key question out of going through this process with the verbs – what part of the text ‘gets you’ and why? What got under your skin and made you think in a new way about the passage and about who God is, and what Jesus points you to?
It was with this recent experience that I entered into our Scripture passage for this Sunday – the one we have heard read and seen acted out in the children’s story of the friends bringing their paralyzed friend before Jesus. I took my own highlighter and marked off and noticed all the verbs in the story, and who gets what verbs. It was fascinating and revealing, and in so many ways enlightened and enriched the story. So who are the characters and what verbs do they get? There are the Pharisees and religious teachers of the law. Their verbs are all very passive. They ‘were sitting’ nearby. It ‘seemed’, that they ‘showed’ up. After Jesus has forgiven the man, they ‘said to themselves’ or you could almost say, ‘whispered’ or ‘muttered’ to themselves about what had just happened. They are still in the background – observing, making judgements, but not wanting to get too involved. How would you block this scene? When Mathieu and I met, we imagined this room with all these crowds of people encircling and pressing in on Jesus, but then these religious leaders off to the side in special seats – maybe raised up a little, elevated, symbolic of their power in the system – looking down with a good view of everything. Perhaps they were the privileged guests who didn’t have to get too close to the commoners, the crowds, and could just sit back and observe, keeping themselves clean.
This is all in total contrast to the friends who carry the paralyzed man. Listen to the verbs they get. ‘carrying’, they ‘tried’, ‘couldn’t reach’, ‘went’ up to the roof, ‘took’ off tiles, ‘lowered’ the sick man. These are all very active verbs. They are not just passive observers. They take initiative. They are determined to get their friend right in front of Jesus, and use creative problem solving to get what they want. This story would not have happened without the perseverance of these friends. So often, it is our friends, our faith community, that needs to carry us and uphold us, and even bring us in front of Jesus for healing when we are not in a space to do that ourselves. Notice that Jesus says ‘Seeing their faith’… in other words, seeing the faith of these friends, that Jesus forgives the sins of the paralyzed man.
So what about the man himself. What verbs does he get? Well, until the very end, he doesn’t get any verbs at all. He is the one carried, he is lowered down, but there is nothing he himself does or says or acts on. We wonder about his back story. Why was he paralyzed? For how long now? How did he feel about it? How did he understand or make sense of his condition? Did he view it in terms of sin, or simply a part of his human condition? Did he blame God or was he angry at God? What did he carry? Were there other ways his whole spirit was paralysed? Had he asked these friends to bring him to Jesus? All we know was that he could not move or walk on his own. It is perfectly represented by not giving him any verbs at all. It is only at the end, after his sins are forgiven and he is told to stand up and walk, that he acts – ‘The man ‘jumped up’, ’picked up’ his mat, and ‘went’ home, ‘praising’ God. Exuberance, rejoicing, in tune with God, free. This is a good news story!
So what about Jesus – what verbs go with him? The first statement says the Lord’s healing power ‘was’ strong with Jesus. We see that most of the verbs are active verbs as well – ‘seeing’ their faith, ‘will prove’, ‘turned’ to the paralyzed man, your sins ‘are forgiven.’ etc. But there is an added element – Jesus has a bunch of imperative verbs. This is starting to sound like an English grammar lesson! But basically that means an action directed at someone else – almost like a command. ‘Stand up and Walk.’ ‘Pick up’ your mat. ‘Go’ home. Jesus is decisive and Jesus is the one whose imperative commands bring healing and new life for the man. I find it interesting that the first thing he does with the man is forgive his sins. It is only later that he heals the man. Are the sins the many other ways that the man is paralyzed in his life? Is he being freed from the parts of his life that have alienated him from God and from his community? Is this what actually frees him – this forgiveness by Jesus – releasing him to discover his true identity as beloved by God, as worthy just for who he is. I like to think of forgiveness as releasing something – the man is able to release his hold on things to God. This is what gets the Pharisees riled up – this forgiveness, this being freed. Jesus asks rhetorically which is easier – to forgive sins or to offer the miracle of healing, walking again. Neither is easy, but Jesus does both. The man is freed and healed in body, mind and spirit – no longer paralyzed within his life.
There is one more verse of verbs at the very end of the story. So far, the crowd, including the religious leaders, have been passive. Even in the second last verse, it says that everyone ‘watched.’ But then, upon seeing the man jumping up and praising God, we get maybe the strongest verb of the whole passage – Everyone ‘was gripped’ – ‘was seized’, ‘overwhelmed’, ‘engulfed’ – everyone (does this include the Pharisees?), everyone was gripped with great wonder and awe, and they ‘praised’ God, ‘exclaiming’ – We ‘have seen’ amazing things today!. There has been a transformation of everyone, a releasing of the paralysis held in multiple ways.
So who is really paralyzed in this story? In looking at all these verbs, I am struck by how some of the verbs, the passive ones, point to, or are a sign or example of paralysis themselves. The Pharisees and teacher, and maybe even the crowd, have their own form of paralysis, of being stuck in a certain way of viewing the world and not acting in ways that heal and build their communities. The friends, in contrast, are already free before they even arrive on the scene – and they help bring the man to his healing by actively bringing him before Jesus.
The question Janet pointed us to when we look at the verbs, is what is it about the story that ‘gets you?’ For me it is the image of being paralyzed. Have any of you ever had a dream of not being able to move your body? It is scary! Or even woken up out of a deep sleep and found you couldn’t move your arms or your legs right away. It is frightening, and I feel deeply for those who live with any form of physical paralysis – an injury, or some of the diseases that slowly take away your ability to control or move your body – when you are trapped within your own body – and we know this is the very tough experience of people we know connected to our SJMC community – and they and their caregivers will hear and ask questions of this story in a very personal way.
We can also become paralyzed in many others ways. I am generally good at making decisions and acting on things, but there are certain parts of my personality and certain situations where I become almost paralyzed trying to choose between things. A restaurant menu for example. I stare at it and debate back and forth between several meals that all look great, hum and haw, and then, to Rachel’s utter frustration, typically ask the wait staff what they personally like and would recommend, then finally pick something but still agonize over what I might have missed out on. It’s my FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. Small silly example – but there have been times in some of the major decisions of my life – geographical moves, educational paths, job choices, when to have kids, you know – the biggie decisions – when I have felt frozen, unable to make a decision and move forward, when I almost panicked – it felt like my whole spirit and being was paralyzed. I think we all have things that can, for a period of our lives, paralyze us – difficult life circumstances, grief and loss, economic hardship, deep conflict with someone, figuring out some of the dysfunctions and dynamics of our families of origin, trauma, our mental health, relationship breakdowns, the feeling of failure in some part of our lives – all of which freeze us and we don’t know how to move forward. Or it can be world events. I have felt paralyzed by watching the horrific events unfold in Israel and Gaza. The pandemic left its scars on us. We are seeing more and more polarization in society on all sorts of issues and topics. Paralysis is a part of each of our lives – personally and collectively. Our story today has pointed to the role that our friends and community can play in bringing us, and all that freezes us, to Jesus, to healing, to hope, to forgiveness, to freedom. It can take that coming before Jesus, being lowered down before Jesus, in all of our vulnerability and fear and admittance that we are not in control, that then opens us to receive those words from Jesus to stand up and go home, to be forgiven, released, healed and freed. As we heard in the song from Christina – You are making all things new. We are free.
In this 5 week worship series, we also keep looking at our life together as a congregation and what Jesus is pointing us to. What are the various pieces of the quilt that make up the fabric of SJMC? If I look back on our congregation over the last few years, I think this story speaks to us. We had the challenge of the pandemic and how to be church during those years. It was hard, very hard, but I also think we rose to the challenge and creatively figured out how to do our pre-recorded and then live streamed worship services, to make all sorts of music videos, to keep connected through a new newsletter and sharing photos, to have drive by meals and parking lot celebrations and keep in contract and in relationship – to be together while apart. What I found hard as a pastor was that waning time coming out of the pandemic, when we could meet again in person for worship, but somehow everything felt different and church had changed – and we had to figure out again who we were and where we were going. I wonder if there was a time period there where we felt paralyzed as a congregation – unsure how to walk forward again. A year ago now, we were in that uncomfortable place. Kevin Derksen had announced his resignation. We were trying to figure out our pastoral time complement. We knew things weren’t ‘normal’ or as they used to be – in worship, in attendance, in community life, in youth ministry. What did church look like post-pandemic. Who were we now? We had more fears and uncertainty than hope or direction. I wonder if our Luke 5 moment came when we cancelled our already planned Lent worship service one March Sunday, and moved to the basement, around tables, for a morning of worship and discernment and listening to each other and listening for God’s leading. Leadership Council was like the friends, who literally lowered us into the basement, to be right in front of Jesus. We needed to admit and own and name our apprehensions as a congregation – our concerns for declining membership, our worries about families and youth, our unease about finances and volunteers and relevance – to admit our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. We laid these before Jesus with open arms. But then we could also be reminded of and name and claim our affirmations – our kindness and friendly, welcoming, inclusive spirit, our thoughtful and engaging worship and music, our wise leaders and leadership models, our potlucks and community events, our intergenerational connections – how much we love this congregation. It allowed us then to dream and name our aspirations and callings – reaching out and engaging the community, using our building well, attracting young families, sharing our faith, learning more and living out Jesus’ teaching, becoming a beacon of hope – notice how active all the verbs are here! Could it be that in lowering ourselves, Jesus has released us and freed us? Jesus tells us to stand up and walk! Some have commented that in March we ‘woke up’ as a congregation. Could it be that God is singing and these notes are our reply to the God-light warmth within us? Surely mercy has a cadence, we can feel it in our souls! Surely justice builds a chorus, making all God’s children whole! (VT 42)
Jesus invites all of us to lower ourselves before him – to bring our weaknesses, our failures, our insecurities and uncertainties, the places where we feel paralyzed. Jesus says to us – your sins are forgiven. You can be released. You can be free. Stand up and walk. Pick up your mat and go home. And everyone was gripped with wonder and awe and praised God – for we have seen amazing things today! May it be so! Amen.