SERMON IN A SENTENCE: We cannot be in a right relationship with God if we are in a wrong relationship with others.
Two weeks ago we encountered Paul’s challenge to “Be like Christ,” and we looked at Mark’s account of Jesus healing a leper for clues of how we could actually be like Christ. We learned three things that will help us in our desire to be like Christ: 1) we have to be people of compassion–that is, we have to be willing to enter into the condition of suffering in which others live; 2) we have to do the right thing even during those times when we would rather not; and 3) we have to reach out to those who are “cut off” from society and life and touch them in a significant way. Last week we took a break from looking at the Gospel to learn how to be like Christ. Instead, we examined Mark’s story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man to learn some basic elements of biblical faith. Our examination concluded with four features of biblical faith: 1) faith is a trusting in, or a reliance on, God’s character and ability; 2) it requires action; 3) it is not hindered by obstacles; and 4) it is the source of stability. This week we’re going to return to the challenge to be like Christ. We are going to pick up the story of Jesus where we left off last week because the really important part of the paralyzed man’s encounter with Jesus was not faith, but forgiveness. And with that forgiveness came controversy.
If I were to extend a challenge to sum up Jesus’ existence in a single word, most people would volunteer words like, “compassion,” or, “love,” or, “forgiveness”–all of which would be perfectly acceptable and appropriate. Nevertheless, if I were to sum up Jesus’ existence in a single word, I would choose, “controversy.” Jesus’ compassion, Jesus’ love, and Jesus’ forgiveness all generated controversy. In fact everything about Jesus fostered controversy. There was controversy concerning his birth. There was controversy concerning his death. There is still controversy about what happened to his body. There’s even controversy about a piece of cloth that some people believe was Jesus’ burial shroud. Controversy, thy name is Jesus.
A lot of people walk around with an image of Jesus as if he were simply some nice guy. But “nice guy” Jesus doesn’t explain how he ended up on a cross. Nice guys may finish last, but they don’t finish up crucified. We are told that the Jewish religious leaders actively sought out ways to kill Jesus. This is troubling for us if we hold to the “nice guy” Jesus model. So we are forced to interpret the whole story in a way that makes out everyone who opposed Jesus to be evil and corrupt men who were threatened by Jesus, particularly his “niceness.” But those opponents of Jesus were religious people. They were no worse than any of us. They were no less interested in doing and believing the right thing than we are. After all, they were men who placed their faith in God at the center of their lives and who tried to live in a manner that reflected that faith. So if they weren’t evil and corrupt, why then did they have a problem with Jesus? The answer is because Jesus may have been a difficult guy to get along with. Jesus possessed an intense, “in your face” humanity that contradicted what the sensible religious leaders of the time thought was appropriate behavior for a fellow religious teacher. They opposed Jesus because they took him seriously and thought that his behavior undermined his message, and ultimately threatened their own respectability as well. If the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus’ time can be criticized, it’s not because they were evil or corrupt, but because they had become focused more on looking good than doing good.
The section of Mark’s Gospel that we moved into last week is one that is filled with controversy about what Jesus was saying and doing. That controversy created conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of Capernaum that ended with the Jewish leaders plotting to kill Jesus. The coming of the Kingdom as personified by Jesus will bring healing, forgiveness, and inclusion to others, but for Jesus, it will also bring opposition and death.
The contention between Jesus and the religious leaders began when Jesus was back in Capernaum. A paralyzed man was brought to him. The paralyzed man and his friends couldn’t get to Jesus because there were too many people, so they found a way to carry the man up to the roof and dug a hole through the roof so that they could lower the paralyzed man down to where Jesus was. Jesus, upon seeing their faith, said, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” For most of us, this isn’t a big deal. We are used to the idea that Jesus forgives sins. But to be fair, we’ve had two thousand years to get used to the notion. The scribes who were there were hearing of it for the first time, and they weren’t so comfortable with the concept as we are.
The scribes were biblical scholars who specialized in matters of Mosaic Law. They thought what Jesus said was blasphemous. They didn’t think that Jesus was being blasphemous because they were evil, but it was precisely because they weren’t evil that they thought that he was being blasphemous. Blasphemy was the crime of making statements that brought dishonor, or insulted God in some way. Jesus, by declaring the man’s sins forgiven, was taking on a divine attribute, thus robbing God of his glory. It is God who forgives sins, it is certainly not mortal men, and certainly not the son of a Galilean carpenter, whose birth was questionable at best. So the scribes call Jesus on the matter. “Who but God alone is able to forgive sins?” they asked.
Jesus’ response to them made it clear that he was able to forgive sins. “Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’?” If I came across a paralyzed man in a wheel chair and told him to get up and walk, it would probably result in some hurt feelings and a declaration that I am an insensitive jerk. It would be hurtful to tell a man who can’t walk, who can’t move at all, to get up and walk. So what is the easier thing to say? Clearly it is “Your sins are forgiven.” It’s just sheer compassion. But to make his point, Jesus told the man to get up and walk. And the man got up and walked.
In the classic ancient formula of debate, if a person proposed the possibility of performing two actions, one harder than the other, and he demonstrated the ability to perform the one that was more difficult, then it was accepted that he could do the easier of the two as well. Jesus made it clear that making a paralyzed man to get up and walk was a harder thing to do than forgiving his sins. Jesus’ ability to follow through on the harder of the two tasks establishes that the lesser of the two has also occurred as well. So by healing the man’s paralysis, he proved his authority to forgive sins.
And authority, after all, is what all this is about. If Jesus’ earthly existence can be summed up with the word “controversy,” the source of controversy in this section of Mark’s Gospel can be summed up by the word “authority.” The crux of the opposition has to do with authority. The Greek word is exousia. It means the “power of authority.” A judge has the power of authority to make legal decisions and rulings in a court of law. That is a component of the exousia that goes into being a judge. I may be able to put on the judge’s robe and sit in the judge’s seat and bang the judge’s gavel, but I do not have the exousia to make a ruling that will be upheld as a valid judicial ruling. Why? I have no legal authority. Moreover, I could be arrested and prosecuted for pretending to have exousia that I don’t really have. Only a medical doctor can practice medicine. Only a judge can preside in court cases. I have the legal authority to perform marriages, but you may not have that authority. This is what is at stake in these controversy narratives. Jesus acts as if he has the legal authority to pronounce people forgiven. But did Jesus really have such authority? Was Jesus doing the first century Jewish equivalent of practicing medicine without a licence?
Actually, the matter of authority goes back to when Jesus began teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum. The people who heard him are said to have responded to Jesus’ teaching by marveling that he taught them like someone who had authority, and not like the scribes did. The irony of such a statement was that it was the scribes who had the legal authority to teach. They were the ones who spent years in active study of the Scriptures. But when scribes taught, they usually did so by citing their teachers and influential teachers of the past. In essence, they taught with the authority of others, their past teachers. Jesus made no such references and allusions. When Jesus encountered the possessed man in the synagogue, he didn’t tell the demon to leave in the name of God, neither did he employ any incantation or formula to force the demon from him. Instead, Jesus told the demon to leave, and based on Jesus’ authority alone, it did. Jesus acted as one with exousia.
So what does all this mean for those of us who want to be like Christ? It simply means that we have to learn how to forgive. Forgiveness means “to send away,” or “to leave behind.” Forgiving others means that we have to leave the grudges we hold against them behind and move on with our lives. This fits in with the Jewish sense of justice, which is not some sense of abstract fairness, but a relationship. Justice for the Jews meant “being in a right relationship” with another. If you wrong me, our relationship is thrown out of whack, until the two of us put it right again. If you want to put it right, but I don’t, then there is no way for justice to be restored. Jewish justice extends in four directions: 1) to God; 2) to other people; ) to creation in general; and 4) to oneself. If any of those relations are out of whack, then all of them will become out of whack, and injustice will be the result. This means that we cannot be in a right relationship with God if we are in a wrong relationship with others. Forgiving restores the balance. Forgiving establishes justice. And in Jewish thought, only justice can bring about peace.
Quite frankly, forgiveness benefits us more than the other person. When I was a kid, one of the other kids used to pick on me all the time. As a result I hated him for years. When we were in college, we started to become friends, but I always secretly harbored a resentment toward him because of the way he treated me when we were children. One day I finally brought it up to him and asked him if he remembered all the things he did to me when we were kids. He plainly told me that he didn’t. He had no recollections of picking on me. Then he told me that if what I was telling him was true, then he must have been a real jerk and he apologized. I had been carrying around anger and resentment toward this guy for years and he didn’t even remember it. Not forgiving him never once hurt him, but it robbed me of some happiness that I would have had if I had just forgiven him years ago.
After his encounter with the paralyzed man and his friends, Jesus was walking around and came across Levi, the tax-collector. In the eyes of respectable Jews, not just the religious leaders, but the “average Joe” of Judaism. Levi’s occupation as a tax-collector made him a sinner of the worst kind. Tax-collectors procured their contracts from the government by promising to collect a fixed amount that would be sent back to Rome. Whatever the Tax-collectors collected on top of that fixed amount was theirs to keep. That’s how tax-collectors made a living, they charged more than the required tax so that they could make a profit. We are all good Americans and we understand and value the principle of the profit motive. The catch was that if they didn’t collect more than the tax, they couldn’t survive because they wouldn’t make a profit; but as soon as they did collect more than the required tax, they were accused of robbing their fellow Jews. Add to that reality the simple fact that nobody likes the tax man. Ask any employee of the IRS how popular they feel on any given day, especially April 15th.
The result was that Tax-collectors like Levi were doubly hated. They were hated because they were deemed as Roman collaborators. They helped to finance the Roman occupation of Palestine. If that wasn’t bad enough, tax-collectors made their living by ripping off their fellow Jews. As far as first century Palestine was concerned, being a tax-collector was analogous to a Jew in the 1940s raising money for the Nazis so that they could finance the concentration camps throughout Europe. As a result no respectable person would have anything to do with them, which meant their only friends would be those other people that nobody would have anything to do with as well.
Jesus did the unthinkable. He called Levi, the tax-collector, the Roman collaborator, the quisling, the sell out, the robber of his fellow Jews, to become his disciple. Then he compounded the matter by hanging out with Levi and his friends. Levi was the lowest of the low and his friends would also have been considered the lowest of the low by any respectable person. It isn’t that Jesus had no idea what Levi’s occupation was. Jesus found him in the tollbooth, collecting taxes. Jesus deliberately called the worst person imaginable to be his disciple. It would be like inviting Osama Bin Laden to join your church. It was offensive.
Levi had a party and Jesus went. In the small, connected Palestinian houses of the time, most of the party would have occurred in the common courtyard, allowing anyone who wasn’t at the party to see what was going on. Some religious leaders came by and saw Jesus at the party, most likely sitting in the place of honor right next to the host, Levi, the lowest of the low. So they asked a legitimate question, “Why is this guy hanging out with Roman collaborators and lowlife scum?”
Jesus’ response was, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. I haven’t come to call people who think highly of themselves, but people who know that they are not worthy.” Jesus was not concerned with reaching out to religious people; they had already been reached. They were religious. His concern was to reach out to those who had not been reached, those who had slipped through the cracks of Jewish society. Jesus was looking for the down and out because the up and in didn’t need him. People who felt worthy were living the religious life, those who didn’t think themselves worthy were not. The only way to make those “unworthy” people worthy was to reach out to them and declare them worthy. The only way to make these “unworthy” people worthy was to be a part of their lives and show to them what worthiness looks like. And they usually responded by behaving in a manner that demonstrated their new sense of worthiness.
Years ago I ran across a friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I was visiting town and one of the churches asked me to preach that week. I invited her to come to church and hear my sermon, not because I thought that there was anything life changing or profound in it, but because I like having my own cheering section when I’m in an unfamiliar church. She laughed at the idea of going to church, not because she though church was stupid or useless, but because she felt unworthy to be there. “If I went to church,” she said, “the roof would probably cave in and kill everybody there.” I told her that the church was built for people like her. She was not too bad for church, and the church certainly was not too good for her. It’s sad that so many people feel that they are not good enough to be a part of the life of a church, or even to go to church. But what’s even sadder is that they feel that way because church-goers have made them feel that way. “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” Jesus said, “but sick people do. I haven’t come to call people who think highly of themselves, but people who know that they are of not worthy.”
One of the worst declarations of wickedness found in the Bible are those who feel that God’s judgment somehow doesn’t apply to them. If we are not going to allow certain people into our churches because they are not the kind of people we would rather associate with, then we are wicked people behaving in the most wicked manner possible. And if that makes anyone uncomfortable or angry–good.
A few years ago, while I was in seminary, one of my friends dressed up as a homeless person and went to a very large and very popular church’s Christmas Eve service. She was dirty and she was shabbily dressed and she smelled. And the church, who didn’t know that she wasn’t really homeless, was offended that she would dare walk into their church like that. Not one person in that church greeted her, talked to her, or invited her back. Not one person in that church, on a Christmas Eve service, during a time of year when we pretend that we actually care about people who are less fortunate than we are, asked if she needed anything. They simply tolerated her presence, while directing enough contempt toward her to be sure that she would never think of attending that church again. “Healthy people don’t need a doctor,” Jesus said, “but sick people do. I haven’t come to call people who think highly of themselves, but people who know that they are of not worthy.”
None of us would think very much of a doctor who could never be bothered to treat a sick person; yet, we still manage to think highly of ourselves when we ignore those “sick” people in the world who desperately need the medicine that only Jesus Christ can give them. We want them to heal themselves before we offer to heal them. It’s like a doctor telling a patient, “I don’t want to be exposed to your germs. Go get healthy first and then come see me.” If we are going to call ourselves “Christian,” then we need to start practicing medicine, and offer the healing that only Christ can give to those people that we don’t like. If we really want to be like Christ, then we have to seek out the lowest of the low who are settled throughout our communities and invite them to be a part of our lives. If we want to be like Christ, we have to learn to love the unlovable until they can learn to love themselves. I don’t know a single person who has been scared or shunned out of hell, but I know a great many people who have been loved into heaven. Jesus didn’t wait for them to come to him, and we can’t wait for them to come to us. We have to look for them, and when we find them, we have to be willing to say, “Follow me”; and even more important than that, we have to be willing to let them follow, no matter how unsavory they may appear to others. A tax-collector was the lowest of the low, and Jesus said, “Follow me,” and then he went to the tax-collector’s house and hung out for a while.
Then some of John the Baptist’s disciples and some pharisees (lay-ministers) started wondering why Jesus didn’t fast like they did. According to the Mosaic Law, the only day that anyone was required to observe was on the Day of Atonement. Periodically, a public day of fasting was proclaimed, much like today when the President announces a national day of prayer. Pharisees and others took it upon themselves to fast on a regular basis as an act of devotion and commitment to God. Their fasts were not merely a private commitment not to eat, but they would wear black clothes, which were a symbol of mourning, and recite certain prayers of confession and penance. John’s disciples and the pharisees were asking why Jesus, this supposedly great religious individual and teacher, did not demonstrate the same level of commitment and devotion to God that they did.
Jesus told them that fasting was a symbol of mourning and mourning was not proper as long as he was around. Jesus’ arrival was the cause of celebration, not sadness. To fast while he was around was like going to a wedding and refusing to eat and drink. The only reason someone would do that would be if they were trying to demonstrate that they didn’t approve of the marriage. It would be insulting to the newly wed couple and their respective families that hosted the celebration.
The Sabbath came around and Jesus and his disciples were walking through a wheat field. They were hungry so they started picking some of the wheat and eating it. Some pharisees saw this and accused them of doing work on the Sabbath–another insult to God. Jesus told them that people were not made for the Sabbath but that the Sabbath was made for people. Then he told them that he was more important than the Sabbath, which would have been another offensive thing to say to dedicated religious people. It would be like me declaring to a group of Bible believing Christians that anything I have to say is more important than the Bible.
Jesus and his disciples went into a synagogue where they encountered a man with a withered hand. Everybody knew that Jesus was going to do something, so they watched him. Jesus knew they were watching and told them that it is okay to do good things on the Sabbath and that no one should ever use Sabbath observance as an excuse to withhold mercy. Then he healed the man’s hand. This was evidently the last straw. The religious leaders were furious and they left the synagogue together discussing ways to get rid of Jesus once and for all.
All this is to say that Jesus didn’t just start hanging out with the wrong sort of people, he started doing the wrong sort of things. He did not participate in the common custom of fasting that was expected of a Jewish religious teacher. He didn’t honor Sabbath observances, which was the cornerstone of Jewish culture and identity. To put it bluntly, Jesus not only behaved in a manner that was not deemed appropriate behavior for a religious teacher, he behaved in a manner that was not appropriate for the most sinful Jew.
But Jesus’ ministry wasn’t directed at religious people. It was directed at the down and out, those who had been cut off from society due to their professions or deeds or physical conditions. The religious leaders who behaved in an appropriately religious manner could take care of the religious people. They didn’t need help. Jesus was after those who were ignored. So Jesus behaved in an inappropriate way (at least according to the properly religious) so that the nonreligious could identify with what he was doing and saying. And by so doing, he could then bring them into the realm of the religious.
God does not demand that we miraculously become someone we’re not. God doesn’t demand that we find a way to rise up to his level. God instead, through Jesus Christ, came down to our level. He lived like we do and he experienced our world. He experienced our pain. He experienced our death. And he experienced our resurrection from the dead. God came down to us and behaved like us so that we could learn to behave like him. If we want to be like Christ, then we have to reach people where they are, or we will surely lose them forever.
But how do we behave in a seemingly inappropriate way so that we can reach people that would not be reached any other way?
There was a guy named John. His hair was long and wild. Most of the time he wore a tie-dye T-shirt with holes in it, ragged jeans, and he walked around barefoot. This was literally his wardrobe for his entire four years at college. He was brilliant, a little esoteric and abstract, but very bright. He attended college on a campus that had a well-dressed, very conservative, proper church located just across the street. The church had long wanted to develop some kind of ministry to the students of that campus, but they were uncertain as to how to go about it.
One Sunday, John decided to go to this church. He walked in with no shoes, dressed in his ragged jeans, his tie-dye T-shirt full of holes, and his long, uncombed, wild hair. He was a few minutes late and the service had already begun, so he started down the aisle in search of a seat. The people of the church began to look a bit uncomfortable, but no one said anything. The spaces in the pews seems to get tighter and tighter as he drew near, so John kept moving down the aisle, looking for a seat, getting dangerously closer-and-closer to the pulpit. When he saw that there were no seats, he simply squatted down right on the carpet, in front of the sanctuary, which was perfectly acceptable behavior to John’s college-world-view. It was not acceptable behavior, however, to many people located in the sanctuary that Sunday morning. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and although nobody said anything about it, the air was thick with tension.
Now, about this time, the pastor of the church, still in his pulpit, who had observed John’s trek down the aisle and the church’s growing tension, noticed that from the very back of the church, a respected member of the church, an elderly man who sat on the Parish Council was slowly making his way to the front of the church, toward John. The elderly man was in his eighties. He was a very dignified man with neatly trimmed silver-grey hair, an expensive three-piece suit, complete with pocket watch. He was well known in this congregation as a “godly man.” This “godly,” dignified, well-groomed, member who had a seat on the Parish Council courtly walked down the aisle with his cane, toward John, toward this young antithesis of everything that this elderly man seemed to be. And as he walked toward John, the people began to mutter softly to themselves, “You can’t blame him for what he’s going to do. How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor?”
It took an agonizingly long time for the elderly man to reach the young man. The only sound in the church was the clicking of the man’s cane. No one seemed to be breathing as the man reached John. All eyes directed toward what was about to happen, everyone knew that even the minister could not do anything until this man did what had to do. And the elderly man, who was “godly” and conservative, who wore an expensive three-piece suit complete with pocket watch, who had a seat on the Parish Council, and who symbolized all that was dignified and proper, dropped his cane to the floor; and with great difficulty, and with creaking and popping of joints, he lowered himself to the floor, and sat next to John, so that John would not have to worship on the floor alone.
That man got it! Jesus came to forgive sins. Jesus came to seek out the sinners and the unworthy. Jesus didn’t come for those who know that they are good enough; he came for those who know that they are unworthy. The healthy don’t need a doctor. Perfect people don’t need a savior. People weren’t made to serve the church, but the church was made to serve people.
How then are we to be like Christ? We forgive people. We don’t just forgive those people we love–that’s easy. We don’t just forgive those people we want to like us or those we want to impress. We forgive those people that we can’t stand! We forgive those people that we want to see rotting in hell. We forgive those people that seem utterly unforgivable. Then we search for people who we would rather not be around. We look for those who most people would be embarrassed to be around. And we invite them to be a part of our lives. We come down to their level and encourage them to come up to ours. If we are like Christ, people will talk, and they probably won’t have a lot of good things to say. To be like Christ is not to become offensive to the nonreligious, but to become offensive to those who think that they are religious. If they are offended, then they probably don’t get it. They are probably more concerned with looking good than doing good. And we pray for them and invite them to be a part of what we’re doing.
Jesus taught with authority. Jesus acted with authority. Jesus’ authority differed form that of the scribes and the Pharisees in that they could not forgive sins; they could not boss around demonic forces; they could not heal the sick; and it seems that they could not muster the slightest amount of compassion for suffering people. Jesus’ authority differed from that of the scribes and the Pharisees in that he forgave sins, while they were merely content to blame people for being sinful. Jesus’ authority differed from that of the scribes and the Pharisees in that Jesus, who was without sin, would ultimately seek out and identify with sinners, while the scribes and pharisees, who were sinners, separated themselves and judged themselves to be better than other “sinners.” Jesus gives that authority to his followers. All the authority in heaven and on earth that was given to Jesus Christ has been given to us by Jesus Christ. The church is to be like Christ. Therefore, we are to forgive sins, seek out sinners, and identify with them in how we behave and by what we say. Jesus gave his authority to those of us who are in the church. I pray that we use it.
This week is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the Lenten Season for the church. It marks a period of purification and preparation for the Easter celebration that is rapidly approaching. Customarily people give up something for Lent as an act of devotion and purification. This year, however, I encourage you not to give up, but to take on. Don’t give up something meaningless like eating chocolate or alcohol or the usual Lenten sacrifices. Instead, take on the authority that Christ has given you. Make it your mission this Lenten Season to forgive sins, whether you want to forgive them or not, whether they want to be forgiven of not–there is nothing in the story of the paralyzed man that suggests that he was sorry for any sin before Christ forgave him. Just forgive and declare that forgiveness to whomever you encounter. Look for people that you normally wouldn’t talk to or give a second glance and smile and say “hello.” Talk to them if you get a chance. Don’t worry about what others will think if they see you talking to such a person. It is more important to do good than it is to look good. This Lenten Season, let’s be willing to meet people where they are, rather than demand that they come up to where we are. Is this an easy thing to do? Not at all! Is it a scary thing to do? Most likely. But all the authority that exists in heaven and on earth has been passed onto you by Jesus Christ, so there is nothing to be afraid of. We can be like Christ because we have been granted Christ’s power and authority. So this Lent, let’s truly do what Jesus would do! Let’s forgive! Let’s seek out those who are being ignored! Let’s identify with and love the unlovable! What better way to purify ourselves and prepare for the miracle of Easter.
Amen.
