Since Easter here at church, we have
been talking about caterpillars, chrysalises, and butterflies. We have been reflecting on the events of
Easter and how the empty tomb and the resurrection offer us the potential to
unlock our resistance to change and to unleash much needed transformation on
ourselves and on the world.
We began with Mary, Jesus’ mother, in
the garden after supper that evening when the angel Gabriel asked her to bear
the child that would embody everything that God wanted in a human being – and
Mary went along with the plan – understanding that her life would never be the
same, but that was OK because, well, because God is so good and with God all
things are possible. And in hearing that
ancient story once again, we were reassured as we set out on our own
post-Easter journey with the caterpillars.
Then we followed Abraham and Sarah into
the wilderness with the new names God had given them alongside the sacred
age-old promises of land and descendants.
That was all they needed, God had said.
That was all they would ever need – and so they struck out toward a new
future on a wing and a prayer. And we
pondered whether we would have faith and courage to do the same.
We stood weeping with Martha and Mary
outside the tomb of their brother Lazarus.
We watched as the community gathered round – offering their own large
and small gifts of healing to the sisters.
We listened as Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, back to life
again. And we could not help but ponder
what new life we might find as a church community if we dared to leave behind
the darkness of the tombs we build around us and faced the brilliant light of
Christ instead.
And just last week, we reflected on the
ancient Israelites clinging to a past that had never existed except in their
own minds, existed only because of the unknown future they could neither
visualize nor control. And we imagined
just how diminished we could become if we became more comfortable in the
nostalgia of the “good old days” than in the energy of the “good new future.”
And all the while – throughout this
whole season of Eastertide – we have come back to the image of caterpillar
encasing itself in a chrysalis in order to prepare for a transformation that it
could not stop or reverse – even if it wanted to. And now, the chrysalis is gone, and the
butterfly has emerged. Take a look at
our sanctuary trees if you need proof! The butterfly is
poised for flight, ready to fly off to new heights not possible if it had not
changed, not possible if it had remained a caterpillar.
Likewise, on this last Sunday of our
worship series entitled “Emerge”, we too are ready to fly. If Easter meant anything to us at all, then we
too are transformed and are ready to head into a Spirit-led adventure that God
will reveal to us each day going forward.
And so, in closing this series, we will take one final look at a Bible
story to center us as we prepare to engage with the world as butterflies, as
Easter people.
It is the story of Jesus healing a
paralytic – but with a wonderful twist.
Word of Jesus’ gift for healing had spread far and wide. By the time he reached Capernaum, crowds of people
were following him everywhere. As Presbyterian
pastor Jon Walton wrote, “Jesus has gained a reputation as a healer. First it
was the man with an unclean spirit, and then Peter’s mother in law that he
healed, then diverse people in Capernaum that came to him, a leper cleansed
outside of the city when they were on the road…Jesus is really on a roll.”
The paralytic in our story came to be
healed along with a few hundred other folks with maladies ranging from sore
throats to stage 4 cancers, from the first signs of a skin disease to advanced
Alzheimer’s, from abscessed teeth to childhood fevers. They came on crutches and in
wheelchairs. They came moaning in pain
and whispering prayers of hope.
Our paralytic came on a mat, a
stretcher, his left hand in a kind of tight grip that had not unclenched in a
lifetime. His muscles were atrophied, and his arms looked like those of a
scarecrow. He stared at his feet, and
his ankles were both cocked at an odd angle.
A few friends carried him because he could not do anything for
himself.
By the time the little sick bay group
got word of Jesus’ arrival and the paralytic was ready to go and had been carried
half way across town, they could not even get near to the house where Jesus was
preaching to and healing the masses. The
doorway was jammed with the sick and the lame and the gawking, each one with
his or her personal agenda (Can you blame them really?).
None of them had any intention of
making room for a paralytic on a stretcher carried by a few friends. After all, who
is more important than my child with his sore throat, than my aunt with her stage
4 cancer? Who is more important than a
beggar no one claimed with the first signs of a skin disease, with my father
who can not remember his own name, with my cousin with an abscessed tooth? Who is more important than my baby with a
fever that will not break?
Oh, the friends of our paralytic did
their best to try to work their way in to Jesus. “Excuse me!
Excuse me! Paralytic coming
through.” But it was to no avail. And by this time, the paralytic had given up
any pretensions of even seeing Jesus, let alone being healed. “It’s OK.
Don’t worry. You made a wonderful
effort. Let’s just go home now.”
However, the friends would not give up
so easily. There was only one clear path
forward from their perspective. Going
back home was not an option in their minds, so an alternative had to be
found. You could almost see their
creative juices begin to flow.
Soon they were pointing upward to the
roof even as they gestured and talked among themselves. One of them went around back, came round the
corner again, and motioned to the others. They picked up
the stretcher, whistling a happy tune – but not so much as to draw attention to
themselves – and carried the paralytic to the back of the house.
By that time, the ringleader was
already on the roof and was soon pulling one of the others up to help him. Those left with the paralytic were excitedly
preparing a sort of pulley system on the ground. Of course, we do not know how they happened
to have all the equipment they needed to pull off their outrageous stunt, but,
by this time, do we really care?
The ones on the roof started breaking a
way in, a hole. I cannot imagine what
the people in the house down below were thinking. As Presbyterian pastor Reggie Weaver imagines
the scene: Even as Jesus was teaching and laying his hands on the halt and the
lame, “little flecks of dust began to fall from the ceiling. Then
some tiles here and there. Long splinters of wood and big, slate
shingles...until, finally, a gaping hole. Part of the roof had crumbled into
rubble around them.”
The men and women and children inside
the house looked up first in distress, but then in amazement. A brilliant sun
backlit two brawny men who were lowering down some sort of makeshift bed
contraption until it came to rest gently at Jesus’ feet. They gasped as they saw a gnarled and
withered man looking up at the healer with eyes filled with such hope but also
a good dose of fear at how his rather unconventional entrance would be
received.
Jesus glanced up at the faces staring
down through the gaping hole in the roof and smiled at the breadth and depth of
their faith – in spite of the rather offbeat, though certainly ingenious, way
they had demonstrated it.
He placed his hands on the paralytic’s
brow and simply said, “Your sins are forgiven.”
I wonder if the sick man’s friends were a bit disappointed and maybe
were expecting more – like a physical healing.
I mean, he was a friend and all, but they had carried him half way
across town, and now there was a big hole in the roof to boot that they would
have to figure out how to repair.
For the paralytic, however, those words
spoken so gently and emanating such grace seemed to be enough. To realize for sure that his physical ailment
was not due to the wrongs he had knowing and unknowingly committed in the past
was a blessing.
Maybe he
understood that we are – all of us – paralyzed in some way and to have finally
comprehended that profound truth in the presence of one like Jesus was more
than he could ever have hoped for.
But, of course, that is not the
conclusion of the story. You see, after
one of what would become over time an endless barrage of altercations with the
local Pharisees, Jesus looked down at the paralytic once again. Then he glanced up at the friends staring
through the hole in the roof and gave them a nod. He said to the man with the withered body
still lying in front of him, “I tell you, get up, pick up your mat, and go
home.”
And the man did. And his friends on the roof repaired the hole
that very day. And his friends on the
ground took the stretcher from the healed hands of the paralytic and carried it
for him, so that he could open and close his now unclenched hands as many times
as he wanted and do a little dancing two step as well on the way to his house.
You know what I like about the
paralytic’s friends? I like that they
were not bound by convention. They were
willing to push the envelope and break a few rules to help their friend see
Jesus. And you know what? I bet Jesus liked that about them as
well.
It was a bold and brash demonstration
of their faith that they made – one for all of their world to see - when they
broke through the roof, the glass ceiling, the traditions and expectations that
did nothing other than tether them to the past, to the way things had always
been done in Capernaum. “Thou shalt not
make a hole in thy neighbor’s roof.”
They found new ways of being in their world. They found new ways of bringing their friend
to Jesus.
Maybe we need to do that too. Maybe the message of this Bible story – and
the message of the chrysalis - is that we need to bust out of the old, the
worn, the conventional just as the friends of the paralytic did – just as the
butterfly did in order to be able to fly to new heights, to soar in the light
of God.
Maybe we as individuals – but even more
so as this church – need to make a bold and brash demonstration of our faith –
one for all the world to see. Maybe we
need to find new ways of bringing our friends to Jesus, of changing lives, and
making a difference.
That is what the Christian church is
all about you know. It has very little
to do with the same people sitting in the same pews week after week nodding off
at the same point in the sermon, and leaving without a passion for this faith
that we call our own and this man that we call our Christ.
The Christian church is about breaking
the rules set forth so strongly by our culture.
It is about standing up and declaring that a federal budget that
increases defense spending while decreasing all manner of domestic programs and
foreign aid is wrong-headed and unsupportable.
It is about protecting the poor and sharing what we have with them. It
is about collaboration rather than isolation. It is about weeping with the
citizens of Manchester. It is about
taking under our wing those people whom the world has chewed up and spat
out.
It is all of those things that we as
the Christian church should want to be known for around Raymond – not for our
pot roast suppers (enjoyable as they are), not even for our flea market (as
many treasures as we will find). We
should want to be known for what those events allow us to do, how they allow us
to change lives both here in town and throughout the world.
We have made strides once in a while in
that direction. We have more people than
ever going to Maine Seacoast Mission this summer. We expanded our Church World Service Kit
project through a matching grant from the United Church of Christ. But there is so much more we are called to
do. We have barely begun to leave the
tomb. We have barely begun to emerge
from the chrysalis.
My prayer then as we conclude this
worship series is that we will be ever more committed to making a bold and
brash demonstration of our faith – through our words and our actions. My prayer
is that we will be ever more public about who we are and what our mission as a
church – that mission to make a difference really means. My prayer is that we will not be held back by
tradition or ritual or convention or what the church used to be. My prayer is that we will make the biggest
hole in the roof you can imagine, so that the light of God that we keep cooped
up in here will shine forth for all the world to see. My prayer is that, like the butterfly, we
will know that now is our time to fly.
You know, the word “amen” has come
round to mean “OK” or “thank goodness this sermon or prayer is over.” Such a
watered down meaning! After all,
originally, “amen” meant “so be it” and that, to me, is way more powerful.
So let me conclude this sermon – and
this worship series - by simply saying – “Let’s be roof-breakers! Let’s fly! So be it!”
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