Community Church Sermons
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany – February 23,
2003
“A Faith Worth Finding:
We have a faith worth finding!
I hope you’ve been out in the world this week helping people find it!
It is a faith that seeks to bring life – and hope – and healing – and peace – to a broken and conflicted world. It is a faith that cares about people, and values them by the standard of God’s love revealed in Christ. And most importantly, it is a faith that trusts completely that Jesus is indeed the Christ – the Messiah - the One whose very presence – whose very word – whose very touch – can lead people to life as God intends it to be.
We have a faith worth finding!
And because it is a faith worth finding, a small group of people long ago were inspired to do a fantastic thing!
You see, they believed in Jesus. They believed that Jesus’ Way is the only Way that makes sense. They believed that the Truth Jesus stood for is the Truth that sets you free. They believed the Life Jesus called people toward is abundant in measure and eternal in scope.
They believed with all their hearts that Jesus IS the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
And because they believed in
Jesus, they decided to do something fantastic!
Because, you see, they had a friend who needed Jesus.
In today’s Scripture story, Jesus returns to Capernaum. He goes into a large house that I guess we could say became a church because of his presence there. Every room is filled with people anxious to hear his teaching. The crowd even spills out the doors, and encircles the building outside. It is a mob scene. EVERYONE is there to hear Jesus!
Well, not exactly everyone.
Down at old Harry Smith’s house, someone’s still at home.
All the neighbors are already at church, of course, because when Jesus preaches seats are hard to find and you’ve got to get there early. Even the other members of Harry’s family have left for the service – probably at his insistence. There’s no reason for them to be late just because Harry has a disability that slows everybody else down.
We’re not sure exactly what the condition was. Let’s just say it was something like Parkinson’s Disease!
Before it got hold of him, Harry was active as could be! Thirty years working down at the mill without ever missing a day. Puttering in his spare time doing projects around the pretty little house with the white picket fence. Serving on the church Properties Committee. Coaching Little League baseball when the kids were little. After they all grew up and left home, Harry even took up golf and enjoyed it a lot despite the fact that he wasn’t very good at it.
But then the symptoms started. First, it was the tremors of the hands. Then came some difficulty with walking. He fell down a lot. And not only that, but sometimes Harry’s body just froze in place and he couldn’t move at all for long embarrassing moments. At first, Harry just attributed these things to the fact that he was getting older, but when the problems persisted he went to the doctor. That’s when he found out what it was.
Parkinson’s! Darned Parkinson’s Disease.
Little by little, the illness progressed, pushing Harry more and more to the fringes of life. Things he used to do he couldn’t do anymore. The people he used to do them with either didn’t want to, or couldn’t be expected to slow down and stop their lives just for him. Little by little, the circle of Harry’s life became smaller and smaller.
And now he was completely immobilized and unable to get around. How lonely it was, laying there on his mat on the front porch every day while the rest of the world passed by. And on this particular day, the world had passed by on their way to church. From where he was laying, ol’ Harry could just barely see the steeple of the church with the cross on top. He could only imagine what it would be like to be there.
Darned Parkinson’s Disease!
Now let me pause here for just a moment. You do realize I’m taking some liberties with the story found in Mark 2, but the principles are the same. Jesus is the One who offers people life and wholeness in God. Harry Smith is like any broken person afflicted by some human condition that makes it impossible for them to get to Jesus on their own.
So the question becomes: how will Harry get into the presence of Christ where he can discover the Way, the Truth and the Life that will give him wholeness in the present, and hope for the future?
How will Harry and Jesus be
brought together?
That’s the simple question. And here’s the simple answer.
Through the faith of some beautiful,
hole-digging friends!
It will be his friends’ faith that makes it possible for Harry to encounter Jesus and find wholeness of body, mind and spirit.
And here’s where the story gets really interesting!
Because, you see, in that church in Tellico – I mean, in Capernaum that day - there were lots and lots of well-intentioned religious people. But of that crowd of – oh, say, eleven or twelve hundred people - only four would be pointed out by Jesus as having true life-changing faith.
And you know who they are. They are the four men who remembered they had a friend who needed Jesus. They are the four who couldn’t sit still in church while someone they cared about was stuck at home. They are the four who left the church service to run down to ol’ Harry Smith’s house. They are the four who put their friend on a stretcher and carried him to the service. They are the four who, when they could not penetrate the wall of people surrounding the church, climbed up onto the thatched roof of the church building, and dug a hole through that roof. They are the four who lowered ol’ Harry on the stretcher through that hole in the roof until he came to a soft landing smack dab in the middle of the chancel.
Scared the choir half to death! I mean, can you imagine? And the Board of Trustees was none too happy! But there he was –ol’ Harry - face to face with Jesus.
And Mark tells us something wonderful. When Jesus saw THEIR faith – the faith of these four stretcher-carrying, hole-digging friends - he granted Harry forgiveness for his sins, and moments later, bestowed upon Harry the gift of healing. And Mark writes that Harry took up his pallet and walked!
I wish that every person like Harry Smith had friends with a faith like that!
But what was it about the faith of these four friends that was so distinctive?
Well, it was a faith that truly believes Jesus makes a critical difference in peoples’ lives. Like the difference oxygen makes to a human being. Like the difference water makes to people who are thirsty. Like the difference light makes in the dark, and hope makes in despair.
They believed Jesus could make a difference in the life of their friend!
Henri Nouwen, the great priest and theologian, once wrote to a young agnostic friend of his that what summed up the Gospel for him is the word “Beloved.” When Jesus was baptized and came up out of the water, God spoke and called Jesus “the Beloved.” And when God called Jesus by that name, God was speaking to us all.
Jesus came to give back to us the gift of our Belovedness. Into a world that constantly degrades us and reminds us how inadequate we are, how we don’t make the grade, how we are no good, how we are not worthy of love, Jesus comes to return to us the Belovedness given to each of us in the creation of our lives. Nouwen rightly points out that our lives are spent constantly searching for this self-value. We think this vindication of ourselves will be found in the next success, the next possession, the next adventure, the next relationship. And we spend our lives looking for these things. But when they finally come to us, they prop us up only for a short while, but soon leave us empty and needing once again to go searching for the next success, possession, adventure and relationship. We spend our lives trying to find love.
But this particular gift of love, that redeems the Belovedness of our lives, cannot be found in money or material possession or even human relationship. It is found only in Christ.
These four men believed that, if only they could get their friend into the presence of Jesus, he would find the love that would set him free.
I was thinking about that this week when we were in Disneyworld celebrating our grandson’s first birthday. We had a great time, and Ryan really enjoyed being there. He especially loved all the characters. Not the Disney characters. I’m talking about his grandmothers and grandfathers…! Well, Ryan was obviously excited by all the colors and movement and sounds he experienced, but as we were riding through The Land exhibit at Epcot, Ryan fell asleep against my shoulder and as I held him, I just found myself thinking that, of all the experiences he will have in life, the most important of all will be the discovery of Christ and the gift of Belovedness.
These four friends believed that Jesus would bring a unique and life-changing Love to their friend’s life. Can you believe that too for your friends?
They also believed that Jesus could give their friend power for living. Now I think it’s important to point out that these four friends do not indicate anywhere in the story that they knew for certain that their friend would receive a healing. And this is important because not everyone does. It might very well be that, at the end of this encounter with Jesus, their friend would still be afflicted with his illness.
But they believed he would receive power to live through it and prevail over it!
Not everyone is healed. Not everyone’s problem just disappears. Most often, we are left to deal with the realities of Parkinson’s Disease, or Alzheimer’s, or cancer, or whatever burden we bear.
My friends Fred and Linda had to live with spinal cord injuries that left Linda a paraplegic, and Fred a quadriplegic. When I first met Linda, I was amazed at the way she lived her life in the face of her disability. She attributed it all to Jesus, and often told the story of how when she was at the lowest point in the aftermath of her injury, it was a friend’s sharing about the power of Jesus to help us find life even in the face of death that made all the difference for her. Through the power of Christ, she dared accept her paralysis, she dared fall in love with a quadriplegic man, she dared give birth to a little boy, she even dared to go to Harvard Medical School and become a physician herself.
She believed what those four friends believed: that in Jesus Christ, there is found power for living in the face of life as it really is!
Do you have some friends who need power like that?
And then one more thing. These four friends clearly believed that the focus of our lives as Christians must be on those who are left outside the community of faith, and who need help in accessing the presence of Jesus. Their faith was not about “What’s in it for me?” but about “What’s in it for others?” It was a faith that is nurtured inside the church, but is always focused on reaching out to those outside the church.
I have a friend who’s really going through a hard time. One of his children is very ill, and he’s very angry at God. My friend is one of those people I truly appreciate – who wrestles with faith, who struggles to believe. And right now, faith and belief are a long ways off. I’d probably feel the same way if one of my kids was going through what his child is.
As we’ve spoken on the phone about it, he has expressed to me his inability to believe in a just God. If there is a God who can intervene in the world, but will not and cause my child to suffer so, it is a God not worth believing in is how he expresses it.
But listen to this. He says that, despite his anger toward God, he still believes in Jesus. In what Jesus taught, and how Jesus lived, and what Jesus stands for, there is something true and worth pursuing.
And I think that’s so true. So often, we humans cannot grasp the mystery of God. But we can relate to Jesus – and the beauty of His Way, His Truth, and His Life! In Jesus, we discover a God we never knew before.
If there are some people in your life right now who are truly struggling with God, let them have their struggle. Don’t argue with them! But encourage them to think about Jesus - what he taught, how he lived, what he stands for. Bring them with you to Sunday School or to church. Send them a book. Write them a letter. Share Jesus with them!
It will make a difference!
Oh, the faith of these four friends is remarkable because it believes Christ offers a Love that can redeem us, a Power that can leads us, and a Person who can reveal to us the true nature of God as a Friend who is always seeking our best. And believing all these things, it is a faith willing to do whatever it takes to bring people out on the fringes of life into the presence of Jesus.
Even it means digging holes in the roof of the church!
Calling all hole-diggers!
There is a world all around us that needs people like you to help them discover this faith that is so worth finding!