2-19-06 SERMON BY PASTOR BARBARA
FORGIVENESS AND HEALING
Scripture: Isa. 43:18-25 and Mark 2:1-12
In our Gospel reading today we are told that Jesus is at home in Capernaum. We are only in the second chapter of Mark and already Jesus has driven out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue, healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, followed by healing many who were sick and with demons. Then last Sunday Jesus healed the leper who came to him. We know that he told the leper to not tell anyone, probably because he was getting tired of doing so much healing, being surrounded by such big crowds. Of course the leper was so excited that he couldn’t keep from sharing the news so told all he came in contact with. So I can imagine that Jesus might have been hoping to get some rest by going home. (By the way most scholars believe he lived with Peter and his family, not a house by himself.) But word gets around quickly in this city by the sea. There was no chance for any rest for Jesus. The scripture says that there were so many people gathered that there was no room even at the outside of the house. It is in this setting that four friends bring a paralytic man, lying on a mat . Upon seeing the crowd, these men were so determined to present their friend to Jesus that they would not stop at the barriers presented. In Palestinian design the roof consisted of crossbeams covered with thatch and hardened mud.[1] So these four friends simply dug through this mud. Do you have any friends like these? These friends possessed two important attributes: they were willing to advocate for one who couldn’t advocate for himself, and they found some creative ways to get past what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles. Jesus sees their actions in persevering as having faith. The Greek word used here for faith is pistis; it is a word when used in conjunction with miracles in Mark that seems to imply perseverance—overcoming obstacles in order to get to Jesus. This same word is used when Jesus criticizes his disciples for being afraid on the stormy sea; it is used when he talks to the hemorrhaging woman about her faith and when the blind beggar keeps calling to Jesus in spite of the others telling him to shut up. Ben Witherington in the The Gospel of Mark says this about the faith of these friends: “They dared to do the difficult, the dangerous, the controversial in order to bring their friend into the presence of Jesus.” (p.115). I wonder how many of us would have that much determination to bring the troubled people we know to church.
Now we are never told specifically why these friends bring the man to church but a good guess would be that they want him healed from his paralysis. However, before doing anything about healing the man, Jesus addressed the man with an affectionate term, Child or my child, or as in the NRSV, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The Greek word used here is only used at other times when addressing his disciples. It seems to indicate that Jesus is declaring this man to be part of his family.
What do Jesus’ words have to do with healing or in connecting the man’s paralysis to his sins? In those days as I have mentioned several times before, there was a belief that suffering or illnesses were the direct result of one’s sins. In other places in the gospels such as in John 9, Jesus has made clear that he does not believe that an individual’s problems are a result of his sin. In this case the man appears to remain paralyzed after Jesus forgives his sins which would seem to be saying that his relationship with God is not dependent upon his health or illness. So “Jesus, by forgiving first, without any healing, is attacking the common belief that sin caused his paralysis”.[2] Forgiveness may not be necessary to cure our illness; however, I believe that both forgiving and being forgiven is the medicine that heals us on the deepest level of our being. I believe that the paralyzed man and we can experience a reality of God’s transformative gift of love when we accept that we are forgiven, regardless of any physical illness that may remain. Saint Ignatius in the opening of his Spiritual Exercises says something that I want to quote about reframing our priorities: “In everyday life… we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts ... We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening [God's] life in me."[3] I pray for this deepening of God in you and in me. I want it more than anything and I pray that this deepening, or what I usually call closeness, is something that you also want.
At this point I want to shift to talking about the power of forgiveness when we are the ones doing the forgiving. Last June Neill and I went to a Peace Conference at the Bruderhoff community in NY convened by Johann Christoph Arnold of that community. Arnold spoke about the power of forgiveness in conflicts big and small. He talked about the saying of Alan Paton, a South African author who wrote that “there is a hard law…When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.” Having worked for many years as a therapist to women suffering from incest, I came to believe the validity of this statement. Another quote I’m reminded of here is a Chinese Proverb that warns, “Whoever opts for revenge, should dig two graves.” We’ve certainly seen the truth of that since 9/11 and the tremendous numbers of deaths that have resulted as we decided to seek vengeance instead of responding with forgiveness and persevering for peace with justice.
At the Peace Conference there were two speakers that had a lot to forgive: Steven McDonald and Bud Welch. Steven McDonald, was a police detective in New York. One day in the summer of 1986, Steven was questioning three young suspects in Central Park when one of them shot him multiple times. Steven was left paralyzed from the neck down, and dependent on a ventilator. He had been married less than a year, and his wife was pregnant with their first child. A devout Catholic, Steven decided to forgive his assailant. It wasn’t easy—in fact, he had to struggle for weeks, if not months, to overcome his anger. But as he later explained, “The only thing worse than a bullet in my spine would have been revenge.” Three years ago Steven and Johann Arnold started visiting high school assemblies and other places to speak about the power of forgivenss. In fact he has now made it his life’s work to promote nonviolent conflict resolution in his city’s troubled schools.
The other person was Bud Welch, the owner of a gas station whose daughter was one of the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. Like Steven, Bud struggled to overcome his anger, especially at the man who killed his daughter: Timothy McVeigh. Along the way, he met McVeigh’s family and realized that Tim too is one of God’s children. In the years since that meeting, Bud has become an outspoken opponent of the death penalty in America. He says that forgiving is “not something you just wake up one morning and decide to do. I still have moments of rage. But you have to work through your anger and your hatred as long as it’s there.”
One of the most amazing prayers of forgiveness came to me from a transcript of a talk Johann Cristoph Arnold gave at an international peace conference in Milan, Italy in 2004. This prayer was found at a Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck written on a piece of old wrapping paper: “Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out to this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.” Isn’t that one of the most amazing, grace filled prayers you have ever heard? It makes me realize how important it is for us to pray for all involved in the current wars tearing our world apart. Let us pray for and forgive those we do not agree with, those we feel have good intentions as well as those that seem to us to have evil intentions. Let us pray for the ability to forgive our enemies as well as our leaders. If the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps, if Steve McDonald and Bud Welch can pray for those who have caused them so much suffering, let us be compassionate and courageous enough to also pray for all. Arnold reminds us of Martin King, Jr’s words, “The judgment of God is upon our world. And unless we learn to live together as brothers and sisters, we will perish together as fools.”
In our OT reading Isaiah presents God as listing the sins of the Israelites and saying that God will blot out all these sins, not for the sake of the people but for God’s own sake. God will not even remember their sins. God says it is time to forget the things of old and do a new thing. This new thing is salvation for the exiles, making a way through the wilderness and rivers in the desert. God does this not because of any goodness of the people deserving good treatment, but because God is redeeming the exiles, leading them to celebration and praise. For me this is similar to our forgiving those that have done things to cause us to suffer. We forgive because we can not live whole lives as long as we are holding grudges, as long as we are hating, as long as we feel the need for punishment of vengeance. We also forgive because as followers of Jesus, we have been told to do so.
We should never forget that on any given Sunday, there are undoubtedly people here in our congregation that are carrying heavy burdens. Some of this pain may be related to health of self or others, grief for loss, concern for the welfare of loved ones in many different circumstances. However, some of these burdens are burdens of guilt. Where else is a better place for a ‘recovery group’ than right here at church. We are the community of God’s transformative love and forgiveness. Nothing that has happened in the past is as powerful as the possibility for love and kindness in this moment. So much more the reason for us to persevere in bringing others to church so they may know this love, this forgiving, this healing. How do we get this forgiveness in church? For some the confession of sin and the reassurance of forgiveness may make a difference. For others the Lord’s prayer one Sunday will not be a mindless recitation but a real thing when we pray, forgive our sins or debts as we forgive our debtors. Some Sunday someone may here in the Lord’s Supper, that they may come as they are, part of the broken world to receive God’s mercy and love. It may be that one of you will say a word at coffee hour that shows how glad you are to see the person and they will feel part of our community. There are so many ways that we can be part of the healing and forgiving process. Thanks be to God. Let us remember that we are Gods eyes, ears, mouth, arms, legs, etc in this world of pain. Use us God to spread your love. Amen.
[1] Harper Collins Study Bible.
[2] Sermon online by Brian Stoffregen
[3] Taken from an online sermon by Douglas R. Loving
Scripture: Isa. 43:18-25 and Mark 2:1-12
In our Gospel reading today we are told that Jesus is at home in Capernaum. We are only in the second chapter of Mark and already Jesus has driven out an unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue, healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, followed by healing many who were sick and with demons. Then last Sunday Jesus healed the leper who came to him. We know that he told the leper to not tell anyone, probably because he was getting tired of doing so much healing, being surrounded by such big crowds. Of course the leper was so excited that he couldn’t keep from sharing the news so told all he came in contact with. So I can imagine that Jesus might have been hoping to get some rest by going home. (By the way most scholars believe he lived with Peter and his family, not a house by himself.) But word gets around quickly in this city by the sea. There was no chance for any rest for Jesus. The scripture says that there were so many people gathered that there was no room even at the outside of the house. It is in this setting that four friends bring a paralytic man, lying on a mat . Upon seeing the crowd, these men were so determined to present their friend to Jesus that they would not stop at the barriers presented. In Palestinian design the roof consisted of crossbeams covered with thatch and hardened mud.[1] So these four friends simply dug through this mud. Do you have any friends like these? These friends possessed two important attributes: they were willing to advocate for one who couldn’t advocate for himself, and they found some creative ways to get past what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles. Jesus sees their actions in persevering as having faith. The Greek word used here for faith is pistis; it is a word when used in conjunction with miracles in Mark that seems to imply perseverance—overcoming obstacles in order to get to Jesus. This same word is used when Jesus criticizes his disciples for being afraid on the stormy sea; it is used when he talks to the hemorrhaging woman about her faith and when the blind beggar keeps calling to Jesus in spite of the others telling him to shut up. Ben Witherington in the The Gospel of Mark says this about the faith of these friends: “They dared to do the difficult, the dangerous, the controversial in order to bring their friend into the presence of Jesus.” (p.115). I wonder how many of us would have that much determination to bring the troubled people we know to church.
Now we are never told specifically why these friends bring the man to church but a good guess would be that they want him healed from his paralysis. However, before doing anything about healing the man, Jesus addressed the man with an affectionate term, Child or my child, or as in the NRSV, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The Greek word used here is only used at other times when addressing his disciples. It seems to indicate that Jesus is declaring this man to be part of his family.
What do Jesus’ words have to do with healing or in connecting the man’s paralysis to his sins? In those days as I have mentioned several times before, there was a belief that suffering or illnesses were the direct result of one’s sins. In other places in the gospels such as in John 9, Jesus has made clear that he does not believe that an individual’s problems are a result of his sin. In this case the man appears to remain paralyzed after Jesus forgives his sins which would seem to be saying that his relationship with God is not dependent upon his health or illness. So “Jesus, by forgiving first, without any healing, is attacking the common belief that sin caused his paralysis”.[2] Forgiveness may not be necessary to cure our illness; however, I believe that both forgiving and being forgiven is the medicine that heals us on the deepest level of our being. I believe that the paralyzed man and we can experience a reality of God’s transformative gift of love when we accept that we are forgiven, regardless of any physical illness that may remain. Saint Ignatius in the opening of his Spiritual Exercises says something that I want to quote about reframing our priorities: “In everyday life… we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts ... We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening [God's] life in me."[3] I pray for this deepening of God in you and in me. I want it more than anything and I pray that this deepening, or what I usually call closeness, is something that you also want.
At this point I want to shift to talking about the power of forgiveness when we are the ones doing the forgiving. Last June Neill and I went to a Peace Conference at the Bruderhoff community in NY convened by Johann Christoph Arnold of that community. Arnold spoke about the power of forgiveness in conflicts big and small. He talked about the saying of Alan Paton, a South African author who wrote that “there is a hard law…When a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive.” Having worked for many years as a therapist to women suffering from incest, I came to believe the validity of this statement. Another quote I’m reminded of here is a Chinese Proverb that warns, “Whoever opts for revenge, should dig two graves.” We’ve certainly seen the truth of that since 9/11 and the tremendous numbers of deaths that have resulted as we decided to seek vengeance instead of responding with forgiveness and persevering for peace with justice.
At the Peace Conference there were two speakers that had a lot to forgive: Steven McDonald and Bud Welch. Steven McDonald, was a police detective in New York. One day in the summer of 1986, Steven was questioning three young suspects in Central Park when one of them shot him multiple times. Steven was left paralyzed from the neck down, and dependent on a ventilator. He had been married less than a year, and his wife was pregnant with their first child. A devout Catholic, Steven decided to forgive his assailant. It wasn’t easy—in fact, he had to struggle for weeks, if not months, to overcome his anger. But as he later explained, “The only thing worse than a bullet in my spine would have been revenge.” Three years ago Steven and Johann Arnold started visiting high school assemblies and other places to speak about the power of forgivenss. In fact he has now made it his life’s work to promote nonviolent conflict resolution in his city’s troubled schools.
The other person was Bud Welch, the owner of a gas station whose daughter was one of the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. Like Steven, Bud struggled to overcome his anger, especially at the man who killed his daughter: Timothy McVeigh. Along the way, he met McVeigh’s family and realized that Tim too is one of God’s children. In the years since that meeting, Bud has become an outspoken opponent of the death penalty in America. He says that forgiving is “not something you just wake up one morning and decide to do. I still have moments of rage. But you have to work through your anger and your hatred as long as it’s there.”
One of the most amazing prayers of forgiveness came to me from a transcript of a talk Johann Cristoph Arnold gave at an international peace conference in Milan, Italy in 2004. This prayer was found at a Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck written on a piece of old wrapping paper: “Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill will. But do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted upon us. Remember rather the fruits we brought, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, the courage, the generosity, the greatness of heart that has grown out to this. And when they come to judgment, let all the fruits we have borne be their forgiveness.” Isn’t that one of the most amazing, grace filled prayers you have ever heard? It makes me realize how important it is for us to pray for all involved in the current wars tearing our world apart. Let us pray for and forgive those we do not agree with, those we feel have good intentions as well as those that seem to us to have evil intentions. Let us pray for the ability to forgive our enemies as well as our leaders. If the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps, if Steve McDonald and Bud Welch can pray for those who have caused them so much suffering, let us be compassionate and courageous enough to also pray for all. Arnold reminds us of Martin King, Jr’s words, “The judgment of God is upon our world. And unless we learn to live together as brothers and sisters, we will perish together as fools.”
In our OT reading Isaiah presents God as listing the sins of the Israelites and saying that God will blot out all these sins, not for the sake of the people but for God’s own sake. God will not even remember their sins. God says it is time to forget the things of old and do a new thing. This new thing is salvation for the exiles, making a way through the wilderness and rivers in the desert. God does this not because of any goodness of the people deserving good treatment, but because God is redeeming the exiles, leading them to celebration and praise. For me this is similar to our forgiving those that have done things to cause us to suffer. We forgive because we can not live whole lives as long as we are holding grudges, as long as we are hating, as long as we feel the need for punishment of vengeance. We also forgive because as followers of Jesus, we have been told to do so.
We should never forget that on any given Sunday, there are undoubtedly people here in our congregation that are carrying heavy burdens. Some of this pain may be related to health of self or others, grief for loss, concern for the welfare of loved ones in many different circumstances. However, some of these burdens are burdens of guilt. Where else is a better place for a ‘recovery group’ than right here at church. We are the community of God’s transformative love and forgiveness. Nothing that has happened in the past is as powerful as the possibility for love and kindness in this moment. So much more the reason for us to persevere in bringing others to church so they may know this love, this forgiving, this healing. How do we get this forgiveness in church? For some the confession of sin and the reassurance of forgiveness may make a difference. For others the Lord’s prayer one Sunday will not be a mindless recitation but a real thing when we pray, forgive our sins or debts as we forgive our debtors. Some Sunday someone may here in the Lord’s Supper, that they may come as they are, part of the broken world to receive God’s mercy and love. It may be that one of you will say a word at coffee hour that shows how glad you are to see the person and they will feel part of our community. There are so many ways that we can be part of the healing and forgiving process. Thanks be to God. Let us remember that we are Gods eyes, ears, mouth, arms, legs, etc in this world of pain. Use us God to spread your love. Amen.
[1] Harper Collins Study Bible.
[2] Sermon online by Brian Stoffregen
[3] Taken from an online sermon by Douglas R. Loving
posted by Sermons given at Deering Community Church @ 8:13 AM
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