Homily for 16 March 2014: 2nd Sunday of Great Lent
(Hebrews 1:10-2:3)
(Mark 2:1-12)
Today’s Gospel story of the paralyzed man
gives us an opportunity to reflect on how we need to work together as people of
faith to come close to God.
Obviously the paralyzed man couldn’t go
by himself to the house where Jesus was staying and teaching the crowds of
people—he was paralyzed. And even if he
had got some friends to take him there, he could not have seen Jesus—after all,
he was lying on a stretcher. And even when
he did get some friends to bring him to the house, they couldn’t get through
the crowd.
He had a need; he had the will to get
close Jesus; he even had he means to get there; but he couldn’t quite
accomplish his goal, even with his friends’ help.
At that point, they must have gotten
serious about getting their paralyzed friend close the Lord. There was a whole group of them with him—four
carrying his stretcher and others with them.
They had to work together to come up with a plan and carry it out. They had to decide on one common goal, and
they had to agree on the one best way to accomplish it.
They probably had a little discussion—and
since they were Middle Easterners, the discussion was probably pretty lively,
with lots of loud opinions and waving hands.
In the discussion, it became obvious that they all had different
talents.
Some were good at coming up with ideas,
others were good at making the ideas into plans. Some were sort of small and athletic, so they
climbed on the roof and opened it up. Others
were strong and tall, so they lifted their paralyzed friend up and then lowered
him down through the hole in the roof.
One or two were good talkers, so they approached Jesus and the owner of
the house to explain why they were climbing on the roof and opening a big hole
in it. Others calmed the excited crowd
and kept things peaceful.
What they all had in common was faith
that Jesus could help their friend, whom they loved and cared about. Maybe it wasn’t easy for them to work
together—everybody would have had his own idea of the best way to do this, and
someone was probably pointing out that they had never done it that way
before. But this was an important
opportunity to help their friend, and they couldn’t let their egos get in the
way of their common goal. There was no
place for arguing over whose plan was better and who was going to have the
special honor of some particular part of the job.
And what happened? Their friend encountered the Lord. His sins were forgiven. And his paralysis was cured. He received healing of soul and body, and
everybody’s faith was made stronger, and they all went away praising God and
saying that they had never seen anything like this before.
The lesson for us as a congregation is
obvious. We have a common goal of coming
closer to the Lord and being healed in our souls and bodies. We have all kinds of talents that we can put
to use to accomplish our common goal. So
we have to overcome our differences and work together, like the friends of the
paralyzed man.
Then everybody’s faith will be
strengthened and we can all give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
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