Scripture: Mark 2:1-12
I got a call last week from my doctor’s office: “Mr. White, I just wanted to let you know that we got the results of the biopsy, and they came back negative. It’s wasn’t cancer!”
I better explain… The problem started a couple of years ago when I developed a runner’s injury—because, let’s face it, an athlete at my elite level will occasionally suffer injuries. And the “runner’s injury” in this case was a blister on one of my toes. Because my toes are scrunched up in my running shoes, things like that are bound to happen—and calling it a “runner’s injury” sounds more impressive than “blister on my toe”… But the blister never went away, and it was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. So I had the dermatologist remove it… cut it away… two weeks ago.
But here’s the thing: I had no idea that he was also going to biopsy it! I didn’t know I was waiting to find out if I had cancer or not!
Which is a good thing, of course, because—oh my goodness… I would have been worried about it for the last two weeks! Because I do tend to worry about health-related problems. I told a group of friends one time that I was “slightly” a hypochondriac, and they replied—in unison—“Slightly?”
But many people today are preoccupied, if not worried, if not obsessed about health, even if they’re not hypochondriacs…
Witness, for example, the proliferation of gym memberships, of CrossFit “boxes,” of expensive home fitness equipment like Peloton.
Witness the proliferation of devices on our wrists that track our steps, that measure our heart rate, that count our calories… that read blood oxygen levels… My smartwatch told me last winter that my cardio fitness had “declined” over the past couple of months based on whatever metrics it was tracking. I promptly turned that feature off—“Like, mind your own business! I don’t need you to tell me that I need to go to the gym more often!”
Witness the proliferation of fad diets… keto, paleo, carnivore, intermittent fasting…
I’m not suggesting that these things are bad—I’m not a doctor—but they do imply that we are often obsessed with our physical health.
And you know what? It wasn’t so different for people in Jesus’ day. Most of us know today’s very familiar story of the healing of the paralytic. We remember that this house in Capernaum was crowded with people—so much so that if it happened in our day, the fire marshal would surely come and shut this event down! Because it’s packed with people—standing room only.
Why was it so crowded?
Is it simply because Jesus was such a great preacher. Well, of course he was a great preacher—the greatest ever. But Mark shows us in chapter 1 why so many people are there to see him: Because he heals people… physically. And he also drives out demons—which, as we see in the gospels, often manifested themselves in people’s lives through physical symptoms.
Regardless, many people are sick—and even if they’re not sick, personally, everyone knew someone who was—often with incurable illnesses, terminal diseases… So naturally everyone’s anxious to see Jesus for a cure.
So… like so many others, the four friends in today’s scripture are desperate to get their disabled friend to Jesus.
But how will they possibly get their friend to Jesus? There’s no way they can maneuver their friend and his stretcher through this crowd… But… they hatch a plan—it’s a lot of trouble, it involves vandalism, it involves costly repairs to the roof of this house… and they have to count on Jesus not being too upset about the ceiling caving in above him and disrupting his sermon… But it’s worth the trouble.
Because, for these men, getting to Jesus is worth everything, it’s worth any risk, it’s worth any expense.
In a way, these five men are living out a couple of famous parables that Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke: First, in chapter 11, there’s the parable of the man who boldly knocks on his neighbor’s door at midnight… because he has some unexpected company from out of town and has nothing to feed them… He wakes up his neighbor and risks waking up the man’s family—possibly even waking up a crying baby—in the hopes that this man had bread to give him. 1
I mean, this man’s actions are bold, they’re brash, they’re shameless. But, Jesus says, his actions demonstrate the kind of urgency with which we all should approach our Father in prayer. Jesus gives us permission to do that… to pray like that! In fact, he insists on it.
And then, later in Luke, in chapter 18, Jesus gives us a parable about persistence in prayer: A poor widow goes to an unjust judge—day after day after day—demanding that the judge give her the justice she seeks. And she won’t take no for an answer. Until finally, Jesus says, she “wears the judge out” with her constant nagging. 2
Jesus’ point is that true, saving faith expresses itself in bold, brash, shameless, frequent, persistent prayer.
Speaking of which, I have two favorite Christian movies. The first is Chariots of Fire. Do yourself a favor and watch that one before the Olympics this summer to get inspired. And the other is The Apostle, starring Robert Duvall. The Apostle is not a kids’ movie, by any stretch—it’s PG-13—but at the heart of this movie is an explicit gospel message. In the movie Duvall plays a successful, energetic Pentecostal preacher in Texas named Sonny, who gets into a lot of trouble, most of which he brings on himself. At one point, after his wife leaves him, and he loses his church, he moves in with his mother, played by June Carter Cash.
And one night, in the middle of the night, Sonny is pacing the floor of his bedroom—shouting at the ceiling. Turns out he’s praying. And here’s some of what he says:
Somebody, I say, somebody has taken my wife; they’ve stolen my church! That’s the temple I built for you! I’m gonna yell at you ’cause I’m mad at you! I can’t take it!
Give me a sign or somethin’. Blow this pain out of me. Give it to me tonight, Lord God, Jehovah. If you won’t give me back my wife, give me peace. Give it to me, give it to me… Give me peace. Give me peace.
I don’t know who’s been foolin’ with me, you or the Devil. I don’t know… But I’m confused. I’m mad. I love you, Lord, I love you, but I’m mad at you. I am mad at you!
Ever since I was a little boy and you brought me back from the dead, I’m your servant! What should I do? Tell me. I’ve always called you Jesus; you’ve always called me Sonny. What should I do, Jesus? This is Sonny talkin’ now. 3
And as he’s pacing the floor and shouting at the Lord, in the middle of the night, the phone rings. This is back when you had those old-fashioned phones plugged into the wall. The ringers were loud. And his mother is in bed asleep. She answers it. It’s a neighbor calling: “It sounds like you have a wild man over there. Is everything okay? Is that your son?” And Sonny’s mother says, “That’s my son. Ever since he was a little boy, he either talks to the Lord, or he yells at the Lord. And tonight, well, he just happens to be yelling.”
I’ve said before that the only One to whom we can safely express our anger is God. Anger is like radioactive waste—it’s too dangerous for us mere mortals to carry around; only God can handle it. So take it to God! Angry prayer is so much better than not praying!
But it takes real faith to be angry with God, and Sonny has that faith.
This prayer he prays… this is real “friend at midnight” stuff! This is shamelessness in prayer, this is persistence in prayer, this is holy desperation for God in prayer. This is a man who understands who’s really in charge here… who understands who has all the power here… who understands that if the Lord won’t solve his problems, they won’t get solved. This is a man who’s going directly to the Source and saying, “You’re all I’ve got, Jesus! If you won’t give me the help I need, I won’t be helped.”
Psalm 73:25-26: “Whom have I in heaven but you. And there’s nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
We all know that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus says so. One of my main missions in life is to help you do that. To that end I read Psalm 116 yesterday. In the very first verse the psalmist expresses love for God: “I love the Lord…” Why? “Because he hears my voice and my prayer for mercy.” And then the psalmist goes on to list specific ways in which God answered his prayers. And he’s filled with love and praise and thanksgiving to God because God answered his prayers.
Two quick points: First, there’s no guarantee God would have given him these good gifts without his asking for them. Second, and this is my main point here: The psalmist simply loves God more because he prays as much as he does. There’s a direct correlation between the extent to which this man loves God and how often this man prays. Because he gets to see how often God answers those prayers! “I love you, Lord, because I’ve seen the many ways you’ve answered my prayers!” That’s the main theme of Psalm 116.
William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, writing in the middle of the last century to mostly skeptical British people, said, “I find that when I pray, coincidences happen; and when I stop praying, coincidences stop happening.” Let’s see more of these coincidences in our lives and in our church, and let’s praise God for them!
Do you want to love God more? Do we want to love God more? Of course we do… It’s the most important command. Then we should pray more!
These five men are giving us a living parable of Christian prayer. They are bold, brash, shameless, and persistent…
And they act with urgency to see Jesus. Because they know that they need a healing… We all do. We all need healing… all the time… And I’m talking even about us Christians. None of us has it all together. All of us are in need. And until we arrive safely in heaven, every single person in this room needs healing.
So let’s go to Jesus with great urgency and ask for the healing that we need!
That’s Point Number One: The urgency of bringing ourselves to Jesus through prayer.
Point Number Two: We should have the same urgency when it comes to bringing our friends to Jesus.
You’ve got to admit: these four men loved their paralyzed friend! Look at the lengths to which they went to save him! What wouldn’t they do to bring their friend into the presence of Jesus so that he can be saved?
The tie-in to our church’s mission—and Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded us” 4—couldn’t be more obvious. And I don’t need to spend much time on this point, except to say this…
We modern-day Christians might read this story, and, yes… we admire these four men for acting with urgency to bring their friend to Jesus… and yes… we see the tie-in to mission… But we have this suspicion in the back of our minds that what we as a church have to offer our friends is somehow less than what Jesus had to offer this paralyzed man.
I mean, sure… we can bring people to worship on Sunday mornings—and as we do, we can be confident that Jesus promises to meet them here. And that’s all well and good, of course. But suppose we could also heal them of all their diseases, all of their illnesses, all of their infections, all of their injuries—free of charge, without the hassle of doctors’ appointments, medical bills, and insurance… if we could only do that, you know our church would be exactly like this house in Capernaum every week. People would be lined up trying to get in to church. They would even line up to enter a sanctuary without any air conditioning in the hot summer if it meant physical healing.
Now, first of all… I’m not saying we don’t have the power to heal people physically… at least sometimes we do, through the power of the Spirit, if we have faith and it’s God’s will. I believe that physical healings can happen… but that’s another sermon…
But if… at the end of every sermon… the people who gather for church knew for sure that we could heal them physically… they would be happy to sit through even a long and boring sermon to get that kind of healing! You know they would! Did you see that news item last week… Pope Francis saying that Catholic priests shouldn’t preach sermons longer than “eight minutes,” in order to prevent members of the congregation from nodding off! 5
Eight minutes! Some of you are like [looking at watch]… “How do we get to St. Mary’s from here?” But suppose we offered free, instant, guaranteed physical healings at every worship service here at Toccoa First… it wouldn’t matter how long the sermons were!
So there’s this thought in the back of our minds—and it may literally be a devilish thought, but let’s name it…We think something like this: “Unlike Jesus in today’s scripture, all we have to offer people is… Jesus and his gospel… and the forgiveness of sins… and eternal life… And I don’t know… in comparison to physical healing, what we have to offer sort of feels like a consolation prize! Maybe clergy like me should instead get medical degrees or nursing degrees… if we really wanted to heal people.
“Because the most important healing takes place at hospitals and clinics and doctor’s offices, not in church. If only we could heal people physically!”
Like I said, it’s a devilish thought! But I get it!
But in a way, once again, we are not so different from the people in Jesus’ day!
Because let’s face it: After these four men go to the trouble of getting their paralyzed friend to Jesus, what does Jesus say? “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
“Wait… What?”I know for sure, when Jesus said spoke those words, that there were some disappointed people in that room. Even Jesus’ disciples… Like, imagine Peter going over to Jesus, “Lord, maybe you were distracted by the ceiling falling in over your head… Or maybe you suffered a concussion, and you’re temporarily dazed and confused… But this man doesn’t need forgiveness of sins; he needs something far more practical, more down to earth: he needs to be able to walk again!
“In fact, that’s what all these people are expecting right now… So, Jesus… can you just please… make that happen, too… You know, in addition to forgiving this man’s sins?” Because, from the perspective of most people in that crowd, the forgiveness of sins wasn’t that big of a deal…
But… making the paralytic walk again…? Are you kidding? Now we’re talking!
Regardless, our Lord disagrees with anyone in the crowd who places a higher priority on the man’s physical healing rather than on his spiritual healing.
How do I know this?
Because it seems crystal clear that Jesus was prepared to pronounce this man’s sins forgiven… and just leave it at that. It’s only after these nitpicking theologians and pastors in the room start thinking to themselves that Jesus was committing “blasphemy” that Jesus also heals the man physically. It seems clear that the only reason that Jesus heals the man physically, in other words, is to prove that he really does possess the authority and power to heal the man spiritually… that is, through the forgiveness of sins!
Besides… I heard this in a sermon last week by an English pastor named Christopher Ash. He boldly said the following, so blame him, not me! But no… I believe it wholeheartedly too… But this is what Christopher Ash said: “The forgiveness of sins always results in physical healing.” When Jesus forgives our sins, we will always be physically healed. Spiritual healing always results in physical healing.”
How does that strike you?
I wouldn’t blame you if you’re ready to throw rotten tomatoes at me. I wouldn’t blame you for thinking, “How is that possibly true… when we’ve watched so many sincerely faithful Christian relatives and friends die of cancer and other dread diseases? Are you calling into question the sincerity of their faith? Or are you preaching some kind of health-and-wealth, name-it-and-claim-it gospel… If only you believe hard enough, if only you have enough faith, you’ll be physically healthy?”
No… Not at all!
Christopher Ash was merely saying—and I’m merely repeating him—that Revelation chapter 21 is really true. Verse 1:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone… [And he goes on in verse 4:] He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.6
Death, sorrow, crying, and pain—including the diseases and illnesses that so often cause them—will be a thing of the past. That’s guaranteed!
But that guarantee only applies to people who receive this free gift of forgiveness and eternal life through faith in God’s Son Jesus!
But to be clear: You have to have your sins forgiven first, if you want to healed physically… and permanently… in God’s kingdom on the other side of death and resurrection.
So with this in mind, believe it or not, our church’s mission actually does include physical healing… always… Whether that healing takes place on this side of resurrection, or the other side. But those of us in Christ are going to receive resurrection bodies, which will be incapable of suffering any longer from the illness and disease that they suffer today.
But the forgiveness of sins must happen first!
Therefore our church’s mission—to proclaim the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ—couldn’t be more urgent.
Finally, Point Number Three: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?”
On the one hand, of course the answer is that it’s easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” because talk is cheap…You couldn’t prove it one way or another. If a person’s sins are truly forgiven, that’s an inward and invisible reality that no outside observer could possibly see.
Whereas if you say, “Take up your bed and walk,” well… either the man will walk or he won’t. We can prove a physical healing!
So in that sense it’s far easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.”
But…
Jesus isn’t considered the greatest teacher in the history of the world for no reason. There are layers to his teaching—there are nuances. That’s why we keep learning from him over and over as we return even to the familiar words of Mark chapter 2… words many of us have heard all our lives!
Consider this: Is it hard for God to perform a physical miracle? After all, God created the universe and everything in it—including you and me—so of course it’s not hard for God to perform a physical miracle. And Jesus is God, God in the flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity. So it’s no sweat for Jesus to perform a physical miracle!
But you know what is hard?
Sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane and saying, “Father, if possible take this cup away from me, but not my will but yours be done.” That was hard! Being mocked, beaten, spat upon. Being rejected by the world you created. That was hard! Having nails driven through your hands and feet. Suffering the punishment for all our sins. That was hard! Crying out, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” and experiencing—for the first time in eternity—separation from your Father, which is nothing less than hell itself—which Jesus did on our behalf, so we wouldn’t have to.
That was hard… And that’s precisely what God did to make the forgiveness of sins possible…
See, we have it backwards! We think that the forgiveness of sins is the easy thing for Jesus to do; and the physical miracle is the hard thing. But no… that’s not even close to the truth!
Now consider this: When you’re in heaven with Jesus and you ask him, “Lord, was it worth it to do all these very hard things for me, of all people—for me!—so that you could have me with you in eternity forever? Was I worth all that trouble?”
Do you know what he’ll say?
He’ll say, “It was totally worth all the suffering in order to have you with me forever!”
Amen.
- Luke 11:5-8
- Luke 18:1-8
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“The Apostle”: Honest Prayer.” preachingtoday.com. Accessed 24 September 2020. - Matthew 28:19-20 ESV
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“Pope tells priests to keep it snappy or people will nod off,” reuters.com, 12 June 2024. Accessed 14 June 2024. - Revelation 21:1,4 NLT