3-8-09

This sermon is the sequel, or perhaps better, the antidote, to last week's sermon, "Lead Us Not Into Temptation." I thought this one might draw better, "Life Is Too Short to Feel Guilty." Not that sermon's draw, but I thought this one might stand a chance. Though I can see, it doesn't much matter. (change bracelet)

The title actually came from a bumper sticker I saw some years ago on the Interstate of California. Bumper stickers are interesting. One of the fun things is to read the bumper sticker and then pull up alongside the driver and see if the bumper sticker fits. You know like, "blondes have more fun," and then you pull up and, of course, it is a blond driving the car. So you honk and fun!

"Life is too short to feel guilty." Well, that's interesting. I pressed and accelerated to catch up with the driver. I could not. She was out of there. I presume "she." Gone. Apparently no guilt feelings about speeding. I'll never know.

I hesitate to use this sermon title because it sounds like it could come from one of those semi-religious, quasi-psychological, slick, show business, encounter-group-on-every-corner type enterprises.

But on the other hand, I like it. I think it is true. "Life is too short to feel guilty." And maybe the reason these semi-religious, quasi- psychological, slick, show business, encounter-group- on every-corner type enterprises have flourished is because the Church, in all its do good, has forgotten that Jesus came to forgive sinners, and that the church is in the business of communicating this good news. So others have co-opted our message, "life is too short to feel guilty."

Let's look at our gospel text for this morning. "The healing of the paralytic" in Mark, though it appears in Matthew and Luke as well. This story tells us a good deal.

First the setting. We are in Capernaum. Some of us were just there. It is along the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum becomes the headquarters of Jesus' Galilean ministry. This story tells us so, for first verse, it refers to Capernaum as Jesus' home. No longer Nazareth, remember "a prophet is not without honor, except in his own home town," Jesus has rented a condominium in Capernaum, where Simon Peter and perhaps other of the disciples are living as well. It's a going place. Capernaum.

Jesus is there "at home" we are told. The crowd gathers to hear him. They fill his living room, spill out the front door onto the lawn, they are sitting on window sills, hanging from the rafters, "there is no room left," the text tells us.

Such that when a group of four men come carrying a paralytic upon a mat, they cannot get in. Undeterred, the men drill a hole in Jesus' living room roof, not that hard inasmuch as the roof would be of stick and mud construction, or as we read they "dug through the roof," and lower the paralytic into Jesus' lap.

Pretty persistent, these guys seem to both care for the paralytic and believe in Jesus, who has already done some healing in town, which is why the crowds are there, as well as the friends with the paralytic.

Jesus, witnessing the faith of the paralytic's friends, mind you, nothing the paralytic has done, he can't, he's paralyzed, but seeing how his friends care and believe, Jesus says to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven." And all hell breaks loose!

For you see included in the crowd are some scribes, the agents from Jerusalem determined to keep the kingdom kosher. And Jesus has just broken the Law. He has blasphemed when he says, "My son, your sins are forgiven." For as our agents point out, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Perhaps some explanation is in order. We have no idea the paralytic's sin. Neither does Jesus. It does not matter. What matters is the belief of the day, which says if one is sick, one did sin, and therefore their disease, be it leprosy, blindness, or paralysis, is a consequence of their sin. It is God's punishment for their bad behavior.

Therefore, upon seeing the paralytic from on high, Jesus can assume he is a sinner. What Jesus cannot do is forgive him his sin, according to the Hebrew Law, for only God can forgive sin, or the Son of God, which becomes the debate and the point of this pericope, or story.

Let's go back. Note that at the point Jesus says, "My son, your sins are forgiven," the fellow is still frozen. He is not yet healed. That will come later, to the "oohs" and "aahs" of the crowd, to be sure, who just love this kind of sport. That's why they are there. But, again, the healing is incidental, it is secondary, something which follows the forgiveness.

What is pivotal to our story is how Jesus' expression shocks the scribes into action, and our ensuing dialogue, "How does this fellow dare speak in this way - that he forgives sin?"

The scribes hear the blaspheme and begin to write furiously, taking notes so as to report back to the bosses in Jerusalem, that they might properly plot to do away with this apostate. All of which serves to set up the point of the parable, the punch line, when Jesus says, "The Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." It is for the purpose of this proclamation that Mark includes this story in his gospel account of who Jesus is. "The Son of Man has authority..." A Greek expression, "Son of Man." Mark writes in Greek, to a Gentile world. If he were writing in Hebrew, he would say "Christ," the "Messiah," the "anointed one." "The Son of Man." We know what he means.

Mark is saying, Jesus came, by the grace of God and to the disbelief of the establishment, to forgive sins. To prove his point, at the conclusion of the dialogue, he invites the paralytic to pick up his palate and walk.

Which he does. So now the paralytic is not only forgiven, he is healed, which is the proof of his forgiveness. He is not only given new life, he can walk. But the greater good is the forgiveness, which grants him new life and the ability to walk again. Only God can do this. And God's Son.

And this is why Jesus came. For our greater good or forgiveness. That we might have new life, by the grace of God, and pick up our pallets and walk. Jesus might just as well have said, "Life is too short to feel guilty."

Let's come current. First the disclaimer. Guilt is good. This must be said. There is a place for good guilt. When we do terrible things, we should feel guilty. When we hurt others, destroy things, take selfish advantage of situations, desecrate the earth, we should feel guilty. If not, we are something short of human beings created in God's image.

This was the point of Karl Menninger's classic of a few decades ago, back when I was in seminary, Whatever Became of Sin? The noted psychologist pointed out that guilt is not necessarily a bad thing. It is the sign of a conscience, and a conscience is the sign of a moral individual, and a moral individual is a mature human being.

So guilt can be good, when it helps us to do right or motivates us to stop doing wrong. Guilt is good when it gets us to grow up and live a better life than the one we are living.

But we've got to get beyond guilt. And perhaps the Church has failed here, for I suppose for many their experience of Church is not as a place which gets rid of guilt but as a place which pours on guilt. For shame.

For shame, for then people look outside the church to deal with their guilt. They turn to psychology, which is OK, but in the end it is going to be guilt lite. For only God can forgive sin. And it is the role of the church to communicate this and exemplify this.

The fundamental issue is: we are separated from God. It comes with freedom. We are created with freedom, thus creating a separation from God. Call it "original sin." Where sin is defined, as it is in the Bible, not as our daily shortcomings and failings, but as our separation from God. This is the human condition. Separation from God.

Our goal in life is to have right relationship with God. This is called righteousness in the Bible. When we don't have righteousness, guess what? We feel guilty.

For somewhere deep down we know we are not quite right, that something is a little off, missing, empty, anxious, hollow, and we feel a dis-ease. For, conscious or not, we were made for God, to live in relationship to God, and until we find our rest in God, we will be restless.

Reconciliation with God, being put right with God, at-one with God, atonement, comes through forgiveness. God's forgiveness of us, for choosing separation over relationship. God's forgiveness comes to us in the person of Christ. In Christ's death for our sin (separation) we are made at-one with God again.

There may be other ways, but this is the message of the Christian faith. And this is the reason for the Church. To tell God's children to come home, that we are forgiven and invited home, that we might live the fullness of life for which God created us. "For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Son, not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Christ." John 3:16-17, "the gospel in miniature" (Martin Luther).

And if this is too heavy with theology, let me lighten it up for Lent and repeat, "Life is too short to feel guilty." Or, in other words, "Life is too short to live separated from God."

A woman went through a traumatic divorce. She was the granddaughter of a Baptist minister with whom she was very close. She loved and adored her grandpa, who performed her wedding ceremony.

During the divorce she avoided contact with her grandpa, as indeed she did with her other family members as well. She separated herself from them during this painful and guilt-wrenching period of her life. After the divorce she dreaded to see them again, especially her grandpa.

But eventually the time came; she could no longer ignore them and shut them out. This is how she describes her reunion.

"I parked the car and remember walking up the long grassy knoll towards my childhood home. My grandpa stood atop the knoll. When he saw me, he immediately started down the hill to meet me. Before I could think of anything adequate to say, he hugged me, and said, ?You know, dear, I've been wondering what it was I said wrong at the ceremony.' I collapsed in his arms and wept.

When I finally gained control, I looked into his own smiling, wet-eyed face. I could not think of a word to say, and he did not say anything, either. With his arm around my shoulder, we walked together up the hill and back into my family."

Mark tells us, in this healing story of the paralytic this morning; the Son of Man has authority to welcome us back into the family. So get rid of the guilt and welcome home. Amen.