WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert September 18, 2005

Mark 2:1-28 “Who’s Sick?”

Who is Jesus, and what does it mean to be his disciple? We have seen that Mark, the earliest of the “gospels of Jesus Christ,” wastes no time in portraying Jesus as the man with authority, the one on whom the Holy Spirit came in power at his baptism, the one who resists the devil, casts out demons, heals the sick, and above all preaches “the word” that God’s kingdom – his rule in the hearts of men and women who will trust and obey him – has arrived. A new thing has begun.

In five short incidents, Mark now expands his portrait. Jesus’ authority extends to forgiving sins and reinterpreting the Sabbath. He comes to reward faith and to call sinners into discipleship and repentance, but he is criticized at every turn. In each incident Mark describes, the critics turn on Jesus over his own words, his disciples’ actions, his eating and drinking with “sinners;” he is criticized over fasting and feasting, and “working” on the Sabbath. The opposition grows rapidly, and by the 3^rd chapter of Mark we hear of plans to kill Jesus!

1) Authority, Compassion, Criticism

Jesus returns from his tour of the Galilean villages to his base in Capernaum, perhaps at Simon’s house. Crowds gather immediately, and as he is speaking “the word” to them, four men arrive carrying a paraplegic on a bed roll. They are so desperate to get their friend to Jesus for healing that they climb the outer stairs of the house to the flat roof and tear up the straw and mud, making a hole large enough to lower the man and his bed down in front of Jesus – who like everyone else is by now presumably covered in dust and straw. Jesus recognizes the men’s determination as a sign of their faith in his healing powers, and rather than admonishing them for disrupting his preaching, he deals kindly with their paralyzed friend.

But to everyone’s surprise and shock, Jesus does not simply heal him: instead he pronounces him freed from his sins – they have been forgiven and “sent away.” What an outrage! Who does he think he is? Knowing the minds of his critics, Jesus asks “which is easier, forgiveness or healing?” Now that’s a good question, which you know the crowds and the critics will answer wrongly! Forgiveness looks easy, because it’s invisible. Anyone can claim to forgive another, or claim to know that God has forgiven. But who’s to tell? Healing is harder, because you have to actually make someone well, and everyone can see if you succeed. But Jesus knows the reverse is true: people are healed all the time, but few are forgiven. To be forgiven takes a gracious inner work of God. Jesus can do that – he has done it, but nobody believes it. To prove he has done it, he then does the easy part, saying to the man “Get up and walk,” which he does.

You will remember that elsewhere Jesus makes clear that in this fallen world there is no one-to-one correspondence between sin and suffering. It was not that this man needed his sins dealt with before he could be healed, but that Jesus was starting to make clear that his mission was all about the forgiveness of sins, and only secondly, and by way of illustration, about healing. And so when Jesus surprises the crowds and critics again by calling Levi the tax-collector as a disciple, he again has the chance to remind them that this is why he has come: to call “sinners” and not the so-called “righteous” as his disciples.

Levi, who may or may not be Matthew the Apostle and gospel-writer, was one of a despised group who worked for the Romans or their collaborators like Herod Antipas to collect tolls on goods that passed from one territory to another, and taxes on all produce. They charged what they could get away with, over and above what the Romans required. They were “tax-farmers” and notorious for their greed and corruption, and were outcasts from synagogue life in Jewish society. Simon and Andrew, James and John may easily already have known Levi and his ways, because the fish they caught were taxed. But Jesus calls Levi as a disciple, and his response is shown by an immediate celebratory feast.

At the meal with Jesus and his few disciples are some of Levi’s friends and other low-lifes. The critics call them “tax-collectors and sinners,” probably meaning they were people notorious for their unrepentant sinful lives, like prostitutes, outside the pale of Judaism and especially of the world of the separatist and holiness-oriented Pharisees. Not for the last time, Jesus is accused of eating and drinking and fraternizing with “sinners.” His response is simple: “It’s the sick who need a doctor, not the healthy” – and these people have this going for them: they know they are sick! These are the kind of people I can deal with – who I came for – and not the ones who are sure they are well!

Whether it’s the company he keeps in seeking disciples, the way he and they behave, his attitude to the nit-picking Sabbath regulations, Jesus makes clear that the Kingdom of God he has come to announce is all new – like new wine that is still fermenting and will quickly burst the brittle and perished old wineskins of Judaism. Let them criticize; let them accuse him of blasphemy and of Sabbath-breaking; let them keep themselves away from “evil” and “bad people;” if they persist in these attitudes, they will never enter his Kingdom, and their old ways will be burst open and destroyed.

2) Faith, Forgiveness, Fellowship

What then does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? Faith that will not allow any obstacle to keep you and those you love away from Jesus. A recognition that you need forgiveness. A willingness to have fellowship with other followers of Jesus, even ones you would not have approved of him calling. A readiness to celebrate the great gift that you are now counted among the friends of Jesus. A courage to ignore the critics who say you are doing it all wrong. A grasp of how Jesus makes things so new that you have to let go of “the old ways.” A willingness to learn from Jesus; to acknowledge that maybe you don’t already know all there is to know about God and his ways.

It must have been a shock for Simon and Andrew and James and John and Levi, as well as the other un-named disciples, to realize how different Jesus was from anyone they had ever encountered before. They did not understood all that was going on, but they knew enough already of Jesus to follow him. Part of what they learned from him - about themselves - was that they were all in the same situation: namely, they were all sick and in need of the doctor. The distinction between the crowds, the critics and the disciples was becoming clear: they all saw and heard the same things, but the crowds saw only spectacles that amazed them; the critics thought they were healthy, righteous, and pursuing a holy life; the disciples knew they were sick and sinful. “Who’s sick?” became a dividing line – if you knew you were, Jesus could heal and save you; if you thought you were well, were righteous, then you were outside his reach. Jesus had come, it has been said, to call “the least, the last and the lost” (Witherington). If you knew you were one of them, you were glad to hear Jesus’ call and respond to it, and you knew that you then had something to celebrate.

3) “Who’s Sick?”

So who among us is sick? Who needs the doctor? Do you see the division that still runs through our world today, between those who know their spiritual needs, and those who think they have none? I am not talking only about those who deny that they are even spiritual beings, and who think all religion is nonsense. I am talking about those who feel that they are living good lives, keeping away from evil, obeying the rules, listening respectfully to Jesus from a distance.

They would never admit to self-righteousness, but that is their problem. It is a disease that we are all prone to – born with, some would argue: we need to convince ourselves that we are “doing fine.” Some level of self-assurance, we are told, is essential to good mental health and functioning. But in fact we constantly think far more highly of ourselves than we should, and if some event in our lives reveals how fragile in fact we are, our self-esteem crumbles. But these moments can be God’s gift that allows us to see our need; that allows us to reach the end of ourselves and cry out to God. The first rung of the “12-Step ladder” requires admitting who and what we are and that we cannot help ourselves out of the pit we are in. It is the moment we grasp the difference between grace and performance.

But even in the church, sad to say, in every generation there are those who settle into complacency about their spiritual condition, and embrace separatism and rule-keeping as the path to holiness and what they suppose is acceptance with God. There is, to be sure, a time and place for separatism from evil; but too often it becomes a censorious and self-righteous way of life. There are whole churches that pursue it. There are people who slide into it over the years, equating the old with the good, failing to see that Jesus brings “new wine” to every generation, and that the old wine-skins are continually being burst.

Rules can also be good: the Sabbath restrictions were intended by God to ensure that people rested - for their benefit! God had special concern for the welfare of the poor, and his law said you must not harvest to the edge of your field, but leave some crops for the alien, the traveler, the poor to pluck for themselves. But good rules became nonsense regulations when they enumerated how many ears of grain you could pick on the Sabbath before gleaning became reaping. Jesus said that he and his disciples would pluck grain on the Sabbath as they traveled, just as David and his men had eaten the holy bread from the priests in a time of need. Suppose our town was flooded, and homeless people sought refuge in the church, would we feed them the Communion bread? Or would that be an “unholy” thing to do?

How far are we prepared to go to reach out to people in spiritual and physical need? Do we welcome anyone to become part of our fellowship, or do we reject those whose backgrounds we don’t like; do we make people “not like us” uncomfortable enough that they don’t want to stay?

And how ready are you and I to admit that we, no less than they, “need a doctor”? Are we ready to be honest before God about our spiritual health, and stop putting off going to the doctor because – as is very often the case - we don’t really want to know what’s wrong with us? Are we ready to admit there are indeed things wrong with us that we can’t fix, and that “Doctor Jesus” may be exactly who we need to see? If we insist that “we are fine,” we may miss what Jesus alone can offer: healing, forgiveness, fellowship, feasting, freedom. Is anyone here sick? That’s good, because Jesus has come to seek and to call people just like you.

Let us pray...