Luke 5:17-26
Rev. Dr. Deborah L. Clark
September 27, 2020
There is so much pain. There is pain wrought by this pandemic—over 200,000 lives lost in our nation, each one with family and friends who are grieving. There is the pain of small business owners who poured their hearts and souls into their shops and restaurants, now facing foreclosure on their dreams. There is the pain of people who have lost homes and loved ones to fires in the west and hurricanes in the south—and the pain of nature-lovers who see the loss of national treasures as the redwoods burn. There is the pain of Black bodies shot and choked and incarcerated at a disproportionate rate, and the pain of the message sent over and over that Black lives are not valued. There is the pain of White people awakening, belatedly, to how we have benefitted from systemic racism.
This week we add the pain of grief interrupted—as the energy we should be devoting to grieving the death and celebrating the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is redirected to political machinations about her replacement. We add the pain of another grand jury decision that highlights the injustice of our justice system. To our pain, we add fear for the survival of our democracy.
I was feeling that pain acutely this week as I clicked on the link Len Ezbicki sent me of today’s anthem: Chain Breaker, written by Zach Williams. I asked On the Fence to record this piece after hearing Kelly and George sing it at our outdoor concert in July. I love the heart-felt testimony in the song, the deeply personal expression of trust in Jesus. I seized on the chorus as a frame for a sermon series. Karen Nell and I picked scriptures to accompany each of the four statements about Jesus.
As the pain of our nation swirled around and within me, I listened to the recording. The first line of the chorus, the line designated for today’s service, leapt out at me with a dissonance I wasn’t expecting. “If you’ve got pain, he’s a pain-taker.”
Well, we’ve got pain. Somehow, though, I don’t think Jesus is going to take it away. If he could, I don’t think he would. The pain we are experiencing as a nation is acute pain—the kind that points us to danger, to the need to do something differently. Jesus is not going to take away that pain and let us pretend everything is okay. We need Jesus now, but we don’t need a pain-taker.
Good poetry—good song lyrics—never give us easy answers. Instead they challenge us to move deeper. This line of poetry in our anthem pushes us to ask a deeper question. How do the life and teachings of Jesus help us live with purpose and wholeness in this time of such acute pain?
Our scripture reading offers us clues. This is one of my favorite gospel healing stories, in spite of it being fraught with troubling implications. I love the vision of a group of folks so dedicated to supporting their friend that they climb up onto a stranger’s roof, cut open a hole, and lower him down. I love their perseverance, their creativity, and their gumption.
The gospel story, though, leaves out the most interesting part. I would love to listen in on their conversations. Who comes up with the idea to go see Jesus? Does the man stuck in bed dare to ask his friends to carry him? Does one of his friends dare to convince him that it is worth a try? How do his friends assure him that they really are happy to go out of their way for him?
I wonder what they have heard about Jesus that prompts them to make this journey. Maybe they heard him proclaiming his central message: the basiliea of God—the reign of God, the realm of God’s love—has come near. There is something more than what you see, Jesus declares. There is something more than the overwhelming might of the Roman empire, something more than a society that says some people are holy and others are unclean, something more than paralysis and despair. Perhaps they have seen how Jesus touches a leper labeled as untouchable, how he eats with outcasts and challenges the powerful. Something in his words and deeds leads at least one of them to hope. Something gives that one courage to talk her friends into going to see Jesus.
In the gospel text, there is one person stuck in his bed and perhaps four others who carry him. When I think about this story in the context of our collective pain today, I imagine it a little differently. Most of us have times when we feel paralyzed by pain, rage, and despair. In those moments, we need our friends to carry us toward hope. Their willingness to do so ultimately restores our strength—so we can help carry another friend will may soon need us. In my imagining of this story for our time, the friends take turns holding each other up, holding hope for one another.
By the time the intrepid group of friends gets to the house, regroups to come up with Plan B when the doorway is blocked, climbs onto the roof, cuts a hole in it and lowers their friend down, the healing has already begun. Jesus looks at this group of friends and sees their faith. Maybe he says to myself, “my work is done here.” All he needs to do is point them to the healing power of the Spirit in their midst: the healing power of holding hope for one another, the healing power of going out of their way for one another, the healing power of learning they can trust their friends. The pain is not taken away; it is made bearable as it is shared.
I have always been troubled by what happens next. Jesus turns to the man on the bed and says, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.” His opponents accuse him of blasphemy; I accuse him of speaking words that have been used for millenia to blame people for their suffering. “You must have done something to deserve this pain,” we hear. “Pray for forgiveness and you will be healed.”
There are many other healing stories in the gospels where there is no connection made between sin and illness, and there is at least one in which Jesus explicitly denies that connection. Over the years I’ve tried to figure out how to leave out this part of the text, but there’s no good way to do that. I sometimes explain it away as an example of how gospel writers use healing stories to set the stage for Jesus’ conflict with his opponents.
In the context of the communal pain of our time, I hear these words in a new way. The pain we are facing today compels us to reckon with our past—with our nation’s original sin of slavery and its on-going sin of racism, with our careless exploitation of our planet, with an extreme interpretation of individualism that allows us to disregard the well-being of our neighbors. As we face our past, we can become paralyzed by guilt; we can also become paralyzed by a defensiveness that projects all the blame onto someone else.
“Friend,” Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven.” If those words mean the past is erased and we can avoid taking responsibility, then they are dangerous words. I hear them instead as an assurance that we are more than our history. The pain that overwhelms us does not have to define us. We are God’s beloved, created in the image of God, with the capacity to learn and grow and change. This pain is an important part of who we are, for it awakens us to the need to change. And we are more than this pain.
This story of friends who seek healing for each other is part of a larger story of Jesu’s life, death and resurrection. The way Jesus lived brought him into conflict with people determined to hold on to their power. His ministry led to his painful death, and ultimately to his resurrection. At the heart of the Christian story is pain—not pain taken away but pain transformed. In the midst of suffering and loss, God is at work planting seeds of new life. When we grieve the loss of someone we love, it can feel like a giant hole in the center of our being. New life comes not as we fill up that hole but as that emptiness is transformed into a spaciousness that enables us to hold another person’s pain with compassion. The pain of acknowledging guilt isn’t taken away by some magical act of forgiveness; it is transformed by grace into a commitment to work for justice and healing. Through his life, death and resurrection, Jesus assures us that God’s love can transform our pain into a source of new life.
Thanks be to God, Jesus does not take away the pain of this time. Thanks be to God, Jesus holds out the promise of another way and challenges us to walk together, holding hope for one another, taking turns holding each other up. Jesus assures us that we are not defined by our pain, but by our status as God’s beloved, called to do God’s work of love and justice. Jesus promises that when we open ourselves to God’s healing love, our pain will be transformed into a source of courage and compassion.
Thanks be to God. Amen.