Introduction
In our gospel reading today we hear of a paralysed man being taken to Jesus by his friends. They are not able to get into the house where Jesus is preaching but, instead, get him up on to the roof and then they lower him down to Jesus from a hole in the roof.
It must have been quite a moment. Imagine, Jesus looking up and seeing this man lowered down before his eyes. It must have provoked some humour too, though I doubt if the owner of the house laughed too much!
I wonder how the friends had been persuaded to take the guy to see Jesus. Had he begged them to take him, or had they just decided that they had enough of this guy and they wanted Jesus to do something, anything with him? We don’t know, but I have a feeling that the friends were fed up with the paralysed man and wanted Jesus to do something with and for him. Maybe the guy was nagging or depressed or just plain miserable and they wanted to cheer him up. Maybe the guy was constantly complaining or just plain unpleasant and his friends had enough. Anyway, they took him to Jesus and Jesus forgave and healed him.
As I read the story again this week, I got to wondering about what are the things that paralyse us when we need forgiveness and healing. Sometimes we know we need Jesus to move in our lives, to continue the great work of transformation that was started when we first became Christians, but we don’t want to let Jesus in that close. We are paralysed. We know we need to be forgiven, we know we need to be made whole, but we are paralysed for a number of reasons and not able to approach Jesus in the way we should. I want to think about three things this afternoon which can paralyse us and stop us fulfilling our true potential as Christians: Fear, Anger, and Other People.
Fear
In the science fiction “Dune” books the rather weird order of nuns who seem to be running the universe, or at least trying to, say that “fear is the mind killer.” We all know what it is to be afraid, to be paralysed with fear. Some of our fears are rational, some of them are very irrational. I am not good with heights or speed. So for me a funfair or theme park is pure torture. I don’t do fast rides and I definitely don’t do rides which make you go up high, or turn you upside down. I find that if I have to get on one of these things I turn to stone and physically can’t move.
Troy Perry, the founder of MCC, has written a book called “Don’t be afraid anymore” realising that many people who come to MCC have lived in fear for years. Fear of God, fear of other people, fear of being found out. We may have been afraid that how we love or who we want to be would be laughed at or rejected by others. We may have been afraid that God would condemn us – as if God would condemn His own creation.
We may be afraid of failing, afraid of making fools of ourselves. If you’ve ever been on a training course you might have known that fear which says “don’t ask a question, the others will know you are stupid”. You may be afraid to speak out and say what is right in your work or home.
Fear serves to paralyse us, to stop us fulfilling our true potential and stops us being transformed disciples of the Lord Jesus. In 1 John we read that perfect love casts out all fear. The love of the men who brought that paralysed man to Jesus enabled him to be healed. The love of Jesus cast out the fear and sin from the paralysed man and enabled him to be made whole. The love of Jesus working within us and within our church can remove all fear from us.
Anger
Anger can be a real block to a good relationship with anyone, let alone God. But, at the same time, anger can be a wonderful energy of change. Often as Christians we think that we can never be angry, but the Bible only tells us not to let the “sun go down on our anger” presumably because then we won’t be able to sleep very well. Jesus is often full of anger at those who are hypocrites and who put obstacles between people and God.
Often we are angry with churches that have hurt us or those we love. We can be angry at churches who continue to just not get it. The huge anger that was unleashed at the bishops in the Church of England over the appointment and then withdrawal from appointment of the Rev Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading was understandable. The anger at the Catholic bishops for covering up years of clerical sexual abuse was also intense and understandable.
Sometimes we are angry with God – though we don’t like to admit it. We may be angry with God for making us the way we are, we may be angry with God for allowing dreadful things to happen – to us or to others.
There are no easy solutions to anger. There is nothing trite I can say to make it all right, to make it go away. All I can say is this: if we use anger wisely it can be a tremendous energy of change. It can motivate us to do things better, to work for justice, to make a change for good. If we let anger control us, however, it can get in the way of our relationships with others and with God. The most difficult thing is to be angry with God – all we can do then is to tell God how we feel, to let the energy of anger seep out of us and to try and reflect on things more. Sometimes our rational selves know that God is not to blame for the thing we are angry about, but it is in the speaking about it, and letting go of the anger that our emotional selves come to the same realisation.
Anger can paralyse us if we let it. Using anger constructively can make a difference. I became very angry when I saw how a number of MCC congregations I have worked in were being misused by some people – either to play political games in so they could become big fish in little ponds or because people were using them as a cruising ground. I had a choice about what to do with my anger – I could have walked away from MCC – especially in the early days – or I could have tried to use the anger as an energy of change. Anyone who knows me knows that I try very hard to use the emotion of anger to change things for the better, not to let it paralyse me.
Other People
And then there are other people! Other people can become the thing that paralyses us. We can become obsessed with how others see us. We won’t do certain things because of what others may think, we dress in certain ways, or don’t dress in other ways, because of what other people may say or do or think. We can become paralysed because of what others may think. For a long time my mother was very worried that her neighbours would find out I was gay because of what they would think, she worried about what my neighbours would say. Then I appeared on tele for the first time and she was deeply traumatised as everyone knew!
We can let others tell us, directly or indirectly, how to live our lives and become paralysed or we can follow Jesus where he calls us to go.
Moving on through these
We have a choice. We can stay paralysed through fear, through anger or through what we think other people want us to be and say and do, or we can respond to the call of Jesus who will make us whole and forgive us our sins. The problem with following Jesus is that we have to take some responsibility and we have to stop blaming other things for our paralysis – because, in the end, if we are paralysed by fear or anger or other people – we are giving them the responsibility for our own solidity instead of realising that it is us, and us alone, which have to change.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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