Sermons from the Pulpit

Save me O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
Psalm 69:1

Mark 2:1-12, Mark 5:1-20

    I recently read this popular book, "Into Thin Air" which Matt (my son) gave me for Christmas. It's a book about the disaster on Mt. Everest a couple of years ago where six people from two groups died on top of the world's highest mountain. That was the experience made famous by the chief guide's phone call to his wife in New Zealand from the top of the world as he lay huddled and unable to be rescued. The book is written partly to face the guilt some of the climbers felt in not being able to do more for their fellow climbers. But in a blowing gale of 70-80 mph winds, exhausted themselves, with snow falling so hard that no one could see more than a few yards, and without any more extra oxygen tanks, there was little anyone could do to rescue three guides and three clients who lost their lives achieving their mountaintop experience.

    Many people consider guilt to be a paralyzing emotion. In fact, some have suggested that the paralyzed man in the first miracle story that we read today may have been such a person. Paralyzed by life's troubles, by the sin and guilt he feels for his past mistakes, unable to move on to new territory, new hope. I have known such persons in every place I've served as a minister. A young man wounded by the emotional scars of Viet Nam- who could not live at home because he so scared and intimidated his brothers, who later found solace on the other side of the country-the West Coast and became a priest. Another young man so scarred by life that he used to hurt himself with his cigarette butts putting them out on his arm and wrist. He found help with a woman who loved him and gave him something to live for. A beggar on the streets of the city in Africa where I lived-who spoke the King's English better than anyone I met over there but who could not hold a job and could not take care of himself because he had no family and no one to care about him. And a man in North Carolina who lost his job of 27 years when another company bought his boss out; who could not get started again.

    Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven", to the paralytic man, for a reason. He asked those gathered about an important point that we have experienced ourselves.

    He asked which was easier to say: "Your sins are forgiven", or " Stand up and take your mat and walk." This is often the truth-physical illness can be dealt with more easily than either mental or spiritual illness. I'm not saying that the paralyzed person in this miracle of healing was not necessarily physically ill. But I am saying that all of us need to be rescued from our spiritual ills. The paralysis of fear, the paralysis of guilt that sometimes makes us unable to function. We need friends to encourage us and lift us up when we cannot rise by ourselves, who apply their ingenuity and tenacity when we are ready to give up, who open up holes in life's roofs for us so that we can see new opportunities. The Lord Jesus Christ knows we need forgiveness for our past lives, our past weakness and fear, our guilt, our sins, and he offers us that love, that forgiveness, to make us more sure of ourselves, more secure in the goodness of life, rather than being without hope and surrounded by evil.

    Some people see demons in all of life. They adopt an attitude of fatalism; that they are powerless to control what happens to them. When something goes wrong-"the devil made me do that." When someone dies, "his number was up", or "it is the will of God" , is their motto. This attitude makes us victims in a powerful and scary world. For many people we are not decision makers but victims in a world we cannot control. The goal of these people is often just survival rather than redemption and renewal. The demoniac in our second scripture is such a man who has finally gone mad in the face of the world and its problems and demands. He has become self-destructive in response to the destructiveness of the world. His neighbors try to control him with binds and chains, but he breaks loose, and so they drive him out to the cemetery where he now lives crying out, bruising himself, tormented by the Legion, the mob of demons that besiege him. This is not such an unusual perspective, an unusual end, in this world today.

    We see the demons of "peer pressure" become destructive in the lives of teenagers in those years when their values are forming.

    We see demons possess parents who abdicate responsibility at home to win a legion of advancements in the corporate world.

We see demons possess politicians who follow the legion of polls and public opinion more than their own principles.

    We see evangelists on TV who become manipulators for a legion of personal gain rather than for the good of others.

We see morally corrupt individuals who cannot resist the legions of temptation to lie and cheat for the sake of self.

    In the face of all this greed and temptation, this giving in to worldly evil, John Greenleaf Whittier wrote the words to one of the world's greatest hymns:

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways,
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,..
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of thy peace,"

"I have learned why people work so hard to succeed: it is because they envy the things their neighbors have. But it is useless. It is like chasing the wind. They say that no one would be a fool to fold his or her hands and let him or herself starve to death. Maybe so, but it is better to have only a little, with peace of mind, than to be busy all the time with both hands, trying to catch the wind."

    And the great irony is that most people do not want help. They want to be left to themselves; to take care of their own problems; to struggle with demons in their own lives all on their own.

    Were the neighbors grateful or inspired by Jesus' rescue of the man possessed by demons; driving them into those pigs who drowned themselves in the lake? No sir, no ma'am. They wanted those pigs back. They lost their living, their livelihood. They were doing just fine, thank you.

    There was no need for charity in that neighborhood. They might occasionally go insane or succumb to the devils of temptation or greed, but their trust was in the high-heaped table of success and the full trough of life's pleasures. They ran Jesus out of town and had no intention of ever having him back again.

    Some people are so lost in this world, they don't even know they are lost. They are not even fighting and succumbing to the demons; that evil that runs rampant even uncontrolled in society. They have taken it on as their own; they have yielded to temptation and sin; they have adopted that lifestyle as their own and become one with it.

    How do we find our way to forgiveness and redemption. How do we avoid the all too common decision to tell Jesus to shove off, to move on, there is no need for faith and redemption in this person, in this household. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there; and I'm going to look out for number one. Is that not the way of the world? How most of us see the world? As a fearful place, an environment to be overcome and subdued?

    Here is the beginning point for our recovering from the fatalism, the determinism of a fearful world.

    First, remember who you are. Then, remember whose you are.
    Why do I go to Maine for my vacation? Because I return to my roots. I watch my eighty year old Aunt slide down a slick hill on her bottom and I realize how great it is to have her courage to take on new challenges, to never give up in life. To see the world as an exciting and interesting place to be enjoyed. I talk to my Dad on the phone and find out that they can now send me e-mail. I am not a letter writer but maybe my Dad will push me a little to innovate, to try a little more to communicate, to stay in touch with who I am, as a child of God, loved by God and by those who love me and are proud of me and my good qualities. I am who I am, valued for who I am, not for what I might be, what I have not done yet. The Lord loves me for what I am, a child of God, not what I might do for myself, but for what I might do for others, as his instrument in a world of need.

    Whose am I, who do I belong to? The first question of the Heidleburg Catechism, the founding principles of all those Reformed members of the United Church of Christ is:
"What is thy only comfort in life and death?" Answer: "That I with body and soul, both in life and in death am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ."

    This miracle story ends with Jesus saying to the restored man: "Go home to your friends," (Remember who you are.), " and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you." (Remember whose you are.)
May we do likewise, as we acknowledge the miracles done unto us every day.