Rev. Teri Peterson
PCOP
Full to Bursting
Mark 2.1-22
10 January 2016,
Epiphany 2 (A-ha! moments), NL2-18
When he returned to
Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many
gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of
the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing
to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring
him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after
having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When
Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’
Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why
does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but
God alone?’ At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing
these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such
questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, “Your sins
are forgiven”, or to say, “Stand up and take your mat and walk”? But so that
you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he
said to the paralytic— ‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your
home.’ And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of
them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never
seen anything like this!’
Jesus went out
again beside the lake; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them.
As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth,
and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
And as he sat at
dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with
Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes
of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they
said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When
Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a
physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but
sinners.’
Now John’s
disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, ‘Why
do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples
do not fast?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the
bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with
them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away
from them, and then they will fast on that day.
‘No one sews a
piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from
it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine
into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is
lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’
This past summer I
spent a morning picking 17 pounds of strawberries at a farm out in Woodstock. A
few days later, I spent an evening turning much of that into freezer jam.
I’d never made it by
myself before, so naturally I called my grandma for help. She’s worked with the
Extension office for more than 30 years, so talking people through their
kitchen questions is kind of her deal. As we were talking and I was making jam,
she reminded me repeatedly not to fill the jars too full.
Now, my grandma is
already sort of prone to repeating things. But this time she was doing it on
purpose, because she could picture my freezer if I filled them to the top and
then packed them carefully in the drawer….only to be awakened in the middle of
the night by the sound of sadness coming from the kitchen.
It almost feels like
Jesus is the extension office grandma at the end of today’s reading, repeating
the wisdom of the ages: don’t sew new unwashed cloth as a patch on old clothes,
because when it shrinks it’ll tear away and you’ll be sad you wasted all that
work only to have a worse problem. Don’t put new wine into your old wineskins,
because when it keeps fermenting it’ll expand and…well…it would be like jam and
glass exploding all over the freezer. Use new wineskins for the new wine, that
way they’ll have room to expand, and they’ll be full nearly to bursting, but
they won’t break. They will be flexible enough to stretch and accommodate the
yeast growing inside.
Everything seems full
to bursting in Mark’s gospel. Every page is packed with action. In just two
chapters we’ve already heard about him calling, teaching, healing, eating,
praying, and getting into trouble. He has attracted attention and there are
crowds of fans everywhere he goes, even at his own home.
Mark tells us that
Jesus—having taking the disciples off to other towns at the end of chapter
one—has come home, and people have heard about it. Soon the house is mobbed
with people eager to hear, to be healed, and even some to spy. So many people
wanted to see and hear Jesus that there was no room for even one more person,
even in the doorways and out in the courtyard. But four guys are determined to
bring their friend into the house, one way or another.
Notice that the
paralyzed man never speaks. We have no idea if he wanted to come to Jesus, or
if he could even imagine wanting. We don’t know what happened to him or if he
wants to be healed. He lays there, unable to move, and his friends do all the
work. And work it is—they climb up onto the roof, where there might be some
space for sleeping out in the cool sea air, until they get their hands into the
mud and thatch and start tearing it apart.
Surely the people in
the house noticed. There had to be dust and pebbles and grass falling down from
the ceiling, and strange noises coming from above. But like any good preacher,
Jesus keeps going in spite of the distraction, until suddenly there’s a person
being lowered in front of his eyes.
And when Jesus turns
his eyes toward the hole in his roof, he doesn’t see the effort and cost to fix
it. He doesn’t see vandals or thugs peering through. He looks up and he sees
faith. Those four had the trust and perseverance to do whatever it took to
bring their friend to Jesus. And Jesus, who doesn’t even know if the paralyzed
man wanted to come or not, looks at the faith of his friends and then looks at
him and assures him: your sins are forgiven. Jesus declares God’s forgiveness,
which is already present and…well…that wasn’t a popular move.
It’s one thing when
he’s a healer and teacher, and another thing when he’s acting like a priest, or
even worse, like God. When Jesus sees the faith of the friends, and then sees
into the hearts of the scribes, and tells the man to get up and walk…it’s too
much. They can’t take all this new reality in at once, and some of them are
amazed, and some glorify God, and some go out and plot.
I have a friend who
says that the key to leadership is managing disappointment—leaders need to be
careful to disappoint people at a pace they can handle. Change is hard, and
none of us like it very much. There’s a reason we keep doing those comfortable
things over and over again. Each new thing brings with it grief over the loss
of the old, and leaders have to be careful to manage that grief, allow time and
space to incorporate each new shift before moving on.
No one seems to have
told Jesus about this key leadership principle.
He’s already expelled
a demon in the synagogue, touched a leper, and abandoned his fans with no
warning. People can see and feel and hear that he is different—that he brings
authority and power and grace. He isn’t all that interested in accepting limits
just because someone says they’re so.
Now he declares
forgiveness without the man ever confessing anything, he calls a tax collector
for a disciple, and then feasts with said tax collector and his friends.
The epiphanies are
coming too fast for people to handle. Jesus is breaking all the rules, coloring
outside the lines, and while some people can go along with some of this new
way, it’s also clear that there are plenty who can’t get on board. He isn’t
following the practices of other holy men and their disciples. He isn’t being
careful about his religious cleanliness. He doesn’t seem to care who his dinner
companions are.
Or rather, he does
care who his dinner companions are—he just cares for the wrong people. He
should be inviting over the other teachers and priests and holy people. Or at
the very least other healers. But instead he’s dipping his hand into the same
hummus dish with those people. You
know the ones—the ones we try not to make eye contact with, the ones we pity
and patronize, the ones we feel perfectly free to judge. Those people, with the
wrong job, the wrong skin color, the wrong family configuration, the wrong
accent, the wrong religion, the wrong budget priorities.
Those people.
They are the ones
Jesus invites to his dinner table. They are the ones Jesus calls his friends.
And the upstanding
citizens, the ones who go to church every week, who have the means of washing
their clothes and educating their children…they’re standing paralyzed, looking
in the window, assuming that Jesus got it wrong and they should be the ones
sharing nice wine, passing a dish of figs, and telling stories around the
table.
The irony here is that
there’s plenty of room, if only we would be flexible like a new wine skin. Flexible
enough to admit our need, and to see the image of God in those who are
different, and to accommodate ideas that don’t fit our limited understanding of
God. The kingdom of God is at hand, and like yeast it will grow within us and
between us and among us…and when the kingdom grows, we need to be ready to
stretch, fast. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to understand or to come to terms with
his new way of doing things—he works faster than we want to deal with it, fast
enough that things could get broken along the way if we don’t stretch ourselves
and our world to the new shape he wants to make.
When we try to fit
God’s new thing into the old wineskin, attempting to control God with our human
ideas, we end up paralyzed, and we can’t see a way in to where Jesus is
gathered with those people. Worse—we may
not want to. And that’s where our friends come in—friends who aren’t afraid to
just pick up and do it, to try something crazy and tear off the roof, to let
the dust fall where it may. Those friends, those leaders, will pick up the
paralyzed Christian and the paralyzed church and let us down through the roof
into a new wineskin, which is full to bursting but still has plenty of stretch.
There, at the feet of Jesus, he will call us back to ourselves, name us sons
and daughters who are loved and forgiven, and we will take up our mat and walk
right into the kingdom of God.
May it be so.
Amen.
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