Sermon 11th January 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our study of the Gospel of Luke. The reading is from Luke 5: verses 17-26.

For a range of reasons it’s been a while since we last had a sermon-joke. Feel free to judge if this one is the seasonal cracker that it has been claimed. So: what do you get if you cross a Christmas tree and an iPad? // A pine-apple, of course!

As well as trying to be funny, that one was deliberately both Christmas-themed, and short – because my real opening is actually rather more sombre. It’s this confession, that when Gill and I planned services together last Monday (before she got ill!) I made a bad mistake. All I did was to open the Bible, check the heading for today’s passage, and close it again! “Jesus heals a paralysed man (GNB) / paralytic (NIV)” was enough for me, after a quick check that it was the through-the-roof one. ‘I know that story’, I thought; though I made a silent promise to re-read it thoroughly before starting writing a sermon, of course.

So I’m wondering if you thought something similar yourself when it was read aloud? Did you tune out; either because the story really is familiar to you; or because you think that it is? Now maybe you do know it: it’s told by Matthew and Mark as well as Luke; and it’s certainly dramatic enough to stick in the mind. But it struck me that the start of a new year is a very timely opportunity: both to make this confession and then to issue a challenge off the back of that. So: how about we each make a commitment to try and engage with the Bible afresh throughout the year ahead? What about trying to set aside what we know, or think we know; and choosing instead to be open to God saying and doing new things?

OK, this now being the second Sunday in January, I’ll lower my sights in line with most New Year resolutions; and suggest that we try to do that today! Maybe, hopefully, we will want to keep on doing it, to keep on having newly-opened ears and hearts. Either way, the fact is Christmas, in a very real sense, can act as a re-set button. We have just gone back to the beginning of Jesus’ story (though God has been at work for centuries on either side of that birth of course.) Having said that we’ve gone back to the start, we’ve since leapt on by 30 years in the course of just 3 Sundays. So trying to have fresh ears and hearts for this story that we’ve arrived at in mid-chapter 5 is probably an extra good aim to have today.

Now, I’m not sure we’d want to say that we’re in good company here; but there were others who were meeting with Jesus for the 1^st time in this story. Again lots of us may have a picture in our heads about the ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’. They are familiar characters in all 4 of the gospels; but not at this point in Luke! So, the whistle-stop tour is that his chapter 2, after the story of the shepherds and the angels, ends with a snap-shot of Jesus aged 12. Chapter 3 explains the role of John the Baptist, including Jesus’ baptism. Chapter 4 opens with Jesus being tested in the desert; and then launching his manifesto in Nazareth that we heard about last week. There’s a brief flurry of Jesus doing miracles before he invited Simon-Peter, James and John to be his disciples. Chapter 5 continues with yet another healing, a key mention of Jesus’ prayer-life; and that has all got us here.

That was also what had brought those ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’ to Jesus for the 1^st time. They (as many others clearly had) had heard about what he was saying and doing. Even our whistle-stop tour is enough to suggest that there was good reason for people to flock to Jesus. Here was a man who’d claimed to be the fulfilment of OT prophecy. In the space of likely only a matter of weeks he’d already performed many sorts of amazing miracles to accompany his amazing teaching about the coming of God’s kingdom. And it was that last part, the coming of God’s kingdom, which attracted the attention of the Pharisees. That was their special area of interest, and expertise; and if someone was saying very different, then …

Jesus was saying very different from what they thought, expected and believed; so this delegation came, from all over the country Luke says, to check out these reports for themselves. Now, at this point, before we get to the detail of what Luke said actually happened, actively try to set aside any preconceived thoughts; even if they did perhaps come from the reading itself …

Right, when you’re ready, let’s engage with the word-picture that Luke paints. Picture yourself, if you can, on a tube or train station at rush-hour; or in Oxford St just before Christmas; or at the gate of a Premiership or international match. The house that Jesus was in (wherever it was) probably wasn’t very big; but that was the kind of crush there was inside there, around him.

Whatever the expectation of those people (and we’ll find out soon enough about some of them), Luke makes it clear that Jesus was there to teach. Yes, “the power of the Lord was present for him to heal”; but that was secondary; again, as we’ll see. Already in Luke Jesus had been asked to stay in a place to perform more miracles; but he’d told them that he had to go, to preach God’s Good News as widely as He wanted. And the immediate question this puts to us is if we want Jesus on our own terms, or his? Are we willing to follow his agenda; or do we want him to do as we tell him, or think he should?

There’s a question that’s worth pondering – honestly – in the days and weeks to come. What kind of follower of Jesus am I going to be in 2015? The kind who comes to get, or say, what I want? Or the kind who comes to listen, and learn; and to follow Jesus’ radical agenda instead of my own? We all have mixed motives: of course we do; God knows that; and He meets us where we are; with all the needs that we have. This story proves that too; but being Jesus’ disciples involves a process of transformation, in which we learn to live for him in all things. And that journey has got to be rooted in listening to him; learning from him; and it means engaging with what Jesus says and wants.

Into that crushed and charged scene walked some men with another man on a mat, or bed. Or they would have done if they could! There was literally no way through to Jesus; but there was also no putting them off. Up onto the roof they went; and then through it! The cultural aside here is that houses in 1^st-Century Palestine had stairs up to a flat roof, which could be dismantled; just as those men did. It was then easy for them to lower the paralysed man to Jesus; and it was very clear to all why they were doing that.

Did you hear that it was “when Jesus saw how much faith they had” that he responded? Well, there’s something else to come at afresh, I’d suggest.  We tend to think, and maybe to encourage others to have faith in God’s ability to hear their prayers, meet their needs; and quite right too. There are other Bible stories where that is what Jesus responded to; and again others where there’s no mention of faith at all! As we do – hopefully! – try to come at things afresh we must be careful not to be too narrow in how we think. But we must engage with what we find. And here it is that the faith of others is what made the difference. For many of us that could well be as much of a challenge as an encouragement – which might also be said of their persistent determination, of course. Just how faith-filled, and persistent, are we in our praying for others, in bringing them to Jesus?

Again we need to engage with how Jesus then dealt with that paralysed man. Let’s be honest, it’s not what many of us would say to someone in that position, now is it: “your sins are forgiven”? And, talking of expectation, it certainly wasn’t what the ‘Pharisees and teachers of the Law’ wanted, or expected, to hear. Their instant thought, and very understandably, was that this was blasphemy. As they said, or thought, it’s only God who can forgive sin; and no mere human is God. All of this Jesus – somehow – knew; and he confronted it, and them, head-on.

Here’s how Tom Wright puts it in his own translation of verse 24: “If you want to be convinced that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins …”; and then he told the man to get up and go home. Now let’s not miss the most obvious, and glorious, parts of this story: the man was healed; and his sins were forgiven. The clear implication here is that, for him, that was one and the same thing; and that needs to be engaged with for what it is too. Again, we need to be very careful – for all sorts of reasons – not to make this into a universal truth; because it is abundantly clear in other New Testament places that it’s not. But there are times when it is so, when sin is the cause of sickness; and that need taking seriously too.

Where I want to focus as I begin to draw to a close, though, is to where Jesus draws our attention. My own – hopefully fresh – engagement with this story convinces me that Luke has written this as it was. Maybe you didn’t spot that at no point is the focus on the paralysed man personally. In one sense this is not a story about him at all. That’s not at all to say that he, or his healing, don’t matter. There is no doubt that his life was transformed by him being carried to Jesus by his faith-filled friends. But Luke’s communication is so much bigger than that. This is about who Jesus is; what he can do; how he brings in God’s kingdom; and how that reality changes all things for all people for all time. And I’d suggest that that is plenty for us all to ponder on.

Now I could have preached a very different sermon on this passage; and in fact, I spent all week expected to! But at the start of what could well prove to be another momentous year in Herne Hill, here is some of what I think God may well be saying to us: don’t think you know it all already; open your hearts and minds to engage with what’s actually in front of you; focus on being the right kind of disciples; i.e. bring Jesus to centre of your life and community; make it all about him; have faith; be persistent; be ready to be surprised; and, above all, to praise God for the remarkable things that He does. And so now let’s pray …