Thank you, Kurt. I’m really excited about Kurt’s song, because it deals with the heart of Jesus…the one who calls us “loved,” calls us “wanted,” It’s some of the same things our sermon text will talk about this morning, and in these weeks of Lent.

This week I was able to do one of my very favorite things of the year, which was to meet with the 3 rd-graders who just received their Bibles a few minutes ago. We spend about 40 minutes searching through the Bible, talking, telling stories, lighting a scripture candle. Then there’s a few minutes for “questions with Pastor Dan.” From year to year, you just don’t know what they’ll ask about. This year there were lots of questions about me receiving a Bible. When did I first get one? How old was I? Who gave it to me? What color was it? Did it have a cover? And then a few questions about our dog, Lucy! Those two topics were pretty much it!

This gospel of Mark is really fun. I’ve said a couple of times we think it is probably the earliest of the gospels written, and that Mark had someone very close to Jesus, like Peter, telling him the stories. Today’s story very much has that mark of authenticity. As we read it, see if you can’t imagine an elderly Peter near the end of hislife, relating this story to a younger Mark, who is busily copying it down as fast as he can. And what he writes down here…is the beginning of Jesus getting into trouble.

Reading: Mark 2:1-12.

Let’s see. An overly crowded building, so crowded that people are being turned away right and left. They can’t get in. There’s just no room. Friday it happened at Key Arena, I understand, people excited to see a presidential candidate. I didn’t hear about anyone climbing the Arena and drilling through the metal roof to gain entrance, though. But then, as exciting as a presidential campaign might be, there wasn’t nearly as much at stake as there was for these four friends. They were desperate. Their friend was broken, immobilized, in pieces.

A building so crowded that four friends couldn’t get their fifth friend anywhere close to Jesus. That’s frustrating, isn’t it? You’d think maybe people would move aside for someone carrying a stretcher, a pallet or a person. Not here. Nobody coming late was going to get close to Jesus. And well it should be, right? First come, first served. Need apparently wasn’t a factor....Good thing Jesus didn’t look at it that way.

This really is a great story. It’s so sparse on details it leaves us room to wonder and imagine. A flat-topped house in the Middle East. Jesus is speaking “the word” to them, preaching about the kingdom of God most likely. Talking about Good News. What was he saying? Again, we’re not sure of details. But I suspect he was telling them something very very good: God is on your side! Or as Kurt’s song said “You called me loved, You called me wanted.”

A couple weeks ago I had a conversation with someone just exploring faith, and he wanted to talk about the Bible. He kept referring to the Bible as a list of do’s and don’ts, a code of behavior, etc. Finally I said “Jim, I’d encourage you to think about the Bible like this – it’s a story. Sure, it deals with behavior and history and lots of things, but it’s a story, and the thread that runs through the whole story is: God is on your side, He wants to know you!” Jesus is speaking Good News, and in this story he’s about to dramatize it, enact it.

So, there’s a huge crowd of people surrounding the house. And there’s four friends who have no doubt worked pretty hard to get a paralyzed friend across the city and close to Jesus. At what point do you just quit, and say you gave it a good try? Not yet. There must have been a lot of faith…or desperation, which are often closely related. And Jesus saw that trust in action.

Around the crowd, up the stairs on the side of the house, onto the roof, clawing through the thin layer of clay, pulling out the small sticks until you could poke an arm through, make it bigger until you can lean your head down through, bigger and bigger until you can lower your friend down. This raises a couple of questions for me. First, where on earth is the guy who owns the house?! Second, what did the people in the house think? Dust, sticks, chunks come down from the ceiling, finally light streams in.

We don’t know exactly how they did this. The story is remarkably stingy with details. I’ve always imagined ropes? Or some kind of block and tackle? We also don’t know about the effectiveness of their aim. Did the sick man end up right at Jesus’ feet, or more likely headed like a runaway park swing towards a solid wall until someone intervened and steered him the right way?

Lowering him down, somehow, swinging him into the room where Jesus was. The four men, laying, tired and panting on the roof. They’d done it. High fives. Laying on their backs, listening for the sweet sound of Jesus healing their friend. They hear his voice: “Son.” Child. The same compassion Jesus had for the man with leperosy last week is evident again. “Son…your sins are forgiven.” What!? "My child, my sick, paralyzed child…your sins are forgiven."

Stop. Who said anything about sin?! Our friend is paralyzed, immobile. We wanted you to heal him, not moralize him. Okay, we’re going to hit pause on the DVD player for a few minutes, leave this paralyzed man right there in front of Jesus.

So Jesus is asked to do a simple physical healing (well,maybe not simple, but he’s done them before) and instead he starts monkeying around with the state of the poor guy’s soul.

It’s like this: You go to the doctor’s office. The doctor meets you, and says “What’s wrong?” You explain that your stomach has really been bothering you. The doctor suddenly says “Have you been doing anything you know is wrong? Any illegal financial dealings? Any excessive addictions? Any illicit relationships?”

You, of course, even if you are guilty, are offended. You can’t believe it. What did you go there for in the first place? One might say you went for help to someone you thought could provide it. After all, what does the way you live your life have to do with your stomach ache? (pause) We always know when we need help physically. But we sometimes don’t know, and rarely admit, if we need healing spiritually.

Often in the scripture there is this uncomfortable connection between sin…and sickness. But it’s often not a direct connection. Was there some particular sin in this man's life that caused him to be sick? There's absolutely no indication of that. And in another place, Jesus is asked about a blind man, whether he was blind because of his sin or his parents'? And Jesus says… "Neither. But I'll do something about it to bring glory to God."

The connection of sin and sickness is hazy. At the least, it seems that the presence of sin in the world has caused many things to not function in the way God intended. Sometimes in scripture, a person is physically healed but there's nothing about forgiveness. Sometimes, there's forgiveness, but no physical healing.

Here, both things are dealt with. The heart of Jesus seems to long for people to be whole…spirit and body. Forgiveness is part of that.

“Your sins are forgiven.” As a result of these 4 words, Jesus will begin to experience the trouble that will last all the rest of his short life, and in fact, cost him his life. We’ll see more evidence of that in the weeks to come. This is the first of five consecutive stories involving “conflict.” Whereas the four friends came to the house that day full of faith, not everybody did. Some scribes were also present, teachers of the Law, part of the religious system…senior pastors. Sunday school teachers. They muttered amongst themselves.

To their credit, they knew theology, and theology said “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Exactly right. They correctly perceived that Jesus was not simply offering an assurance of pardon “Let me remind you that God forgives sins.” We do that every time we have a time of confession here in worship. Either the worship leader or myself in some way after we have confessed, say “In the name of Jesus Christ,” or “through the blood of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven people.” We aren’t doing the forgiving, we’re just reminding that this is the heart of God, the character of God and that in Jesus he has shown himself able and willing to forgive.

But that’s not what was going on here. Jesus was doing the forgiving: “Your sins are forgiven.” The scribes got it right. But instead of wondering if God was at work in some kind of wild, out-of-the-box way, all they could think was: “blasphemy.” An affront to God, claiming to do something only God can do. Jesus thinks he can speak the word of forgiveness. The scribes think he cannot.

It is not the only time Jesus will be charged with “blasphemy.” It comes again in chapter 14 when Jesus stands before the High Priest on his last night, and is asked “Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?” And Jesus says “I am.” And they hiss, “blasphemy.” And the only way they’re wrong is if Jesus IS who he says he is.

One more miracle. Jesus knows the questioning the scribes are doing in their hearts! Reads them like a book. Asks a question of his own. “Is it easier to say “Your sins are forgiven?” Or “Stand up and walk?”

It’s actually a tough question. I suspect that since no Bible scholar I read agrees with what the right answer is, it was a tough question for the scribes. Maybe they think “it’s easier to say sins are forgiven,” because we can’t objectively perceive if that has happened or not. Easier to say, perhaps, but harder to do? Or maybe they think it’s easier to say “stand and walk” because they recognize the magnitude of forgiving of sin. “So you may know the Son of Man…(that’s a phrase that Jesus uses to refer to himself)…has authority on earth to forgive sins, “I say to you “rise.”

There comes that word authority again, we talked about it two weeks ago. We talked about letting Jesus define it, and it seemed to be a power Jesus exhibited for putting people back together. It’s exactly what he is doing here: healing a man in need of both forgiveness and physical healing. Making him whole. That is what Jesus has authority to do, and it’s what his heart calls him to do: Son, your sins are forgiven.Daughter your sins are forgiven.

Okay. A long time ago we paused the DVD and left the paralytic man lying in front of Jesus. When Jesus tells him to rise, take his mat and go home…he does so.

He has been healed on the inside (forgiven). He has been healed on the outside (can move). He’s whole. And when the man walks away, it just says “he went out before ALL of them; so they were ALL amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” You have to wonder, don’t you? Does the double repetition of all include any of the scribes? Wouldn’t that be great, if the healing power of Jesus just spilled over onto them as well?!

Well, it’s a great story. But what does it mean for us, here and now?

1) it gives us a glimpse into the heart of Jesus. More than Jesus is concerned about his own safety or reputation, he is concerned about people being made whole. Being bent towards forgiveness is not something Jesus has to do. The French philosopher Voltaire once said quite flippantly, “God will forgive me. That’s his business.” No, it’s not his business. It’s his heart! What Jesus most wants is whole people. He heals those sick, he befriends sinners.

One reason we read slowly like this through a gospel is so that we can linger over Jesus, be around him long enough not only to see his actions but his heart. “Son, your sins are forgiven…get up and walk.” The heart of Jesus is a heart of forgiveness. And when we glimpse or experience that heart…it changes us. We become people more ready to forgive, because we’ve received forgiveness.

2) What is ministry? I don’t mean being a pastor, I mean ministry, since every one of us is called to it. We’re called first to Christ. And if we’ll follow, we’re called to ministry. When I was in seminary, I had to write a paper on “my philosophy of ministry.” It had to be 20 pages long. It had to be pretty formal. It had to have proper Princetonian footnotes. It probably had some good ideas in it.

But the older I get, I find myself drawn to things that are much shorter than 20 pages and much simpler. These 4 guys whose names we do not even know are my heroes. They probably never thought they were doing ministry. All they were doing was ushering their friend into the presence of Jesus. They got him into the same room, the same vicinity as Jesus, the same space, the same area. Now that’s ministry. It took a lot of faith to get him there, and then they had to trust that once he was in Jesus’ presence, Jesus would take care of him. They had to recognize that they couldn’t fix their friend, they couldn’t save him.

I used to think it was part of my call as a Christian to save people, or fix them…now I believe those things are for Jesus to take care of, not me. It’s our job to walk people near. I need people like these four guys. Lord knows I need friends in my life who will get me close to Christ whether I can walk there myself or not.

And I wonder. In what ways is this happening in your life right now? How are you walking people close to Jesus? Who are those people?

3) Friendship and faith are a very powerful combination. When we were in Minneapolis, we heard this amazing story of a group of men who cared for their friend Bob Peterson. Bob had a form of severely degenerative arthritis that left him disabled in his early fifties, and in a great deal of pain much of the time, and frankly made him not a lot of fun to be around.

Since Bob’s wife Bev was working so they could pay the bills, a group of men from our church there banded together and synchronized their schedules. Every day, one of them would show up to talk to Bob, to push his wheelchair out to take a walk, to make lunch for him, to pray with him. Every weekday for years this went on. I think that group literally walked each day with Bob into the presence of Jesus. And their time, their patience, their love were the ropes that lowered him to the Lord.

It’s happening right now in this community at Bethany. In past months, friends have gathered around people in crisis to pray. People have awoken in the middle of the night for a prayer vigil to pray over someone. We heard some of these stories at the Annual Meeting in January.

It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? That Jesus would start getting into trouble for being a person bringing forgiveness and healing. Let us pray.