Body builders bench pressing heavy free weights know that safety demands spotters to prevent serious accidents. Even the strongest of us need help.
Sunday’s sermon at the Black Rock/Long Ridge Congregational Church (North Stamford, Connecticut), building upon that theme, was delivered by Rev. Ted Fiorito. His text was the familiar verses in Mark 2:1-12.
The scene is set in the opening lines:
A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven. (Mark 2:1-5)
Our attention usually is fastened upon the paralytic and Jesus. There is an important message for us in looking more closely at the four men who struggled to take the paralytic to Jesus’s feet.
Carrying a man on a litter through a dense crowd, climbing with him to the roof, then hacking a hole in the roof was no easy task. Most people would have just given up at the outset, declaring that it would be impossible in the circumstances to get the paralytic directly to Jesus.
Mark says nothing about how the four men managed to chop a hole in a solid roof that must have been thick and reinforced with branches and timbers to carry the roof weight. The four men must first have searched the neighborhood to find tools for the task. Then considerable labor was required to open a hole in the roof large enough to lower the paralytic to Jesus’s feet.
The four men’s willingness to go to such lengths to bring their friend to Jesus is a model for each of us today. We have to become spotters, helpers for those who struggle with heavy loads.
In witnessing for the Lord, we need to be prepared by studying the Bible and praying for God’s guidance and help. Good intentions alone won’t get the job done.
Our goal is to draw closer ourselves to God and to bring others to Jesus.
We are both paralytics and helpers. Without God’s help we can’t be healed; without God’s help we can’t stand up from our paralytic spiritual condition and become helpers for others.
Today’s secularists may deride us as ignorant and superstitious dolts, just as the Pharisees challenged Jesus when the paralytic was brought before him.
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . .” He said to the paralytic, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this! (Mark 2:6-12)
If we, like the paralytic, heed Jesus’s commands, we too will be enabled spiritually to get up and walk, to become helpers for others whose lives are spiritually empty.
Back to summary...
