January 18, 2019

THE

PARALYZED MAN

INTRODUCTION

I would like to talk about today’s gospel - Mark  2: 1-12 - and how it offers lots of food for thought—lots of themes for reflection, for meditation, and for prayer.

ONE THOUGHT AT A TIME—ONE THEME FOR A HOMILY

I know that the specialists in preaching homilies stress one theme per homily, but this morning’s gospel is like a menu. It offers so many meals to choose from.

Joe Manton in his book, 10 Responsible Minutes, uses the image of the cafeteria line. If everybody stopped at every dish and every possibility along the way, they would drive everyone behind them up the wall. If the conductor of a train stopped at everything he saw along the way, he would be late—late for his destination—say for example, he was to make a non-stop to New York City or Chicago.

Well, this morning I am going to break that rule and stop and nibble on a bunch of thoughts that come out of today’s gospel. It has lots of food for thought.

1) JESUS AS GOD

The first thought we could reflect upon is Jesus as God. Mark is telling us that. Who can forgive sins but God? Well, Jesus can forgive sins, therefore God is amongst us.

Too often we try to do it alone—to forgive us our own sins and the result is that our falling back again into our sins over and over again.

So Mark is telling us here in his gospel that “Only God can forgive sins.” So allow Jesus to forgive you your sins, whether you are the Paralyzed man or a Scribe.

2) FRIENDS

Or we could take today’s gospel and reflect upon the theme of friendship.

The man in the gospel has good friends who go out of their way to help him. Who are the friends in our life who would go out of their way to help us? Who are the friends in our life who if we were paralyzed, if we had a stroke, if we were stuck and couldn’t move, would come running to help us.

Who are the friends who would not give up if when trying to help us, they ran into a brick wall. Who of our friends would then try to come up with an alternative way of helping us.? Who of our friends would go the extra mile to help us? Who of our friends would go through a roof to help us?

In his Serendipity Series for youth ministry, Lyman Coleman uses this gospel to get young people to think about their friends. He asks kids to read and reflect and picture this gospel. Then he asks young people to list in his book the answer to this question: “Who are your 4 closest friends?”                              

          1)___________________

          2) __________________

          3) __________________

          4) __________________

3) FAITH

Or we could reflect upon faith. We could stop and choose the issue of faith—faith in Jesus again as necessary for forgiveness and healing of our sins. No wonder we are not healed. We try to do it alone.

4) COMMUNITY

Or we could reflect upon the theme of community—the communal dimension of the sacrament of healing, confession, reconciliation—and how healing effects community.

The man is sent back home by Jesus.

If they were effected so deeply by his paralysis, image all the scheduling and re-scheduling that has to take place if someone in the community is paralyzed. Well, now all everyone in the network is now freed up because the man is now unparalyzed.

We know from alcoholism how much the alcoholic person effects a family and the community. His or her problem mushrooms. It networks. It effects lots of people. 

Well, doesn’t the opposite happen when they are into recovery?

When someone gets into A.A, don’t all the people in his or her life benefit from their recovery process. Of course, we have issues like people who have related to the person in a sick way -  dependency — co-dependency and all that. So obviously, lots of recoveries are called for.

5) CELEBRATION

Or we could reflect and chew upon the theme of  celebration. Celebration happens when one is healed—when one is converted—when one changes. We praise God!

When this gospel — but Luke’s Version (Luke 5: 17 - 26) is used for the 2 Monday in Advent the first reading is Isaiah 35: 1 - 10. Isaiah tells us what happens when an Exile is over, when an Exodus happens, when a Conversion happens: The desert blooms, the parched earth is healed, flowers blossom, people sing and rejoice. We see the splendor of Carmel!

6) SIN AS PARALYSIS

One more theme is sin as paralysis. This one of my favorite ways of understanding sins.  Sin paralyzes us. I think we can all relate to this image of sin as paralysis.

Take the sin of anger. It gets us every time. Martin Luther describes sin as turning us in on ourselves (“incurvatus in se”). Well, when we are angry, our hands, our fists, our mind curls up. Our hands and our whole body, soul, mind and strength turns in on itself. We become arthritic with anger. People with arthritis suffer more. The human hand is like the mind when it’s clenched. I used to tell my mom to double her tension when she is tense and she ended up teaching that technique to some old people she worked for as a home care servant.

Take the sin of fear when it’s a lack of trust in God or self or others. Fear paralyzes people from going out of the house or from helping a neighbor. I might get mugged. I might crash. I might fall. It might rain. It might snow. It might ....

Take the sin of jealousy. It kills so many marriages and so many relationships and so many businesses. It can become a habit that we take into every relationship, every community, into every situation we find ourselves in. We start screaming inwardly and acting out outwardly, “This ain’t fair.” The husband who hates to dance and also gets jealous when his wife loves to dance at weddings ends up not enjoying his prime ribs because his wife’s ribs look too close to this other guy’s ribs.

Take the sin of gluttony. We become bloated and overloaded and slow. We eat so many French fried potatoes that we become a couch potato. Or we drink too much and become incoherent and we destroy ourselves, our families, our homes, our cars, our jobs, etc. Addictions paralyze!

Take the sin of pride. We become paralyzed and unable to move when our pride is hurt—when our ego is crushed—when we think we’re better than the other guy or gal. Our nose goes in the air and it gets stuck there.

So take any sin: hatred, harboring or holding onto grudges, hurts, comments, and unable to let them go can paralyze us.

I once was at a Mission Conference. Charlie Zeller, a young missionary at the time, began a major talk to a crowd of missionaries, most of whom were old: “The missions are dead!” I was sitting behind Father "Chubs" Renehan, an older missionary.  

Well, at that opening comment that our missions were dead, his back went up. It stiffened. It froze. And it stayed like that for the rest of the talk. 

At the end of the talk Charlie said, “Any questions or comments” and Chubs arm and hand went up, “You said, `The missions are dead!’ What do you mean by that? Who said they are dead?  It’s you young guys who say things like that.” 

He held onto that opening comment the whole talk and probably didn’t hear anything else. I am still holding that memory for 25 years plus. We hold onto things. And holding onto things take energy.

We hold onto sins. We hold onto being sinned against. We hold on to all kinds of stuff. Sin paralyzes us.

Isn’t that everyone’s experience? Can’t we all say that sins effect us? Can’t we all see how sin effects our bodies? 

When we sin, we can’t look at others. A man cheats on his wife and she wonders why he can’t look her in the eye. 

When we sin our face and our jaw tightens. We become uptight. We don’t even taste the chocolate pie we are eating. Our attention is elsewhere. We hide. We get nervous. We fear being caught. We bite our nails. We can’t see. We cause accidents. We bang things.  So sin effects our bodies, our souls, our spirits. Sin paralyzes us.

And how does this happen? Mark has the Scribes talking to themselves about what Jesus is doing. They spend all kinds of energy talking to themselves about what Jesus says he will do for this man. Jesus is NEW! They can’t accept the NEW: Good News. They are already filled with OTHER NEWS: other paradigms—other assumptions. Their apple carts are filled with their stuff and they can’t let go.

The word used in the NAB for what the Scribes were doing is “harboring”. They were harboring lots of stuff. The Greek word “DIALOGIZOVTAI” is translated in the NAB by “harboring”. Other translations use “dialoging” or “talking to yourself” or “reasoning” within yourself about.

That’s how the paralysis takes place. People harbor stuff!

I can relate to this image of harboring because when we were kids my dad took us down to the New York Harbor every Sunday. We would go to Bliss Park which overlooked the New York Harbor in a place of the harbor called the Narrows. My dad would give my mom a break. So we would go down there and see ships anchored waiting for their turn to move into a dock to be unloaded and to be loaded up with stuff to be taken to some other harbor.

Aren’t people like harbors. We collect all sorts of things. We spend our lives grabbing and letting go and some stuff we can’t let go of. We harbor some stuff. We grab some stuff. We hold onto to some stuff for 5 minutes, 25 minutes, 25 weeks, 25 years.

Go into any nursing home and listen to people. In 25 minutes you’ll discover what people are harboring.  They’ll show you their pictures. They will tell you their stories. Some are good stuff. Some are poison. And we cry at people who are still holding stuff that they don’t have to—hurts that are killing them—disappointments that paralyze them.

Read any book about counseling and you’ll read case after case of people who can’t forgive themselves or a husband or a wife or a kid who went a way different than expected.

Surprise we go through life harboring expectations. And they can kill us.

To harbor is to hold onto stuff. To hold onto the past. To hold onto garbage. Take the New York Barge that was filled with garbage. They couldn’t get rid of it. So they had to keep on bringing it back to harbor.

Sin is the sludge that we are harboring inside us.

Sin is a frozen harbor.

Sin is a strike!

Sin is the stones we keep in our suitcase.

Sin is the junk that we keep stored up in our basement.

Sin is the memories we’re holding onto—just in case we need to feed on hurts to prove we’re right and you’re wrong.

Read Markings by Dag Hammarskjöld. He tells us about his early years especially and how he constantly kicked the crud  out of himself in his self examinations about his not liking his self-centeredness. (Cf. p. 41, 62, 72, 63, 48, 43). A big change took place in New Year’s Eve on New Year’s Eve/Day. It was a slow long change and healing a-coming, but it came and he said his “Yes!” to new life.

Sin as paralysis makes us hostages. We are incarcerated in our smelly garbage. We need Liberation Theology!

We need conversion: a new way of seeing, a new way of being, a new way of hearing, a new way of treating people, a shift in perspective, a stopping of using people,  a radical inner transformation, a change at the core, a substance change and not a style change, because we have being been substance abusing ourselves.

We need our ice broken. Jesus is an ice breaker that can crack the ice that freezes our harbor.

Jesus is a strike breaker that ends the strike and we get moving again.

Jesus is a wrecker who comes and opens up Route 9W or Route 90 that has been stopped and backed up for miles and years because of our crashes, sins or accidents.

So we need to take the time to go to our core, our substance, our being, our meaning / belief / attitude / center and have Jesus heal there—effect there what needs to be healed and then our behavior will change. We will be able to stand up, pick up our mat and walk in a new way.

We need to learn how to be forgiven and forgive—whatever is called for.

All this happens slowly. But let the seed be planted.

We need to make some major shifts - Abraham / Joseph / Moses / David type shifts. Like Dag Hammarskjöld we need to say “No” to our past and “Yes” to a new future.

We need to change our perspective by changing our philosophy.

We need to let go of our special interest groups.

The process is dying / rising or decline / fall / rise!

It’s the Pascal Mystery here and now in me.

It’s a shattering experience. My status quo is shattered.

I am like the man paralyzed for 38 years.

I am like the woman at the well.

Read your own Markings, your own Confessions, your own Autobiography and see where you have energy blocks— stuckness — paralysis.

CONCLUSION

So let Jesus heal you — body mind and spirit. When we were kids the image was sin as a black smudge on our soul. Now we can picture it as a paralysis that effects our body and our soul. So let’s go through the roof and let Jesus heal us.