We have just shared together a portion of The Gospel According to Saint Mark

Epiphany 7 “THE CROWD” 2/16 & 19/06

The Gospel lesson, for many, is a familiar story. For others, this story may be quite new, even hearing it tonight/today for the first time. For all of you, I have a question:

What is this lesson about?

1) Jesus healing a paralyzed man

2) Some really nice guys going to great lengths to help their friend

3) How to remove a roof without disrupting people

4) Some “teachers of the law” witnessing, but missing, the miracle

5) Jesus teaching about the power of forgiveness

6) Jesus’ ability to know what people are “thinking in their hearts”

These are all good answers and reflect some aspect of these 12 verses. Over the years of Bible study and preaching, I’ve likely focused on most---if not all---of these focal points. But, not this week. It’s always exhilarating, though not always comfortable, when a new learning comes to me…when I am enabled to see something in a way I’ve not seen before. We do, you know, come at similar things in quite dissimilar ways. Communication prospers when we are able to “see where another person is coming from”---when we realize “I hadn’t looked at it that way before!” I want us to look at our Gospel lesson in a new way. May this be the will of God for our worship!

Remember Jesus saying, as recorded in John 14: 6: “I am the Way and the truth and the life.” Remember what was said about John the Baptist: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord.” (Mt. 3:3) Most of us prefer to have “our own way”. Sometimes we’ll say to someone, whether walking or driving, “Get out of my way!” When we doubt something, we’ll respond, “No way!” What does any of this have to do with our Gospel lesson? My answer, in a sentence, is this: Sometimes the followers of the Way get in the way of others knowing the way! I realize that I have about 8-10 minutes to explain, so here’s goes….

This past Tuesday afternoon, as I read and re-read this Gospel lesson, I was repeatedly brought back to “the crowd”(vs. 4), the first of 37 times Mark uses this Greek word “ochlos”. So great a crowd had gathered that people were standing in the doorway and outside in an attempt to hear what Jesus was saying. The crowd was so great that this paralyzed man’s friends had to chop a hole in the roof of the house and perilously lower the paralyzed down by cords simply to get close to Jesus! Because of “the crowd”, this man of great need was blocked from getting close to Jesus!

Among the crowd are those described as “teachers of the law” or “scribes” (vs. 6). These are people who spent their lives studying and pouring over the Word of God---professional religious experts. These folks knew their way around the realm of religious life in their day. Mark does not say they are bad people; in fact, so eager are they to hear preaching that they arrive early in order to get the prized “front row seat.” Oh, how things have changed in 2000 years, as now people come early so they can sit in the back… another sermon for another day!

Time warp 20 centuries, as we are “the crowd” gathered to hear Jesus’ teaching. We have come out to listen to Jesus and to leave, later, to follow Jesus. We are insiders, we know the way to worship, we are the inner circle, we are the disciples of the Master…sinners seeking the Savior!

This would be the safest time to say “Amen” and conclude my sermon…but I’m led to follow a less “safe” way. It is precisely these good, full-time, religious, theologically informed, dedicated people---people just like you and me---who quite unintentionally block a needy person from getting close to Jesus! The people closest to Jesus seem oblivious to the incredible need of people who are not, yet, so close to Him. The crowd is so large that even the man’s four friends are unable to get their needy buddy through the door and up close to Jesus. There must be another way!

Sometimes Jesus’ friends have Him so covered up and cut off, well, you have to do what you have to do. It is pretty sad when you have to dismantle a roof to get to Jesus and, realistically, most people, then and now, simply won’t work that hard. Might the neediest of our community be unable to get close to Jesus because His followers have blocked the way? Zacchaeus had to climb a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus. This man’s friends had to take off part of the roof. Is it possible that you and I…people of the Way…may actually---although unintentionally---stand in the way of others coming to experience Jesus, “the Way, and the truth, and the life?”

As an ordained Pastor of 27 years and a member of the body of Christ since my Baptism on November 8, 1953---as a man who has given most of his life caring for and serving the church, it is difficult to admit, but it is true in my experience: The primary reason people offer for not following Jesus…for not embracing the Christian faith…is us, the church. Church people who scowl at guests with noisy children. Church people who are offended when someone else dares sit in “their” seat. Crowds of Christians overheard saying unkind, hurtful words about others. Sometimes those “outside” the Church are unable to see Christ because of what they observe within the Church. It was Mahatma Ghandi who said: “I like your Christ. It’s the Christians I don’t understand, because they are so unlike their Jesus.”

What of Jesus do others see through you, through us? What do people know of Jesus’ life by the way we live? What do others see of the Savior through those of us He has died to save? May we not forget that while the world worries about the removing of the roof, Jesus came to raise the dead! May we not forget that the world “gets even” in life, but Jesus offers eternal life! And, may we, as people of the Way not get in the way, but, rather, show the way that others might know the Way by the way we live and give, learn, and love! Amen.