HEALING: FORGIVEN AND FREE
Isaiah 43:18-25; Psalm 41; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12
February 19, 2006
By Rev. Dr. Jeanne Knepper


Friends lowered a young man on a mat through the roof, lowered him right between Jesus and the listening crowd, guided the mat down to a spot at Jesus’ feet. Friends, hoping for a miracle of healing, brought him to Jesus. Friends cared enough to bring him to the healer; cared enough to help him seek the life, health, and wholeness he desired so much.

Every Sunday, some among us desire prayers of healing, for themselves or others. Nearly every week, we send out requests for prayer through the electronic and telephone prayer chains. At a deep, behavioral level, we believe that prayer does help people; that it can bring about relief and healing.

A few years ago, Barbara Sawyer and Kim Sharp taught Marcia and me the initial basics of reiki, a healing practice of Japanese origin. Since then, I’ve learned to be bold about offering healing prayer to people who are suffering, from a variety of causes. Last summer, for instance, I was one of the deans for Creation Vacation, a ministry of our United Methodist conference that takes low-income families, families that might not otherwise get a vacation, get a time away together, at all.

Over the course of that week, a number of situations arose where people were hurting, sick, stuck. I began to offer to help, saying something like, “Would it be okay with you if I put my hands on your shoulders. I’ve been trained in reiki, a healing art that sometimes brings relief, and I would give you some good energy if you agreed.� Sometimes, people are eager for the intervention; sometimes they hesitate, asking questions or setting boundaries: “What do you do? Will it hurt? I don’t want to be massaged, it hurts too much.� I explain a bit about reiki, which non-church people seem to accept more readily than “laying on of hands� or “I’m going to pray for you.� I think we have, culturally, grown very deeply suspicious or people who claim they are going to heal others with prayer.

And rightly so, perhaps, for we have seen the media spectacles about prayer and healing. We’ve heard the theological manipulation of preachers who offer healing like a prize for right belief; we’ve heard the words that blame people for their failure to be healed—“You didn’t have enough faith. You haven’t really turned your life over to God. You don’t believe the right things.�—It’s your fault, they say. If you really believed, God would heal you; God would give you a miracle.

I want you to recall something about our story for today. Jesus didn’t ask the man at his feet what he believed about God, whether he knew the four steps to salvation, whether he kept the commandments, whether he was willing to contend with him against the forces of evil, against demons that were laying him low. Jesus did not ask the man to join him in a spiritual struggle against evil. Jesus said only, initially, “Son, you sins are forgiven.�

We understand, don’t we, that Jesus didn’t know this person at all. I mean, he’d just dropped through the roof, a complete stranger. Jesus didn’t say “Your sins are forgiven� because he knew that the man had accepted God in his heart, or because he knew that the man was crippled through “no fault of his own,� or because the man had been loving and kind to others. Jesus didn’t know those things about him, but he spoke confidently because, though he didn’t know the man on the mat, he did know, down to his very toes, that God, in the words of Isaiah, is “the One who blots out your transgressions; . . .[the One who] will not remember your sins.�

This was Jesus’ message to and life with poor people, marginalized people, people who had little use for or acceptance by the religious establishment of his day: “God loves you. God forgives you. God does not write all of our transgressions in a huge book with archival binding and acid-free paper. God lets them go, sets them aside, forgives you.� God forgives us, before we ask, because this is the nature of God. God doesn’t love us, forgive us, because we are good enough, because we’ve joined a church or learned the right words to say. There is nothing we can do, or not do, to change the fact that God loves, accepts, and forgives us. Nothing we can do or say, you see, because we don’t set the love and forgiveness in motion. It’s not about who we are or what we do or don’t do; it’s about the nature of God. And this is what Jesus was saying: “God, the one at the center of everything, the source of all life, the creator of all beauty, God loves and forgives you because that is God’s nature.�

We cannot escape that love; we cannot hide from that forgiveness; we cannot flee from this deep welcome that is built into all being. We can no more hide from God’s love than I can conceal myself behind this flagpole. We are embedded, held, rocked, and knit into a vast web of connection and care, into the body of Christ, into the love of God, into all sources of energy.

I don’t care what we call it: words are all inadequate. But I know it is there, this love that is the fabric and essence of all being. And I believe that we sometimes thrash about and get tangled; that we lose our ability to perceive the loving net when we are faced with hardship, with pain, with heartache.

Last summer, when I was at Creation Vacation, I offered reiki—healing prayer by a different name—to a woman who was having an asthma attack and had left her inhaler at home, to a woman who was deeply depressed and suicidal, to a camper suffering the pain and pukiness of a migraine headache, to a family friend exhausted to be with so much need. Often, they improved. The pain relented, the fear subsided, the breathing eased, the tight knots of anxiety loosened their grip. I believe that prayerful presence made a difference to people. I did not offer prayer instead of medical care, instead of an appointment with a therapist—I believe it would be arrogant and irresponsible to suggest that anyone, in any circumstance, should set aside the insights and remedies of medical care. Prayer is not about magic, not about “proving� that God is not bound by human laws, not about suggesting that we can cause God to “work a miracle� by the things we say or do. No, I believe that prayer is about combing out tangles in the web of being, is about lending our strength and energy to someone who is feeling overwhelmed, is about witnessing, humbly and steadily, to that great truth: you are not alone in your pain and suffering. We, the people who love you, the ones who will carry you to the roof and let you down in front of Jesus, we will hold you just now, we will be at the end of your rope, we will hold onto the feathered ends when your life seems to be unraveling, we will help you to trust the net of God’s love when it is hard for you to hold it in focus. We will be the arms that rock you, the hands that bathe you, the love that will not let you go, we will be this in the flesh, right here and now, for a moment, for this time of need. We will do this, not because we believe our words could compel God to care, not because we think that God responds better to larger numbers of supplicants, and certainly not because we believe that we are special enough to persuade God to circumvent the laws and patterns of nature. No, we do this because we know that sometimes, when times are the hardest, people can forget that they are held, wrapped and rocked in God’s love. Sometimes, people need eyes to see them, arms to hold them, hands to hold onto; sometimes people need the body of Christ, in the flesh before them, to remember that they are loved and forgiven, bottom line, now and forever.

What I love about today’s story is that Jesus doesn’t ask the man on the mat what he believes, or how much, or whether he believes in God or not. Jesus doesn’t ask him to say or do anything to make himself worthy of being healed. Jesus doesn’t talk to him and say, “Do you know the four steps of salvation and do you ask me to forgive your sins so that you can be made whole and saved?� Jesus doesn’t demand that he contend with evil spirits or surrender his heart and soul to God. Jesus just receives him and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.� And then he tells him to take up his mat and walk.

Jesus was speaking from his knowledge of God, a God who knows us and knows how we like to give ourselves and others blame and guilt, a reason for suffering. How often have we heard it, or thought it: “Well, you know, it’s no surprise that he had a heart attack; he never takes care of himself, why I don’t think he’s gone walking once in three years.� Or, “Oh yes, I’m not surprised that she has cancer—look at how long she smoked.� Or, “She’s always been such an angry person.� Or, “Of course he’s depressed—he spends all day wallowing in her sorrow and pain. If she wanted to be healthy, well, she should just get up and get with it.� Oh, we love to judge all the ones who suffer. Sometimes it’s part of trying to feel safer ourselves; sometimes it’s part of the blame we carry for our own suffering, internal thinking that goes something like this: “Well, you know, I wouldn’t have twisted my knee[or sprained my ankle, or ruptured a disk, or had a stroke] if I hadn’t been in such a rush and if I had gone out and walked, stopped smoking, given up salt, biked, exercised, and if I’d been more attentive to my eating so that I don’t weigh so much and put so much weight on my knees. Really, you know, deep down, I know I deserved it. And why should I expect something better when I’m such a screw up?�

“I’m such a screw-up.� There it is, our modern parlance for “I’m a sinner.� And underneath all the silent brow-beating, a belief in a God, a Something at the Center of the Universe, a God who keeps books, notes all our failings, stores all our misdeeds, fatigues, bumbling mistakes and wretched meannesses in a great gunny sack, ready to dump it out on us, SPLAT!, when we’re down, ready to confirm that great article of popular faith, “You probably deserved it.� I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they probably deserved it, probably brought it on themselves, probably got what they had coming.

Why do we hold onto this mean—and inaccurate—understanding of why bad things happen? Maybe because it’s easier to believe that anyone who gets sick, is paralyzed, has a hard time, encounters injustice, is laid off, anyone in such a situation could have prevented it, if they’d only done what God wanted, if they’d only led a healthy, well-balanced, godly, generous, disciplined life. Meaning, “It won’t happen to me; and if it does, it will be because I deserved it.�

How many ways have we heard this thinking? Sometimes it’s cloaked in traditional religious language: “You need to believe in God’s power, contend with the evil spirit that is trying to take you over, and pray with me, that God will forgive your sins and make you whole.� Sometimes it’s cloaked in the language of a newer faith, “Well, you know that we each choose what we will struggle with in this life, so she must have chosen to be with abusive parents; he must have chosen to be hit by a car; she is bringing bad energy into her life; he is creating the troubles he’s experiencing. Nothing for me to do but to remind him, her, myself, to “Don’t worry; be happy.�

Jesus had a perfect set-up for reinforcing this belief. Don’t you imagine he could have said, “Why you lazy, incompetent sponge, why do you imagine that I’d do anything for you. Don’t you know that God helps those who help themselves. Don’t you know that God’s promises are for the faithful? Tell me how you’ve sinned and we’ll know why you are in such a predicament.�

But he didn’t. He said, “Your sins are forgiven.� Not knowing a thing about the man on the mat, he spoke of the nature of God: “God forgives you, no matter who you are, because that is the nature of God. God offers you the gift of wholeness and health not because you’ve done something to earn or deserve such gifts, but because it is the nature of God to seek our well-being. God loves you, paralyzed man. God loves you, person who has had a stroke and person struggling with depression. God loves you, you who are beating yourself with recriminations and guilt. God loves you not for anything you did to earn God’s love and not for anything you refrained from doing in order to retain God’s love. God loves you, God loves us and blots out our transgressions. God sets them aside; invites us to rise from our beds of injury, paralysis, depression and self-judgment, to rise up, claim our beauty as beloved people of God, and to walk into the rest of life knowing that we are forgiven—loved and accepted as who we are—because that is the nature of God.

You whoever you are, your sins—your brokenness, your bad judgments, your meannesses, your fears, your paralysis—your sins are forgiven. Rejoice! Rejoice, take up your mat, and move freely into the future. The center of all Being loves you. You are not alone in a harsh world, carrying the burden of all your missed steps and wrong choices . You, you are set free to move into a new way of being, a life no longer paralyzed by guilt, no longer immobilized by depression, no longer torn with self-judgment. God doesn’t love you because you’re ‘Good enough.’ God loves you because that is the nature of God. Nothing you will do or be can ever change that. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Show (0) - Add comments: