Sermon Title: "Trouble Getting to Jesus"
Date: February 22, 2009
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Mark 2:1-12

She had a terrible week.  Her job as a social worker is difficult and demanding, never more demanding than the week past.  Thus, on her one day off, on that Sunday, she arose, got dressed, and walked down the street to the large church near her apartment.  She had not been to church in a number of years, not since she was a child, in fact.

But when she got there an usher met her at the front door and said to her, “Young lady, I'm sorry, but the sanctuary is already full.  We have some seating in our fellowship hall.  We broadcast the service there, if you don’t mind going down there to hear the service.”

If she had wanted to see church on TV, she would have stayed home.  Dejectedly, she returned home.  She had trouble getting to Jesus for the crowd!

Twenty centuries have passed since the four caring friends who wanted Jesus to heal their paralyzed friend approached the house in Capernaum, only to find the same situation as the social worker recently:  the crowds were so great that they couldn’t even get inside.  So they carried the pallet up the side stairs to the roof.  (It was no easy task:  This was not a medically approved gurney with a safety strap, nor did those steep stairs have an ADA approved handrail.)  Once on the flat roof, the four determined men began to dig through the dried mud and push aside the reeds and twigs which lay across the roof beams.  Then carefully they lowered the man on his pallet down through the hole in the roof into the very midst of Jesus’ presence.

Here are two instances of where the crowd got in the way of someone getting through to Jesus.  But it’s more than just dealing with a crowded room where a leader is speaking, or encountering a church that’s filled, or even a parking lot that leaves no room to park for a couple of blocks around.  What are the real barriers that prevent people from getting to Jesus?

It could be sin.  Sometimes we hear people are paralyzed by fear.  So too can one be paralyzed by sin.  That is evidently what was wrong with the paralyzed man on the pallet, and Jesus sensed this.  Jesus said a strong “Yes” to the one who was paralyzed, healing him in body and in spirit.  Jesus tells him his sins are forgiven.  This irks the religious authorities because according to their practice and understanding, there are elaborate rituals of atonement that must be undertaken in order for one’s sins to be forgiven.  Jesus simply says that it is so, and forgiveness is given, as surely and immediately as the physical healing that occurs on Jesus’ command.  Forgiveness is a gift to be received from Jesus’ hands, a gift that brings salvation and new life.

Yet some people are so overcome by their sense of sin that they cannot bring themselves into Jesus’ presence.  Not here at church, not even in prayer at home, nor will they discuss it with a religious leader or counselor.  And often it is some sin that has lurked in the distant past for some time, paralyzing one from being in a right relationship with God.

Still others have trouble getting close to Jesus because they are angry at God.  It can be over something that didn’t work out well in their life:  a relationship, a job, a sickness or death of a loved one.  Life has treated them unfairly, they believe, and God didn’t help.

That is what I believe happened in the middle of the night in late November and late December, when someone threw bricks through two of our stained glass windows here in the sanctuary.  I certainly don’t know the particulars, but since I discovered the broken windows, and saw the bricks, and swept up the glass, I have a notion.  I believe it was a man, who came up from Second Street after the bar closed those two nights.  He either walked up Granada Avenue or came up the diagonal alley beside the parking lot.  He was angry.  He was bitter.  He saw the church.  He saw a loose brick in our neighbor’s fence.  It was nothing personal against us.  I don’t believe the man was ever in this church.  But it represented something—the God who didn’t treat him fairly, who didn’t give him what he wanted, who caused his life to be the miserable mess it was.  And so he lifted his arm and hoisted a brick through the balcony window.  And a month later, I believe it was the same man, feeling exactly the same as before, who lifted his arm a second time and hoisted a second brick through the narthex window.

What if, instead, he had chosen to come a few hours later, during the daylight when situations never seem as dark and dire as during the night.  What if he had come in here to worship?  We wouldn’t have turned him away.  Our church is never so crowded that the ushers would have said there was no room.  What if he had just sat here through one service, or even stood out in the narthex looking in through the windows if he wasn’t comfortable coming into God’s house.  Might there not have been something said in our worship, some song sung that maybe his grandmother taught him, some verse of scripture, some phrase of a prayer that just might have helped break down the barrier that he erected to keep himself away from Jesus.

Still others cannot come before Jesus because they feel it’s been so long.  Maybe someone once said something that turned them off to the church.  Maybe the church took a stand on an issue to which they were opposed.  Maybe the church they used to attend dealt with someone unfairly, and this person just can’t get over it.

I heard a formerly homeless man speak at a clergy luncheon last Wednesday.  He lived here on the streets of Long Beach for ten years.  “I heard the word every day,” he said, “but I just didn’t believe it was meant for me.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus begins his ministry.  Where does he begin?  By immediately going to one who is sick, disabled, disempowered, one who had trouble even getting through to Jesus because of all the obstacles in the way.  The 16th century German Reformer Martin Luther makes much of the way in which Jesus is to be found

among “the humble and the miserable”, sounding much like it was written for our 21st century world:

“God is the God of the humble, the miserable, the afflicted, the oppressed, the desperate, and of those who have been brought down to nothing at all.

“And it is the nature of God to exalt the humble, to feed the hungry, to enlighten the blind, to comfort the miserable and afflicted, to justify sinners, to give life to the dead, and to save those who are desperate and damned.” (Luther, Lectures on Galatians [1535] [on Gal. 3:19], Luther's Works, 26:314.)

Jesus did not erect the barriers.  He is willing to meet you, anywhere, anytime, even if you’ve been lowered down through the roof.  That didn’t stop him from giving the paralyzed man the power and the forgiveness to get up off that pallet and stand up and walk away.  And there’s nothing that should prevent you from having access to Jesus too.  You just have to ask, and be willing to be changed.