A sermon on Mark 2:1-12 by Nathan Nettleton

There are many people, including quite a few in this congregation, who are a lot more capable and competent than they think they are, and the main thing that holds them back is their inability to believe in themselves. It is the case in most areas of life that if you want to achieve something, you first need to believe that you can. It doesn’t matter whether you are trying to establish a new discipline of prayer, or get a new job, or even lose a few kilos, if you don’t believe it is possible for you, then it is very unlikely that you will achieve it.

We are used to extending this principle into the nature of our faith-relationship with God. We speak of the necessity of personal faith in Christ, and how we enter the kingdom of God by our faith alone. We speak of faith moving mountains, and we naturally assume that those who have the strongest faith in God are able to achieve the greatest things with God. Some of you may have even had the diabolical experience of being told that the reason that you have not been healed or transformed is that you have not had enough faith. Sometimes it seems like it all depends on faith to such an extent that faith itself becomes a mountain to be climbed, a challenging task to be achieved.

Sometimes I wonder though, whether God’s gracious mercy doesn’t extend to forgiving our lack of faith too, and whether we might not all be rather more interconnected than these very individualistic theories of personal faith seem to assume. Today’s gospel reading adds fuel to my wondering here. It is a well known story. The house where Jesus is teaching the people is so crowded that when some people come carrying their paralysed friend on a stretcher in the hope that Jesus will heal him, they can’t get in through the crowd, so they climb up on the roof, rip a hole in it, and lower their friend down in front of Jesus. Jesus recognises their faith, tells the man his sins are forgiven, and then heals his body as well. So what is it about that that is making me wonder?

Well, maybe it is just a little thing, just a word or two really, but did you notice what it said about Jesus recognising their faith? It was “their” faith. It was the faith of the friends up on the roof that he noticed. When he saw “their” faith, when he saw how firmly they believed that all this effort would be worth it, he turned to the paralysed man and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Yes, Jesus is acting in response to a display of faith, but it is not the faith of the man who receives the forgiveness and is healed. The story gives absolutely no indication of his faith. He has been dragged along by his friends because of their faith, not because of his. He might not have had much faith at all, if any. It was not like he could stop them from dragging him along; he’s paralysed. They can drag him wherever they like and he can’t stop them. We are all familiar with the scenario of someone being reluctantly dragged off to a doctor or a therapist because someone else believed it could help. That’s often the time when we talk about how you have to have faith that change is possible before it is likely. But this man is forgiven and healed when Jesus recognises the courageous faith of his friends. Not only does it not say anything about him having faith; it doesn’t say anything about him expressing any repentance or commitment or anything. The only things Jesus is reacting to, so far as we are told, are a need and the faith of the friends.

Now before you start organising a heresy trial, let me distance myself from some of the wild conclusions that have been advanced in some sections of the church over the centuries. I do not believe that the faith of the friends earned or brought about the forgiveness of the man. There have been times when the Church has taught that if you pray in faith enough for someone, and pay the church to have the right liturgies performed for someone, then you can bring about their forgiveness, or at least reduce the punishments that might be due to them. This is bunk, and it is bunk for precisely the reason that it buys into the same sort of mechanistic view of God’s grace as the overly individualistic theories that turn faith into a work to be achieved. It suggests that God has to be bought off, and that God is a kind of cosmic vending machine who will only offer forgiveness when the right change is entered.

But I don’t think we have to resort to convincing ourselves that the paralysed man had an intense faith that just fails to get mentioned. That would be pure speculation and we are always on dodgy ground when we try to insert our beliefs into the biblical stories instead of forming them from the stories. But it is worth noting that it would also be speculation to conclude that the forgiveness of the man is done by Jesus at this moment. The story says that that is what his religious critics think Jesus is saying, but it doesn’t say that they are right. Jesus doesn’t say, “I forgive your sins now.” He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s the same thing we told each other a little earlier in the service, and we weren’t doing the forgiving. We were simply telling each other something that was already true. Jesus may not be doing anything more than that here. Jesus has come proclaiming the new kingdom or culture of God, and it is a culture of forgiveness, a culture of radical and extravagant mercy. He is announcing the good news that God is a God who does not hold our sins against us, and that we can be set free from both guilt and resentment. We can begin to live out that radical culture of forgiveness. “Son, daughter, your sins are forgiven. You don’t need to have faith before that will be true, but if you can put your trust in that forgiveness, you will begin to enjoy its fruits of freedom and joy and healing.”

Now, even if that is the case, it is also the case that there is an act of faith being honoured in this story; the faith of the friends. It is the faith of the friends that brings this guy into the presence of Jesus in the first place. It is their faith that presses on when it seems impossible; their faith that will not stop at obstacles like a crowd crush or mere solid walls and roof. It is only by their faith that this guy comes to hear the words of forgiveness and healing from Jesus. Whether he believed or not, they do the believing for him and get him there. They act in faith, whether he has any or not. And Jesus responds with the word of life.

Which begs a few questions. What does it mean for us to believe “for” others? What can that achieve? And who do we know who is unable to have faith for themselves and is needing us to have faith for them?

When you begin to think about it, this is not as weird as it might sound. We are all familiar with the concept of faith being a bit contagious, and sometimes the faith of a few can carry a few more. Sports commentators often observe it. A team’s cause seems lost, and then someone stands up and does the seemingly impossible and the whole team lifts. Someone refused to lose faith, and their fierce belief lifts and carries the rest, and things are turned around. Maybe you’ve experienced it in the workplace. If the whole team loses faith in the project, morale plummets and all is lost, but sometimes it only takes one or two people to keep the faith, and their continuing belief can keep the whole team pressing on. You may also have experienced a negative expression of this, because the same phenomena can become a means of denying reality and staving off the truth. I was talking to James the other day, and he was talking about the escalating demise of the political party to which he has given enormous amounts of time and energy over a number of years and several election campaigns. He was noting that no matter how terminal things get, people keep talking up their prospects because there is an unspoken pact to hold the faith for one another. You can’t talk about the death of the party, because talking about it is seen as precipitating it. So the pact to keep believing for one another becomes a denial of reality and a toxic avoidance of the grief and moving on that needs to take place. You sometimes see the same toxic denial in a bereaved family. No one will talk about the grief and pain, or even say the word “dead”. They all keep artificially upbeat and refuse to allow anyone to break step. It becomes oppressive and poisonous.

But having faith for others can be enormously positive when it is rightly focussed, as it was in the case of this paralysed man’s friends. Many of us have known times when we were so despairing that it was only the faith of friends or loved ones that kept us from going under. Or times when we had almost achieved something and began to despair of being able to make that last little bit, and someone else’s faith gave us the energy for the final push. The current advertising campaign for the Commonwealth Games where the faith and support of the crowd pushes the high-jumper over the bar and the weightlifter to the top of the lift pick up on this sort of image. Some times when we most need it, it is the faith and belief of others that can get us through desperate times, or impossible tasks, or impassible crowds, or solid roofing iron. Sometimes it is the faith and belief of others that gets us safely into the presence of the Christ who is able to awaken us to the forgiveness and healing that are already ours in the life of God. That’s one of the reasons we gather here and do what we do week by week. In our prayers of intercession we are acting in faith for others, others who may not be able to pray for themselves. And sometimes when it is us who are desperate and unable to believe or pray, the liturgy itself and the congregation gathered to celebrate it are able to do our believing for us, and carry us with them, until we are able believe again and return the favour.

And the fabulous news is that our gracious God is more than willing to honour such vicarious faith. God is so eager to see us embrace the divine forgiveness and healing that God is not looking for some excuse to rule us out like the faith that got us here wasn’t really our own, or we didn’t individually believe hard enough. Those who will be saved are those who are entering into the new culture of forgiveness that Jesus came proclaiming and are becoming forgiving people. They are turning from resentment and vengeance and are becoming reconcilers who can respond with unflinching love and mercy to even the most bitter enmity and hostility. And Jesus isn’t being picky about how we get there. Whether you find your way into that culture of mercy by climbing the most treacherous mountain on your own hands and knees, or whether you are helplessly lowered into it by believing friends, all that matters is whether you will embrace it or flee from it in disgust. For in the end, all of us are as helpless as the paralysed man, and none of us would ever have the courage or strength to make it alone. In the end, none of us are really saved by our own faith, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, who believes for us, and picks us up, takes us where we could not otherwise go, and lowers us gently into the loving and merciful arms of God so that we might know ourselves forgiven, healed and beloved. And the news can’t get any better than that!