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Is there anything that endures, anything that stays the same from day to day and year to year, anything that lasts? As every first-year philosophy student knows, the ancient philosopher Heraclitus didn't think so. "You can't step into the same river twice," he said. If you step into a river, and step out again, and then step back in, it's new water, a different river. Everything has changed. And you? You look in the mirror one day, and you see your father or mother looking back at you. And you wonder what happened, and you are propelled into a strange new future. Life is like that. Those of us who grew up on typewriters have had to learn to use word processors, while those who are graduating from high school this year ask, "What's a typewriter?" Life is always on the move. The dollar isn't worth a dollar anymore. The dollar used to be something you could count on. We never should have left the - what was it? - the gold standard. What's the gold standard? And have you noticed that the Golden Age of anything seems always to be in the past? The Golden Age of philosophy, we say, was Fifth-Century Greece. The Golden Age of painting was the Renaissance. The Golden Age of faith was the early church. Even in sports: "There'll never be a time like that of Ruth and Gerhig, the days before steroids, the days when they hit 'dead' balls over the fence, not these 'live' balls like we have today." We human beings are always looking over our shoulder. We are all like Lot's wife who couldn't stand a good thing when she had it. "Sodom is going to be destroyed," the angel told her. "Run to Zoar to safety, and don't look back." But Lot's wife couldn't stand leaving home without a parting glance. She looked back and - zap! - she became a pillar of salt. The people in exile in Babylon were always looking over their shoulder as well. They couldn't help but wonder why they were there. What happened? They remembered the Golden Age of the past, how the Lord had brought them out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in Canaan, in the past. And how they had prospered, in the past. And how Saul and David and Solomon had built their great kingdoms, in the past. And then - poof! - it was gone. All was lost, and now they were back in slavery again, this time in Babylon. And they lamented their plight. They looked over their shoulder and longed for the good old days, the days when their God had been mighty and powerful. But through the prophet this morning God speaks to them, and to us, and says, "You guys have got to keep your eyes on the future. Stop dwelling on the past. Remember the past. Be thankful for my grace in the past, but remember that the Golden Age of grace is not in the past. It's right now! I'm about to do something new. Can't you see it?" And then suddenly this morning, right on the heels of the prophet's counsel, four men bring their paralyzed friend to Jesus. They create a bizarre scene. Everyone in town has heard about the miracles Jesus has performed recently, and they are all pressing around the house where Jesus is staying, just as they all crowded around the house of Simon's mother-in-law the other day, all wanting to see him do something now, something in the present. But they can't get to Jesus through the door, because of the crowds. So they carry their friend up the outside stairway to the roof, and they begin breaking into the house by knocking a hole in the roof. Just listen to the racket! Hammers pounding, crowbars creaking, dust and stones and boards all falling down into the room where Jesus is, and the men peering down through the hole as they lower the pallet with their friend lying on it, all of them struggling to keep from falling through the hole themselves. What do you suppose these men St. Mark tells us about are seeking today for their friend? Was it a cure they wanted? Did they want Jesus to heal their friend so that he could walk again? Maybe. That would certainly be a blessing for a paralyzed man. Certainly they and their friend would be happy with that. But I wonder. I wonder if there wasn't more they wanted. I wonder if there wasn't something even greater they were seeking. Mark says that "when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, 'My son, your sins are forgiven.'" What a strange thing to say! Or maybe it isn't so strange. Maybe it isn't such a strange response if we remember the burden those people were carrying from their past, if we remember that for them a disease or a personal calamity of some kind was evidence that the person who had it was a sinner. Somehow, from their past, they had come to believe that when something bad happens to someone, it is because he is bad. He must deserve it. Remember, that's what Job's friends had said to Job when all those bad things had happened to him. So I wonder this morning if this paralyzed man and his friends aren't really seeking something deeper than a cure for his paralysis. I wonder if they aren't all seeking some release from the spiritual burden that suggests that if you get sick you must be a bad person, a sinner. I wonder if their friend isn't really a good man, a righteous man like Job. And I wonder if, like Job, they aren't hoping this morning to ask Jesus for his take on why bad things happen to good people like their friend. I wonder if they aren't hoping to ask Jesus if it really is God who does things to people like this, if it really is God who caused their friend to be paralyzed because God is angry with him. I wonder if they aren't hoping to ask Jesus, "Is God for us, or against us?" And Mark says that when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, "My son, you're sins are forgiven." And all the scribes who were there - and all the scribes who are here this morning, the keepers of the law, the keepers of religion - are thinking to themselves, "How can this fellow talk like that? That's blasphemy. We know that paralysis and other illnesses are signs of sin. And we know that no one can forgive sins except God. That's what we've always been taught." And Jesus knew what they were thinking, says Mark, so he said, "OK, you guys don't like it that way, let's do it another way, whichever is easier for you. God is mindful and pleased to have us do it either way, mindful that man can heal, mindful that the son of man can set the prisoner free." And Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, "Stand up. Take up your bed, and go home." And the man got up, and at once took his bed and went out in full view of everyone, so that they were all astounded and praised God. "Never before have we seen anything like this!" they said. Why were they so astounded? Had nothing like that ever happened before? Or was it just that they had never had eyes to see it? That's what I wonder. In a book of several years ago, Philip Yancey asks What's so Amazing about Grace? I think I know the answer to Yancey's question. The amazing thing about grace, about the grace of God, is that grace, like love, endures. Everything else will pass away, St. Paul reminds us. Prophecies will cease. Tongues, they will cease. Knowledge will vanish. But three things abide: faith, hope, and love. Grace, it endures. And yet, every time we see it, every time we see grace at work in our presence, whenever we see faith at work, or hope at work, or love at work in the world, we are amazed, astounded. Perhaps it's because grace is so rare among us in our own lives. When we look back over our shoulders, we can see the effects of grace at every point in our long, sad, human history of "ungrace." But when grace happens among us now, we are astonished, because it's so different from the way we actually live our lives. So much of the time we insist on meting out what one deserves, especially when someone has sinned against us. We insist on retribution. We hold onto our grudges. We are like the man Jesus tells us about, like the man who was himself forgiven a great debt, but who turned around and insisted that a neighbor who owed him a few pennies pay up right now, or else he'd have him thrown in jail. And when the prodigal who has run off and squandered all that we gave him comes home, we tell him to get lost. He made his bed; let him sleep in it. So much of our own ungraceful lives are like that, that when grace actually happens in our presence we are astounded. We've never seen anything like it, we say. But when we remember, when we remember that from Creation to typewriters - every step of the way, even from Creation to word processors - when we remember how the world itself if built on grace, and how it is grace that has "brought me safe thus far," then our eyes are opened and new things are possible. That's what we come here to do today, to remember. We come to look over our shoulder. We come to remember that in the beginning God gave us the gift of life, created us, not because of anything we had done to deserve being brought into being, but just because. Because God wanted to, and wanted us. And we come to remember that later, when we were slaves in Egypt, it was God's grace, God's power, not ours, that led us into freedom. And we come to remember that later still, when we were in exile in a foreign land, and lost, it was God who brought us home and welcomed us once again. St. Paul reminds us this morning that God is like that. Paul says that with human beings, as we make our decisions in life, everything is always "yes" and "no." On the one hand, if things go well, then "yes." If you deserve it, then OK. But on the other hand.... That's the way it is with us, either "yes" and "no." But with God, says Paul, it is never a mixture of "yes" and "no." With God it is always "yes." That's the point of all our readings this morning, the point of the Gospel every day, the point of the Good News - that with us life may be a matter of "yes" and "no," on the one hand this, on the other hand that. But with God, it is always "yes." Despite changing circumstances, despite the changing lives of "ungrace" we tend to live, God is always for us. There is always a new good thing God has in mind for us, always a burden God is ready to lift. That is what endures, God's grace. We can count on it. The lousy circumstances of life can change. Your feet may swell, your eyes may go blind, you may be paralyzed and your friends may have to pound their way through the roof to get you to Jesus, you most certainly will die, but God's being for us never changes. "My son," he says to the prodigal, "welcome home. Your sins are forgiven." And we're amazed. We just can't believe it. So accustomed are we to thinking "on the one hand this, but on the other hand that" and to living that way with each other, that when God simply says, "Yes. Take up your bed and go home," we're astounded. So accustomed are we to having been taught that if we mess up and sin that, "Well, then, bad things happen to people who do that," that we simply are unprepared for grace when it happens right in front of us. "Never before have we seen anything like this," we say. But I wonder. I wonder if it has never happened before, or if we just don't have eyes to see the enduring grace of God that is as old as Creation and as fresh and new as today. This morning, every morning, we come to God's altar to remember the past, but to remember the past in a particular way. We come to remember the great events of God's grace in days gone by, to remember all the ways God has been for us in the past. We come to remember God's grace in the creation of the world in the beginning. We come to remember the grace of our deliverance from slavery in Egypt, and our welcome home from exile time and time again. We come to remember the power of God's grace to heal, not just the body but also the soul. We come to remember the power of God's grace to heal a paralyzed man, and even more to remember the power of his grace to forgive, the power of grace to free him from the burden of believing that his illness must mean that he was a bad person with whom God was angry. Most of all, we come to remember Jesus. We come to remember Jesus walking his way to Calvary. We come to remember Jesus' joining us in our suffering and death, his coming to tell us that no matter what happens, with God it is always "yes," his coming to tell us that God is for us and with us. We come this morning, and every morning, to remember all the great times of grace in the past. And we come to remember that everything has changed since those times. It's not the same river at all. Everything has changed, except the promise, except the promise that God is for us, the promise that, with God, it is always "yes." So we come to remember the great events of God's grace in the past in a particular way. We come to re-call this grace to life here among us today, to accept the gift of grace present in our lives right now and the faithful promise of that same grace in the future. Faith, hope, love, these abide. Forgiveness, release, grace, these are always available despite changing circumstances. That's what God means when he says he's about to do something new today. Do you see it? God is here to grant your freedom, to bring you home, to lift your burden, because his faithfulness is great. Grace endures, though everything else changes. Grace is as old as creation and as new as this morning. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |