February 18, 2012
This week’s Gospel reading is from the First Chapter of Mark. In a quick summary, a paralytic is taken to Jesus to be healed. Because of the crowd, they cannot get close to Jesus, so they open the roof and lower their friend down. Jesus sees the faith of the friends and forgives the sins of the paralytic, who is then able to walk. (Also, this week, Psalm 41.) Here is a reflection I did on that reading for this week:
I like Facebook. I have 279 friends on Facebook…well, 278 friends, not counting my Mom. I never had 278 friends before. This is really cool. The other night, I started going through my list of friends. I saw a couple of names I really didn’t recognize. I looked at their pictures and didn’t recognize them either. One of my friends is from Bozeman, Montana. I have never been to Bozeman, Montana, and for that matter, I didn’t recognize her name. Turns out she is a friend of a friend, but that other friend is a person that I don’t really know all that well. I guess that in some weak moment, some late night, I must have accepted her friend request. Now I have a dilemma. I don’t know this friend, but I don’t want to unfriend her because I don’t want to hurt her feelings. If I am ever in Bozeman, Montana, maybe I should give her a call. I can almost hear that conversation now: “Hi Joyce. This is your friend Russ.” “Who?” “Russ, you know, from Facebook, we’re friends.” “What do you want?” “Well, I was just passing through Bozeman and thought I would stop by to say hi... Hello?... Hello?... Joyce?” “Click!”
We throw around the word friend pretty easily. The paralytic in the Gospel of Mark, he had friends. These were four guys who must have loved him. They knew who Jesus was. They knew Jesus could heal their friend. They would go to any length to get him healed. There must have been some interesting and deep discussions amongst these friends. Perhaps they discussed the Psalm we just heard:
The LORD will help him on his sickbed,
He will take away all his ailment when he is ill.
Once I said, “O LORD, have pity on me;
Heal me, though I have sinned against you.”
We have to get pretty close to a person to have that kind of discussion. This is not a discussion about the weather, about a good movie we have seen, a new restaurant we have been to. This is about looking deeply into someone’s life, looking at their scars, picking up their burdens and making them yours. It is more than encouragement, more than cheering them on. It is saying to them, “I know how you can be healed and I will carry you there, if that is what it takes.”
It is not enough to say that I will be this kind of friend to you. We need to have these kinds of friends ourselves. We need to have people in whom we can trust. We need people who have our permission to say to us whatever it is that they think we need to hear. It was the in faith of the paralytic’s friends that he found hope. Jesus does not say to the paralytic “your faith has healed you.” Jesus sees the faith of his friends and heals him. Imagine just how much trust the paralytic must have had in his friends to let them lower him through a hole in the roof. The only way this healing is going to occur is if the man lets his friends carry him. We have to be ready to bare our souls to our friends and listen carefully to what they tell us. These need to be men or women of integrity, wisdom and love.
Lastly, please note that the paralytic was healed when Jesus forgave his sins. Almost everyone, at some point in their life, is paralyzed by sin. Some small thing leads to a bigger thing, and then our relationship with family, or with our friends, or with our employers, or with God is impacted. We become paralyzed. We see no way out. It is especially then, that we need the help of our friends to lead us back to Christ, or even to carry us back, so we can be forgiven…so we can start fresh…so we can pick up our mats. It is especially then, when we see no way back, that we need to let our friends open the roof and lower us down. We need friends who will help us to pray:
“Lord, heal my soul, for I have sinned against you.”
I said earlier that I have 278 Facebook friends. What I should be asking myself is if four of them would actually be willing to cut a hole in the roof for me.
Switching gears, I am doing very well. Spring break is in two weeks. The notion of going on spring break seems very weird to me, after working for so many years, but what the heck…being a student has to have a few perks. I will be headed to Florida to visit my Mom. I should be back in Texas in April to celebrate Easter with family and friends at St. Jude. I am really looking forward to both trips. President’s Day is this weekend and we actually get off two days in a row. I plan on skiing one day in New Hampshire (it’s only a 2 hour drive) and then reading and writing all day on Monday.
That’s the news from here. Please continue to pray for me and all seminarians.
In Christ,
Russ
