Mark 2:1-12
Making A Way For The Disabled
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Thanks to Marissa Hover and Mary Lu Ramsey for the transcription below
When I was a teenager and driving around, I always liked to have my friend, Paul, in the backseat. It wasn't because he was good company—he was; the reason I liked to have Paul in the front seat was because he never complained about my driving. No second-guessing, no directions, he was perfectly fine with whatever I did. In fact, at one point I turned left into six lanes of oncoming traffic. I had to tell him later to scream because, you see, Paul is blind. I used to worry about him. I used to worry about what he could and couldn't do and I thought I'd have to watch out for him. Then one night we went to a movie and as he was paying for his ticket, I tried to watch to make sure he got the right change. When we went in, he turned to me and said, “She gave me an extra $5.00.” I didn't worry about how he knew that. I just said, “No, she gave you the right change.” He insisted that she gave him an extra $5.00 so I had to confess to him that I'd been watching and had seen the entire transaction. He still argued with me. It came out that his sister had been in his wallet and had refolded the bills which threw him off.
One time, we were walking from his house just after he got his seeing-eye dog. So, it's a little bit after dusk and we're out walking along and the dog is keeping him on the sidewalk and all of the sudden the crazy dog pulls Paul off the walk and onto the grass and then he pulls Paul back on the sidewalk. I'm walking behind them trying to figure out what this crazy dog is doing and Wham! I walk into a branch. The dog had seen the branch but I didn't. After 4 or 5 times of this kind of thing happening I quit worrying about him too much. How do we treat the disabled? When we think we are helping, are we really? I wondered about the paralytic. I wanted to ask the paralytic,” Did you want to go see Jesus, or did they just take you?” I wonder because it's almost like he isn't there. It says in Scripture, “Jesus saw THEIR faith.” Didn't the guy on the mat have any faith? Jesus didn't see it or comment on it. Jesus saw their faith and said “Your sins are forgiven.” First you come to Jesus and you think you're going to be healed and get all fixed-up, restored, fulfilled, healthy, and Jesus says,” Your sins are forgiven.” But he still can't walk. Here we find out that sometimes even though we have a lot of faith and we go to the source, Jesus Christ; we may not be healed. Instead, your sins will be forgiven.
Back then disabilities and sin were connected. Today, most of us are more sophisticated and have separated sin from disability. We don't think, “You sinned, therefore you can't walk.” Back then it was, “Why can't you walk? You must have sinned” So when Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven,” They didn't believe him. They said that only God could forgive sin. Then he said, “Rise, take-up your pallet and walk.” So he stood up and walked. They then said, “Well, I guess his sins are forgiven; Look, he's walking.” In a way, we still do the same thing. The question here is the question we struggle with in almost all of the major controversies and movements throughout our lifetime and hundreds of years before: What is fully human? What is the image of God? Is this person this way because God wants this person to be this way? Is this person this way through no fault of himself or is this person something lesser because of sin: We can see the sin in there life by the way they live and the disease of their body. What about Aids and the view that Aids must be sin? Sin is making them sick and only God can forgive them.
You know how we can tell that we've made an idol of God? It's when we're sure that God hates the same things that we do. That's not God, that's an idol we've made. This is the greatest issue of our time. What is the image of God? Then we'll talk about what human is. What is fully human? What is “a person” who has all the rights? Isn't that what all of our great movements and problems are? What do the gays say now? We want to be fully human. What did the women say when they wanted to vote, to own property and have their own name on their driver's license after they were married? The women said they wanted to be fully human. What did the black people say in the Civil Rights Movement? They said, “We no longer want to be counted as 3/5ths of a person: we want to be 5/5ths of a person. We want to be fully human.” What is the abortion controversy and debate about if not, “When does fully human start? One answer is humanness starts at the time of conception. Does it start a millisecond before conception? Is there a great moral difference between stopping conception a millisecond before it happens and stopping it after? Is it, as the Catholic Church ruled for centuries, a baby becomes human once it moves. The Bible itself makes another distinction. The Bible gives different penalties for causing the death of an unborn baby as opposed to a baby that had been born.
We are in the midst of that and it's only to get worse, friends. The question of what is human, what is the image of God, what names someone worthy of humanity or not; is only going to get worse. How many parts can you replace in a person to still remain a person? How many parts? How many organs? How many limbs? How long before a computer is human? If you talk and interact with a computer and cannot tell whether it was human or not, how far is it from being human? If you're in to Google, check out the China-Brain project. They plan to have a motion-laden computer by April of next year. Is it human? What makes a human? What is the image of God? Is it the first breath or the conception? Now, we have cloning. What are we going to do with cloning now? I swab my mouth and I've killed a thousand potential cells that could have been clones and fully human given the right environment and nurturing. Am I a murderer? Is it all right to do that? All of these questions go back to: “What is the image of God?” What if we, at some time, are able at birth or before birth to choose genetically every part of our child's humanity and we choose for them to never need glasses or have a problem with obesity? We might choose for them to be right-handed and choose for them to be a perfect human specimen. Then what about those children who are conceived in the usual way and don't have the stacked deck? Who would be disabled?
In the movie clip we're going to see in second service, they have a child who isn't up to snuff, that isn't programmed, isn't safe and we see very graphically him being locked out of the daycare. The daycare says their insurance won't allow them to take the risk. What if he got hurt? Disabled – it's all in the definition. Depending on the definition; anyone of us could be considered disabled and not fully human, not in the image of God,
Here is where the church and faith and Christianity have so much to offer the world. Yet we are still arguing and discussing and worrying over the same old controversies. We're not even close to the issues we need to be talking about, such as: How does the image of God relate to cloning? What are ethical ramifications of companies patenting parts of DNA in our cells that makes us human? Do you think slavery is bad? How about someone who owns an entire species and their DNA code? In the future, if you need a cure for Parkinson's or diabetes—well, there's a fee for that. If you want to do research on cancer- well, you can send money over here.
We have so much over the world because we know what makes us human. We have the answer. We know exactly and we say it every week. We know exactly what humanity is. Our very core bedrock belief is that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. So when people ask us what human is, when humanity begins and what the image of God is we have an answer. We say, “Jesus Christ! We know him and we would like for you to know him too.” Well how is he human? If we think about it we could tell them how is anyone human, how is anyone fully human? I would say this: It isn't in the genes. It isn't in the number of weeks that it takes for development. And it isn't in any other genetic trait you list. It isn't whether they can walk. It isn't whether or not they have a certain disease that we've assigned to a moral category. Being fully human is how close you are to the fully human, Jesus Christ. The closer you come to him, the closer you are to being truly human.
Jesus Christ showed us that to be fully human you should take the worst that the world can give you and die on behalf of others. No greater love has anyone that he would die for those he does not know. The crosses all over our sanctuary answer that question. If you look at the cross, you have the answer. We ask how much has he died for others. How much has she sacrificed for the good of the community and humanity? How much has she given of herself to help others? That is what humanity is and Jesus saw that in our scripture today. What made the disabled broken, sinful, less-than-a-man “human”? THEIR faith; THEIR sacrifice; THEIR work; THEIR love for him; what makes humanity? The love of others. The love of God. This is still the greatest commandment. We need not be scared of the future. We need to claim the future in our faith. We know what the image of God is. It's not a list of DNA given from some corporate company that says, “This is it”. It's not a list of perfect traits. It is not a certain skin color. It is love for humanity as Jesus Christ loved humanity. When you love like Jesus Christ, then you are fully human. When you love like Jesus Christ, you make others that you love fully human. Go with love and be in the image of God and be fully human. Share that humanity with those you love.
AMEN
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