It wasn’t real comforting to be watching CNN and The Weather Channel last
weekend when I was in chilly Chicago. The Weather Channel alerted me over and over and over again that it was snowing and sleeting and icing up and down the East coast. Airports were shutting down, schools were closing, only emergency vehicles were being allowed on the roads. Would I be able to get home?? That concern was stressing enough, so I finally turned to CNN to catch the headlines. But then I had to turn off CNN because I couldn’t stand seeing the terrorist threat alert rating staring at me continually at the bottom of the TV screen. I can’t remember now whether it was the orange warning sign for High Risk of Terrorist Attacks or the red warning sign for Severe Risk of Terrorist Attacks. Again, would I be able to get home?? Were my husband and daughters all safe and accounted for? Was something going to happen??

Well, thankfully, I got home safe and sound. Once home, feeling much more settled, and going through the accumulation of mail, I picked out of the stack of mail the current issue of Newsweek. Perhaps you read the cover story this week, or saw the headlines on the cover. It became, like the Weather Channel and CNN, yet another stress-booster. Here’s the cover in case you missed it: “Anxiety and Your Brain: How Living with Fear Affects the Mind and Body.” And now I quote from the article: “The recent barrage of bad news – nukes in North Korea, snipers in Maryland, a failing economy, an imminent war, a threat of domestic terror – has left this privileged nation feeling unusually vulnerable and uncharacteristically anxious.”

The article goes on to tell us that our national anxiousness produces a whole host of responses in us emotionally and physically. We eat more, we drink more, and we’re more susceptible to everything from colds to heart attacks. I expect all of us have felt the stressful effects of what’s going on in the world in one way, shape or another. And I certainly don’t need to tell you that our children and teenagers are feeling the stresses we adults are feeling on top of their own stresses.

I suppose there are a lot of people around the world who would say to us Americans in the face of new anxieties we’re dealing with: “Welcome to the real world.” After all, millions of people around the globe have been dealing with feelings of anxiety, fear, and powerlessness against a range of things beyond their control for years, for decades, or perhaps for their whole lives. Perhaps we’re finally getting just an inkling of what it has been like to be a Jew or a Palestinian, for example, living in the Middle East. Perhaps we’re finally getting an inkling of what it is like to live as a Chinese Christian in a communist country where Christianity is outlawed, or a European in the face of the memories of world war and cold war and years of terrorist attacks and kidnappings, or what it is like to be a Cuban in Castro’s regime or a child getting ready to head out to school tomorrow morning in Belfast…and so on and so on… and so on.

And, perhaps, we can understand and relate in a new and different kind of way to the paralyzed man and his friends in the gospel story from Mark – the story we just heard. We know, from a medical standpoint, that paralysis is often the result of an injury to the spine, but we also know and have understood more completely in the past year or so that we can also be emotionally and spiritually paralyzed by our emotions. We can feel paralyzed by fear, by anxiety, by guilt, by depression, by a sense of powerlessness, and by a sense of hopelessness. We know that dis-ease, whether physical or emotional or spiritual, can cause a kind of paralysis and we know that dis-ease can block the much needed and God- centered channels of hope and healing.

Perhaps we can also understand in a new kind of way, then, the faithful determination of the paralyzed man in the gospel story and his friends who go to extreme and unorthodox lengths to get through the hordes of people milling about to get to Jesus, including, as it ends up, knocking a hole in the roof of the house where Jesus is staying. And why? Because the paralyzed man and his friends have the strong and sensible and certain faith to see Jesus as the Healer he is; the Healer of whatever it is, including our fears and anxieties, which paralyzes us.

And so we might think about these questions this morning, and which ones might apply to us directly: What needs to be healed in your own life? What may be causing you paralysis? Do you seek the healing of a relationship, the healing of fears, the healing of pain, the healing of sadness? Do you seek the healing of your worries, the healing of your spirit, the healing of your suffering, the healing of your anger or bitterness?

The message of the gospel, and I want you to hear this loud and clear, is that God doesn’t intend us to live lives of fear and suffering, of pain and anxiety, of anger and frustration, of sadness or bitterness. It is not God’s will for us to suffer in any way, shape or form. It is not God’s will for us to be fearful and anxious or paralyzed for any reason. It is, instead, God’s will that we be healed of our worries and our fears and that we live lives of hopefulness and thankfulness, bearing his own love and peace and strength through our words and actions. The lesson we learn from today’s gospel is that as Jesus healed the paralytic man of his spiritual and physical dis-ease, so too He will heal us as we come to him in determined and sure and certain faith.

We learn in these hardest of times that our “smarts” as American citizens, our technology, our safety precautions, and even our nation’s President and the might of our military can’t keep us safe from the evils of the world and from the crazies of the world. The only sure safety we have in our lives is our relationship and trust in the healing and saving power of God. The only healing and salvation in the world that we can absolutely count on is the healing and salvation of our souls through our relationship with God in Christ.

I will tell you that it will never be bottled water and canned tuna fish and duct tape, of all crazy things, that will save us. Again, the only saving power in the whole entire world is the saving power of Jesus Christ. As we ask him to heal us of our spiritual paralysis, in whatever form that has taken in us, we are then forgiven and freed to work with him and on his behalf towards the redemption and peace and welfare of the world.

God does not call you and I to store up for ourselves bottled water and canned tuna fish and duct tape awaiting a biological or chemical attack. God calls us instead to lay our sorrows and fears at his feet, to ask for healing for all that paralyzes us, and then to be his very presence in the world. Remember what the apostle Paul says in his Letter to the Corinthians: God gives us “his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.” We are quite definitely not alone. And we are quite definitely not without strength and power. And God is very definitely, and ultimately, in charge.

Let us ask Christ today to heal of us anything and everything that stands in the way of our being his very body and presence in the world. Let us ask Christ today to cure our own paralysis so that we might go forth as the bearers of his life-giving and life-affirming Spirit. Let us ask Christ today for the healing of our hurts and our hopelessness, and then let us act out of Christ’s Spirit in our hearts for the welfare and redemption of a world so in need of hope and healing.

God will ultimately reconcile the world in peace to himself and God will ultimately draw all people unto himself, but for now his work of saving and reconciliation takes place through you and I. May he free us from spiritual paralysis on this day and enable us to get spiritually busy on his behalf. And may each of us, in strong, sensible and sure faith, carry His message of hope and healing from this place and into the whole wide world.

Amen.