Mark is such a skillful writer!  I love the way he weaves two stories together to give each a deeper meaning than it would have on its own.  In our gospel reading this morning we have the first of a series of controversy stories embedded in a story of healing.  These controversy stories will lead to a plot to end Jesus’ life.  But that is later.  We find this story in all three of the synoptic gospels.

 The dramatic healing story of the friends tearing off the roof in order to get their paralyzed buddy into the presence of Jesus put me in mind of the film “The Green Mile” which is so named because the floor of the Death Row in Louisiana’s Cold Mountain Penitentiary is laid with green linoleum.  One of the inmates is John Coffey, whose huge size and strength would make him capable of killing anyone, but whose gentle character and compassion and sensitivity to evil make us think of another man whose initials are JC and who also exhibited both strength and compassion. Paul, the head guard, discovers that Coffey is a healer when the he becomes the recipient of Coffey’s healing powers. The guards decide to take John to the warden’s house so that John can heal the warden’s wife who is dying.  They don’t ask the warden if this is ok.  It is against the law to remove John from prison, but they are convinced that John can help. And they are right, It was worth the risk. John heals her.  When Paul asks how this happens, John says, “I just take it all back.”…the suffering, the hurt.  When the warden’s wife asks John, “Why do you have so many scars?  Who hurt you so badly.”  He answers, “Don’t hardly remember, ma’am”…which I read as forgiveness.  John Coffey is a man condemned to die for a sin he did not commit and offers life to all, captors and condemned alike.

 Healing and forgiveness.  Forgiveness and healing.  They seem to go together.  There seems to be a tie between these elements for Mark.  Now I have a problem here.  I feel differently about healing and forgiveness. I want healing to be indiscriminate.  I want it to go to everyone…just like I want everyone to win.  I have problems watching the Olympics because I don’t want anyone to lose.  I have no idea why some people get well and some people don’t…oh, I hear some people’s theories on the why, but no one really knows why.  I understand disease to be part of the risk of being human.  We could live in a bubble, but I don’t consider that living as I chose to live…though, if that was the only option I had, I would jump at it and try to find the joy in it, I hope. 

But then I remind myself that there are different kinds of healing.  At the memorial service of my friend Rene Riley---who was in some people’s eyes a modern day saint---her pastor addressed her three young children, asking them what happened to all those prayers said on her behalf when it was found she had brain cancer?  Answering her own rhetorical question, the pastor told how Rene, even though she was so accomplished and so outgoing and so loving, had a hole in her soul…she had never felt truly loved for just being herself.  During the course of her illness as the love she had poured out to others began flooding back to her, that place in her was healed…through the love outpoured by her friends.  So, said the pastor, we never know how our prayers may be answered…it may be on a level we never imagined.

 Now I understand that Christ can both heal and grant forgiveness…though that was a major sticking point for the scribes…in fact, they considered it blasphemous…but we believe Jesus is the Christ for we live on the other side of Easter…they didn’t.  I have to say that if someone came into my living room and told me that my sins were forgiven, I might do exactly what the scribes did,  thinking, who are you to forgive my sins and how do you know for sure that I have sinned?  I think I hide them as well as most…and I thank you very much not to remind me...I’m doing my best to ignore them or push them under the carpet and I don’t appreciate your pointing them out to me…or to God either, for that matter.

 This is one of the problems, is it not?  As we try to hide out, we never face what hangs us up and this keeps healing from happening.  We have to open to the forgiveness that is offered by admitting that we are part of the problem.  It isn’t all “so and so’s” fault.  We have some responsibility in keeping reconciliation from happening.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu had the right idea with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which worked for the healing of South Africa after Apartheid fell.  Some felt that the commission was just opening wounds and making things worse.  Better to just cover everything up and start over.  But, no, his take was that if the wounds were opened they could be cleansed and not allowed to fester.  He thought scars could become strong points with which to move into the future that God was opening before them.

 This is not so different an approach than Jesus took, for he began his ministry with an attack on illness.  The reign of God meant healing of affliction which separated individuals from the larger community.  In the second chapter of Mark another barrier falls: sin.  If we think of sin as a barrier between us and God or a barrier between us and one another, we can see why Jesus was trying to change that.  Often in the Hebrew Bible illness was associated with sin.  When Jesus asks the scribes which is easier, to heal the paralytic man or to forgive sins, the authority of these religious rulers is on the line.  They cannot answer one or the other because if they chose one over the other, they lose.  But Jesus heals the paralytic I think because the healing can be seen.  Forgiveness has deeper and longer ranging effects, but this healing becomes a sign of forgiveness.  Charles Wesley believed that forgiveness is the foundation of the Christian faith.

 The other thing that is tricky about universal forgiveness is the question of justice.  If all is forgiven, the fear is that the oppressors will keep grinding down the oppressed, so there needs to be some natural consequences…hopefully, non-violent ones, but consequences none-the-less.  But perhaps as people of faith, we must believe that God’s forgiveness has the power to transform lives.  Perhaps when we truly claim God’s trust in us and extend it to others, we extend the possibility of transformation to them as well.  This is when healing and forgiveness walk hand in hand.  Bitterness is ended.  The churning in the stomach abates. Hope can flower.  Barriers are surmounted. God can do a new thing!

 Where are we as individuals or as a congregation paralyzed? Stagnant? Stuck?  Where do we need healing and forgiveness to flow? Do we believe that Christ is present in our midst?  What is the mat on which we live?  Our comfortable place…that we think we need to exist?  What would it take for us to accept forgiveness, to give forgiveness, to get up from our mat and let God do a new thing?  Let us center our lives on Christ. Let us open our fists and receive the forgiveness and healing and wholeness God has in mind for us all.  Amen