Isaiah 43: 18-25
Mark 2: 1-12
Village People
Elizabeth Macaulay
2/19/06
Ten days ago someone broke into a tiny flower shop a mile from here.
They stole a safe, and set a fire burning.
During the week when even the least romantic has thoughts of flowers -
it was, after all, Valentine’s day in the week to come - the owners of
Petersen’s flower shop were left with a huge heart ache and decisions to
make.
What were they going to do with the truckload of flowers that were
arriving the next day?
And what were they going to do with the sense of despair and grief they
felt about the violation they had encountered?
They decided to sell from the truck, when it arrived. Word got out about
their plight. The newspaper and TV media were on the story about the
desecration. People put the word out that this was an important time to support
this local business.
Hundreds of people arrived to support them with their business. Roses
were walking down the street in the arms of those who had climbed into the
truck to select them. Petersen floral had its best Valentine’s day in
their history.
I share the meat of the story through the eyes of the Fairy Godmother,
whose shop is across the street from Petersen floral. Terre’s store had
been burglarized earlier that year, and she knew what it was to feel violated
and shaken by the violence of others. And, she too had experienced a
groundswell of support from people who showed up to support her when she was feeling
so low she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on.
Vickie (one of the owners of Petersen flowers) and Terre both reflected
that even in the midst of the so difficult they endured, they discovered that
there were so many good things that had come out of it.
Terre shared this comment in her weekly newsletter:
“The tremendous amount of love and support we were flooded with in
the days and weeks that followed the break in and the fire was tremendous. I
never would wish the experience on anyone but… my faith in the power of
people’s loving goodness was increased ten-fold because of it.
A couple guys do something bad and hundreds of others step in and repair
and restore it.
Now that’s life worth living and faith worth having.” (Terre
Thomas YFG newsletter 2/17).
A man during the time of Jesus was crippled in such a way that his world
consisted of a mat. On it he watched his world become more and more distant,
because he experienced the isolation of the less-than-able-bodied.
At the time of Jesus, such a state was thought to be visited upon the
sufferer because of some affront to God, some sin.
So this man was clearly, in the eyes of his world, damaged goods.
Physically and spiritually.
Damaged goods confined to a mat. Damaged goods sure to be poor and
isolated and pretty near convinced of his own wretchedness.
Until for reasons we are not told, four people become convinced that
this man did not earn his misfortune.
Four people became convinced that this Jesus they had heard about, this
healer from
Four people decided that they are willing to take action in the hope of
healing. They decide that this vision of healing and wholeness is worth the
long haul they would have to make.
Did they have to convince the man on the mat? We don’t know. Did
they question themselves each step of the way?
Through the streets of the village, through the crowd around the house.
Up the stairs to the rooftop. With each movement that opened the roof. And
while they were lowering the man on the mat down into a place where Jesus could
see his need.
With arms aching but hearts filled enough with hope, they walked on.
Insistent upon a something more than the empty life of pain lived by the human
life on the mat.
And their hope bore fruit in the power of Jesus. They heard the words:
Son, your sins are forgiven. Stand up, take up your mat and go to your home.
And they saw the man who minutes before had been the pity and fear of
the community. They saw the man stand up and walk. Freed from the burdens that
had so long bound him.
Free.
Now, in the words of a modern day Fairy Godmotherish theologian:
That’s a life worth living and a faith worth having.
For the man on the mat, surely. For the Petersens, whose burned out shop
was not the end of their story.
But the persons I want to celebrate on this day are those who were
willing to notice the pain and isolation of the man on the mat.
The story I want to celebrate on this day is that lived by those who
responded to the violation by buying roses from their neighbor. And the story I
want to celebrate on this day was lived by those who lifted their brother and
carried him as far as it took to get him to a place where he could know that he
was no longer bound, no longer laid out in utter helplessness, no longer
suspect.
Because claiming the power to ease pain and walking with people who are
outcast in order that they can be brought back into life in community. That
kind of discipleship makes for a life worth living and a faith worth having.
Robert Kennedy put it this way:
“Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man
or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills -
against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence…few will have the
greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small
portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the
history of this generation…
It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human
history is shaped. Each time a man stand up for an ideal, or acts to improve
the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of
hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and
daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls
of oppression and resistance.”
So where do we encounter the crippling reality of despair?
We are the movement of Jesus the Christ.
There are mats we have the power to carry.
What justice movement of healing will you pick up and carry on?
Amen.