Ancient Church

Like so much in the Gospels, the passage we read this Sunday from the Apostle and Evangelist Mark is important and significant on a great many levels. We are presented with a scene which contains many people, and a number of specific interactions. There is Jesus, teaching the crowd that has gathered around him, opening hearts and souls to the truth of the Incarnate Word. There are the scribes, as their suspicions and dislike of Christ grow inexorably into open conflict. Inevitably, there is a sharp exchange, and a lesson is taught. It is highly important for us to understand what the conflict was, because that understanding is necessary to us as we grow in our faith.

But I have to confess that for me, as a person who struggles with my own faith and with my own sin, it is often the silent characters, the ones in the margins of both the crowd and the text, who speak most clearly to me. In those characters, I see a reflection of myself, as though I were looking in a mirror. And in looking in that mirror, I understand my Saviour and my salvation on a deeply personal level.

When I look at today’s Gospel, I see two such characters that I instantly identify with. From these nameless people, I learn something important about our faith and about the Church, something that I think is important for all of us to understand. That is because these characters teach us two crucial things. The first is this: that Christianity is not a solo project. There is a reason that Christ created the Church, and did not leave us as free agents, seeking salvation outside of community. Yet paradoxically, the second is this: our faith is intensely personal, that we carry within ourselves the seeds of our own destruction, which we must confront and struggle against.

It is in the nameless friends of the paralytic that we learn of community. The story is compelling. Jesus has been out of town for a few days, and His return home has people excited. St. Mark tells us that a huge crowd came to the house to hear Jesus, so big that they spilled out into the street. It was impossible for even a healthy person to push through the excited people into the house where Jesus was, much less four nameless men who are carrying their ill and crippled friend on his bed.

A lot of people would have given up and gone home. A lot of other people would decide that the best thing they could do would be to stay outside the house and hope that they could get Jesus’ attention if He ever came out. But these four men were not to be denied. Pushing their way through the crowd, they climbed to the roof of the house, and actually broke a hole through the ceiling, and lowered their friend inside the house, to the very feet of Jesus.

We ask ourselves:
Could the paralytic have made his own way to Christ? No.
Could the paralytic have achieved healing in any other way? No

There is a deeply important lesson here for us. As members of the Church – as members of this parish – we are responsible for each other. As Orthodox, we know that all relationships are intended to lead us to salvation. A monastic lives in a community, so that all may achieve salvation. A husband and wife are partners, responsible for the salvation of each other. Parent and child, sister and brother, neighbors and friends – all are intimately involved in the business of salvation. Not in a probing, nosy fashion, but in a sense of constant concern, of unceasing care, of unfailing love, of continual sacrifice.

The four friends show us how this relationship works. They took their friend to Jesus. They did not simply talk to him about Christ, nor did they give him directions to the house where Jesus was and suggest that he visit sometime. Instead, they took him in hand and expressed their love in a concrete and unmistakable fashion.

In the same way, we must watch for each other. We must be available in a multitude of ways – not only physically, but in prayer, in concern, in love. Like the four men in this story, we may find that our faith brings the heavenly response. St. John Chrysostom, speaking of these men, said that:
in this case, they both approached Him, and had faith required on their part. For [Christ] ‘Seeing’, it is said, ‘their faith’ - that is, the faith of those who let the man down…as they evinced such great faith - He also evinces His own power
In the first instance, for the paralytic, it was the faith of his friends that evoked the response of Christ. Their faith healed their friend. Their love was the first step in a road that led to the sight of their paralyzed friend picking up his bed and walking home.

You see, in the end, for each and every one of us, the sorrow and infirmity of our brothers and sisters is our sorrow and infirmity. And, it goes without saying, it should be a comfort to us to know that our own sorrow and pain is shared by those who are now around us.

But there is another side to this story, one that is found in the heart of the paralytic himself. It is one that has particular importance for us as we make our way through the Great Fast. For the Fathers, the condition of the paralytic man was more than a physical ill. Rather, it was a paralysis of the soul. St. Gregory the Great taught that
Couch sometimes stands for pleasures of the body…What is meant here, but that by the bed pleasure of body is signified? And he is commanded to bear as a healthy man, that on which he had lain as a sick one; for everyone who still delights in sin, lies sick in the pleasures of his flesh.
Nor is it simply the sins of the flesh. For all of us are paralyzed in one form or another. We are paralyzed by sin and by fear. We are paralyzed by guilt, or by a refusal to forgive. We are paralyzed by what we refuse to surrender – that habit or fear or belief that we hold fast to ourselves, that we refuse to surrender, but which keeps us from moving forward. It keeps us from reconciliation and love. It keeps us from Christ. For all of us, that “something” is different, and some of us may not even realize that we are languishing in whatever that “something” is. But it is there, and as with the paralytic man, Christ awaits us to come to him, to receive forgiveness. To receive healing.

Yet having healed the man, Jesus then tells him to pick up his bed and go home. Again, this command is deeply meaningful for the Church Fathers. If the couch symbolizes the paralysis we suffer through our enslavement to sin, the requirement that he carry that couch means that the impulses and the tendency toward sin do not leave us, but remains something we struggle with through out our life. And indeed, this makes perfect sense. If we had no temptations that assailed us, we would not progress in our journey toward God. As St. Paul pointed out numerous times, the Christian life is like a long, rigorous race. It is not a sprint, but a contest where the winner is the person who perseveres against temptation and against sin, trusting in God for all things.

St. Ambrose of Milan summed it up: in this story we see – he said – “a complete likeness of the resurrection. (Through) Healing wounds of mind and body, He forgives the sins of souls and makes an end of the infirmity of the flesh: This is to cure the whole man.”

Do you see how this lesson is so timely for us as we make our way through Lent? We are called to carry our brothers and sisters to Christ: not only in a physical sense, but through prayer, through love and forbearance, through forgiveness. And just as we carry each other, we also present ourselves to the Great Physician, for the healing of every wound, every illness, every sin and infirmity. We do this through partaking of the Eucharist, through prayer and fasting, through making confession and through whole hearted devotion to the One who is the Savior of our Souls. Together, we make our way to the Cross, with transparent heart and fervent souls, bearing each other’s burdens and cares, there to meet our Lord.