Persevering Past Paralysis: A Sermon for Lent II focusing on Mark 2:1-12
Hurricane Katrina, flooding in Johnstown, Superstorm Sandy: Presbyterian Disaster
Assistance (PDA) brings hope when homes have been lost. Do you remember the blue shirts
many of us wore last week? Members of this congregation have rebuilt the homes destroyed by
these natural disasters. The home wreckage in our Gospel lesson for today though is intentional
and transformational, both for the wreckers and for us. Imagine the mess: boards, dirt, and straw
everywhere! I feel somewhat sorry for Simon and Andrew’s family at whose house Jesus is
presumably teaching. Fantastic friends – some might say fanatic friends – make certain Jesus
sees the paralytic. They ingeniously cut a hole through the ceiling and lower the paralytic down
in such a way that the whole structure does not collapse around their ears.
Who is this paralytic? We have no details. All we know is that he cannot walk and that
he has “some people” willing to carry him to Jesus. Who are these “some people”? Again, we
have no way of knowing. We don’t even know if their motivation was one of friendship, testing
Jesus’ healing chops, or simply wanting to rid themselves of a person who could not walk and
likely subsisted on alms. What ails the paralytic? Yet again, we have no way of knowing. Is the
impairment physical, emotional, psychological, social, spiritual? Ultimately, does it matter?
What paralyzes us? Is it stage-fright? Or fibromyalgia? A fear of public speaking? Or
heart palpitations? An unwillingness to deal with something unpleasant? Or heavy fatigue? The
prospect of homework? Or an upset stomach? A daunting task? Or sprained muscles? Fear of
possible rejection if we ask somebody for something we want very much? Or addiction?
Analysis paralysis? Or ADHD? Regardless of what paralyzes the paralytic or us, the fact of the
matter is we are all now or all have been stuck in some kind of a moment from which we cannot
move. The paralytic cannot move; therefore, “some people” move him to Jesus.
Jesus himself has been moving a lot lately. Remember, Mark’s Gospel is the gospel of
“immediately this” and “at once that”. It’s the shortest of the four Gospels and Mark economizes
his words and storytelling vignettes. Jesus has already been baptized by John in the Jordan
River, tempted by the devil in the wilderness, called four of his disciples, taught in Capernaum’s
synagogue, healed Simon’s mother-in-law from the house where he is presently teaching, prayed
in a deserted place, taught throughout Galilee in their synagogues, and been forced to teach in the
countryside because his fame has prevented his entering towns openly. Here at the beginning of
Mark 2, Jesus has covertly returned ‘home’ to Capernaum and such a crowd has gathered that
“there was no longer any room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the
word to them.” (2:2)
How would we behave if Jesus were in Rochester? Would we find out where he was out
of curiosity and be in the house listening to him? Would we be some of the scribes who had
heard him preach in neighboring synagogues and been tasked by our superiors to keep an eye on
him? Would we be “some people” who bring the paralytic man to see Jesus?
Jesus does more than see the paralytic. He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” In so doing,
he does not say the sins are the paralytic’s fault, but he does forgive and free her from them.
Jesus does not equate disability with sin, either here or in his other healing narratives. In John
9:3 Jesus says, “Neither this [blind] man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s
works might be revealed in him.” Jesus does not link disability with sin and yet we do it all the
time. We consciously or unconsciously judge that lung cancer is the smoker’s fault. What about
the person who has never smoked a day in her life? At whose feet lies that fault?
Those sins are in fact systems in which the paralytic is literally paralyzed. Did you notice
the heavy writing on Elena/Lanie’s sign as she played the part of the paralytic this morning in
our dramatic reading? What keeps Elena/Lanie from walking? Normalcy and hierarchical
dualism. There’s a mouthful!
The system of hierarchical dualism is one in which we stigmatize those we perceive as
bad, sinful, ill, disabled, dysfunctional, or diseased and hold ourselves to be superior to them. A
person is good or bad; righteous or sinful; healthy or ill; abled or disabled; functional or
dysfunctional; well or diseased. With this system we can label somebody as being mentally ill
for example and thereby depersonalize God’s creation thereby making that person inferior to us.
The system of normalcy hoodwinks us into thinking that there is some kind of universally
agreed-upon and attainable normal. Anyone deviating from this presumptive normal is somehow
in deficit and personally accountable for the sin of being outside the norm.
How many times have we been anxious about not fitting in to what is perceived as
normal in these complex overlapping systems? How many billions of dollars do we spend on
altering our body image to conform to the ever-fluctuating and fickle fashions of the times?
How have we driven ourselves cuckoo trying to keep up with the Joneses? In our increasingly
globalized, pluralistic, and technologically-complex world, the sheer magnitude of choices
facing each one of us can lead to analysis paralysis and many other expressions of paralysis.
At the sin-forgiving word of Jesus, we are transformed from being paralyzed by these
systems to actively shaping the systems for ourselves and for others around us. When Jesus tells
him in Greek to pick up his mat, the paralytic moves from being the passive person being carried
(airo) to being the active agent carrying (aron) his mat.
How can we actively participate in redeeming these fallen systems of hierarchical
dualism and normalcy? Did you notice that Jesus forgave the sins of these systems not because
of anything the paralytic did, but because he saw the faith of the people carrying him? Since
Jesus used his authority to forgive the sins of the paralytic caught up in systems beyond his
control, we can become acutely aware of the systems in which we and all of God’s good creation
are ensnared. Recognizing that Jesus responded to the faith of the people aiding the paralytic, we
can be pallbearers for those paralyzed by the fallen systems in which we are all trapped. One of
those traps is reflected in our language – even our biblical language. We don’t know the name of
the person let down on the mat. She is forever, ‘the paralytic’. She is not, ‘the person who
cannot walk’. Our labeling the paralytic dehumanizes and degrades her. We honor a person
with a name, not a label. We are more than the challenges we each face.
The National Institutes of Mental Health estimate that one in four persons –
approximately 61.5 mission Americans – experiences mental illness in a given year. Look
around us – one in four has struggled with some paralyzing system or reality this year alone!
Gone are the days when a trip to a counselor was the kiss of social death, but we still do not treat
mental health with the same preventative attitude as we do our annual physical.
The concept of neurodiversity provides a paradigm shift in how we think about mental
functioning. Neurodiversity is an approach to learning and disability suggesting that diverse
neurological conditions appear as a result of normal variations in the human genome. Instead of
regarding large portions of the American public as suffering from deficit, disease, or dysfunction
in our mental processing, neurodiversity suggests that we instead speak about differences in
cognitive functioning. Just as we talk about differences in bio-diversity and cultural diversity,
we need to start using the same kind of thinking in talking about brain differences. We don’t
pathologize a calla lily for not having petals (e.g. petal deficit disorder), nor do we diagnose an
individual with brown skin as suffering from a “pigmentation dysfunction.” Similarly, we ought
not to pathologize individuals who have different ways of thinking, relating, attending, and
learning.1 Using the concept of neurodiversity to account for individual neurological differences,
we create a discourse whereby labeled people may be seen in terms of their strengths as well as
their weaknesses. Recognizing the advantages neurodiversity brings to human existence rejects
the fallacy of normalcy, helps collapse the hierarchy between abled and disabled individuals, and
releases us from literal and metaphorical paralysis.
With this paradigm shift, we read the healing narratives as tutorials for our treating one
another. Did you catch that play-on-words? How do we treat people? Do we give them the time
of day? Do we see them as full persons? Do we treat our neighbors courteously and with
respect? When we treat others with this kindness, courtesy and respect, we are administering
treatment just as Jesus did to the person who was lowered on the mat. Given the complex
systems in which we are all ensnared, outward manifestations of our mutual paralysis may linger,
but with proper mutual treatment, our individual and collective burdens can be lightened.
Thomas Armstrong, The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired
Brain (Cambridge, MA: DaCapo Lifelong/Perseus Books, 2011), 28.
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There are practical steps – a do-ology – for mutual benefit we can take along this path.
The first is to watch our thoughts and remind one’s self to think of personhood, not our own
assumptive and probably faulty diagnosis of paralysis. The second is to watch our words and
speak not about mental illness, but about mental health and all that we can proactively do
individually to promote our own and that of our neighbor. Resources such as the Huffington
Post’s “Stronger Together” initiative places positive articles, blogs, resources, practical
suggestions, and statistics in one place for easy access.2 The third is to watch our actions to
empower others striving to break free from oppressive situations. Sustainable and tangible acts of
grace greatly improve the quality of life for those seeking to improve their mental health. The
fourth is to watch our habits and create sustainable vehicles for greater independence of our
brothers and sisters. Consistent transportation is the greatest need. Public transportation does not
go easily when and wherever people need to go. For those improving their mental health,
mobility determines possibility to things like medical appointments, church services, life skills
classes and job training, job interviews, part time jobs, rehabilitation meetings, social activities,
shopping, pharmacy, barbershop, and banking activities. And finally, we can watch the content
of our character, to be modeled on the character of the Christ.
We are neither abled nor disabled, but uniquely created as neurodiverse children of God
designed for relationship with one another and with God. As we continuously treat one another
in the systems arising from our interactions, we create the Kingdom of God right here and now.
No disaster can stop that continuous co-creation. As Jesus says to each one of us paralyzed by
interlocking and complex systems, “Your sins are forgiven. Stand up, take up your mat and go to
your home!”
Huffington Post, Stronger Together http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/stronger-together/ Accessed
February 5, 2015.
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