Standing On Your Tippy-Toes

Luke 5:17-26

Ken Whitt                                 May 13, 2007

Eight year old Dawn lit the candles this morning. Did you notice how she did it? She reached the first candle easily but the wick on the second one was just out of her reach. So Dawn stretched. She stood on her tippy-toes. She reached her goal because when she stretched herself as far as possible, the candle was within her reach. Success was right at the edge of what Dawn could do for herself. However, for many children like Dawn, their lives are not that simple. Success is often just beyond their reach. No matter what they do for themselves, they won’t quite make it. Many will almost make it, but there is nothing they can do for themselves—even tippy-toes will not be enough. They may stretch too far and they will fall. Unless. Unless they receive a helping hand from beyond the systems of family and government that are supposed to take care of children. Someone has to get personally involved. Someone with more than a child’s reach needs to reach out to lift up a child.

Only ungrateful and ego inflated people don’t realize that what is true for Dawn is true for all of us. There are times that none of us can reach our goal, even on our tippy-toes. Nobody gets to the great goals of life by standing on their own feet and reaching with their own arms. Everybody seeks a hand up, sometimes offered by a Sunday School teacher or a school teacher, hopefully by family, not always though. Sometimes a surprising neighbor or friend is the upward lift under someone’s life, and this applies to all of us. We all need a helping hand, a forward shove, and this sermon is about the importance of community in all of our lives, especially the capacity of community, the family of God, to uplift us because it’s not enough to stand on our tippy-toes. No matter how big we are and how far we stretch the day will come when it is not enough, and without help we will fall, and the goals of our lives will be just out of our reach.

To explore that theme we’re going to turn to Luke 5:17-26. It’s one of the most amazing stories about healing and a lift up that you will find anywhere in the Bible. And as I’m reading it, there’s one question I’d like you to try to answer. There are a variety of aspects to the story of the healing of the paralytic that could be emphasized. What I want to focus on is, “What primary force enables the paralytic, who is flat on his back, to rise up and walk and go home and fulfill the rest of the purpose of his life? What is the power behind the healing?

One day while he was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby and they had come from every village in Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem and the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal. Just then some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw there faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you”. Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question: “Who is this who is speaking blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” When Jesus perceived their questioning, he answered them, “Why do you raise this question in your hearts? Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or to say Stand up and walk? But so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the one who was paralyzed, ‘I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go home.’” And immediately he stood up before them and he went home glorifying God. Amazement seized all of them and they glorified God and they were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen strange things today.”

Okay. What is the uplifting force in the story? Who is credited in this story with providing the faith that makes healing possible? Yes, the faith of the friends. We don’t know anything about the faith of the paralyzed man. It simply never says anything about that. He does obey at a certain point in the story, but we don’t know why he obeys. His faith is never mentioned. But the faith of the men who carried him into the presence of Jesus is the focus of the story’s attention. By himself, the paralyzed man did not have a chance. Jesus had power for healing also, but even he was dependent this time on the faith of the friends. The paralyzed man couldn’t stand on his tiptoes to reach out for healing. He couldn’t stand at all. And if he was going to be in the presence of Jesus, he was going to get carried there by his friends. You know, the story never tells us why the friends did this. Why did they put out that effort? Maybe early in the morning they went and woke this guy up and maybe they had to make him go. Maybe he’d gone before and was tired of going somewhere for healing. Maybe he had tried and had failed again and again. But these guys, they show up, and they take him on his bed and they carry him, maybe a long way. We don’t know, but they certainly were determined because when they got to the house and the crowd was too big to get in, they went up on the roof and they cut a hole and they lowered the man in front of Jesus. And when Jesus saw them, he said that because of their faith the paralytic would be healed. Imagine this. Jesus is looking up through the hole, and there are those guys, probably about four of them, and they’re looking down through the hole and they’re wondering what’s going to happen. They’re certainly not leaving. They’re checking things out down through the hole and Jesus looked up at them and said, “Your faith has made him well”.

They carried him. That’s why he could walk again. They carried him up and they lowered him down. That’s way he could walk again.

This story has some awesome dimensions for discussion and Bible study. One of them is, in what way are you paralyzed in your life? What part of your life needs healing? What do you need your friends to do for you? Paralysis can take an almost infinite variety of forms, including the form of fear or self doubt or low self esteem. Including the form of a life being lived without joy or a life paralyzed by addiction. Maybe you are just stuck in a rut of exhaustion and you don’t know how to exit that paralysis. If you really want to understand this Biblical story you will need to ask yourself the questions:

“What form of paralysis cripple my life? How could friends help me be uplifted because I can’t lift myself out of this? What kind of support do I need to find my way through this experience of paralysis?” What kind of experience of community could save my life?

Church, let’s ask of ourselves, “What way can we be community, so that someone who is in that experience of self doubt can find the force to uplift them to the life that God intends for them?”

I read an amazing story about that same subject in the book called Christianity for the Rest of Us, and it involves a family, a couple named the Hickmans. They were members of a church like First Baptist Springfield, a main-line, progressive, urban congregation. Their daughter-in-law, Linda, the mother of a young toddler had died. The police said it appeared to be a suicide. In complete shock, Barbara and John phoned their pastor, Rev. Gary Burdolf, and Gary told them to wait at home and he would accompany them to their son’s house. Barbara and John agreed. Gary later told me that when he arrived at the Hickman’s, Barbara and John were in the driveway. Barbara was shaking physically and mumbling that she could not make it through this experience. John was talking to a neighbor and Gary overhead him saying, God has brought us to our knees. Now our faith was in the dirt. Gary hugged them. Barbara and John warmly remember the hug, and they drove to their son’s house. When they arrived, Barbara and John worried about their daughter-in-law’s body.

They could not go in to see her, but would Gary, their pastor, go in and make sure that her body was treated with respect? Would he talk to the coroner and deputies for them and make sure they carefully cared for her body? Gary agreed. He treated the woman like a person instead of a crime scene. After Linda’s body was removed, John asked, “Do you think she’s in heaven?” And Gary answered, “Yes”. And John said, “Good, because I don’t want to go there if she’s not there”. Barbara and John confessed that in the midst of their deep sorrow and confusion, they also felt mortified. After all, a member of their family had committed suicide, an act that some might think of as an unforgivable sin. How would their congregation react? Would anyone care? Could they hold her funeral in the church? Would people understand? Where would she be buried? You have to know something about American church history and common custom to know that those questions are often answered with harsh judgment and exclusion in different forms of Christianity. Barbara shakes as she tells the story. John puts an arm around the back of her chair, gently supporting his wife. Gary, she tells me, was amazing, insisting that the family hold the funeral at St. Mark. To Barbara and John’s astonishment hundreds of people gathered to celebrate Linda’s life. There was no gossip, no hint of judgment, and no limitations of blame. Rather the congregation did everything possible to support and care for the family, especially their son, and their granddaughter. John said, “I’m ashamed for speaking of how our faith was in the dirt, because St. Mark has picked us up and carried us through all of it in Jesus name and I believe we have seen Jesus.

I believe we have seen Jesus in the face of the community. We came to such a critical turning point a couple of months ago when we were holding prayer meeting at Shirley Boydston’s house. An initial part of that conversation was that, of course, Shirley was going to get this tube for feeding because she wanted to live as long as possible. Shirley wanted to live, and that’s what she was saying, but along the way in this conversation, somebody in the group suddenly understood that Shirley had another truth within her that she was afraid to speak. So the group invited her to speak her truth and her desire and her longing and finally she said, “I’m not sure how you’re going to take this, but I have to tell you, I don’t want to keep on living, I’m old enough, I’ve lived enough, I don’t need to live forever”. And everybody said, “That’s right, Shirley, that’s how you see it. That’s how you feel about it, and we’re here for you, we will support you.” And she was so relieved and she was so excited when she discovered how strongly her church family was on her side.

And thus began a process over another a couple of months; this miraculous process of community in action at its best, where it was always difficult to tell where the faith was coming from and whose life was being transformed the most. People began coming into Shirley’s life that had never been there before and friends continued visiting during this very special time in Shirley’s life. Shirley began to grasp the depth of our love for her a lot from the book Nancy Flinchbaugh created with a lot of your thoughts about Shirley. That book captured the thoughts and feelings that she was loved and valued and affirmed and you just saw her beam like she was already in heaven. She was so happy to know that she was loved that way and she had never really understood that and now she’s 86 years old, and for the first time, she really begins to get it. And it’s like she’s already in heaven. And then, she’d share that and people would pick up on it and our faith would be uplifted, and we would go back the next time and we would encourage her and then she would encourage us and all of us had this experience of being in community, uplifted by the power of God and experiencing affirmation and love like we’d hardly known at other times.

Bill and I talked to each other right after Shirley died and both of us, from our long years of experience as Pastors, had never had an experience quite like this where a person came so deeply to believe in God’s love and was so supported by the presence of the community, including hospice, that she was completely at peace with whatever was going to happen.

It was an awesome experience; it was truly an awesome experience.

Now, a lot of you know Renee Donahoe, and she’s battling lung cancer, and the word battling is the right word; she’s fighting. She believes God has told her that she will be victorious and she’s fighting. Renee has always been, in my experience of Renee, a person of faith, but she will tell you, and I can tell you from what I observed with her, that when she confronted this experience of cancer, she did not have anything resembling the kind of faith she was going to need to carry her through this time in her life. And so she began struggling and people visited her during the days of struggle and we would stand with her and we would stand with her on the promises of God that she would because that’s where she chose to stand and we would stand with her. We stand today where Renee believes God is telling her to stand.

And, it works. Renee is uplifted and she finds her faith for the next moment. And then we will come back the next time and if she is down we will stand with her and if she is up we will stand with her. Sometimes, many times, when I am with Renee her faith increases mine, and sometimes it is the other way around. Life and faith and love continue to grow in an ever rising spiral. Who is being uplifted and who is doing the lifting? Well, it depends on the day—but one thing is sure; in the midst of all of this we are all growing in faith. One of the conclusions I draw from such experiences is that we are all learning how to be Christians. We are learning and growing through difficult days so that faith and love can become the norm of our lives, more the expectation, more the power that uplifts all of us and helps us all grow in Christ.

One of the ideas we talk about when we’re talking about on the Vision Team as we strive towards finding the future of our church is, “creating urgency.” The phrase “creating urgency” refers primarily to the difference between the way things are and the way things will be when the power of God had been fully known and experienced in our lives. Shirley’s dying and Renee’s living have created this kind of urgency for us which has led to a desire to pray more deeply and to grow in faith and love. I don’t know what the next situation will be, but around the next corner there will be a need in one of our lives to grow faith like we’ve never known it and it will be possible to rise to the occasion if we carried and uplifted by the community. We do not reach this faith and love on our own, not even by standing on our tippy toes.

The most significant challenges of our lives are faced and transcended only when someone else carries us and uplifts us, only within the community of faith. The community stands and uplifts and then each person shares what is growing inside them and then the faith of the entire community grows and the love of God is known more completely than ever before. In the midst of that experience of the growing power and love of God we can take on the world, we can heal the divisions in our city. We can build justice. We can be part of the powerful presence of God at work to save everybody’s lives in a myriad of different ways.

It’s all possible; it’s all, not only possible; it’s already happening right in front of us, and it will continue to be so.

In the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, it will continue to be so.

Amen.