Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 21 – February 1982

 

Can You Believe… For Someone Else?

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. deGraaf on Luke 5:20

Scripture Reading: Luke 5:17-26

Psalter Hymnal: Nos. 37; 251; 472; 404; 485

 

It happened during the Korean War.  An American fighter pilot was wounded in action.  As he sat in the cockpit of his plane, he slowly was losing consciousness…..  but his two friends who had flown the mission with him weren’t going to let him just fall out of the sky.  They prodded him awake via their radios and flew side-by-side with him.  When eventually everything turned black before the eyes of their stricken mate, they put the wing tips of their planes under the wing tips of the plane in the middle, and nursed him home, waking him up when it was time to land on the base field.

I had to think of that story when I read this text of this morning: Jesus seeing their faith… that lame man couldn’t do a thing apparently – even his faith in God had gotten shaky.  As often is the case during long protracted illness, or when grief is over the first days and weeks when everybody thinks of you and rings you up and visits you… but then after a few months or a few years, it is accepted as normal and your visitors stay away and you are left with the loneliness and the unanswered questions.  This lame man maybe had just about lost his faith, because it does not say (as would be good reformed:) Jesus seeing his faith said: Your sins are forgiven you…!  No, the remarkable thing is that it says: Jesus seeing their faith – the faith of his four friends who carried him to Jesus.  Then when they had trouble getting in there they broke through the roof and let him down at Jesus’ feet.  This unusual way, this persistent kind of action that keeps trying: “We have to get him to Jesus; once we have him at Jesus’ feet he’ll be all right!!” shows their faith.  They hang on like Jacob did, who said “Lord, I will not let you go unless you bless me.’  Ah, but these four men weren’t asking for themselves: their faith said: “Lord we do not let you go unless you bless him, our friend!!”

That friend had sin cluttering up his relation with God, but then he had friends who believed and prayed on his behalf.  Jesus looked up through the hole in the roof, and saw four pair of eyes looking at him.  Psalm 123 says, “Like a servant looks at the eyes of His master or a servant girl to her mistress so my eyes are on the Lord….!”

Remember Eljah’s persistence when he prayed by the sea shore for the rain God had promised – and he kept on praying even when six times his servant reported: The sky is blue, there’s nothing doing yet…!  But these friends were as persistent as Jacob and Elijah.  They even overcame the obstacle that stops plenty of others: people.  They tried to get their sick friend to Jesus and that crowd does not want to let them through!  How selfish can you get!  Others might have gotten discouraged and said it’s no use, if Jesus is caring for those kinds of selfish pigs then as far as I am concerned I’ve had it with Jesus, too!

Yes, the way people resign from churches because of what other men or women have done to them…!  People have stood with their back to them blocking the path to Jesus.  How easily can it happen, and how often has it happened…. it could have happened to these four.  But no: they said: if only we can get our sick mate before Jesus’ feet he’ll be all right, and so they tried even the unusual way, and so – even when it was people who blocked the path, people that can make you sick like the people in Psalm 116: (“I said in my despair all men are a vain hope!).  So it was people also who got this poor man to Jesus.  That is the truth we see in this text.  It was people who pulled their sick friend through to Jesus.

“And Jesus… seeing their faith…” but is that possible then?  To believe on behalf of someone else??  After the Reformation especially we have become somewhat hesitant about that thing, haven’t we?  The pre-Reformation church had a strong idea of the “Communion of the Saints” spanning even the gap between earth and heaven.  Saints pray for us…. because we aren’t that good at praying…!  Saints pay – help pay at least for our sins, because we can’t make it by a long shot.  Saints put all their extra good works into the treasury of the church, so we poor beggars can get some of that on our account and stand a chance….!  Ah yes, and of course we know the weakness of this thing, that it lets saints take the honour which belongs to Christ Jesus alone.  He paid the full price for our sins and said rightly to us all: It is finished!!  And yet…. and yet!

In the Benedictine monastery I visited 30 years ago one of the monks told me he had chosen that strange way of life of prayer.  (It was a contemplative order after all: prayer being the main job day and night).  He said: Someone has to do it, on behalf of all those others who are in the middle of things and often have no time for proper prayer.  We are the battery of prayer, the powerhouse to back up their busy lives…!

There you have it again: the idea of the body: being hand and a foot to one another, yes even to the point of taking one another’s place.  As it is here in our text, our friend has trouble believing?  All right then we believe for him; we’ll pull him through with our faith.  And Jesus accepted that and smiles up into those eager and intense faces looking down to him through that hole in the ceiling.  Later He says to the man lowered right in front of Him, “My son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven…!” and later on: Get up and walk, you made it all right!

You know, in our justified Reformation zeal to rescue the honour of Christ from the worship of the saints, we may have overlooked perhaps that beautiful element of truth which there is in the teaching of the communion of saints – often our protestant morality has stressed our personal responsibility so much that we just say: “Everyone for himself and God for us all”.  And that, I tell you, is bad news!  We say then, that the road to the father is open for everyone.  And yes that is a glorious Reformation truth: the road to the father is open for everyone, but not everyone goes that way.  Some will never go that way without a push or even maybe without being carried that way.  They are simply too miserable for it… or too lazy perhaps… too disappointed or disillusioned… or maybe they are too angry?  Like Naaman was.  Naaman the Syrian, who hears that ridiculous counsel of that two-bit prophet who doesn’t even have the decency to come out to talk to him himself but sends that messenger boy who sends compliments from the boss, “Please go wash 7 times in Jordan and you’ll be right…!”

Fuming and foaming at the mouth the general roars off back home.  Wash in the Jordan!  Of all the cheek!  Wash in the Jordan!  Who does He think He is!

Have you ever tried to talk to an angry man especially when that man has all the power to hire, fire, and even imprison you?  But that man would never have found healing if his servants had not risked just that, and if their faith had not made him see reason….!  Yes, Naaman was brought to the Lord’s way by the faith and the love (for they go together) of His servants just as he had found out about Elijah in the first place from the slave girl of His wife.  God saved this man, but all along it was people who carried him to that Lord.

You know, Protestant churches can be way too individualistic in their approach to faith and salvation: “Each for himself and God for us all”.  Everyone responsible himself…. responsible…. responsible…?  Sure, we are.  But our text teaches us that we are responsible for one another, too…!  And that text comforts us greatly when it tells us that faith can have fruits…. also on behalf of someone else!  Jesus, seeing their faith… said….!

Thus parents like Monica, Augustine’s mother, can say: A child of so many tears and prayers, can it be lost?  And they keep on praying for their wayward children refusing to give them up for lost.  They are responsible yes, but never on their own… these children are never left alone.

Thus friends can keep going for a mate who has lost the way.  This can for instance be very acute in the case of (threatening) mental illness.  When you have a friend who actually pushes you away and says: do not bother me, leave me alone…!  Do you then leave him or her alone?  Or do you then stick to him or stick to her, even though getting nothing in return??

That is the way a congregation hangs on to its weak members.  We are not a spiritual elite where only the upper ten makes the grade, but we are a body where suffering is shared.

Yes, and where the strong ones carry the weak ones… literally carry them – may I give this point a painful edge here?  I have heard it said – and at times I have said it myself: It is unfair that the strong ones in the congregation carry the weak ones financially….!  Yes, a faithful few pay up, too many just ride along on the back of these few.  But then, what do you want to do?  Walk out?

Or do you want to have the weak ones cut off, dropped as a hot potato, cut out as a social misfit?  Is that what church discipline means to do: weed out those that are not perfect until the pure breed alone is left…?  This is not according to our text!  This is not according to the Bible: Where ten righteous would have saved Sodom, where 7000 still were praying for the nation in Elijah’s day and therefore the Lord was still patient, where there always is the remnant for whose sake the whole nation is still regarded as the nation of God!!!

Is not the very church – weak and scattered and unfaithful as she often is, yet not the very remnant, the very cork on which the whole fallen world is still floating today?  The Church is the very core for the sake of which the world is still kept from the fire??  When you give on behalf of someone else it is not you who are the poor sucker, you have your joy, you have your faith, your prayer is not: poor me, Lord release me from my burden, I have all those others on my back…!  But your prayer is: Lord I believe, help the sick ones and the weak ones believe too, that they too may jump up for joy in Christ again.

And Jesus, seeing their faith, said: My Son…. your sins are forgiven, stand up and walk…!  Yes then you never know what will happen to those weak ones you carry, but you know nothing is too wonderful for the Lord.  The same goes for time given for meetings and energy given for the Lord’s work.  Yes, and that does not mean that anything goes of course, those friends brought their sick mate to Jesus and yes, Jesus did talk about sins, didn’t He!?

But at least these friends were not like the Pharisees saying: Lord I thank you I am better than that publican.  They brought that poor soul to Jesus.  That’s what being a member of the body is all about.

What Jesus saw was not just their love, mind you… but their faith.  And faith says: Lord we cannot manage but you can!  You can do all things: Lord heal our friend.  Yes, there was love here of course but also faith.  If love is the greatest, it is because she is married to faith.  Because she is soaked and saturated with the love of the Son of God.  Our text is no mere pleading to be nice to one another!!  But it pleads that we shall hang on to one another till we have one another at Jesus’ feet!!

It does not say in our text: Jesus, seeing their love said: your sins are forgiven even though of course He saw that, too!  But it does say: Jesus, seeing their faith!  That is the biblical order of things.  Where faith works… properly, there love must work, too.  In that order.  The other way round it isn’t always true.  Love without faith cannot keep going; it cannot bring a man to where he really finds healing.  Love alone can weep and try, but it is often so powerless.  God alone holds the key, and Jesus alone has salvation.  But true faith that has discovered him will hold on to that fellow man till he, too, has found the pardon and the healing of his life.

And Jesus, seeing their faith, said: Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you, rise up, and walk!

Amen.