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Where There is a Will There is a Way*
Luke 5:17-26
Justo González
Decatur, Georgia
Many of us here have preached on this text from Luke. All of us have heard sermons and expositions about it. It is an inspiring passage, telling us about a group of people who would not let obstacles stand in their way. It is an evangelistic text, telling us of the power of Jesus to save and to heal. It is a text we like, because Jesus comes out on top, and at the end even those who would rather criticize him are overcome with awe. But this is also a problematic text. It tells us that the power to heal was in Jesus; and yet that power could not be made effective for some who were outside the house. Although Jesus had the power to heal, that power was held hostage by the crowd around him. And that is the problem. Verse 19 tells us that those who were bringing the paralyzed man could not get to Jesus “because of the crowd.” I had always imagined this crowd to be the townspeople who had come to listen to Jesus, or to seek a miracle. They were all trying to reach him, to come closer. Amidst such a crowd, it is very difficult for a group carrying a bed to move forward. But that is not really what the text says. In verse 17, Luke tells us exactly who stood in the way between Jesus and the sick man and his friends. Jesus is teaching in a house, and around him there are seated Pharisees and teachers of the law, who have “come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.” Given the size of houses at that time, such a crowd of Pharisees and teachers of the law would suffice to create an insurmountable obstacle for any who would approach Jesus—much less any who would approach him carrying a man in a bed. The text does not say that these teachers and Pharisees were bad people, or that they were hypocrites trying to catch Jesus in some slip from orthodoxy. Other passages speak of some such teachers and Pharisees. But not here. In fact, in spite of all their bad press, the doctors of the law were probably those from among the entire population who took Scripture most seriously and who studied it most assiduously. They studied Scripture carefully, to make certain that not a jot or a tittle would be changed—to make certain that the people had the Word of God in all its purity. And the Pharisees were among the most committed religious people of their time. They were the ones most concerned with discovering and obeying the will of God in every possible circumstance . The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were the religious leaders of their time, the theologians, the professionals of religion. It was to them that many looked
* In late November 2001, a delegation from Columbia Theological Seminary visited the Seminario Evangélico de Teología, in Matanzas, Cuba. The purpose of the visit was to explore possible partnerships between the two institutions. This sermon, a part of the “service of welcoming” celebrated in the chapel of the Seminario Evangélico, was preached by Justo González, a graduate of that institution and part of the delegation from Columbia.
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when seeking religious guidance. They were a significant part of the religious and theological establishment of their day. The problem is that while these people sit around Jesus to listen to his teachings, and perhaps also to judge them, outside the house there are others in need—people who cannot reach Jesus precisely because the scholars and the Pharisees are sitting around him, listening to him. Those who are outside are also fascinating. Among them we find the extremes of weakness and daring, of physical disability and liberating imagination. At the center of the group is a man in a bed. He is tied by his circumstance much more than common folk usually are. He can go nowhere that he is not taken. For this man his own body, rather than a help, is a hindrance. But this lame man and his friends have an amazing imagination and daring. The normal paths are closed. In order to reach Jesus it would be necessary to open a way through the crowd. And that crowd includes very important people—Pharisees and teachers of the law who are not used to standing aside to make way for the lame and the needy; they are, instead, people who are used to being at the center of things, or at least near the center. There is no way through the door. Perhaps the lame man and his friends can peek through a window and catch a glimpse of Jesus. But between them and the master there is a tight circle of teachers and Pharisees. There is no way. But there is a way, if one lets imagination make it. Perhaps the lame man himself, precisely because he has so long been tied to his bed, has learned to let his imagination fly free. The truth is that, if there is no way through the door, and if the windows offer no more than a glimpse, imagination finds its own way: through the roof. It is thus that these excluded people, marginal ones who could not even break into the circle around Jesus, find a way in. Or rather, they make a way where there wasn’t one. As Luke tells the story, “they went up to the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus.” Into the middle. Closer to the center than the teachers and the Pharisees. Within that apparently closed circle. In the middle, by Jesus. At the beginning of the story, Luke had told us that “the power of the Lord” was with Jesus. Now, through imagination and daring action, the obstacle that would not allow that power to be effective has been overcome. Luke does not tell us exactly when this happened. He says simply: “One day…” Yet, what happened that day still happens today. Today, as then, Jesus has power to heal and to save, to forgive sins and to free the lame from their beds. But today, as then, there are circles and more circles around the Master. Today, as then, there are lame people who cannot reach Jesus because access is blocked by the numerous and tight circles of Pharisees and teachers of the faith, of religious leaders and wise and profound theologians, of ecclesiastical, academic, and social structures. We who sit in such circles are not particularly bad people, just as those Pharisees and doctors of the law were not bad people. We simply wish to come as close as possible to the truth of Jesus, just as those teachers and Pharisees were seeking to hear him as closely as possible. Those who sit in the close-knit circle are people who really wish to hear Jesus. Like those ancient teachers of the law, we have spent years studying Scripture, or theology, or history. We are eager to know, to discover and to share truth. We are even eager to have others come and join in the circle and sit with us, as long as they play by the rules,
Pentecost 2002
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and don’t upset our process of listening, of studying, of reflecting, of teaching. Too often, however, sitting at the circle as if it were merely a matter of hearing something interesting, we do not realize that we may be blocking the way for the many lame ones who have urgent needs—or at least not making it any easier for them. We may be blocking the way for those who cannot afford the luxury or the leisure of academic discourse. But there is more. It is not only the bedridden man who is incapacitated. Bound too are these Pharisees and scholars of the law, so used to their wisdom, to their authority, to their self-sufficiency, that they may sit there all day listening to Jesus and will not witness his power to save and to heal. But there is good news. The text that began with people divided into two very distinct groups, those inside and those outside the house, ends with a common experience of solidarity: “Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘we have seen great wonders today’.” It all begins with an act of solidarity, when those who were carrying the bedridden man, even though they could possibly have elbowed their way in by simply leaving him behind, are led by solidarity to imagine and to make new means of access. And it all leads to solidarity, when the liberation of the bedridden man makes it possible for those in the inner circle to say that they have seen wonders.
In various ways and in different measures, all of us who are here are both part of the inner circle and also bedridden people in need of liberation. Today, as then, the power of Jesus is ready to heal and to save, to free us from the beds of suffering where we are tied like paralytics, and to free us from our chairs of comfort, where we are blinded to the great wonders that God can do. No matter whether we are at the center or at the margin, no matter whether we sit comfortably with the doctors of the law or we lie painfully on a bed of powerlessness, there is only one way. It is a way that combines creative imagination with solid solidarity. That is the way that we shall be seeking these days. And, with God’s grace, as we tread that road of solidarity, we shall all be able to say, jointly and with one voice: “Today we have seen wonders.”
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