Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Ecclesiasticus 6:4-17, Luke 5:17-20, 25-26
November 24, 2002
W.W.J.D. “What would Jesus drive?” Apparently, a group of clergy (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish) asked that of a group of Detroit-based automotive executives on Wednesday as part of a campaign to improve environmental ecology. And while I know a little something about the issue, I know next to nothing about the group. I think most came from out of town, given that no call went out to any of us “locals.” So, like you, all I know is what I read in the papers.
Nor do I know what Jesus would drive, were he to suddenly find himself in the Motor City, standing in line at some car rental counter. Jay Leno contends that Jesus would rent a 12-passenger van. For which there would be biblical precedent. Although, in his time…and in his region….Jesus walked (save for a few boat rides and one late-in-life mountain descent on the back of a donkey). That was about all there was available to Jesus….or anybody. Unless, of course, your friends carried you. Which is the mode of transportation that figures so prominently in this morning’s gospel.
Today’s story has always been one of my favorites….in part, because it is so visual. Somebody should paint it. I suppose somebody has. But I haven’t seen it. So let me describe it. Jesus is teaching….indoors, rather than outdoors….in a house, rather than a synagogue….to a crowd, rather than a handful. And the reason there is a crowd is because his fame is spreading. People who never heard him of before are hearing of him now. Making them curious, don’t you see.
And in a very strange phrase, Luke writes: “And the power of the Lord happened to be with him so that he might heal people.” “Happened to be with him”….almost as if it wasn’t always with him….as if it came and went from him….as if it wasn’t an everyday kind of thing for him….as if it were a gift that could be used, but couldn’t be commanded by him….whatever. On this day, Jesus has it and is using it.
Which is why a paralyzed man is being carried by other men (Luke doesn’t say how many men, although Mark says four) on a stretcher. Well, they can’t get anywhere near the house. Which tells you how thick the crowd is. Nobody is of a mind to move out of the way. Nor is anybody of a mind to make a way. It’s wall-to-wall bodies, everywhere you look. Whenever I get in a crowd like that....as I was last Saturday in Ann Arbor….I try to get behind somebody with a wide body and use him as a blocker. Unfortunately, I have reached that point of my life where others try to get behind me and use me as a blocker.
But this day, there is no way. Except for the very clever. Which these four guys are. So what do they do? They get themselves and their paralyzed friend up on the roof. Whereupon they make an opening (right above where Jesus is doing his thing) and they lower their friend down to Jesus. Whereupon Jesus does three things. First, he marvels at the faith of the four friends. Second, he forgives the man’s sins (thereby giving him mobility). Third, he gets into a hassle with the gawkers (who, instead of marveling that a paralyzed man can suddenly walk, challenge Jesus over whether he has the authority to forgive sins).
As concerns the authority question, Jesus does what he always does when someone questions his authority to do something. He says (in effect): “I did it, didn’t I? And it worked, didn’t it? What you see is what you get. Pay attention to what your eyes tell you. The proof is in the pudding. So back off.” Which they did.
As concerns the forgiveness question, guilt cripples people. I mean, if guilt can eat away at your gut till it bleeds (we call that “ulcers”), I suppose guilt can also eat away at your limbs till you’re lame (we call that “paralysis”). So don’t worry about the parts of the text that have to do with authority and forgiveness. Instead, let’s you and I spend a few minutes talking about the friends. These have to be some of the all-time great guys of the world. Although they don’t necessarily need to be guys. If it makes you feel better, make two of them women. Indeed, if it will make you feel better still, make all of them women. My point is not gender-dependent. My point is that, in a world where we are commanded to bear our friends’ burdens, these four bore their friend.
Obviously, it is friendship that interests me this morning. This being the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I want to suggest a measure of gratitude for friendship. And for those who offer it. After all, life is lonely. Or it can be. During the stupidity of adolescence, we are overheard to say: “I can’t wait to be totally on my own.” Only later do we learn that it’s not what it’s cracked up to be, once we achieve it….being “totally on our own,” I mean.
When I was a child, I was taught to pray:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
Which, had I stopped to think about it, would have scared the daylights out of me. But I didn’t. So it didn’t.
But having reached an age where I know people who go to sleep and don’t wake up, I am much more drawn to Dorothy Sayers and her poem entitled “Hymn in Contemplation of Sudden Death”….from which I give you but one stanza (the first stanza):
Lord, if this night my journey end,
I thank thee first for many a friend,
The sturdy and unquestioned piers,
That run beneath my bridge of years.
Just to be sure I understood her, I looked up the word “pier” in a dictionary and read: “A mass of masonry supporting one end of an arch or bridge….or a similar support of iron or timbers.” And while it is true that a pier could also be a dock or promenade built over the water, I think Dorothy is lifting up an image of supporting, rather than an image of strolling. In other words, if the years of your life are a bridge carrying you from here to there….without friends, the bridge collapses. And I further love the dictionary definition that compares a pier to a “mass of masonry,” given that one way we have often described a true friend is by saying that “he (or she) is a real brick.”
Friendship is hard to define, but wondrous to experience. When in high school, friends are everything. But in high school, quantity counts for more than quality. The more the better, we think. Having lots of friends tells the world we are popular. Heck, having lots of friends tells us that we are popular. And lots of friends ensures that we will never be bored.
The fact of the matter is that very few high school friends are lasting friends. But collegiate friends are often maintained for a lifetime. In high school, we choose our pack. In college, we move from pack to person. Which may explain why the late Rev. Edward Everett Hale once wrote of Harvard: “The best part of a college education is the people you meet there.”
Seldom does the Bible speak with eloquence about friendship. But a delightful exception is the passage I read (mere moments ago) from the Apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus (sometimes known as the Wisdom of Sirach). The writer begins with the suggestion that not every friend who starts as one, stays one….meaning that friends can hurt you, abandon you, even betray you. For which of us has not voiced or heard the lament: “But I thought you were my friend?”
But when friendship takes hold (the writer says), it provides a secure shelter and a true treasure. “A faithful friend is beyond price.” And a faithful friend is also “an elixir of life”….as in life’s tonic, life’s flavor, life’s joy. Do I think that finding such persons is easy? No. Do I think that finding such persons is necessary? Yes.
You would think that clergy….who talk about such things glibly….would establish such friendships readily. But you would be wrong. Clergy are often quite lonely. For one thing, many of us are more in love with roles than relationships. Meaning that when we take the collar off….the robe off….the title off….the church off….we are painfully private and somewhat socially inept. Great as we are at bedsides, we are far less effective at parties….where the meeting is casual and the conversation non-professional.
And for the second thing, we are told from day one of our ministry: “Don’t get too close to a few, lest you offend, confuse, or otherwise ignore the many. And when you leave a church, leave it. Sever all ties.” For which there may be a rationale. But from which nothing very healthy comes. For several years ago it became clear to me that when we try to love everybody equally, we wind up loving nobody satisfactorily.
In the midst of writing this sermon, the mail came. And in the pile of mail that fell from the slot to the floor, there was a packet from the Board of Pensions. Apparently, there is a computer somewhere in Evanston that thinks this is my year to retire. It’s not. Believe me, it’s not. But the computer wanted to be sure I had the necessary financial information, just in case.
Better yet, the Board of Pensions sent a slew of booklets, including one entitled “How Do You Know It’s Time?” In it, I found a series of questions concerning one’s emotional readiness to hang it up. One of which read: “Do you feel comfortable that you have friends to replace work?” Which is a good question. But we clergy would be better served if it were asked of us in our twenties, rather than in our sixties. For the goal of friendship is not to replace ministry. The goal of friendship is to enhance ministry.
True, friendships come in all shapes and sizes. At least that’s true for me.
- There’s the friend I see once a year (every year) for as many hours as it takes to drive to and from Ann Arbor and watch a Michigan football game. Ironically, we pick things up as if we had left them a day ago, rather than 365 days ago. Should that friendship end, I’d miss it.
- Dearer still are the friends with whom bread is broken and who (while they appreciate the fact that I am the senior minister of First Church, Birmingham) know that being the senior minister of First Church, Birmingham is not all that I am….and who let me (over the course of an evening) be all that I am.
- And there are the five or six friends I could call from the police station at 3:00 in the morning, asking them to come right away with $500. And they would do it, not knowing (or needing to know at that moment) the reason why.
- And there’s the woman who, ever so many years ago, attracted my eye as the object of my youthful passion, but is now (some 38 years later) my best friend.
- And there are those who, across the years, by word, deed, example, encouragement, maybe even by sermon and song, have lowered, lifted or led me into closer communion with Jesus Christ. The Beatles are correct. I have gotten by with a lot of help from my friends.
But there’s also this, courtesy of Peter Gomes: “God desires friendship with us, and has given us the model of friendship to describe his relationship to us….and ours to him.” So what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. Ours is an incarnational faith….meaning that the best way to believe it is to encounter someone who embodies it….given that Christianity is less a doctrine preserved from generation to generation, than a virus passed from person to person (albeit a most pleasurable virus).
Not that it works every time. Mark Trotter is one of my better friends in ministry. And Mark Trotter is one of the better preachers in Methodism. Everybody in San Diego likes Mark. Well, not everybody. One of his parishioners disliked him passionately and disagreed with him frequently. But as every unpleasant encounter between them drew to a close, she would paint her face with a thin coat of spiritual lacquer, gargle with a quick slug of spiritual honey, and say: “But just remember, Mark, God loves you and so do I.”
One day he decided to test her claim. So he said to her: “Mary (Alice, whatever), sometimes when you say that, it sounds like a formula…..something you read in a book, heard on the television, or figure you somehow ought to say. I know God loves me. So just once, why don’t you skip that part of it and tell me that you love me.” Whereupon she stared at the floor for the longest time before breaking the silence with: “I’m sorry, Mark….really sorry….but I just can’t say it.”
But others can. And have. And will again. So this Thanksgiving (after you’ve whacked the bird beyond recognition), why not raise a prayer of gratitude for them, knowing that it is God who speaks to you through them?
Lord, if this night my journey end,
I thank thee first for many a friend,
The sturdy and unquestioned piers,
That run beneath my bridge of years.
Note: Since preaching this sermon, I have learned that the clergy who confronted Detroit’s automotive executives were largely out-of-towners. They represented a rather interesting coalition. Some of them came from the Evangelical Environmental Network, a biblically orthodox non-profit group that works with World Vision and the International Bible Society. Others came from the National Council of Churches, working in conjunction with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. So now you know.
As for Dorothy Sayers’ poem, “Hymn in Contemplation of Sudden Death,” I am still searching for all the verses, given that the samplings shared with me by Peter Gomes in his book, You Can Do This, have greatly captured my fancy. For those interested in such things, Dorothy Sayers is both British and Anglican.
