Faith Moves

Hello to the person reading this. I’m back with what I think is a new series of blogs. If you’ve been reading my blogs you’ll know that I recently finished writing a series on Jonah. Please read it, I think it’s really entertaining and also super helpful. Today we’re going to start looking at a story in The Gospel according to Mark in chapter two. I think the story we’re looking at together is one of the most beautiful and compelling narratives about who Jesus is and about who Jesus reveals God to be. So do yourself a favour and memorise this story, think about it every day and bury it deep in your heart.

So before we get to Mark chapter two, because I can never just write about the actual story, I’ve always got to set us up contextually. Mark begins his account of The Gospel beautifully. In Mark 1:1-2 Mark writes; “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your  way.” So Mark starts with the claim that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. What he does with the poetry he quotes is brilliant! He’s asking the readers to go back so that they can see that we’re in the point of the story where the promised king has arrived. After this Jesus starts preaching his message which according to Mark is; “The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” By the time we get to the end of chapter one Jesus has cast out many demons and has healed many sicknesses and has taught many lessons. As a result he can’t enter a town openly and he gets followed by large crowds everywhere he goes.

Okay. Let’s jump into Mark 2. Jesus takes a huge risk and he goes back into Capernaum, likely in Simon and Andrew’s house and again he draws a massive crowd. The Bible says in v1-2; “A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.” When you read these stories, it is good practice to make them as real as possible for yourself, especially the really familiar ones which this one is. So take a breath and imagine the scene. You’re in a tiny fishing town and the majority of the town is gathered in and around this house trying to listen to this random man. Everyone is there because apparently he’s unlike anything anyone has encountered before. These are pretty chaotic scenes. In the midst of the chaos Jesus continues to preach his normal message. Repent for The Kingdom, etc. As Jesus preaches something insane happens. According to Mark in v3-4; “Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on.” This is insane. These four dudes have a friend who’s paralysed, they’ve heard that a man who can do something about it is in town so they go to the house he’s in but it’s packed. There’s no way to get in through the front or even backdoor. So they CLIMB THE ROOF and then proceed to DIG THROUGH IT! Spare a thought for whoever’s house this is they must’ve been fuming. Anyway after they dig through the roof they lower this paralysed man’s mat (with him on it). Seriously this is an insane scene. After this Jesus responds, how can he not? According to Mark in v5; “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

There are a million beautiful things going on in this verse. We will tackle the actual words Jesus says to the man in the next blog, for now let’s focus in on a huge theme that Mark addresses. It says “when Jesus saw their faith” this is the first occurrence of this theme in Mark. So when Jesus would encounter people and heal people he would often bring up their faith and how it’s connected to what just happened. When you read the gospels there’s a specific pattern that plays out. When Jesus is in places where people refuse to believe who he is, where people want to catch him out and require him to prove himself to them, what they are usually met with is this impenetrable Jesus who they can’t reach and a Jesus who doesn’t make any sense to them and he scares them. When you approach Jesus with a closed mind-set what you get is a closed Jesus. 

Fortunately for these guys, they were different. They approached with an open desperation, they believed in who Jesus was, they trusted that if they could get to him something would happen. And when people approach Jesus this way, with an open faith Jesus is right there and what he usually says is; “your faith has made you well.” 

It’s beautiful because Jesus is beautiful but it’s also crucial to understand what Jesus means when he says faith so put your assumption of the definition of faith aside and let the story define it for you. How does Jesus know these guys have faith? He doesn’t know who these dudes are; he doesn’t have a conversation with them. There’s no “hmm do you really believe in me?” So when Mark says “when Jesus saw their faith” what did Jesus see?  The answer is simple. They literally DUG THROUGH A ROOF! That was the extent of their desperation to get in front of Jesus. They were willing to tear a house apart. This is really crucial because we think that faith means we believe in our head that something is true, somehow faith has become this feeling that we need to muster up. We’ve all done the dance in our head. “Do I have enough faith in Jesus? Am I sure? Maybe I need to pray more and believe more.” Jesus didn’t see any of that. What Jesus saw was behaviour. They’re choices revealed their deepest convictions. In The Bible belief isn’t only mental. Yes Part of faith is processing what I believe is true about God and me and the world. But if you want to know what I believe, please don’t listen to what I say a lot of what we say is just our way of managing perceptions surrounding who we are. Our deepest beliefs are revealed by what we do and how we live. When Jesus looks at these men and the choices that they make what he sees is men who deeply trust that Jesus can do something for them that they cannot do for themselves. That’s faith. Yes as we grow it’s important to get our theological furniture in order but at its core faith in Jesus is the realisation that we need him and we need to do whatever it takes to get to him.

Another really interesting thing to note is the way Mark words verse five. Jesus speaks to the paralysed man he says; “son your sins are forgiven” but he says this after seeing not his faith, but instead the faith of his friends. Usually in the gospels Jesus responds to the faith of the individual. But here Mark gives this picture of a community’s trust and faith in Jesus carrying an individual.  We will see in the next blog as we progress in this story that this paralysed man had likely lost hope. So what we see is that in this moment, the faith of his friends is what’s carrying him. This is a deeply profound commentary on what it means to follow Jesus. There will be seasons in our life where we will have to take our doubt and waning hope to Jesus ourselves and on our own. Like in this story in the gospels where this man has a demon possessed son and he goes to Jesus and says “If you can please help him” and Jesus responds “If I can?” and the man then says “I believe help me overcome my unbelief” in other words, I want to trust you Jesus help my lack of trust. Sometimes that’s the season. But there are other times where we’re the paralysed man. And our community’s faith is the faith that we rely on. It’s a beautiful picture; we tend to think faith is purely individual but Mark puts to us with this the story that faith is also communal and that when we can’t move towards Jesus on our own our brothers will carry us to him. Jesus sees the faith of this man’s friends and he forgives him, which again we will talk about in the next blog.

For now if you can’t move on your own I pray that you have a community around you who can carry you, you may need to put on your big boy pants and ask them to carry you, but know that it doesn’t make you less loved by Jesus. It is not only up to you, your friends can make you well. May God have mercy on us as we figure out what it means to thrive in our life and faith.