Lent Exercises: Embarrassed - Responding to Radical Acceptance

Everything was going great, until Heather asked if I wanted to see an unfinished room above her garage.  It was a really cool space.  The only problem was that it didn’t have a floor.  So, you needed to walk on these wooden beams, so that you didn’t crash through to the garage below.  

In my defense, the beams made for very tight walking quarters, (did I mention the teenage hormones) and in a moment of graceless and awkward teenage boyhood, I stepped off the plank and pushed my foot straight through the garage ceiling.  

As I pulled my foot out of the ridiculous hole I’d created, I looked below and could see Heather’s dad… looking up at me… fuming.  I thought I was going to die.  

Have you ever done something so awkward, so graceless, so embarrassing, that it hurt just to have people look at you?  

I always think of this story when I read the story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man in Mark 2:1-12.  In this well-known story a man is brought to Jesus for healing.  His friends can’t find a way into the house where Jesus is teaching.  So, they dig through the roof and lower their friend through the roof.  Every eye in in the community is now fixed on Jesus and on the man as he lies suspended before him.  

There are layers of complexity in this simple story.  Jesus’ first response is to say, “your sins are forgiven.”  This befuddles the religious leaders in the crowd, who start grumbling.  Mark points out Jesus’ response is to the friends’ faith.  This befuddles Western individualistic readers who are struck by how passive the paralyzed man is.  The friends dig through another person’s roof because they can find no other way through the crowd.  It’s fascinating that the crowd would not make space.  The physical healing isn’t really the point of the story. Before healing the paralyzed man Jesus asks, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?”  The expected answer is that the second would be easier to accomplish, but that’s clearly impossible.  This passage shows Jesus’ profound authority. 

Perhaps it’s the embarrassing memory, but I can’t help blushing as I imagine what it’d be like to be lowered through someone else’s roof.  Hanging there, exposed, vulnerable, and unsure stirs my fears of rejection, embarrassment, and shame.  I see the fuming face of the houseowner and want to hide.  Perhaps that’s why Jesus’ speaks of forgiveness.  

What must it have felt like to hear a declaration of forgiveness while in the very act of damaging another’s property?  How liberating to have Jesus’ first words speak of acceptance, not rejection?

Can you imagine yourself in this scene?  What emotions stir for you?  How does it feel to hear Jesus’ words of forgiveness?  Is there a response you want to make to Jesus?