A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, Associate Professor of New Testament, given in Christ Chapel on February 23, 2006

Mark 2:1-12

On my last Sunday in South Africa, I decided to go to church in a prosperous neighborhood of Capetown. I had heard that one of the priests was leaving, it would be her last Sunday, she was a friend of my friend, Beverly. Her name was Wilma Jacobson, she was a chaplain at the University and she was leaving South Africa, her homeland, to go to Los Angeles where she had spent time as a seminary student. I was at the end of a month in South Africa, immersed in the culture, trying to teach among those to whom I was strange, being introduced to the violent history of apartheid and its social effects. I had sensed the hope for the new political arrangement. It had been a long time, and I was tired from trying to understand a new place. When I walked into the church, the choir was practicing, and the song they were singing was "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Hearing that music and those words, I was filled with joy.

"Lift every voice and sing, til earth and heaven ring, ring the harmonies of liberty. Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea."

It was beautiful, it was familiar, it summed up all that I had seen and heard in my time in the university and in the townships, hiking in the Drakensberg mountains, swimming in the Indian Ocean. But it also spoke of home, St. Paul's Cathedral in Boston where we used to sing it, Christ Chapel here at the Seminary, Church of the Good Shepherd. I was humming, now, but I couldn't wait to belt it out during the processional. The church filled. When the hymn began, I sang at the top of my voice, and soon I noticed. The only ones who were singing were the choir, me, and Wilma -- the congregation didn't know it. Wilma must have chosen it for her send off -- it was not a South African song. Then I realized -- it's an American song, it's written about American experience, and it's my song. It's my history. I'd borrowed the song from my black sisters and brothers throughout my church going life, so gratefully, but now far from home, it became mine in a new way.

It was a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, it was a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Even if my biological ancestors were not slaves, this was the story of American history that I shared to the bottom of my shoes. It was about being in bondage. The song spoke of leaving a foreign land and coming home, being brought by god through water and tears and blood. It was about wandering the wilderness and overcoming obstacles all around- it was about gaining freedom. Freedom in Christ, being delivered, being redeemed.

God's Salvation is making a way, God finds a way, God leads on a level path through the hills made low, we the people go on dry land with terrifying walls of water on the right and on the left, traveling forward over the stony road.

In the center of the gospel today is a man who can't move. Even without mountains and without stones, he can't make headway. He is full of desire, he wants to but he cannot walk. But this man is not a victim.

He is not a victim because he had friends who found a way.

When the sensible, straightforward and easy way was blocked, guarded by the scribes and overcrowded with the ambulatory, the friends found a way.

Commentaries will tell you that the roofs back then were only mud and straw, so the digging through was not a big deal (not a big dig) but it was a big deal. Getting in from the top of the oikos, the house, was noisy and messy. The four friends exercised ingenuity, persistence and imagination. They not only found a way; they made a way. They exercised collaborative leadership. They were organized and fierce.

And do you know what Jesus called all that? He called that "faith." Israel traveled with faith. My African American ancestors and friends journeyed through the wilderness in faith, and their faith carries me.

"When Jesus saw their faith." When Jesus saw the opening in the roof with the light pouring in and the man on the bed coming down into the house, that still body suspended in the crude rig, Jesus might as well have seen the heavens opened.

"He saw the heavens torn open and spirit descending like a dove upon him."

He saw the closed way ripped open, and in the faith of these people, Jesus had his epiphany. Jesus' vision was as sharp and galvanizing as the Spirit's coming down at the Jordan. 'When Jesus saw their faith." He knew they understood. They recognized him. They believed in God who empowered Jesus.

"Child, your sins are forgiven." Jesus freed him from everything that kept him helpless. Jesus forgave not his own personal bad deeds, but released him from the power of sin, the power of sin that had him in bondage and his mobile friends. Sin made Israel fail and fail again, but always God was there when they looked to God, when they sought God, God was there to forgive. Jesus deployed the power of God to unbind this man, to put away his sins.

The scribes interrupt this story with their objections that this forgiveness did not come through proper channels. They view Jesus as a threat, and their antagonism escalates through the gospel of Mark.

But I don't want to focus on these enemies or on this dialogue. I want to keep my focus on the four, the four who bear the paralytic.

Friends carry you when you can't. Friends in solidarity find a way.

Jesus would need friends when he was further along his road. Friends to watch from afar as he died on the cross, to take him down and find him a tomb. He would have friends to work and to weep and to watch, and they would be people from the sidelines, the edges, mothers, widows, young women, healed beggars. When the called and chosen had fled, these friends remained. The friends endured with patience on the stony road. His friends would to come to his tomb, where they too would see the heavens open: "you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here."

"Stand up take your mat and walk." "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." And he stood up and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them. When the people were slaves in Egypt God found a way to bring them out. When Israel was in exile in Babylon God made a way. This new thing God does is described with the images we all know, the images of water and plants and of events of healing:

And eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. The lame man will leap like a hart and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy!

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.

How divided and how broken have we been in this American country of ours, how much sin has kept us from living the gospel of Jesus' cross and resurrection. How much sin has kept separate my story from your story and set us apart from each other.

I have been so thankful for that moment in Capetown, when in a strange land, I realized that I was an American, and that this national anthem was as meaningful to me as the Star Spangled Banner, more meaningful really, because it told the Christian story, the African American story, tidings of Jesus, redemption and release.

And I have been grateful this month that in this very familiar place, Christ Chapel, we have heard different songs and new voices, preaching and singing, new accents, new choirs and found our souls moved and stirred and expanded.

When they left the tomb and headed to Galilee, Jesus' friends had to take over his work, to spread the gospel, restore the world, make new things which had grown old. It was a bedraggled group, widows, beggars, deserters, and the limping formerly lame. They had to go forward, they had to march on.

They would have to exercise their faith, solidarity, ingenuity, fierceness. As we move beyond February, could we possibly exercise that faith together? Could this Black History Month move from sharing to making alliances? Could each of us pick up our corner of the bed and together restore creation?

I see plenty of stones, lots of obstacles - that look insurmountable. Where human rights are concerned, the road forward seems at times to have taken a sharp U-Turn.

But we have been forgiven, we have been redeemed and brought out. We have shared our stories.

"Behold he is going before you to Galilee -- there you will see him." Let us march on. Let us make a way.