The Faith of Another

December 8, 1991

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Scripture: Mark 2:1-12

Do you know what I think? There may just be an Advent theme here somewhere, lurking

around in the shadows. It’s not an Advent story, I know.... certainly not traditional Advent story, this passage from Mark...and yet, I wonder. I wonder if this simple incident from the Gospels doesn’t contain an idea very closely related to what Advent---getting ready for God’s giving---is really all about.... namely, THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES... THE LIFE-GIVING DIFFERENCE IT MAKES WHEN YOU KNOW SOMEBODY BELIEVES IN YOU. Think about it with me.

The background, first of all. Go with me in your imagination back 2,000 years, and halfway around the world.... The place is Galilee, during the springtime of Jesus’ ministry, specifically, Capernaum, up on the north side of Lake Tiberius. Some of you have been there. The big news of the day is this strange Carpenter fellow, who has exploded on the scene and whom nobody is quite able to pigeon-hole. Jesus never could fit into ready-made categories...... Still can’t.

The countryside is buzzing about all He’s been up to.... The folks are talking about Him down at the barber shop, and at the well, and over at the 7-11, and people begin to flock in..... rich and young and old, Gators and Seminoles..... crowds of people, pushing, shoving, elbowing, shouting.... trying to get to Him, just to touch Him, to hear Him, to be as close to Him as they can. All day long they come, wave after wave, and the room in which He tries to see them is continuously filled to overflowing.

Suddenly, outside the house, something unusual. A group of men carrying a friend, a crippled man, on a stretcher. They try their best to gain access to the room.... no chance. Too many people. It’s worse than the Mall the day after Thanksgiving, or Bennigan’s on a Friday night. They can’t even get inside the door.

So, with an ingenuity born of necessity, they climb on top of the house, and with ropes, I suppose, and sheer brawn, they hoist their friend to the roof.

It’s a flat topped house, of course, as all Palestinian houses were in those days--- still are, as a matter of fact---they’re built that way....flat, with a slight tilt so the winter and spring rains can slide off.....

When they get to the top, they go to work, and knock a hole in the insubstantial roofing

material. So far as we know, no permission was granted; they just DID it, with unmitigated gall. Then with their ropes, they lower their buddy through the beams so that he comes to rest on the floor at the feet of Jesus.

Can you picture it? The people, crowded into every corner; the crippled man, suddenly the center of attention on the floor; the friends, still up on top, still on the roof, looking down into the room; and Jesus, now gazing up into their faces, marveling at the confidence.... no, stronger than that... at the sheer audacity with which they have done this nervy thing.

It’s one of the most vivid little cameo shots we have in the New Testament.

 AND THE RECORD, IN MARK, SAYS THIS.... I wonder if you caught it? The Record says,

“When Jesus saw THEIR faith”.... get that possessive pronoun.... “When Jesus saw THEIR faith”...

NOT the faith of the man on the floor---he’s not even looking down there--- not HIS faith.... the faith of the men on the roof---- “When Jesus saw THEIR faith”, he said to the paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven....” AND HE HEALED HIM. TERRIFIC! A man made whole by the faith of others. A man the recipient of blessing, not through his own doing, but because somebody else cared enough about him and believed enough in him. It really is an intriguing insight.

That guy on the floor could never have found wholeness by himself. There was no way. He could never have done it on his own. Somebody had to bring him and put him in the location where the healing could take place....AND THAT MEANS SOMEBODY HAD TO CARE ENOUGH TO DO IT. It couldn’t have happened otherwise.

We don’t even know for sure the man wanted to come. We don’t even know if he asked to be brought to Jesus.... presumably he did, but who knows? Don’t we wish we had more details? How old was he?

How long had he been paralyzed? Did he have family? Was he a Rotarian or a Kiwanian? We don’t know any of that. That’s how the Gospel stories do you, every time. They

give you just the barebones outline and leave the rest to your imagination. Maybe that’s

why they’re so bottomless.

YOU CAN’T TELL. This man’s friends may have cooked up the scheme among themselves and dragged him away without his asking for it. They may actually have brought him against his will. We don’t know.

What we do know is that this unnamed, unidentified paralyzed man had some friends who were concerned about him. That’s the great thing. They believed in him, and they believed in Jesus, and they had the active faith that if somehow, they could just get the two together their friend could be healed. THE FAITH OF OTHERS MADE A CRIPPLED MAN WHOLE.

Well, that’s the background. Now, let’s play with it. I want to lift it out of the realm of history and into the realm of BIOGRAPHY. Or, if that isn’t personal enough, let’s  make it AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Let’s just go ahead and be existential about it. AREN’T WE ALL TO

A GREAT EXTENT WHAT WE ARE BECAUSE OF THE FAITH OF OTHERS?

Aren’t we all, in large measure, what we are because somebody else along the way had and maybe continues to have faith and confidence in us? Don’t tell me this is an atypical, one-of-a-kind story. Distinctive and dramatic, maybe, but not unique. Not on your life. This is a story, in a sense, about everybody, including you and me.

What we’ve achieved up to now, maybe more than we realize, has not been just our doing; partly, perhaps, but not entirely. It’s been at least as much, I suspect, because of the

confidence and faith others have put in us. We wouldn’t be, we couldn’t be where we are now without that.

We’ve all grown, and developed, and matured, and blossomed, and thought better of ourselves, and done better because somewhere along the line we’ve known that there was somebody who believed in us and we didn’t want to let them down. The faith of others.

Do you know who comes to my mind when I think about it? She was a teacher I had in

high school. I’ll never forget Ms. Laird if I live to be 105.

She was the world’s meanest woman. I’m not talking fussy, or crabby, or irascible. She was those. But MORE than those. She was MEAN. You can look it up if you don’t believe it. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records, page 346. World’s Meanest Woman: Gladys O. Laird....The O stood for OGRE.

She taught Latin. Wouldn’t you know it? Did you take Latin in high school? How do they make Latin teachers from that particular mold all Latin teachers seem to come from? I don’t know how they do it. It’s a mystery, that’s what it is, one of life’s imponderables.... like theodicy, and the doctrine of the Trinity, and when something goodwill ever happen to the Tampa Bay Bucs.^[1]

I suspect there’s a special school somewhere, probably at the foot of the Janiculum Hill, in Rome, presided over by a combination of Dragon Lady, Cruella Deville, and Wicked Witch of the West where they produce that kind of grisly personality that is a Latin teacher.

But of all the star alumnae of that infamous school---that’s alumnae, a-e ending, the

feminine plural form of alumna---- of all the star alumnae of that infamous school, of all the stern, strict, and scary Latin teachers who ever declined a noun, surely Ms. Laird was the most forbidding.

She could just look at you with those probing eyes and pick out of your brain what you didn’t know. When you walked into the classroom, she had your lack of preparation catalogued. It was uncanny.

She had a special eye in the back of her head....I know she did, and it peered out through the bun. Did you ever notice how they all wore their hair in a bun? That was the reason. It peeked out through that bun to take in what you were doing, even when her back was turned.

She rarely raised her voice. She didn’t have to, but I have seen her with my own eyes, cut a student to ribbons from a distance of 20 paces with just a flick of her two-edged tongue.

She was AWESOME, that’s what she was, absolutely AWESOME, and if Ms. Laird were to walk into this room right now, I would instantly quail, turn ashen faced, and begin conjugating irregular verbs.

But guess what happened one day...one day that is forever etched into my memory. One day after a particularly grueling test over a particularly grueling campaign with Caesar in Gaul, this imperious woman cruised over to my desk, paused dramatically, and then pronounced, “Thomas Price, after school I want to see you in my office.” AND I KNEW IT WAS NOT GOOD. Indeed, I entertained at that moment a rather solidly grounded suspicion that I was about to be the victim of an unmitigated disaster. If I could have chosen right then between fighting the lions in the Circus Maximus and facing the wrath of Ms. Laird in her den, I would have overwhelmingly opted for the former.

But alas! There was no way out. I gritted my teeth, I prayed, I sweated.... As an act of atonement, I even threw away the copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover I had hidden in my locker.... everything I could think of... but when the appointed hour came, I was there, because I knew better than not to be.

I slithered in through the door, quaking like a reed blowing in the wind---that being a Biblical allusion I offer simply as a gratuity---- She received me coldly, positioned me in a chair, then closed the door behind, thus ending all possibility of escape.

There was a window, I noticed, but we were 3 floors up. I momentarily in my desperation considered diving through it and taking my chances with that, but her movements distracted me.

Drawing herself up to her full five foot and one and a half inches, she clenched her jaws,

closed one eye....not the one in the bun, but one of the other 2 in front.... closed one of those, and sort of squinted out of the other one....THEN BRANDISHED A TEST PAPER IN MY FACE. All I could see was my name and a rampaging horde of red X marks.

“This”, she hissed, “is the worst test paper I have ever seen in my life. How do you

ever expect to get into college with grades like these?”

COLLEGE? I thought. College? Are you out of your tree? What are you talking about?

I ain’t worried about college, lady, just let me out of the tenth grade. If I can just

get out of this office, I’m GONE....I promise. I’m out of here. I’ll never set foot in

the county again.

These were internal, you understand, not external expressions. I didn’t say anything.

I just sat there. And she continued. And as she talked, I began to get the shock of my

life. Something was happening to Ms. Laird. I looked up in utter stupefaction and saw

a change.

Those hard lines around her mouth were softening. She wasn’t exactly smiling...I knew she couldn’t smile. She didn’t possess those particular muscles in her face.... BUT THERE WAS SOMETHING THERE I had never seen before, a touch of friendliness, even tenderness in her eyes,. almost a flicker of humanity....

And finally, in the softest voice I had ever heard her use, she said, “Oh, Tommy, for your own sake, don’t waste your talent. You can do so much better work than this.”

AND THAT DID IT. If I hadn’t been a big sophomore, I think I would have cried. THAT WAS MS. LAIRD TALKING TO ME LIKE THAT.... Ms. Laird, the Demon Woman. She was actually concerned about me. She thought I had some promise. She thought I could cut it. She believed in me. She expected better of me than I had been producing...and that got next to me. I WENT OUT OF HER OFFICE THAT AFTERNOON A DIFFERENT STUDENT.

Oh, don’t you see...the faith of others. Something happens to you when you know somebody believes in you, and is counting on you. It makes a difference in the way you see things. It makes a difference in the way you see yourself. It makes a difference in everything. You can’t be satisfied with common levels of attainment when you know somebody who  loves you is expecting you to go higher.

One of my friends in the Conference, now preaching in a big church, tells how he was

stationed overseas during the Korean War, for a while in a big city, known for its corruption and vice. There was plenty of opportunity, he said, for almost anything and everything, alcohol, drugs, women... you name it. It was there in abundance. The whole gamut of possibility was ready at hand.... and loneliness at times made it very tempting.

What kept him from succumbing, more than once, he said, was a photograph he had, placed in a prominent spot on his mirror.... a photograph of his family. He would look into those trusting eyes...the eyes of the dearest people on earth to him, and he knew he must not let them down.

THE FAITH OF OTHERS. Don’t ever discount the power of it. I thank God for the people

who have believed in me, even when I didn’t or couldn’t believe in myself. They’ve pulled

me through, time after time, and I know it. I could name most of them.... I could reel off a whole roster of friends, and teachers, and counselors, and relatives.... AND SO COULD YOU IN YOUR OWN SITUATION, couldn’t you? You’d die before you’d let them down. We don’t build our faith and our ethic out of nothing, not one of us. Like the unnamed man in the story, WE ARE WHAT WE ARE BECAUSE OF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE. You can believe in yourself and do a better job when you know somebody has a high expectation of you.

Now, let me lift it to an even higher dimension. I’ll do it quickly. The Advent angle.

I told you I thought I sniffed an Advent theme here somewhere, lurking around in the

shadows.... Here it is---the GOSPEL. The best news of all. GOD HIMSELF BELIEVES IN YOU.

That’s what Advent means. It’s what Christmas means. THE PROOF OF IT IS THE INCARNATION.

God is not off somewhere, remote and removed from His Creation, demanding imperiously that the creation makes its way back to Him. That’s not the Gospel. THE GOSPEL IS THAT HE HAS COME TO US.... believed in us enough to bring us, crippled and paralyzed though we are, to the place of total healing. That’s what Christianity is all about. The faith of ANOTHER....capital A....has made us whole.

The miracle of it is that now we can believe in ourselves; now we are free to respond, because, incredibly, God Himself thinks we are worth something. What could possibly be better news than that?

Wallace Hamilton, in one of his books, uses this illustration which maybe you’ve heard. Do you remember the play Green Pastures,^[2] which Marc Connelly wrote more than 40 years ago, I guess, for an all-black cast? Some of you may have seen it on stage, or perhaps on television at one time or another. It’s one of the classics of 20th Century drama.

When it was first presented, there were those who thought it was somewhat sacrilegious and should never have been shown. But others, with greater insight, I think, have seen in this crude portrayal a representation of the mightiest truth humankind has ever known.

The play opens with an old, black Sunday School teacher telling Bible stories to his class of little boys. In a rather naïve fashion, the play presents God as getting better, as coming to know more as the Old Testament stories unfold. What really happens, of course, is what the old scholars used to call “progressive revelation”; the people’s understanding of God becomes clearer as they learn more about Him.

The highlight of the play concerns the prophet Hosea. Remember Hosea from the Old

Testament? God in His anger has refused to have anything more to do with His faithless

children who have forgotten Him and are now in bondage for their sins.

Every day the 3 old patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob come into God’s office in

the sky.... they call him “de Lawd”. They come in each day to play poker with Him, and as

they sit around His desk in the sky playing 5 card draw, they beg Him to have mercy on His people and deliver them.

But God has made His mind up. He’s seen how the people have been living. He’s seen their contentiousness and their sin. He’s seen human life grow dirty and squalid, and He

has washed His hands of them forever. But then He notices something. He keeps seeing the shadow of a man on His door, a man walking back and forth outside, deliberately casting his shadow against the door of heaven.

God says, “Who is that, anyway?” And the patriarchs tell him it’s Hosea, this sensitive

Old Testament prophet, who loved a woman who went bad, and left him, and became a prostitute. BUT HE LOVED HER ANYWAYS. He kept loving her, and finally he went out to the pig pen where her life of degeneration had taken her.... and brought her back home,

and forgave her, and gave her another chance.

For a long time God stands at the window, looking down, listening to the noise and cries of the people in their bondage.....And then He balls up His fist and calls down to them in an angry voice, “I ain’t comin’, I tell you I’ve had enough of your carryin’ on. I ain’t comin’ down no more.”

Then He turns and walks across the floor again, with His hands gripped tightly behind His back in determination, when He sees that shadow again, the shadow of a man who though sinned against, continued to love with a love that never faltered. Plainly a battle is going in God’s heart.

Then, finally, He can stand it no longer. He goes over once more to the window, and looks down on the world from the parapet of heaven. For a long time He stands there, watching and wrestling with Himself. Then you can hear Him say in a soft voice, “I’m comin’, chillun’, I’m comin’.”

 And Gabriel hands Him His hat and cane. And as “de Lawd” leaves, He turns to the

Archangel and says, “You look after things up here for a while, Gabe. I’m going down to

give ‘em another chance.”

Don’t call it sacrilege, says Dr. Hamilton. Don’t call it blasphemy. See it for what it is, the dim foreshadowing all the way through the Old Testament of what the New Testament has in full---INCARNATION, the coming of God in the flesh, the great drama of the mightiest truth that ever dawned on the human mind.

It broke into history one cold December morning, when, as Paul Scherer put it in a

matchless phrase, “God the Father Himself walked down the stairway of heaven, with a Baby in His arms.”

Let it come alive for you this year. Let it come alive as it never has before. The Good News.

It was for YOU that He came. You matter to Him. You are important. He believes in you. THE FAITH OF ANOTHER MAKES US WHOLE.

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[1] The Bucs did not win their first game as a new NFL team until the 13^th week of their second season.  Their starting record was 0-26!

[2] Green Pastures won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.