Are You in a Stuck Place? Here Jesus Shows you How to Get Free

I truly hate them.   I try to avoid them any time I can.    If it costs me more time, I don’t care.   I just want to get away from them any way I can.  I’m talking about traffic jams.  And when I say traffic jams, I’m not talking about when traffic just slows a bit or putters along.  Heck, that’s every day in South Florida.  I’m talking about those monsters where the brake lights go on forever, when you have no idea when or where it will end.  All you know is you are stuck in your car and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.   I know such jams often mean an accident.  I know whatever inconvenience I face is nothing compared to what those folks are going through.   I even say a prayer for them.   But the traffic still drives me nut.  I look for the nearest exit.   I do whatever I can to distract myself from how frustrated I am.

Still, eventually the jam will end.  The traffic will move forward.   I will get to where I need to go.  But that’s not so true when you’re stuck in life.  No traffic jam compares to that sort of stuck.   Do you know what I’m talking about? 

When I reached my 40s without marriage or family, I felt it.  I wondered.  Would that ever change?  Some days, it felt ok, but other days, well, it didn’t.  It didn’t at all.   But stuckness can go far more deeply than that.  Say you’re stuck in a marriage going nowhere good, or in family conflicts or problems with seemingly no solution.   Say you work in a job you hate, but feel you can’t leave or wish to God you had any job at all.    What if you find yourselves trapped in a body that has betrayed you or caught in a dark place that feels as if it has no exit?  You get the idea.  That sort of stuck can so wound you, even destroy you.   But how do you find freedom from that sort of stuck?   How does that happen?   In this strange, surprising even shocking story, Jesus shows us the way.   Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Mark 2:1-12

It can be so hard, to be stuck, to be caught in a situation or struggle that we desperately want out of. We want deliverance.  We want a way out.  But we can’t find it.   That’s why we’re stuck.   When our lives become paralyzed like that, how do we break free?  Here Jesus shows us the way with someone not just figuratively paralyzed but literally.  

You gotta admire the chutzpah of these man’s friends.  They do anything and everything they can to get their friend to Jesus.   They literally go through the roof for him.   Imagine you are standing there.  You feel the mud and straw from the roof start to fall on your shoulders.  You look up puzzled.  You see daylight breaking through.   You then see hands breaking up the roof.  You are wondering. What the heck is going on, especially if you are the homeowner?  Then you get it.  You see a man on a stretcher being lowered down through the air.   Talk about dramatic.

But what comes next, if you think about it, blows that shock away.   Jesus sees this obviously paralyzed man.  And what does he do?   He says.   Your sins are forgiven.   What?   I feel for this poor guy.   His friends have gone to all this trouble for this?   So this wonder-worker named Jesus can tell him that his sins are forgiven.   Hello, Jesus.   I don’t think this man is coming to you because of that.  What is Jesus doing? 

In these simple words, Jesus is making a profound point.  He is not only telling us what this man actually needs, but about what we all need.  And even more shockingly, he is telling us that he is the only One who can provide it. 

In these brief words, Jesus is saying to this paralyzed man.   Yes, I can cure your paralyzed legs, but in the long run, that won’t really help you.    Jesus is telling him.  What is really paralyzing you goes far beyond your legs.  

Last week, do you remember that study I mentioned?   Researchers looked at thelevels of happiness of two very different groups of people.  One had just won the lottery, and the others had recently become paraplegics.   After a year, what did the research show?   Both groups had pretty much the same level of happiness.   Do you get what that means?    Those who were unhappy before winning the lottery generally went back to being unhappy.   And on the other hand, those who were happy before their legs got paralyzed went back to being happy.  Don’t you see?  What messes up our lives has far more to do with what is going on inside of us than anything happening to us on the outside.   

Jesus knew that if he simply healed this man’s legs that it wouldn’t really free him from what truly paralyzed him.   For that he had to go deeper. 

In one of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, this little boy named Eustache appears.  And he is a truly awful kid, self-involved, snotty, truly a jerk.   One day Eustache discovers this cave full of treasure.  He can’t believe his fortune.  He thinks how he will use his newfound wealth to make all those around him even more miserable.  But this isn’t any treasure, it’s a cursed dragon hoard.  So as he goes through the loot, Eustache falls asleep, and when he wakes he has become a dragon.   He hates it, the scales, the claws, the isolation.  He desperately wants to change.  One day, the God character in the story, a great lion named Aslan appears.  He brings Eustache to this pond.   Aslan tells Eustache.  Take off the dragon skin and dive in.  And Eustache realizes.  Hey, this skin comes off.  So he begins tearing with his dragon claws.  But when he tears the dragon scales off, underneath he just finds more scales.   As many times as he tries, Eustache can’t get free.   Then Aslan looks and says.  “I see.  I will need to do it.”  And with that Aslan leaps and with his lion claws tears deep into Eustache’s skin.  For Eustache, the pain felt as if it tore into his very heart.  But the more Aslan clawed, the more the scales came off.    And then Aslan took him, and threw him into the pond.  And the water stung.  But when Eustache came out, he was changed.  He was not simply a little boy once again, but a far different boy than before.

     

Often when it comes to our stuck places, we go to God so God can change our situation, but God says to us.  That’s your whole problem.   You somehow believe that if your situation changes, then you’ll change.   But a new situation can’t heal you, only I can.   And for me to do that, I need to go deep.  I need to go to your very core.

And that is what Jesus does here.  He goes to the heart of the matter, to the brokenness that paralyzes this man far more than his broken legs.    Yet when Jesus does that, something very important is missing.  Do you see it?   It may not be so obvious, but something big is missing.

This guy never asks for forgiveness.  He never expresses that he has any need for it.  Again and again in the Bible, God makes clear.   Forgiveness only comes to those who ask.   But this guy never asks.   Or does he but only in a way Jesus can hear?  

Do you see where the writer Mark tells us how Jesus sensed what the religious leaders were thinking in their hearts?    In the same way, Jesus must have sensed what was happening in this man’s heart.  He sensed his yearning for release, how he hungered to be freed from his guilt and inner brokenness.   And that was all Jesus needed.   Do you see how aggressively Jesus loves us?

Jesus doesn’t need to wait until we say the right words.   All Jesus needs is the cry of our hearts.  No matter how inarticulate or partial that cry is, it’s enough for Jesus.   I love the words of this prayer that I often use at funerals.   O God, who gave us birth, you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray.   You know our needs before we ask, and that often we don’t even know what to ask for.   If you and I come to Jesus, that is enough.  We don’t even need to know the right questions.   Whatever our true need is, Jesus is eager to answer. 

Still, what Jesus does here with this act of forgiveness really offends the religious leaders.   And they have every reason to be offended.   In those few words of forgiveness, Jesus is making a shocking claim.  Jesus is saying.  “I am God.” 

Only God can do what Jesus does here.   And if you think about it, you’ll see why.   Let’s say.  Tom, Dick and Harry are hanging out together.   And Tom goes off and decks Dick in the mouth, lays him out right on the floor.   Then Harry says to Tom.   “Tom, I forgive you.”   Dick is going to be like, “What?  You forgive him?  He didn’t hit you.  He hit me!”   But God can forgive. Why?  Because whatever wrongs we do are ultimately acts against our creator, against God’s intention for our lives.   So when Jesus offers this man forgiveness, Jesus is saying.  Whatever wrongs you have done against others, even yourself, they were ultimately acts against me.   And I forgive you.

Now how does Jesus response to their offense at his words?  He gives them a riddle.  He asks.  “Which is easier to say?   Take up your mat and walk or your sons are forgiven you.”   And if you think about it, it’s kind of a tricky question.   In some ways, it is easier to say your sins are forgiven.  Heck, I can say it right now.   Your sins are forgiven.   But hey who knows if it actually happened.  But to say to a paralyzed man, take up your mat and walk, well the truth of those words are going to get tested immediately.    And in that distinction is where the answer lies.   The word Jesus uses for say here also means do.    Jesus is not talking about just any words, but the sort of words that actually make something happen, like when a jury declares a defendant innocent or a general gives an order. 

But to say words like that, to say your sins are forgiven, and actually make that happen, that is infinitely harder than making a paralyzed man walk.   Why?   Because when it comes to forgiveness, somebody always has to pay.  

Let’s say when I pull out from the church today, I run into John’s car, and put a big dent in the side.    Well, John can say to me.  “Kennedy, that’s ok.   Accidents happen.”   But is that going to take the dent out of his car?   No, somebody will have to pay, either I or John or our insurance companies.   

And when we forgive, we’re paying.  We’re saying.  You hurt me, but I’ll absorb the cost of that hurt.  Now maybe you absorb it to restore the relationship or to free yourself from the burden.  But whatever the reason, you take a hit.   You pay a price.   But to do that, not simply for an individual mistake but for the accumulated brokenness and pain of the whole human race, the entire planet?   

That’s paying a price.    And who is the only One who can even do that? Only God.  Because whatever wrongs we have done against others, even ourselves, they were ultimately acts against God, against his intention for our lives.  So only God even has the right to absorb the cost.  

In Jesus, that’s exactly what God did.  God took the hit, the hit for everything.  In Jesus, in the brutality of that cross, God paid that infinite price.   How can Jesus free us from our stuck places?  Because he was stuck on that cross. On that cross, Jesus proclaimed.   Whatever wrongs you have done against others, even yourself, they were ultimately acts against me.   And I forgive you.  I free you from the ultimate stuck place.   The infinite pain that I offer up here has paid that price. 

Don’t you see?  Jesus was utterly broken so that you might be made whole.  He was totally abandoned so that in our darkest moments, you would never be.  Because Jesus went that far down, even to death, there is no pit we face so deep that Jesus is not deeper still.   . 

 

Are you stuck?   Do you yearn to be free?  Then Jesus will free you, but it probably won’t happen the way you want.   But it will happen the way you need.   And he will do it, no matter how partial, how confused the cry of your heart might be.    How can you know he’ll do it?  Because he answered his own riddle with his very life.  He paid the price.   Indeed he is the only One who ever could.