sermons

The Way of Jesus

Healing In Community Through Jesus

Lydia Shiu

Nov 16, 2025

Mark 2:1-12 New International Version

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralyzed Man

2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home.

2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.

3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.

4 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.

5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,

7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things?

9 Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?

10 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man,

11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.”

12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

I was sitting at my desk in the office one day. It was a time before open concept office layout became cool. So not here, years, a decade ago, at my prior place of employment. You know the cubicles that you can look over when you stand up, but in your own world when you sit down. And sometimes we’d have random over the cubicle conversations, without even looking up. Someone would make a sound, we’d chuckle and carry on. Listen to and hear everything that happens from our own individual desks. 

There was this one guy I never really liked, who sat three cubicles over from me. We were both interns at the church, Associates we’d call it, maybe he was one year ahead of me. You can kind of get the vibe of the church office culture from that. He’s the kind of guy that would say things like,

“As an economist in my former life…”

He was an econ major in college and worked like a year in consulting I think. I also worked for a year after college in political campaigns before seminary but I don’t go around calling myself a political strategist in my former life. 

That day, we were talking about some new pop song that came out, maybe it was a kpop song. I chimed in and said, yeah it’s a kpop song. And the guy, that I didn’t like, says,

“what even is the difference between kpop and jpop? Cause they sound the same.”

One could say it’s a harmless comment. He just didn’t know. But to me, it was offensive. Because it brought up for me all the times when I felt invisible and unseen. When guys holler “konichiwa” or “nihao” to me on the street because they can’t even catcall correctly. When people would ask me,

“Are you Japanese or Chinese?”

and I’d say,

I’m Korean. 

And then they’d say,

“South or North”?

Like they’d been there or know anything about the difference.  I’ve heard lately people say in response,

“where are you from?”

and if someone says,

“America.”

you say,

“North or South?” 

It’s ignorance. It’s just that sometimes we don’t know. It’s aggravating in one sense but also, I used to say, well I don’t really know the difference between the French and the German. 

Look, we’re all ignorant people in so many ways. I think sometimes in the intellectually liberal circles, we’re even worse about what is offensive. Well no, that’s not true. Saying the wrong thing will get you excommunicated and cancelled in the liberal circles, but a trans person just existing without even having said anything in some circles will get you that invisible unseen feeling for sure, or much worse. 

How are we supposed to put up with one another? 

The politically divided, the ignorant co-worker, the microaggression, the difference in culture that causes stress and offense. Things ranging from minor agitation to hurtful even violence toward one another because of our difference, that causes harm, even death. How are we supposed to live together? 

We’ve been talking about healing in our sermon series and I wanted to talk about healing in the context of community and relationships. Because sometimes it feels like there’s more hurt, pain, and offense when we are in a relationship with one another, especially when we’re in a relationship with a “difficult” one. 

That co-worker I really didn’t like, that’s just one story. I had to work on a project with him at some point, and one day we had a huge confrontation. All my built up anger toward him was triggered that day, when we started arguing about diversity. After that difficult conversation, a week later, I went to the dentist for a filling. She told me to come back if the bite wasn’t correct, they’d file down the filling if it was bothering me. For days, it bothered me. I went back in, convinced that the filling was giving me pain in my jaw. She looked at it. She said it looked fine. I tapped my teeth. It still felt like something was off. And then she asked me,

“Have you had any stress in the last week or two?”

I was like,

“Um I mean, work is always stressful (strung out laugh)!”

But I was immediately thinking about my confrontation with that guy. 

In an attempt to heal, sometimes our first line of defense is, just cut him out of my life. He is toxic. It’s a toxic work environment. He’s literally causing me physical pain! I’m supposed to buy a $300 retainer and wear it every night so I don’t clinch my jaw–for him? Cause of him? Naw. I’m gonna live a stress free, toxic free life, as soon as he’s out of my life. He’s on my No Fly list. 

Someone right now might be thinking,

“See that’s what’s wrong with cancel culture.”

And I agree with you. 

I want to offer that today’s Bible Story shows us a picture of healing that happened through and because of a community. The healing happened because four friends decided to carry a paralytic man on a mat, and decided to conspire together to break through someone’s roof to get this man healed. 

You see, the action taken by the four men not only practically had the strength to carry the mat or plow through shingles or straw, whatever Ancient Near East roofing material was, but it also showed their faith. Their determination. Their love. 

Mark 2:5  

Look. Verse 5, it says that,

“When Jesus saw THEIR faith” 

That is, the faith of the paralytic and his friends. When Jesus saw all of their faith in action, that’s what it took. 

In our overly individualistic culture, we’ve built this personal relationship with Jesus as the top goal for the gospel, when so much of the Bible is about THEIR faith, OUR faith. Now I don’t know how well these five guys got along. But try carrying anything with three other people okay.

I’m pretty sure, if I remember correctly, that Steve, our senior pastor, and Brian McMurry, Shawn, and my husband Eugene tried to carry our piano into the house from the moving truck, seven years ago when we first moved here. You have to communicate, so as to not hurt anyone in the process. 

I saw a post by Francesca Psychology saying this,

Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. That means people want a strong community for support, but they are not willing to put in the effort and sacrifice required to be a part of it. Being annoyed is the price we pay for connection and community. It can mean sharing space when it’s inconvenient, showing up when you’d rather stay home, or hosting when you’re tired. Somewhere along the way, our fear of discomfort turned into hyper-independence–strict boundaries, perfect routines, and no interruptions. But when our boundaries become too rigid, they stop protecting us and start isolating us. They become walls. And we wonder why we feel so lonely. We’re paying for convenience with disconnection. We traded the messiness of community for the ease of solitude and lost something vital along the way.” 

You know my algorithm now, chicks into therapy. You see, ideas and wisdom like this is trying to invite us into that community that heals. And how that connection and community isn’t always easy but worth it. The truth is though, the Gospel takes it further. What therapy and psychology attempts to get at a kind of healing and connection, a true holistic healing for everyone calls for not just withstanding annoyance. The kind of healing Jesus offers us goes far beyond self-help notions like,

“so be a villager.”

No, Jesus raises the bar higher and says,

“love your enemies.”

Forgive them. Forgive one another of sins. 

You see, I actually struggled with this concept in these healing stories in the Bible. When this man is paralyzed, he can’t walk. And Jesus says to him,

“Your sins are forgiven.”?

As if it’s because of his sins that he has this ailment? That’s my misunderstood, misused, misinterpreted theology coming at odds with the truth of the message. Because I have heard churches or people tell someone with a very physical condition, even disease like cancer, if only you would pray hard enough, confess a contrite heart of your sins, then Jesus will heal you. And sometimes it doesn’t work out that way and the sick are left with not only the sickness itself but shame and guilt that they could never figure out the right confession to get that miraculous healing. It’s blaming the victim. Some of you might have seen or experienced it too, and think, that’s why I don’t like religion or not sure about prayer or healing or miracles and I don’t blame you. 

Jesus’ power of such holistic healing got translated in a weird transactional theology in which the disease somehow was the consequence of sin. That theology only speaks to the model of a God, a description of God we assume to be one who is transactional, one who punishes in the face of sin, and maybe you’d come to believe in that God so deeply that you have a hard time seeing that God could be any other way. Or that love could be any other way. But let me tell you something, I don’t believe in that God. 

We’ve been taught that God plenty for sure. Here’s how Cole Arthur Riley put it in This Here Flesh. 

“On the day the world began to die, God became a seamstress. This is the moment in the Bible that I wish we talked about more often. When Eve and Adam eat from the tree, and decay and despair begin to creep in, when they learn to hide from their own bodies, when they learn to hide from each other–no one ever told me the story of a God who kneels and makes clothes out of animal skin for them.” 

She goes on to say, 

“I remember many conversations about the doom and consequence imparted by God after humans ate from that tree. I learned of the curses, too, and could maybe even recite them. But no one ever told me of the tenderness of this moment… In the garden, when shame had replaced Eve’s and Adam’s dignity, God became a seamstress. He took the skin off of his creation to make something that would allow humans to stand in the presence of their maker and one another again.” 

Isn’t that beautiful? A God who covers us. 

The God that we see in Jesus has always been in the healing and restoration work, with grace and mercy.

• Grace and mercy for the ignorant.
• Grace and mercy for the offensive.
• Grace and mercy even in the face of injustice or racism.

And that’s why I don’t like God sometimes. Jesus is too forgiving for my taste. Or so I say, for everyone else until that forgiveness is bestowed upon me. 

And it is. That radical, even scandalous gracious, merciful forgiveness that Jesus extends to everyone, and he means everyone, from paralytics, paralytics friends, and teachers of the law who criticize him, everyone, he offers that forgiveness to, even you.

• For all that you have done.
• For all that you have left undone.
• For all the things you’ve said.
• For all the things you left unsaid.

Jesus forgives you and moves toward you in a scandalous way. In all the ways that you’ve left rubble and damage in your tracks, tearing through roofs of communities that you loved, places that were safe and offered healing that in your desperation plowed through with your one longing, your one longing to simply to be seen, accepted, forgiven, and healed. God sees it all and you didn’t mess it up. In fact, it only brought you to the feet of Jesus. And at the gasps of onlookers, at the side eye of those who judged, you are simply loved, healed, and liberated. Wouldn’t it be great if that were true?

Maybe as you walked into this place today, you felt like you were in some ways symbolically tearing through your own hardened heart roofing system. 

Or tearing through the religious institution, the church, because somewhere in there, you wondered, maybe even hoped, that Jesus would be here to greet you. So you came with some friends. 

Or maybe you came alone, wondering, I’m broken, I’m hurting, I can’t walk. And if there anyone, anyone else’s faith beside my own because it is not strong enough, to carry me on a mat to take me to Jesus? Maybe their faith would rub off on me.

I still don’t exactly understand what it means for Jesus to say,

“your sins are forgiven”

to someone who couldn’t walk, and then he could walk. But then again, I also have come to realize a whole lot more about psychosomatic connections, what mere “stress” can do to your body and the truly holistic work of heart, mind, and body is a mystery that science is constantly discovering new understanding on how it all works together. 

I’ll end with this quote from a brilliant book called Disunity in Christ by Christena Cleveland, a social psychologist and public theologian. I find it more interesting than often some Christian books that simply call for unity for unity’s sake, but with a more sophisticated look at our differences and how to overcome them. 

“There I was convinced that I was defending Jesus by condemning Wrong Christians, when I saw that Jesus was beckoning both Right Christian and Wrong Christian and inviting all of us to know more of his heart. As I read through the Gospels, I noticed that he had a habit of connecting with everybody: conservative theologians, liberal theologians, prostitutes, divorcees, children, politicians, people who party hard, military servicemen, women, lepers, ethnic minorities, celebrities, you name it. 

He was pretty serious about connecting, in spite of natural and ideological differences… Rather than using his power to distance himself from us, Jesus uses it to approach us. He follows his own commandment to love your neighbor as yourself–often to his detriment, I might add–by pursuing us with great tenacity in spite of our differences. He jumps a lot of hurdles to reach us.”

A God who pursues us, that is the God we run to and follow.

• What would it look like for you to know that?
• That God relentlessly pursues you with love?
• Would you run to this God? 

Let me pray for us.