Where Is The Miracle?

A sermon preached by Dr. Peter James Flamming, Pastor
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
From the Sermon Series: "Questions Jesus Still Asks"
October 3, 1999

Text: Matthew 9:2-8

Our text today is from the ninth chapter of Matthew. Would you turn there, please? Beginning with the first verse – Matthew 9. Ours is an age that questions most everything – God gets included. I think of Philip Yancey’s fine book, "Disappointment with God". I’m sure God is particularly threatened. Through Isaiah the prophet, God said "Come on out and argue with me. Make your case. See if you’re right." I don’t think God is bothered by our questions. He’s bothered by our silence and our neglect.

But suppose we did the flip side of the questioning business. Suppose Jesus were to ask some questions of us – put us on the witness stand. What would he ask us? The truth is the gospels are full of Jesus questions. And so today I begin a series entitled "Questions Jesus Still Asks." Stick the insert in your bulletin in your Bible and you’ll have a little bit of the record of the procedures that go from here. Today I have as my text Matthew, the ninth chapter. It is the incident that has already been read by Lynn and Ralph, but they used Luke’s version of it. And I’m going to use Matthew’s, because I think Matthew had the same purpose that I have this morning.

We begin with the first verse, where Jesus stepped into a boat and crossed over and came to his own town. Let me set the scene. Our Lord has come home to Capernaum. He has come by boat, sailing Westward across the Sea of Galilee. After the journey, he has to be bone-tired. He’s been doing ministry on the other side of the lake. But no sooner has it been noised abroad that he’s there – "Jesus is back." Then the people start lining up by his door, waiting to bring their sons and daughters, their parents, their friends to be healed.

One of those who was brought – we’re told about – was a paralytic, lying on a mat, brought to Jesus by his friends. In my eyes, I see the ones who brought him making a kind of stretcher, by taking that mat – two long poles, lacing the mat to the poles – and carrying him to Jesus’ house. Did you ever stop to think about the fact that your first way of getting someplace was to be carried? You don’t remember it, of course. You were walking by the time your memory clicks in. But, perhaps, you can still remember a late at night arrival at home when mom or dad picked you up and carried you to the house and tucked you in. Being carried is part of being human. And it doesn’t only happen when we are very young and weak. Consider that awful scene when a player playing football tears up a knee. The anguish on his face is just excruciating. And what happens is two friends will come out and they will lift him up and one arm of that hurt athlete will go around the shoulders of one strong friend. And the other arm will go around the shoulders of the other strong friend and they will walk him to the sidelines, carried.

You have carried Shirley and me through your love and your prayers these days as we have walked through my cancer surgery. It is one of the wonders of Christ’s church that the strong ones carry the weak and that the roles reverse. Sometimes we’re the strong ones, other times we’re the weak ones. Now during our cancer surgery, we have been like the paralytic. We have been carried by you – by your prayers, by your thoughtfulness, by your love. We have been like the paralytic in another way. I’m now on my feet. You know with the paralytic, winding up that day on his feet was a miracle. What we miss usually and what Matthew is trying to get across is there were two miracles that day. And if you missed the first one, you’ve missed what it’s all about.

Listen to what Jesus said: "Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven." First miracle. Well, some of the teachers of law said to themselves, "This fellow’s blaspheming." And knowing their thoughts, Jesus said ‘Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?’" Strong word for a theological position. Evil – Evil, this word is used only six times in all of the gospels – and one of them is here. Evil thoughts. What’s evil? They have a viewpoint. Well, what’s evil is that these people can’t catch the miracle of forgiveness. Of what Christ is doing in the heart when Christ forgives. Do we? Do we catch it? Now later on when Jesus heals the man, and he gets up on his feet and Jesus says "Take your mat and go home," and he does. We have no trouble calling that a miracle.

But let me put it this way. Today we are going to be around the table of the Lord, and we’re going to celebrate – we’re going to celebrate forgiveness. As we celebrate – as we do it through the wonderful symbols that he gave us – do we see it as a miracle? Or do we see it as a ritual? See, we have the Lord’s Supper – Communion – once a month; the first Sunday of every month. Suppose the first Sunday of every month it were possible – it’s not my gift – but suppose it were possible that the first Sunday of every month I healed somebody. Somebody who is blind and I laid my hands on their eyes and suddenly they saw. Or somebody who was crippled and I laid my hands upon them and they walked out of this place. Or suppose they were deaf and I put my fingers on their ears and after I had done so, they could hear! Would you walk out of here and say, "Wow! Wasn’t that something!" You would. You would say that’s a miracle. But when you come around the table once a month, do you leave a walking miracle? Or is it just like the grocery list, or the checkbook – of course balancing the checkbook is sometimes a miracle.

But I think you see with the point that Matthew is driving at. He leaves out the four guys who let the guy down into the midst of the crowd. He doesn’t want anything to detract from the fact that when Jesus forgives, it’s a miracle. When we forgive one another, it’s a miracle. Why does Jesus begin with forgiveness?

Hear a parable, please. Once there was a city in Virginia destroyed by the Hurricane Floyd. The rains came and the floods arose. And the rains continued to fall until it entered into all of the houses and all the businesses and all of the churches. First it was ankle deep, and then shoulder deep, and then to the ceiling and it stayed for days and days. And it seemed like the waters would never recede. Finally, the roads and the streets were dry and the people were able to go home and they opened the front door and they could not believe their eyes. Inside their homes there was mud everywhere; and mildew and bacteria were gaining a foothold in every room. And walls were ruined and it was as if some giant had taken all of the furniture and just thrown them on top of each other in the corner of the rooms. And the people stood and looked at what was once their homes and they wept.

While they were standing there with tear-stained cheeks, let us suppose that a truck drove up – a furniture delivery truck. And the back goes up and they start unloading furniture. Will not the homeowner say, "What are you doing here?" "Well, we have brought some new furniture for you. Your other furniture is ruined." And will not the homeowner say, "You can’t deliver this yet! We must clean up! We must dig our way out of this mess. We must rebuild. We must start all over. We must scrub. We must cleanse. We must sterilize. Don’t you bring one stick of furniture into this house until we’re ready for it and everything is clean and new."

So it was with the paralytic in the gospel story. You see, he like all of us had a spiritual home called the heart. And sometime in the past – we know not when – the floods of unexpected heartbreak overwhelmed him. And the mildew and mold of fear had begun to stick to everything. And the bacteria of sin had settled on his attitudes and his actions. And the bitterness like mud had settled on the carpets of his hope. And Jesus knew this. And Jesus knew that if he started with the paralyzed man by giving him strong limbs, all it would solve was his mobility. The mud of bitterness would still be in his heart. The bacteria of a sinful attitude would still be raising havoc with his relationships. And the mold and mildew of fear would still be sticking to everything in his life. What the man needs is cleaning out! It isn’t as if it isn’t a miracle, it’s just an invisible miracle.

When Jesus goes to work, it is as if his living spirit comes down from the cross and puts on the work clothes of mercy. And he takes out his shovel called the new creation in Christ and he goes to work. And he shovels out all of the mud of bitterness and replaces it with forgiveness. And he tears down the mildewed walls – those of despair. And he replaces it with faith. And he rewires the home of the heart with the power of his spirit and he carpets the cleansed heart with the carpet of grace. And he paints the walls of our hearts with the bright colors of celebration, because new life has come to that which was old and muddy and diseased and all full of chaos.

Hear this. Forgiveness is the spiritual servant that puts on the work clothes of God’s mercy and cleans up the chaos of the heart and makes room for the risen Lord who wants to live in our hearts. There were two miracles that day. And the most important – eternally – was the first one. "Son, take heart! Your sins are forgiven you."

As we gather around this table this day, let us remember that communion is a special time to deal with what is in our hearts. If the floods have come and the effects of those floods have just settled in our hearts. And if we know there is bitterness towards someone else or unforgiven sin. Or disappointment that has turned into anger and we know it needs to be cleaned, what a better time than with the elements the Lord gave us. There were two miracles that day. One was a healing miracle, the other was a cleansing miracle. Most of you walked in here. You expect to walk out of here. Pray to God all of us will be walking miracles when we leave this place because we will have met the Christ and his cleansing power.

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