Last Sunday’s message (May 4, 2008) from Mark 2: 1-12 is for all the GRILS among us. And within us. Anyone of us who was ever the last one picked, as a kid, for the soccer team, or for sandlot baseball, or for dodgeball during recess. Anyone who ever felt unwanted, excluded, not accepted or welcomed, or who felt stuck, for no fault of your own, on the outside looking in, on the back side of a ring of cold shoulders, tried, judged and exiled with no chance even of defending yourself, because of your color or your income or your language or your weakness or an error, a failure, faults, or your newness, sentenced to permanent exile with no chance for appeal. Like the paralytic on his mat.
Sunday’s message was also for any one of us who did the choosing for the dodge ball team, or for soccer, and who worked hard to make sure that that scrawny, gangly weakling with the thick glasses ended up on the other guys’ team. And for the self-designated enforcers of very exclusive standards who made sure that you-know-who didn’t get into the inner circle, the protectors of a proper sense of who’s "in" and what constitutes "us." Like the teachers of the law, seated in Jesus’ crowded little home in Capernaum, who were watching over the teaching, preaching and healing, to give it their official seal of approval. Or not.
And for any of us who prefer to stay stuck in either role, or both (for both persons are within us), Sunday’s message is good news, and bad news. First, for the good news, at Download paralyticword.doc
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