EPIPHANY VII
Rev. Robert W. Carlson

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing, now it spring forth, do you not perceive it?" "I am about to do a new thing." These "words of the Lord" delivered by the prophet Isaiah set a theme that runs through all our lessons this morning. They are words of hope and promise. The "new thing" that Isaiah cites is that judgement of the people will turn to forgiveness, punishment turn to renewal, despair to hope. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah give us a grim picture of how bad the people of Jerusalem had been and how God would punish them for their transgressions by allowing Babylon to conquer them and lead them off into captivity as servants and slaves. They ignored Isaiah's warnings and suffered defeat and year's of exile in Babylon. I learned a little about the pain of exile from my Swedish grandfather who left the Aland Islands as a teenager to avoid being drafted into the Russian navy. He could never return to see his parents and younger sister. For the Israelites, the time in exile was a far more dreadful time. When their captors asked them to entertain them with one of the songs of Zion, they lamented, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land." But beginning with the 40th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet has a new word from the Lord, beginning with, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people says your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her that her iniquity is pardoned..." The message is continued in today's lesson , " I am about to do a new thing." In other words, "You have known the holiness and the judgement of God. Now it is time for you to know that same God is a God of forgiveness and grace." "I am about to do a new thing."

St. Paul, in our second lesson, also speaks of the good news of something new. He writes of his Lord that in him "it was not 'Yes and No'; but in him it is always 'Yes.'" I'm afraid I often answer people's difficult questions by "waffling," by saying "Yes and No." I've seen too much of disappointment and uncertainty in life to answer without qualifications, but when it comes down to the final questions, Paul reminds us that God is faithful, that God will forgive, that we can trust his promises. It is not "Yes and No"", but "Yes." "I am about to do a new thing."

Our Gospel lesson is that wonderful story of the paralyzed man who came to Jesus for healing in an unusual way. I still remember receiving a picture in Sunday School on one of those flyers they used to give out. It showed Jesus, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers, all gazing up with strange looks on their faces at the man being lowered down into their midst on a stretcher of some sort. As a child I wondered at the time how Jesus would permit such damage to a perfectly good house, but I later learned that it was probably a house with an atrium which was covered over in colder weather with brush or straw and which could easily be opened up. In any case, this sick man was fortunate enough to have four friends who would go to an extreme effort to help him by climbing up on the roof and risking personal injury and looking foolish, on the slim chance that Jesus could do something to heal an affliction nobody else could heal. Not many people have such friends.

What complicates the story of the man on the pallet and makes it more than a simple healing event comes about when Jesus' first words to the paralytic are not words of healing, but, "Son, your sins are forgiven." Some of the onlookers, the Scribes, the professionally religious, were understandably offended. This seemed like blasphemy to them. After all, they knew that only God can forgive sins. Jesus responds by asking which is easier, to say "'Your sins are forgiven, or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk?'" "But," he says, "so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins," he says to the paralytic, "Take your mat and go to your home." Most of the people were understandably amazed, glorifying God and saying, "We have never seen anything like this." "Do not remember the former things..... I am about to do a new thing."

The association with sin and illness, though, is still a troubling one. There are still Christians who make that association. I remember a number of years ago when I spent some time in the hospital, we had an evangelical friend who suggested that it was time for me to do some serious repenting! Jesus, however, was not making this association. At another time, when confronted with those who asked him who had sinned, the sick man or his parents, Jesus said that neither were guilty, but that his healing was a cause to glorify God. It is clear though, that in the first century sin and sickness were associated. Even Jesus' healing is spoken of in the New Testament as "casting out demons." Two things could separate you from the Jewish community in the first century, willful sinning, breaking the covenant, violating the Ten Commandments, and being ill. We know this especially in the case of leprosy. Here it was not just the fear of catching the disease, but also the fear of spiritual contamination. We have not, of course, totally given up this association of disease and spiritual contamination. Consider friends or loved ones who are HIV positive and how quickly some friends may reject them. I remember a young priest on his death bed whom I visited, and the pain of separation which he suffered. The "new thing" that the Gospel announces is that all those things that separate us from God and from each other can be healed. It is God's will that we be whole people. Of course we fail. Of course we will be ill, but it is God's will and within God's power that we be whole. Healing, being made whole, may not be the same as curing. There may be conditions from which we cannot be cured, but it is within God's power that we be healed, made whole. "Do not remember the former things. ...I am about to do a new thing." Thanks be to God.