Wednesday, August 10, 2005
The Rev. Greg Mast, director of ministry services
Reformed Church in America
Texts: Isaiah 43:and Matthew 9:2


The Lord be with you. Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

The words for the morning are whispered to Isaiah and the people in exile: "I'm about to do a new thing;. now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" I am about to do a new thing and it's about to spring forth; do you not perceive it?

Matthew describes the healing of the paralytic in one verse. Mark and Luke put flesh and blood on that one verse, the bare bones of Matthew, and talk to us about what happened on that morning long ago. Jesus had returned home to Capernaum. He was in his own house. People ha d gathered - had flooded the house. And then the four came - the four nameless, faceless people carrying the one who could not walk. They came and they stood at the doorway, and it was inaccessible - they couldn't get in. Not only was the man paralyzed; the crowd was paralyzed. There was no way in or through them.

Now, if you read the Greek at this point, it hints at the fact that they looked at the security badge. A layman said that. There was some debate, according to the Greek, whether this person - these people - ought to be seated in the visitors' side or sent down the hallway to the closed video room. Be that as it may, behind the crowd, outside of the hallway, outside of the Lord's house, something remarkable happened. These friends became people of deep and abiding faith. They looked at the crowd and they decided they would not stop,. Up the side of the house they went - we can follow them. They reach the roof, and with their bare hands they begin to take out sticks and stones as they begin to remove the roof. They are lying down, prostrate on top of that roof. Watching them from the outside you can see them slowly but surely removing the roof, and if you were in the congregation that morning in the Lord's house, you would have seen some sticks and stones sprinkling down, and all of a sudden the roof opened up, and out of heaven came this man - literally into the lap of Jesus!

There he is. And we can almost watch the eyes of our Lord. He looks up, sees the four - hopeful, anxious, encouraged, eager. He looks down at the one who is at his feet, looks back up again and says, "Because of your faith," - the faith of those who are outside of the house, the faith of those who are on the roof, "Because of your faith, this one will be healed. Pick up your bed and walk; your sins are forgiven."

"I am doing a new thing. It is springing forth; do you not see it? And I would suspect on that day long ago it was difficult to see it because it was happening behind the congregation, out of the street, on top of the roof. It was happening there.

In the spring of 2000, Roman Catholic Archbishop Keeler of Baltimore, Maryland, invited a group of denominational leaders to Baltimore, to the great cathedral there, to be a part of a concert of Haydn's "Creation." We gathered together at the rectory, had this beautifully prepared and served meal. We vested, and then we walked the short walk from the rectory into the front of the cathedral. We were east of that altar; we came down the side aisle, we came around the back, up the center aisle, and found our places in the front pews. It was packed! The Lord's house was packed!

As I was seated, I turned to the person next to me - we had some time - and he began to describe to me the last time he was in the cathedra. He said, "We were here to welcome Mother Theresa. The evening was very similar to this evening; they had this beautifully prepared and served meal at the rectory, we vested, then added to our numbers came mayors and millionaires and the governor and senators and this and that." "And," he said, "the procession was probably almost a hundred people. We marched from the rectory into the front of the cathedral, down the side aisle. There in the center of us was Mother Theresa, sari, covered head - small, tiny, almost invisible among the powerful. We went down the side aisle, we came around the back, we got up about half-way up the center aisle, and all of a sudden the procession stopped.

The whispers were initially somewhat discreet. "Where is she?" Then they got a little louder. "They have lost Mother Theresa." They found her on the front steps. She had gone down the side aisle, and as the powerful had come around back to go up the center aisle, she just kept on going - right out the front doors - and was talking with those who could not get in. Those whose security badges had been checked and maybe they had been sent down the way, where there was a visitors' place for them. She said, simply, when they found her, "I was looking for the face of Christ."

It seems to me that the Gospel shares with us simply in this morning that we discover the face of Christ not only as we recess into the world, but also as we process into the world. We know what it is to recess - we will get up from here and we will go out into the world having experienced God's love. We share it. Having experienced God's grace, we share it. Having heard God's Word, we share it. Having heard God's Word, we share it. Table and Sacrament are spread out into the world, hungry for God's presence and peace. We know what it means to recess into the world with such grace.

But what does it mean to process into the world to discover that grace? What does it mean to go out onto the front steps of our cathedrals, into our communities, not only to carry God's grace but to discover it buried - buried deep in the people who surround us and the lives of those who are around us?

In the fall of 1972 I was a college student serving a semester at an LCA congregation in South Philadelphia by the name of Immanuel. God came to me, and I was called to ministry, and four years later I began my first ministry in Johannesburg, South Africa. I remember well standing on the shore in Cape Town, looking out at Robbins Island and wondering about this man Nelson Mandela, who was on the island in 1976 and would remain there for 27 years.

I returned 25 years later to stand in that same place and then to go to Robbins Island, which has become somewhat of a shrine, and our guide that day said to us, "You know, I was a political prisoner here on the island, but now I am a guide for those who come to want to hear our story. We live here on the island. Those who were prisoners and those who were guards - we live together in a new community. It's one thing to talk about reconciliation; it's a whole other thing to live it.

Out there - beyond the doors - in the world - there are glimpses of grace and islands of hope, where God calls us again and again to glimpse the face of the Christ.

"I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?"

And most of the time, my friends, we do not, I'm afraid. We're facing in the wrong direction - this way rather than that way. We're gathered together in solemn assembly, and God is out in the world doing surprising and shocking things.

There's something deep in the human heart that again and again whispers to our worst being, "There's a them and an us." A "them" and an "us." You identify the pronouns, but God could never reveal God's self to "us" through "them." Fill in the pronouns. There is some place deep in the human heart that keeps that whisper going, and the story today says, "I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?" And Mother Theresa does not only recess, but processes out into the world to discover that grace; and we hear God whisper to all of us in this assembly - this filled house - when it is too full, my friends. When the house is too full - too full of power, too full of talk, too full of ourselves - it's time to slip out into the world, there to discover God's new things.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.