This story from the Gospel of Mark that Martha just read for us is something else, isn’t it? Jesus had just been on his first preaching and healing tour in Galilee, and talk has spread about the power of his words and deeds. It is just a few hours since he arrived back in Capernaum, and the crowds have formed around him already. Mark tells us that Jesus is preaching and teaching the word, and the people were straining to get a look, to hear what he was saying.

Also in Capernaum, we learn there was a man who was paralyzed. We don’t know anything about this man—how long he had been in this condition, whether he was rich man or a beggar, whether he was a Gentile or a Jew. We don’t even know if he participated in the decision to go to Jesus for his own healing. We only know that he had four friends. These four friends heard of Jesus’ healing power, and carried their friend, on his mat, to the house where Jesus was preaching. They arrived and saw how many others were already waiting, but they refused to be deterred. They just had to get to Jesus. Taking a survey of the situation, these four determined friends decided to get up to the roof. Now, the roof in those days would have been flat, formed by laying crossbeams atop the walls, then filling in with a mixture of thatch and hard, dried mud. This was sturdy stuff, because the roof was often used as a quiet patio away from the busyness of the household. There would have been a ladder at the side of the house going up to the roof, because whole families even slept out on the roof on hot nights. But even the presence of a ladder or the common habit of hanging out on the roof doesn’t explain how these four friends not only negotiate a way to carry their friend on a stretcher up a ladder, but once the five of them get up there, they invent a way to break through this solid roof. Just imagine them on their hands and knees, clawing at the roof with tools or even their own fingernails, meanwhile sending a shower of dust and chunks of dried mud down upon the heads of Jesus and the crowd below. The determination, the innovation, the clear ability to get to the goal. They knew what they had to do—their friend needed healing, and Jesus had it. They used every ounce of their strength and creativity to get their friend there.

I submit to you that these four friends, these stretcher-bearers, ladder climbers, roof-openers—these four are model pragmatists. Pragmatism is generally defined as “a practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems.” (American Heritage Dictionary) Certainly these four friends have shown themselves to be problem-solvers. But there is an even deeper sense of pragmatism in our own time that this story also evokes. Here in the United States, around the end of the 19th century, there developed an entire philosophical school of pragmatism, which took this practical problem-solving to a whole other level, elevating the practicality of an idea to a measure of its truthfulness. In other words, the truth of an idea or theory or belief is no longer measured by some abstract assessment of its correspondence to reality or morality. Truth is only measured by the usefulness of an idea in meeting the practical challenges of the world—if it works, if it makes things better, it’s true. Or at least true enough. William James, a famous pragmatist philosopher, puts it this way: “Grant an idea or belief to be true …what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?” (James, Pragmatism) Pragmatism, practicality, became the measure all ideas and beliefs.

Does this kind of thinking sound familiar? This pragmatic attitude spread like wildfire in American culture. I would argue that all of us are shaped and formed by this American pragmatism. Whether we are talking about international politics, economic justice, freedom, church life, personal relationships, or even religious belief, we may debate whether an idea is good or moral or right according to some religious or social standard, but in the end, we find ourselves always saying, “Yeah, but is it practical? Could this idea be viable in the real world? Will it work?” and any judgment about right and wrong, good and evil, seems to be dismissed on the basis of this pragmatic query alone.

Like the four friends with their journey to the rooftop, pragmatic thinking excels at figuring out how to get where you want to go. At its best, pragmatism has propelled our society to new technological innovations and solved problems once deemed intractable. Think of the U.S. drive to land a man on the moon. What ingenuity, what innovation, what creative hard work it took for those scientists and engineers to discover a way to make it from here to there. They had to travel a quarter of a million miles, using computers with memory about the size of today’s pocket calculators. It took 15 1/2 billion hours of labor over the course of a decade, but they got there. That’s pragmatism at its best—following what works to get where you want to go.

Even if the race to the moon displayed the very best our pragmatism has to offer, it was not pragmatism that decided to go to the moon. All that ingenuity and innovation only got started because of a vision. To quote John F. Kennedy’s bold 1961 declaration: “We choose to go to the moon. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard. The goal, before this decade is out, is landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” Pragmatism alone did not inspire those first astronauts; their inspiration came from a vision, a clear and exciting, powerful and seemingly unimaginable goal.  Pragmatism, by reducing all truth to questions of practicality, cannot break the boundaries of expected outcomes. Pragmatism can only measure reality, never transform it.

Theologian Walter Brueggeman writes, “The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.” (The Prophetic Imagination) The prophets cry, “Without vision, the people perish.” Pragmatism offers no help in determining exactly where it is we want to go. Other than “because it works,” pragmatism can’t tell us what it is that’s actually worth doing. Aside from its usefulness, pragmatism can’t help us assess the value or worth of anything. Think about it. When a relationship is broken and in need of repair, doing what’s practical is more likely to dismantle the relationship than invest in its healing. When we are paralyzed by terror, acting pragmatically will not encourage us to confront our fear and risk courageously in the face of it. When the world is confronted by the threat of war, making judgments about truth and falsehood, right and wrong requires more than an assessment of what is most useful. When life leaves us battered and bruised, wounded and brokenhearted, pragmatism does not provide compassionate care, the strength to carry on, the healing we yearn for. But Jesus Christ does.

Return with me to the scene with our four pragmatic friends and their efforts to bring the paralyzed man to Jesus. The message Jesus preached offered such power and inspiration that the people did everything in their power to get there. And what was that message? Was it a practical cure for medical ills? A new strategy for building better communities through love? A step-by-step path to self-actualization? What did Jesus say, when the dust stopped falling from the ceiling, the sunlight came through, four expectant faces staring down from above and a paralyzed man laying prostrate before him? “When he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” (Mark 2:5) But they came for healing, a practical solution to a practical problem. Yet in speaking that word of forgiveness, what Jesus offered to them was a vision of hope and transformation that broke all the boundaries they had ever known.

The word of forgiveness liberated the crowd from believing that the hardships of illness and misfortune in their lives were punishments from a nagging, spiteful God, and opened their lives to experience God’s compassionate loving presence with them in their pain. The word of forgiveness told those four pragmatic friends on the rooftop that their care and concern for this paralyzed man did not make them contaminated, unclean for having touched one so stricken, but that their faith and compassion should be the model for compassion in others. In the word of forgiveness, the scribes cried, “Blasphemy!” because Jesus had opened the door of the sacred and invited all to come inside. No longer is God’s forgiveness and love available only to those who can act out the necessary steps to earn it by way of religious obedience. This man was paralyzed, he was powerless to live up to the laws of purification and cleanliness—and yet he was forgiven. The message Jesus delivered on that day, the message the crowds couldn’t get enough of, the message Christ still offers us, is the message of God’s overwhelming grace. That message disregards all practicality and pragmatism in judging the truth, and says the only truth we need to know is that God’s love goes beyond all boundaries and expectations and therefore it is capable of transforming the world. To constrict ourselves to what is practical, whether we are measuring forgiveness or healing or love or justice or peace or anything, is to limit God’s gracious power in our lives and in the life of the world.

In sum, hear this now, do not misunderstand: the human determination that shines in our pragmatism is no less than a gift from God. But it is a gift that is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. The end of our struggle must not simply be what’s most practical, but the impractical, unfeasible, irrational, imaginative vision of compassion, forgiveness, healing, boundary-breaking transformation that Jesus Christ embodies. God’s grace is pouring out into the world with abandon, giving us the vision to go beyond any simple practical solution to a peace that passes all understanding, a love that knows no end, a healing that takes us all in its grasp and makes us whole.

Do not resign yourself to the stale truth of pragmatism, the dry bread of what’s do-able as the limits of our existence. Because God is at work here, and God’s grace is not constrained by practicality. Keep the vision of Jesus’ healing and transforming word first and foremost in your mind, and harness that pragmatism in service of that vision of God’s reign on earth. Listen for the word that Jesus speaks, the healing Christ offers to all who will receive it. And let us use every ounce of our being to carry every wounded man, woman and child to the one who heals and who forgives, who revives us and transforms us—Jesus the Christ, Son of God and Savior. Come and experience the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and you will be transformed.

Let us pray:
God of Grace and God of Glory, your grace is beyond all expectations. May we open ourselves to experience your love and to be transformed. May we not limit the truth to what we can see and experience, but trust in your power to heal and renew. Use us as your instruments, that we may be faithful friends who bring others to hear the powerful message of Jesus. May we as individuals and as a church, bear witness to your grace in this broken, troubled world.  Amen.

When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home.  So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them.  Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.  And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay.  When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way?  It is blasphemy!  Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves, and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts?  Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?  But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”  And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”