The Healing of Community
An Orderly Account: Encountering Jesus in the Gospel of Luke
Luke 5:12-26
The Text
12 While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” 13 And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. 14 And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” 15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
17 On one of those days, as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus, 19 but finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus. 20 And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” 21 And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” 22 When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, “Why do you question in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 24 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” 25 And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. 26 And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, “We have seen extraordinary things today.”
Introduction:
Let me tell you a few things you already know.
Charlotte is a fast-paced city.
No, it’s not LA or NYC, but Charlotte is not a lazy town. We don’t live in Uptown, but even here in suburbia, we know what it’s like to “go, go, go.”
Our church members are spread over a wide geographic area. If you want to know, virtually every regular attender of our church lives west of Highway 160 (Steele Creek), and south of Highway 49. The vast majority live over the bridge in South Carolina.
Because HWY 49 is the main thoroughfare connecting Charlotte and the communities here on the border, travelling to other parts of town is a gigantic dice roll.
Just out of curiosity, I want to take a quick poll.
If you live in North Carolina raise your hand.
Ok, what about South Carolina?
Raise your hand if you live in Charlotte.
Now Tega Cay or Fort Mill.
Now Lake Wylie.
Now Clover.
Now York.
Any Belmont?
Anywhere else?
Raise your hand if you aren’t sure where you live.
Ok, our church currently has 91 members, 94 regular attenders (meaning, you aren’t a member, but you gather with us for worship at least 2x a month), and 19 visitors (meaning you’ve showed up at least once in the last 3 months). (Thank you Nelly DeCapua for the data.)
204 people.
Do you know how many people live within a 15-mile radius of our church campus? AI estimated around 300,000.
So, the total number of everyone who has been at LWBC in the last 3 months makes up 6/100ths of a percent of the people who live within 15 miles of this campus.
Ok. Where is he going with all of this? Here’s my point:
Because of where we live…
because of the bare facts of the highways, the lake, the geographical sprawl…
it’s really easy to go from Sunday to Sunday and not bump into one another.
Because we live in Charlotte, because we’re spread out in a fast-paced city, you have to go out of your way to build intentional community with other Christians.
It takes effort, scheduling, calendars, creativity, and commitment.
Raise the Need, State the Destination, Give Signposts:
And hear me… you need community with other Christians. Yes, God uses large gatherings like our Sunday worship and our Bible studies to shape us and teach us.
But growth in grace, wisdom, and character are all played out through deep relationships and in community where the implications of the gospel are worked out practically in our lives- in ways that no large venue can replicate.
Today, we’re in Luke 5:12-26. Jesus miraculously heals two men. One is a leper. The other is a paralytic.
These two stories teach us many things… but for today I want to show you what they teach us about community.
Specifically, they show us…
- Community in Action
- Community Needed
- Spiritual Community Restored
- Community in Action
In the healing of the paralytic, we see an incredible picture of community in action.
- 18 – Some men come to Jesus, carrying a man on a bed who needs healing.
We aren’t told much about these men. We don’t know their names. We don’t know their occupations. We’re just told they are carrying a paralytic man on a bed.
Now, it’s fair to assume that the paralytic man was one of their close friends, but truth be told, we don’t even know that for certain. This man could have been a close friend. He could have been a neighbor. They could have all been brothers.
All we know is that here they are, each taking time out of their day to give this paralytic man a chance for healing. They’ve heard of Jesus power, his authority, his ability to perform miraculous healing.
They know of someone in their town who cannot walk, and so, instead of working overtime… instead of scheduling a trip… they’ve all coordinated their schedules in order to help this one individual get to Jesus.
And they’re so determined to help this man that when they cannot get into the room where Jesus is teaching, they go up to the roof.
Most buildings at this time were flat roof with stairs on the exterior of the building. They tear away the tiles from the ceiling and then lower this guy to the feet of Jesus.
Now, I want to tell you this is an incredible picture of community. Several men, showing immense consideration and compassion for their fellow man.
Over the last few centuries, the word “community” has been butchered in our culture.
Most of our modern communities are transactional in nature.
- We get together with people for the purposes of networking.
- Who knows who?
- How can I advance my career, my brand, or my personal relationships?
- In our culture, “community” has become a technique.
We spend time with people who will open doors for us. Our friendships and social relationships are too often based on their usefulness to our goals.
The same thing has happened in the church.
It is now natural for us to think of “community” as a program the church might offer that we can partake in the same way we might choose to partake in an outreach program or a Bible study.
So, there’s the outreach ministry, the Bible study ministry, and the community or small groups ministry.
In other words, “community” has become a menu item at church that you might add to your plate.
But look at these men in the passage… community isn’t a program. Community certainly involved “togetherness,” but for them community was far more than mere socializing, or networking, or a program to attend.
For these men, on this particular day, community looked like getting this man to Jesus.
- Community isn’t about their personal goals.
- It’s not about networking for the purpose of advancement.
- For them, community means seeing the needs of an individual and working together to meet the need.
Community isn’t a program at the local synagogue to provide social activities.
Community was having open eyes to needs. Community was coordinating to meet those needs. For these men, community wasn’t transactional at all. Rather it was sacrificial. This took time away from their schedule. This wasn’t about career advancement; it was about having your eyes on the lookout for the advancement of others. These guys were looking out for one another. They were sensitive to one another’s needs.
Think about it… this paralytic man never makes it to Jesus without this small community of men to carry him there. His healing depends on the compassion and care of others.
That’s what true Biblical community looks like. A genuine concern and commitment to others. Considering how we can work together to get one another to Jesus Christ.
Ok. We see community in action. But let’s also see…
- Community Needed
If you go back up to verse 12, you see the healing of the man with leprosy. And let me tell you… this story is the polar opposite of the healing of the paralytic.
In the healing of the paralytic, you have a man surrounded and supported by human community. But here, you see a man alone, isolated, cut off.
Listen, this man shows us that human community is not just bonus. It’s essential. We need community.
What do we know about this man.
First, we know that he was diseased.
It’s important to note that in the ancient world, the word leprosy referred to a variety of skin diseases, not just the modern pathology we know of as Hanson’s disease.
So, even though we don’t know exactly what was afflicting this man, we know it was some sort of disease that produced visible sores on his skin. Luke says he was “full of leprosy.” In other words, there was no mistake that this man had leprosy.
I won’t go into vivid physical descriptions of this man’s condition, but just consider this… we tend to think of leprosy primarily as a physical malady.
We think of the lesions, the physical pain. But in ancient Israel, the physical suffering of a leper was almost considered a secondary issue.
The primary suffering was social. If you had leprosy, you were cut off from the community.
If you go back to Leviticus 13 there’s an entire chapter on how a community would handle someone who was leprous.
- They had to be put out of the city.
- They couldn’t contribute to the community.
- The only thing they could give the community was disease, and therefore, they had to be quarantined. The only way for the community to be protected was for them to be isolated.
Leviticus 13:45 says:
45 “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ 46 He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp.
And when this man comes to Jesus, notice what he doesn’t ask for. He doesn’t say, “Lord, if you will, you can heal me.” Rather he says, “You can make me clean.”
What’s he saying?
He’s saying, “You can bring me back into community.” This man, out of an abundance of caution for the safety of the community has been forced to live in sub-human conditions.
We don’t know how long he’d been in this forced isolation, but now, he’s broken all of the rules… he’s run into town. And he isn’t just asking to be physically restored, he’s sayin…
He’s saying to Jesus, “You can give me back my humanity. You can bring be back into community.”
Do see this? This man is a walking, breathing picture of how desperately we all need human community.
As bad as his physical health is, there is something more basic, more fundamental to him than even his biological well-being.
Jeremiah Johnson is one of my favorite movies. It’s about a man who goes West to escape the Mexican War. He’s seen things he wants to forget, so he decides he’s going to isolate himself. He’ll have no attachments. He doesn’t want any responsibility.
And what happens? Before long he has to take in a boy who’s lost his father, and an Indian chief gives him his daughter as a wife. And though he tries his best not to get entangled… in the end this boy and his wife become his very reason for living.
What’s the point? You can’t escape human community. You need it.
Listen, you may not feel it right now, but you need community. Human beings were made for community. You desperately need deep and supportive human relationships. You need friendships.
John Donne wrote the famous poem:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
I know I’m belaboring this point… but stay with me… Community is one of the main themes of the Bible.
When God made Adam and put him in the garden, he said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” God made a companion for Adam. And, immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, one of their sons killed his brother.
And for the rest of Bible, God promises to restore broken community.
God’s promise to Abraham wasn’t a mere personal or individual salvation. He promised to build out of Abraham a people… a community.
What is the church? It’s the gathering of the redeemed. It’s the family of God. It’s the kingdom. It’s community.
And look at what Jesus does for this man who is leprous. The man says, “If you will, you can make me clean.” How does Jesus then heal him? Verse 13:
And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him
He doesn’t just speak a word. And we know Jesus can heal with just a word.
There are other miracles in the gospels in which Jesus doesn’t even need to be in the same town as the sick person. He just says a word and the person is healed.
But here, Luke is careful to tell us that Jesus touches the man. Why?
Jesus didn’t touch the man because Jesus needed to. He touched him because this leprous man needed it.
This was the first human contact this man would have experienced in possibly years.
Listen to me… the application of this point of the sermon isn’t to go physically touch someone. And all the introverts rejoiced. We aren’t going to ask you to hug someone on your way out. We aren’t going to conclude the service by all holding hands.
But do you see yourself in this man? No, you don’t have leprosy. That’s not the comparison. But every person in this room desperately needs community.
Think of the men with the paralytic…
You need people like that in your life. Looking out for you.
You need to be that kind of person in someone else’s life, looking out for them.
This is what the church is. It’s a community. It’s a fellowship. It’s a partnership in the gospel.
We see community in action. We see the need we all have for community.
- Spiritual Community Restored
Come back down to v. 17, the story of the paralytic. There are several ironies in this passage.
First irony: the men bring this paralytic on his bed to Jesus so that Jesus can miraculously heal him. They want his physical restoration. And instead, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.”
I wish, in that moment I could have seen the looks on their faces.
They’ve carried this man to Jesus. They’ve just torn a hole in the roof of a building. They’ve interrupted Jesus’ sermon. They are peering down though this hole. Bewildered faces are staring back up at them. And instead of Jesus healing the man’s legs, Jesus says his sins are forgiven.
“Well, that’s nice Jesus… but it’s not really why we came. It’s not why we did all of this. Sure… we’re grateful for the forgiveness, but we’d really like a fresh set of legs for this guy.”
Jesus is giving us a valuable lesson here. He appears to be insensitive to this man’s obvious needs. Why?
Because he’s telling us… we have a deeper, more fundamental need that we even realize.
All of the miracles in the Bible remind us that we live in a world of disease, demons, hunger and death. All of the miracles are shouting at us, saying, “This world is not the way it’s supposed to be.”
Listen, I don’t mean to make light of this man’s leprosy, or this man’s being a paralytic. Not at all. I certainly do not mean to make light of any trouble or suffering you are facing.
But all of those troubles point us onward to a greater trouble.
And we all know this. Whether or not you are Christian, you know this. There is an ultimate, cosmic restoration that you need. It’s not just that your eyes are going bad, or that your hair is going gray.
Remember the old Joni Mitchell tune, “Woodstock”? CSNY popularized it, but think of the lyrics.
We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
It will do you no good to have a new set of legs if in the end you are estranged from God, your Maker?
You need a restoration of spiritual communion with your Creator.
Second irony in the passage. We’re told that the scribes and the Pharisees begin silently questioning Jesus’ authority.
They secretly accuse Jesus of blasphemy because they rightly know that only God can claim the authority to forgive sins.
They know what Jesus is claiming for himself. And so, he audibly answers their silent accusations by asking them a question:
Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?
Jesus gives us a riddle… he says to us, “Which do you think is harder, healing legs or forgiving sin?” Which is easier? Which is, of course, another way of saying, “Which is harder?” Which is harder, to say, “Walk,” or, “Thy sins are forgiven.”
Now consider this… from a human perspective, it is far easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven,” than it is so say to a paralytic, “Rise and walk.” Why?
If a group of friends tore a hole in our ceiling right now, and let down a paralytic man on a bed right in front of me… which would be easier for me to say?
It would be far easier for me to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” And that’s because it wouldn’t require visible evidence that anything had happened. But if I say, “Rise and walk,” all of a sudden, I’m on the hook. If the man still cannot get up, then I’m a phony.
Jesus says, “Do you not know how much easier it is to say to the unclean man, “You’re clean,” or to the paralytic, “Rise up and walk” than to say to the sinful man, in a stroke, “You’re forgiven”?
It didn’t cost Jesus a single thing to restore this man’s legs. But for Jesus Christ, who is the Divine Son and cosmic judge… for him to pardon this man’s sins…and let this man go free, was to agree take his place.
And that’s what he did at the cross. Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God took the place of sinners, bore the wrath of God, so that you and I can be forgiven of our sins.
And all we must do to be forgiven is simply believe in Christ and rest in what he has done. That’s what true faith is. Admitting your own sinful neediness and looking to Christ in faith.
Now, before we finish up, I want to give you a few applications.
- Friend, if you are not a Christian, understand that your biggest need at this moment is a restored spiritual communion with God. That’s not something you and earn for yourself. It’s graciously given.
- Maybe you’ve fallen prey to the cultural view of community. Perhaps, for you, relationships are first and foremost transactional. Maybe you don’t commit to relationships until they’ll be a net gain for your goals. Or maybe you see community as optional. You see it as an option on the menu, but not essential. Do you see yourself as an island? Listen… you were made for community. And if you want to see real spiritual growth and maturity.
- Begin with staying after service today. Grab a coffee and a cookie. I know it’s Mother’s Day… but our service began at 10:15 instead of 11 so you’ll still beat all the Presbyterians to lunch with Mom.
- Come talk to me about Membership.
- Our gut instinct after hearing a sermon like this at a church is, “What kind of program can we start?” There’s nothing wrong with programs. If you’re a member and feel compelled to start a small group in your home, we’re all for it. But a better question is to ask, “What kind of people must we become such that intentional community isn’t just programmatic for our church… it’s cultural. It’s not just what we do… it’s who we are.” That’s a harder question to answer, because it’s incredibly personal to each of us. But it’s essential that we are asking ourselves this question.
Charlotte will not be slowing down. There will not be less traffic. Our church will still be comprised of people who are spread out.
Yet we all deeply need intentional community.
May God grant us the grace to work for that kind of community that sees the needs of one another and never hesitates in meeting them. May we see the isolated, the lonely, the outcast and move towards them.
May we be a people in action, meeting the needs of community in others, pointing them to the spiritual community they need most.