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

“We have never seen anything like this,” they say at the last verse of today’s story. I would have said that pretty much from the first verse! I’ve never been anywhere where they did that: remove the roof, let somebody down. That’s what I would I have started saying: “I’ve never seen anything like this!” The gospels are full of things of which we must declare: “We haven’t seen anything like this!” Not just the things that Jesus does, but the things that other people do! I have to tell you, I’ve lived three quarters of a century and more, and I expect maybe in the next quarter of a century, I’ve never seen anybody walk into someone’s dining room and start crying over someone’s feet, washing them with her hair. We’ve never seen anything like this! People do different things when the Lord comes into their presence.

Now last Sunday, beloved, we began a consideration of the moral structure of the human being and the moral structure of the human mind. I’m talking about these things because this is a season of repentance. The very notion of repentance presumes that we are moral agents. To repent means a number of things, one of which is a norm, the presupposition of a norm, to which all of us are beholden and according to which all of us will be judged.

Now last Sunday we commenced these reflections with a critical examination of three moral fallacies, which, because they threaten the proper formation of the conscience, make the Gospel itself almost impossible to hear. We reflected on the fallacy of presupposed historical maturity. Talked about that at some length; in fact, it was at least half of last week’s sermon. Second, the fallacy of privileged social presumption. And third, the most brief point and the one I should have given more attention to, but will in the future: the fallacy of philosophical scientism.

Today, however, I want to move away from these fallacies and attend to the moral order itself. I propose to do this in three stages. First, I ask you to come with me and walk into this one-roomed house. I ask you to sit with me for a spell and watch the brief drama that unfolds in the story we have just heard. As we come into this house, we must shove ourselves into it because it’s very crowded. It’s very crowded; even around the door, people are grabbing. It’s very, very difficult. So it’s hard, but let’s shove our way into this house while other people are sitting and listening as Jesus preaches the word.

Before we start listening to the preaching of the word, I ask you simply to consider the room itself. I’m trying to take you through this story, well, the way I think one should read the gospels, read any work of literature. Go into the story, shut yourself. I find this an absolutely haunting experience. Many, many nights I’ve fallen asleep just trying to get into that room.

We observe, first of all, that it is quite quadrangular. It has corners shaped at right angles. In other words, it’s something structured by mathematics. These angles are formed by confining walls. It’s a way of limiting the horizon. The Lord has made the round world so that our horizon is always limited. I’ve always found it astounding: we can see further into space than we can straight ahead.

Anyway, these angles are formed by confining walls. The area is limited. Step into it and to accept limitation. If someone wants to look outside the room, at the world outside, he must do so through a window which also has four walls and four angles. That is to say, the entire experience is one of confinement within mathematical proportions. To have entered this room is to narrow one’s perspective, to place it within rational dimensions. The room constricts man’s vision into a rational shape.

We observe that nothing in this room exists in the world without man. Beavers have been working at this for a long time, but there’s never been a lodge constructed with rooms at right angles. No bird shapes her nest this way, not even the mighty eagle, whose nest, I am told, is twelve feet in diameter. I never actually saw this myself. Nature doesn’t really know about these things. Eggs do not come in a square shape. It would be much more easily packaged if they did. You see, living things don’t go into these kind of shapes, and up till now we’ve discovered no womb constructed with right angles.

The shape of this room is constructed on the form that projects the mind of man. These shapes do not take place in nature alone; they take place within the human mind. Man’s mind is marked by rationality; therefore what he builds carries the impress of mathematics. This room is constructed with the human being in mind. It’s a rational place, and rational pursuits are discernible there. For that reason, this room signifies the rational structure of human culture.

Now the naturalist does not recognize the significance of this shift. He sees only an evolution between the nest of the bird and someone’s home. The naturalist fails to perceive the unique rationality expressed in the human room. He discerns no qualitative step from the cave to the castle. God preserve such rooms! I can remember so many of them, but some especially stand out in my mind. The humblest cottage I ever visited in rural France, I confess, was a work of art. It is very sad that people go to France and just stay in Paris. It’s just sad. It’s sad, very sad. It’s like visiting the United States and thinking that New York is somehow typical. I mean, Paris is a wonderful place, but I had the good fortune, many decades ago, to live in rural France.

Picturing in my mind’s eye, I can see it yet: this little house sitting in the middle of a vegetable garden, the open timbers of the kitchen ceiling, the rustic table that supported a hot stew with local cheese and fresh bread. This domestic room embodied a moral universe. Any human being from any period of history would recognize it as a home. It incorporates a history. It preserves an inheritance. This constructed room makes the case against the naturalist.

Why do I keep talking about this? Because naturalism and scientism is the demonic philosophy in which everybody here has been educated. It is the dominant philosophy of every college campus with which I am familiar. It is at the heart of what’s taught in the American university, the American high school, and the American grade school. The presupposition that all things can be understood and must be understood on the basis on the only thing of which we have certainty, namely, empirical data and mathematics.

When I think of the number of campuses over the last 60 years where literature itself is taught as a branch of psychology or as a branch of something else! Not everybody does that, obviously, but when they don’t do that, then the sciences are going to look down on the arts, and that often happens. I’ve been exposed to that myself, when the scientists tend to look down on the arts. But you see, the thesis of scientism is that everything can be known for certain, only what can be known for certain. If one can treat literature as just fantasy, just imagination—don’t take it seriously. You see, what we must take most seriously in our inheritance is our literature. Our literature goes to the structure of our souls.

But you see, how would you prove that the only thing you can know for sure and the only thing you can prove is what you know empirically and by mathematics? Can you prove that empirically? Can you prove that by mathematics? And why should you have to prove anything anyway? Aren’t there supposed to be some things that are self-evident?

You see, the naturalist will not understand this room. This room embodies an atmosphere—an atmosphere. And this atmosphere is called culture. This room represents what it means to be a human being. We haven’t even put Jesus in the room yet! I’m still looking at the room. The room affirms moral commitments that are not reducible to the instincts of an animal. This room preserves values that are beyond the selfish.

In short, the shape and atmosphere in which Jesus teaches human beings is human culture, and human culture, in the words of the sociologist Christian Smith: “Human culture is always moral order.” Human cultures everywhere are moral orders. Human persons are merely and inescapably moral agents. Human actions are necessarily constituted and propelled moral practices. And human institutions are inevitably morally infused configurations, of rules and resources. And human persons, Smith goes on, near universally live in social worlds that are thickly webbed with moral assumptions, beliefs, commitments, and obligations.

Why have we lost that? We’ve lost it, I believe, because we now have a culture which is based on which each individual thinks is his right, his due, and he is the center of his universe! My brothers and sisters, if we just manage to get some history into our systems, we know that this is a brand-new thing on the face of the earth, and it is the worst thing that has ever happened! The baby-killing Carthaginian culture was miles ahead of us, way ahead of us, in terms of ordinary human assumptions, and these people killed babies for a living! For this reason, there’s nowhere a human being can go to escape the moral order. There’s no way to be human except through the moral order.

Now this is the setting in which Jesus teaches. The properly structured moral universe is the proper context in which to receive what Jesus has to tell us. One accepts the law of God placed in the nature of man before he accepts anything else. Here we Christians are now struggling to preserve just this, that someone could actually come to church, actually profess Christ, and deny the moral structure of the world—it’s unthinkable! That there should be some debate among Christians about what is the nature of marriage, between man and woman, there should be some debate among Christians!? We’re nowhere near ready to hear the Gospel if we’re having that debate.

This is the setting, this moral setting [in] which Jesus teaches. The properly structured moral universe is the context in which we receive what he has to tell us. This, the arena of moral truth, is the atmosphere into which the teaching of Jesus is delivered. If this atmosphere is not recognized, if someone does not discern how this human room differs from the bear’s cave and the nest of the eagle, the hearing of the Gospel is impossible. If man is merely the evolved descendant of some primitive animal, if it is presupposed that reflective thought and deliberative will are merely the products of neurological agitation, there’s nothing more to be said! And Jesus may as well leave that room to those who are doomed to die in it, to spend their lives on this earth and never become human beings. That can’t be the end of the story, however. Let’s go to point two.

While we’re sitting in this room, listening to the teaching of Jesus, let us be distracted by a curious activity taking place on the roof and the ceiling above us. This room appears to be invaded by what used to be called outside agitators. I’m from the South; I remember that expression very well: “You’ve got all these outside agitators.” That means people from New England and Canada, coming down and causing trouble. [Laughter] Anyway, these are outside agitators.

They’re removing the roof and the ceiling, which probably in this room are the same thing. They’re lowering into our midst a paralyzed man living on a pallet, suspended from on high. These intruders, however, are doing something eminently suitable to the purpose of the room. They seem to be destroying human culture; actually, they’re perfecting it. They are endeavoring to assist another human being in his need. That is to say, they are doing a moral and unselfish thing. Even as they remove the roof from this room, they are uncovering a truth at the very heart of this room. These are men of compassion and mercy. They are not acting from self-interest. They are succoring another human being. They are turning this room into a hospital, and what could be nobler than this? What could be more human?

When Jesus sees these men of mercy, when he looked up at them, what does he see? Mark tells us this morning. “And, looking up, he saw their faith.” Jesus regards a work of compassionate service, and he discerns faith. Today’s gospel story illustrates what we heard some weeks ago in the account of the Last Judgment.

Third, what did Jesus first address when he’s confronted with this situation? If Jesus were the social activist that so many people in mainline American religion believe him to be, the first thing he would have done was take care of that man’s physical need; it’s the first thing he would have done. But notice that’s not what he does. We observe that he does not begin by healing the man’s paralysis but by healing his soul. His first point of attention is the moral order.

You see, because within this rational room there is also sin; there is also failing. Man cannot by himself simply adhere to the rational order. Man needs help—man needs big help. And Jesus commences this new conversation by forgiving the man’s sins. You see, my brothers and sisters, if the world is not a moral place, if it has not been structured on moral lines, then there’s no such thing as sin; there’s social failures, but there’s no such thing as sin. But Jesus inserts into this moral atmosphere the recognition of the fall. And Jesus deals with this fall before he turns his attention to anything else. He reconciles this sick man to God, because what afflicts his spirit is more serious than this affliction of the flesh.

The proper primacy in human culture is the kingdom of God. A few of you, or just a handful, have deeply edified me over the past 16 years when you went through serious physical crises, facing cancer, facing disaster, facing what appeared to be very bleak days in the immediate future. And those of you of whom I am speaking, when you came to me to speak, were far more concerned about the state of your souls than you were about the state of your bodies, and, beloved, that is as it should be. You see, Jesus reconciles the sick man first of all to God, because what afflicts him is far more serious in his soul.

The proper primacy in human culture is the kingdom of God. If such is not the case, the mathematical measurements of the human room are utterly dead and sterile. Indeed, the worst architecture ever conceived in this history of the world was constructed by atheistic governments during the past century. The sterility of such architecture is a symptom of the problem. Human culture cannot be left to its own devices, because it has no way adequately to deal with sin. Sin is properly dealt with only by the Son of man, who has power on earth to forgive sins, and he can forgive sins because he died on the cross to take away the sins of the world.

What Jesus teaches in man’s house, then, is inseparable from his authority to forgive sins. And Jesus’ claim to this authority is what transforms the house into the Church, for the Church is the institution which God places in this world to deal with the problem of sin. The Church is the place where we carry people, to which we carry people. And why do we carry them here? So they can be forgiven of their sins. The Church is a house of compassion and mercy. It is the one place where the human moral order can be healed of the death-dealing effects of our murderous history. The Church is that domicile in Egypt where Joseph is reconciled to his brothers. It is the moral home where each of us has recourse to the mercy of Christ. Amen.