The words you will hear this morning deliver a coherent message, but the version I will post to the Saint James web site will include links to articles, web sites and pictures that will give you a deeper view into the life and times of the New Testament and a fuller sense of the message I am presenting.

On the web you will be able to see drawings and archeological data about Peter's house even as you remember hearing the story from Mark's gospel of the roof being removed so that the paralyzed man's four friends could lower him on a mat .

In the web version of this sermon you will be able to read an article about Corinth at the time of Paul's arrival and see pictures throughout that web site that make the nature of Corinth's society and Paul's challenges there more clear. Not unlike the Episcopal church today there were a variety of voices and views in Corinth.

I will draw parallels between the lessons we have heard and the actions of our Ministry Communities. You will even be able to see a picture of the type of rock to which I'll refer to in my sermon illustration.

Why I have gone to all this trouble…because there is a theme that runs through all three lessons this morning. It is summed up in In the opening lines of the words from the prophet Isaiah: "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"

This theme of the "new thing" does not mean that the love of God waxes and wanes like a lamp in the wind or that the foundations of our faith are going to be swept away and replaced by something else. But we live in the twenty-first century, so we have tools, benefits and challenges that were unknown to earlier ages. Proclamation and Christian education are conditioned by the culture in which people live and so are the possibilities for evangelism. Saint Paul knew this. This knowledge is behind Paul's assertion that to Jews he was a Jew and to the Greeks he was a Greek (1 Corinthians 9:19-25).

We are neither first century Jews nor are we eighteenth century Americans even though our beloved church building dates to that period. God who is unchanging in His regard for us is ever creative in his attempts to reach us. I believe that we are called to be creative in our attempts to reach others. New times call for new ways of proclamation - the message is the same, but the media changes.

When Gutenberg premiered the printing press it changed the church. It changed the world. Gutenberg's efforts made the quill pen industry quake and he made it possible to place the gospel in the hands of the common person. But the printed text is no longer the only game in town. A communications seminar I attended earlier this week made it clear that most people under 25 aren't reading newspapers. They're surfing the internet for their information and news. My interest in technology like the internet, I-pods and cell phones cameras is not just a fascination with gear. It is driven by a desire to reach new people and to proclaim the gospel in new ways and new places so that we may, in Saint Paul's words "win more of them."

We live in a century in which change seem to come faster and faster. But some things never seem to change even over the millennia. We are no more or less distractible than the people in ancient Israel. We have our moments when God is in the front of our mind and on the tip of our tongue and then there are those days when we just do whatever we want having forgotten all about God.

It is that "not paying attention to God" mode that has always been the near occasion of sin. And the weight of our mistakes and missteps have a way of accumulating until the burden of them is intolerable. But God doesn't stop loving us even when we act like fools or worse. In fact God continually desires to save us from ourselves. This is the word Isaiah brought. God was not telling the house of Israel to deny the past, but God was giving them the freedom to move forward from it. For all the good that could be pointed to in the years gone by since Abraham there was also a lengthy list of opportunities lost and various wrong roads pursued. A pack of memories is not always the best traveling companion.

I have traveled a lot in my life. I have seen and done many things. Some people buy souvenirs to remind them of places they have seen. I used to pick up small rocks that would catch my eye when I was in memorable places. I remember one rock in particular. It was an egg shaped piece of snowflake obsidian. It rode in my pocket as I traveled down the AlCan highway from Alaska to the lower forty-eight. It was the beginning of a journey that would take me into Mexico down the Baja peninsula, across the water by ferry to Matzelan, on to Gaudalajara, Mexico City, Oaxaca and over the mountains to Puerto Angel on the southern coast. All along the way I picked up interesting rocks that seemed unique to each setting. None of these rocks were large. But as the trip progressed the rocks accumulated until the weight of them became inconvenient and finally a burden that could fairly be described as intolerable. What to do? I wanted to hold on but I also wanted to be released. A friend helped me lay down my burden and sort out what I valued most. In the end only the snowflake obsidian lay nestled in my hand under the hot Mexican sun. The rest of the rocks were left behind.

Sometimes people need to let go of some of what they have been carrying so that they are free to travel the road ahead. Through his prophet Isaiah, God proclaimed that the weight of old sins and the pattern of the past need not be carried forever. Forgiveness flows like water in the desert. Mercy makes a path in the wilderness. God does new things and hopes that we will too. I did not haul a sack of rocks from Mexico to Monkton and I do not need to carry forward the burden of things done and left undone from early periods in my life either. We do not need to be anchored by our mistakes or missteps or even our previous successes. God is not looking to weigh us down with grief and guilt or to rebuff us with a constant stream of "no's". Saint Paul reminds us that every one of God's promises is a "yes". Every one of God's promises leads to freedom. Not the freedom to do whatever we want but the freedom to be who we are called to be- children of God.

We may get carried to the feet of God by the efforts of others as was the paralyzed man on the mat in Mark's Gospel. But the same freedom, the same "yes" is there for all who will accept it, whether they arrived there by their own efforts or not. Release from paralysis is possible. Forgiveness of sin is possible. We do not need to earn it. It is not a reward for good behavior. It is a gift.

This idea is so different from much of what we witness or experience in everyday life that it is hard to accept. It was hard for the people who witnessed the forgiving and the healing of the paralyzed man to accept. The Greek word that describes their reaction is a term used for a response to events that are beyond normal understanding or comprehension.

Jesus restored the man to normal life. He did not just give him back his mobility, Jesus re-connected the man with his family and his society. In first century Palestine people believed that a man's illness was a punishment for sins he had committed. Jesus removed both topics of conversation by publicly forgiving and healing the man. It was as though Jesus had said to the overflowing household: "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? "

The scribes who would normally have been the ones to interpret the application of the law and possibility of forgiveness were simply bystanders. Jesus not only spoke with authority about scripture, Jesus acted with God's authority in people's lives and things changed. On the one hand this "new thing" was a wonder, on the other it threatened the way things were.

The goal of the godly is to pray, hope and work for the coming of the Kingdom. But we all form ideas of how we think that journey should look. The scribes and the pharisees had some very firm ideas and when God intervened in a new way they decided to kill the messenger rather than hear a message that seemed different than their expectations.

The Good News is that God is not bound by our past. Our sins are forgiven and we do not have to sit paralyzed by fear. The bad news is that God is not bound by our past and we may be surprised by the emergence of new ideas, or the arrival of new people. If we like sitting still we may be disturbed by a God who is prone to giving admonitions to rise up and walk. But let's consider the source.

When we are rankled by change or leery of new ideas let us try not to kill the messenger. We are not asked to embrace every notion that comes down the pike but we are told to be loving as we sift out that which is of God and that which is not.

The collect of the day counseled "O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you."

Let us listen for the words and look for the fruit that announces the power and presence of God for God is the source of love and our life. That presence is all around us- in the face of the stranger as well as in the lives of our friends. God is not just the rock of ages but new every morning. New things are springing forth, and as we perceive them I pray that we may be willing to pick up our mats and walk.