“What does the Americans with Disabilities Act have to do with forgiveness?”

That was one of the questions I asked a group of people recently. The theme of the morning was forgiveness. We were looking at a couple of stories that Mark tells about Jesus.

In one of them, four friends rip a hole in a roof so they can lower another friend, a man who is paralyzed, through the hole to end up in front of Jesus. Jesus looks at him and tells him that his sins are forgiven.

The house was too packed to get in the usual way. Even if it hadn’t been packed, the man couldn’t have gotten close to Jesus without help.

It makes me wonder: Do there need to be rules to make us have church buildings be accessible? Do there need to be rules to make us have accessible lives?

“Jesus makes house calls. What does that mean for the church?”

At the end of the section, Jesus says that he has come for the sick, not the healthy. He says that while sitting not in the temple, not in a synagogue, but in the house of a tax collector.

What’s that suggest for how his followers might be about his business?

“Rank these four where 1 = most and 4 = least

Jesus tends to be most critical of
__ Social outcasts
__ Close friends
__ Spiritual outcasts
__ Professional clergy”

As I look at this text and others, Jesus is roughest on the professional clergy. He just keeps chipping away at him, perhaps because they keep picking at him. The next group are his close friends, the disciples. He challenges them because he wants them to understand. The group he is gentlest with are the ones that everyone else rejects.

I’m still thinking about my score on this quiz.