Sunday, July 13, 2008 
Scripture reading: Mark 1:40 & 2:4
Jesus Cleanses a Leper
1:40 A leper* came to him begging him, and kneeling* he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’
2:4 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.
Sermon Title: "INSIDE THE VELVET ROPE" Sunday, July 13, 2008
Dr. Marvin Hudson: I think all of us are
familiar in one form or another with the image of an
event that is so exciting and so attractive for
whatever kinds of reasons that people have lined up
outside the door, circled the block standing there
waiting, and somebody right at the door has a velvet
rope stretched across. They're letting people in
according to some formula that perhaps is known only
to them, and people desperately want into that place.
In Mark's gospel, Jesus finds himself in that
kind of demand. He heals a man, and it sets off a
chain reaction in which Christ's ability to overcome
something that is desperately a problem in the life of
an individual opens a window of hope and opportunity
for people with all kinds of maladies and conditions
and situations. They begin to flock to Jesus.
In fact, Mark says it this way that as he went out
and began to do this kind of ministry, Jesus could no longer enter
a town openly, but had to stay outside the town in
remote places and yet the people still flocked to him
from everywhere.
Mark tells us about a paralytic that needed healing,
and once again we see an image of an immense crowd that
wanted to be in the presence of Jesus and they mobbed Jesus to the
point that this paralytic was not able to get
close to Jesus. So his inventive friends broke a hole
through the roof and lowered the man down right into the
very presence of Jesus Christ.
I want us to think for a few moments today about
what brought those kinds of crowds to Jesus. It
goes without saying it wasn't that Jesus was
necessarily doing anything gimmiky. There was no
special program that he was offering, and it wasn't
even an entertainment kind of thing.
Jesus was sought out by people
because there was something very key in his
interaction with the crowds. There was an encounter,
a response, and a need was met.
Think about this in terms of the church. Would
it not be a desirable goal on the part of Wesley to be
able to say that what happens in the walls of our
building from week to week, month to month, year to
year is so substantive, so attractive that people
would be lining up around the building that we have to
have somebody there with a velvet rope to let them in
so it's not a mob scene?
Wouldn't it be great that as people are leaving
Wesley after Sunday service they would continue to
seek us out because when they came here.. when they
encountered people with the name Wesley upon them,
they experienced something that was so satisfying, so wonderful,
that it really, really captured
hearts.
Now I will say it's incumbent upon this church
not to assume that we can slop any old thing together
and somehow people ought to honor us with their investment
of time. We need
to make sure that what we do at Wesley is worthy of
somebody saying, hey, keep it going, it's great.
Let's do it again.
What would happen if we were to think about that
next level, that next place that we might go as a
church that is in the model of being so winsome that
it's like the velvet rope where people are lining up
three deep around the building to get in this place.
How risky would we have to be willing to be to let God
do something very powerful, very radical in our minds?
I don't know the answer to that, to be honest
with you. The truth of the matter is there are
churches all over our community that have wonderful
organs, good pianos. Praise bands are almost a dime a
dozen, lots of hymnals, those things are common, but
to really become a place that people say, wow, I've
got to be there, there has got to be a seat somewhere for me, and
I'd be willing to accept standing room only. What
would that type of church and its attendant risk be like?
It might call us to the moment where God is able
to lead us in a way we're not sure just exactly where
the Lord is going. I think there is something
attractive, something enticing about the idea of
following a Lord who simply drew those kinds of groups
to himself.
I'm going to close with this, I'm going to ask
you to join me in prayer that the Lord would lead us
as a congregation in such a way that everything that
we do in ministry, mission, worship and all the rest
would begin to take on the kind of substantive
attractiveness that would cause people to want to find
a place here because it is meeting their needs on the
deepest of levels. In Christ's name, amen.