In one episode of Peanuts, Charlie Brown and Linus were walking along, chatting with one another. Linus said, “I don’t like to face obstacles head on. I think the best way to deal with them is to avoid them. In fact, this is a distinct philosophy of mine. No obstacle is so big or so complicated that you can’t be run away from it!” Linus isn’t the only one, who’d prefer to avoid obstacles. I recall back in an Intro. To Psych. course that the professor recounted an experiment about reactions to obstacles. A group of toddlers were the subjects. Each toddler was taken into a room where the child’s mother sat -- behind a barrier and out of sight. The mother called her child, and each one reacted. Most crawled up to the barrier, may even have tried briefly to push against it or crawl around it, but inevitably either sat down and cried or crawled away. Obstacles can be frustrating. We may not want to face them and, once we do, we may feel overwhelmed and want to avoid them.

There were all sorts of obstacles in our scripture readings, today?

Isaiah talked about making a way in the wilderness. The Judean wilderness is made up of steep hills covered with shale and sharp rocks -- hardly a place for building roadways. The wilderness was a harsh obstacle. Isaiah also spoke of making rivers in the desert. A desert is a tremendous obstacle for a river. Oh, there might be the occasional spring – to form an oasis, but to make a river in the desert where there was none before? An insurmountable obstacle!

In that same Old Testament reading, Isaiah also mentioned another obstacle --sin. Sin is as an obstacle – one that that stands between people and God. In Jewish tradition those impediments to harmony with God could only be overcome by God’s forgiveness. Forgiveness was received only when people took the initiative to make atonement for their sins. The people of Isaiah’s time made atonement by the offerings and sacrifices they gave God. And yet, Isaiah says of God, “You did not call upon me... You have not brought me burnt offerings, or honored me with your sacrifices... and yet I will not remember your sins.” Forgiveness without atonement? Impossible. Unwillingness to make atonement for sin was an insurmountable obstacle to forgiveness.

The Gospel reading mentions obstacles too. There was that man in Capernaum who couldn’t get around. He was paralyzed. His paralysis stood as an obstacle to his mobility, and to his ability to get to Jesus for help. When the man’s friends carried him to Jesus, another obstacle stood in the way. They couldn’t get him into the house. It was filled to overflowing -- blocked by other people. That congestion stood as an obstacle. They took to the roof, but then that roof stood in their way -- another obstacle. Ah, but they were a determined lot. They started to tear away that obstacle. Houses back then, were rudimentary post and beam structures. They laid palm branches over the beams, and on top of the branches they packed a layer of clay. It would have been hard work to chip away at the dried clay and then to tear a hole in the underlying branches large enough to slide the stretcher through, but once the work was under way it wouldn’t have taken long.

Of course, if you’d been the owner of that house you might have hoped that another obstacle might have prevented them -- concern for your house. What about the roof -- your roof -- what about consideration for the damage and for the hard work it would take to get it back in shape. Shouldn’t common respect for another person’s private property have been an obstacle? This story began with an interesting detail. It said that people heard that Jesus was at home. That might well have been Jesus’ own house, but instead of letting their callousness to his home stand in the way, Jesus overcame the obstacle of indignation. Instead, He responded to the man’s need and his friends’ faith and hard work rather than their destructiveness. What did He say? Oh, yes. “Your sins are forgiven.” But that raised another obstacle -- tradition. The religious gatekeepers presented that obstacle, saying -- “You can’t do that. It’s blasphemy. A man can’t forgive sins - only God can.” Tradition can be an obstacle. Even memory can be an obstacle. When Jesus so much as said, “You don’t like that I said, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ How about this? ‘Stand up, take your litter, and go home.’” The paralyzed man faced his obstacles of memory -- the memory that he was unable to do what Jesus told him to do. Then, when he did, the crowd was confronted with their memory and said, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.” Memory of what can and can’t be done often presents a formidable obstacle.

Obstacles, obstacles, obstacles. These stories are full of obstacles, but isn’t that true of our lives as well. We face our own obstacles virtually every day – large and small -- impediments to our relationships, to our success at work, impediments to ideal child rearing, to our health and mental energy, impediments to our spiritual growth and to our relationship with God. Like Linus, we may want to avoid them and run away. Like those toddlers in that experiment, we may simply want to sit down and cry or grumble about the obstacles we encounter. Like the Scribes we may think, “It can’t be done, or shouldn’t.” Like the crowds at Jesus’ door we may not have any previous experiences to draw from in dealing with them. We may actually wish that we’d never encounter any obstacles -- that we’d always have a free and easy time of life and that everything would always go our way. But it won’t happen. Obstacles are part of life -- each and every person’s life -- but that’s true for God as well. The fact of the matter is that we’re God’s main obstacles -- and what most stubbornly blocks God from accomplishing His purposes is our heart. I don’t know if God ever becomes discouraged coming up against obstacles, but I do know that God is forever drawn to us and to the heart of that within us which strives to block Him.

In today’s scripture readings God consistently tackled the obstacles that seemed insurmountably to stand in the way. He came up with the idea of trying new things, saying, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing.” He’s full of ideas for trying new things -- making a way in the wilderness, making rivers in the desert, causing people who are tired of Him to offer Him praise, forgetting the sins of those who don’t atone for them, setting free those who are paralyzed by their conditions -- physically, perhaps, but even more important -- in their minds and their spirits -- sending Jesus to forgive sins. God specializes in tackling obstacles with new ways of breaking through to us. Actually, all of the images in today’s readings -- wilderness, desert, sin, crowds, roofs, paralysis, traditions -- they’re all about God doing the unexpected and improbable to get through to people like us. No obstacle is too much for God or to help us overcome. Once God does -- get through to us, I mean -- His purpose is clear. Isaiah makes it clear. He says, “...I have formed for myself (a people) so that they might declare my praise.” Declaring God’s praise means honoring and worshipping God in our lives -- not merely by thanking God when things go easily well for us, but even more important, by choosing to honor and praise God when things don’t go our way. We honor God when we face obstacles and praise him anyway. We honor God by choosing our courses in life -- what we’ll shoulder -- not on the basis of what will be most expeditious for us, easy, or rewarding to us, personally -- but by following Christ -- even when it means running up against the very obstacles that most daunt us -- the ones we most fear.

We exist to honor God, especially when we encounter obstacles along the way. We exist to do God’s work in this world -- even, perhaps especially, when it’s hard to do. That means taking risks for God -- taking risks with God -- in a spirit of faith and love. It means putting behind us the accustomed things and setting our hands, in faith, at doing new things, shoulder to shoulder with God -- shoulder to shoulder with Christ. What things? Only God and you know what things in your personal life, but you need to ask. As a church, though, it means facing and overcoming obstacles with faith -- seeing the possibilities rather than fixating on difficulties when it comes to God’s mission for us in this world – to make Christ know in everything we say and do together, without avoiding what’s hard for us.