Psalm 32, Isaiah 43:18-25, 2 Corinthians 1:18-22, Mark 2:1-12
Healing the Body and the Soul
Chuck Swindoll in his book "The Grace Awakening" had some interesting things to say about our needs and what God might have provided to meet them. Expanding on Swindoll’s suggestive words, I would render his thoughts like this:
If our greatest need had been lack of information, God would have sent us an educator. If our greatest need had been our lack of technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been poverty, God would have sent us a philanthropist. If our greatest need had been our boredom, God would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need was forgiveness, So God sent us a Savior!
What we find in today’s gospel lesson would surely be summed up in words similar to what Swindoll has offered us. We might add to his list the one more thing: if our greatest need had been our illnesses or our infirmities, God would have sent us a healer.
There is a tension that runs through the opening scenes of Mark’s gospel, a tension between what Jesus had in mind for his mission, and what the people who heard him felt was their greatest need. As we have seen over the past couple of weeks, Jesus’ early ministry in Capernaum was routinely overwhelmed by the sick and the demon possessed who found in Jesus one who could relieve them of their suffering.
At one point, he departs Capernaum for surrounding cities, so that he can preach. But, the crowds following him out into the wilderness. Last week, you will recall, Jesus tried to get turn a compassionate miracle of healing into a witness concerning Himself – not as a miracle worker, but as the promised Messiah. He tried to do this by healing a leper, warning him to tell no one what had happened, but to go instead to the priests of Israel and to offer the sacrifices which the Law of Moses prescribed when a leper was cleansed. But, that too failed, for the man noised it about and Jesus couldn’t even get into town.
In today’s gospel lesson, we find that the furor seems to have quieted down a bit, for Jesus is now back in Capernaum. The text we heard read says “he was in the house,” and most commentators note that this is an idiom for “he was at home.” I don’t know that what Mark describes here could have taken place in an ordinary home – certainly not in one that would have been the size the widow Mary could have afforded. And, so many think the scene is not Jesus’ home, but rather the local synagogue. That would explain, also, the presence of the Scribes when Jesus is teaching them. Luke notes that those present include Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem.
At any rate, Jesus is doing what he had been wanting to do all along – to teach the people. And there were people aplenty! So many that the door was packed. If there were windows, I imagine they were filled with onlookers as well. For once, Jesus had their attention and he wasted no time preaching the Word to them.
But, on the fringes of the crowd, here come five men – one of them a paralytic. How paralyzed he is, we do not know. Certainly he could not walk. And the fact that he was carried on a kind of cot or sling by four other men suggests that he may have been what we call a quadriplegic – someone paralyzed from the neck down. There was no way they were going to get to Jesus through that crowd. But, they figure out another way – they go up to the roof, which was evidently thatched, and they dug through it, until they had a hole big enough to lower the man down through.
It must have made an interesting scene inside the synagogue or inside the dwelling – whichever it was. I’m sure some would have wanted to go outside and make a stop to it, but they had the same problem – the crowds were surrounding the building. Those on the far outside could not get in, and those on the inside could not get out. So there was nothing for it – Jesus and everyone else just had to wait until the chunks of roof had stopped falling, a gap had opened up, and a paralytic was lowered on mat into the midst of the room.
You know, in view of what Mark has already shown us about Jesus’ ministry up to this point – I don’t know that I would have expected what Mark tells us next. I would have expected Mark to tell us that Jesus saw yet another case where his mission was being derailed, that his preaching grinding to a stop, because a pitiful wreck of a man was appealing for his mercy. But, instead, Mark tells us that Jesus saw their faith.
It’s interesting that Jesus saw “their” faith – not just the paralytic. Indeed, we don’t know for sure that the paralytic had any faith in Jesus. But, there is no question about the four men! They knew who could heal the sick, and cast out demons, and cleanse lepers. Their faith was in Jesus. No question about it, and whether their paralytic friend believed in Jesus or not, they did, and what they were doing made that crystal clear. So, Mark tells us that Jesus saw their faith in Him to heal their friend.
And what does Jesus say? “Be thou healed?” No. He stuns everyone by saying to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven you.”
I bet you could have heard a pin drop. No one says anything, but you wouldn’t have to listen very hard to hear the wheels beginning to whir inside everyone’s heads.
For one thing, Jesus’ words were unexpected. Remember, his reputation in Capernaum up to this point is as a miracle worker, a healer of diseases, a mighty exorcist. All manner of human ills – mental and physical – find their cure by the word of this man. If he had said, “Be thou healed of your paralysis” no one would have been shocked. Overjoyed, yes. Surprised? No. He had already done something similar to this scores, maybe hundreds of times already. But, “your sins are forgiven you?” This was something new!
And while it may have been quiet as a mouse, while everyone waited for the other shoe to drop, the faces of the Pharisees and Scribes was plain enough. Jesus knew what they were thinking – “Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Indeed! And, here we see our Lord’s mastery of the teaching moment. Quite apart from having his teaching interrupted, Jesus takes the occasion to make a point about himself that it would be difficult to make otherwise.
Here we need to remember something about sin and sickness, about moral corruption and physical incapacity. In that day, immense illness was always considered to be a sure sign of God’s judgment on sin. Everybody got sick, and ordinary sickness – while it might be God’s judgment, might just be the common lot of a fallen men living in a fallen world.
But, a man born blind! Here was a calamity out of the ordinary. Or leprosy – where the leper’s body literally rotted away on his bones! Or paralysis such as this man experienced – utter immobility. Surely such a person was guilty of great crimes against God, even if no one could name them. God knew them, and God was just. Great calamity falls on great sinners.
Today, the world thinks rather the opposite. There are a number of great personal disasters that befall people which a reasonable man would plausibly link to some sin. Addiction to alcohol is a common one. Addition to any number of currently popular drugs. Or sexually transmitted diseases. These lead to all kinds of suffering, and in a vast majority of the cases, the suffering is a direct result of the folly or sin of those who are suffering. Not in every case, of course. A baby born with a heroin addiction suffers greatly because of his mothers’ sins, not his own. But, the usual pattern today is exactly the opposite of what we see in Jesus’ day. In that day, great suffering was an obvious sign of great sin.
And, so, what was the man’s greatest need? For a healer? or for a savior? What would help him the most? To walk out of there under his own power? Or to have his sins forgiven? Jesus knew the answer, and so did everyone else. I do not think for a minute that “Your sins are forgiven you” sounded strange because no one thought the man was a sinner. Quite the contrary. Here, surely, was a great sinner.
And, so why didn’t the man’s friends ask Jesus for the forgiveness of his sins? Well, maybe they already had. Maybe the man himself had pleaded for the forgiveness of his sins. Or maybe not. We don’t know. But we do know what Jesus said – “My son, your sins are forgiven you!” And the shock to everyone’s system wasn’t what Jesus said, but rather this – that it was Jesus who said it.
And, so the theologically astute in the crowd – the Pharisees, and Scribes – they reasoned in their hearts, “Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Indeed. And He just did it in front of everyone! But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, “Why do you reason about these things in your hearts? 9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’? 10 But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralytic, 11 “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” 12 Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
To their credit, it appears that the crowd assembled around Jesus began to see what they had not seen before. Their amazement couldn’t have been that Jesus healed a man for he had been doing that over and over and over again ever since he appeared in synagogue in Capernaum for the first time. No. What they had never seen before this was what Jesus wanted them to see – that He, the Son of Man, had the authority of Almighty God to grant the forgiveness of sins.
In next week’s lectionary, we will skip seven chapters forward in Mark to the transfiguration. It is too bad, that we won’t read what comes next in Mark’s gospel, after this miracle of healing. Because after this healing – a healing not only of the body, but also of the soul – we find Jesus beginning to attract people who are sick in their souls as well as their bodies.
If you keep reading in Mark’s gospel, what you find next is the call of Matthew – a tax collector, someone despised by all Jews as a traitor, a blackguard of the worst sort, someone who consorts with unclean gentiles to oppress God’s people the Jews. Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector to follow him, and Matthew does so. Do you think Matthew had sins that needed forgiving? You’d better believe it. Do you think Matthew understood that Jesus could forgive his sins? Of course he did. He had heard what happened with the paralytic, and that Jesus had not only healed his body, but had granted him forgiveness of his sins. And, what do we find in Mark’s gospel after THAT? Let me read it to you:
Mark 2:15-17: “15 Now it happened, as He was dining in Levi’s house, that many tax collectors and sinners also sat together with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many, and they followed Him. 16 And when the scribes and Pharisees saw Him eating with the tax collectors and sinners, they said to His disciples, “How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners?” 17 When Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Before, Jesus had been attracting the sick and the lame and the demon possessed. Now he was collecting around him tax collectors, and prostitutes. Yes, Jesus healed the sick, but the greatest need of the sick does not arise from the infirmity or illness of their body, but rather the deep sickness of their soul. More than anything else, Jesus came to cure the sickness of sin. Jesus came to take that away the rottenness of guilt. Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.
And, yet, in his mercy and patience, Jesus meets the sinner where he is. So many times, the human wreck does not know his own sin, or if he knows it, he has covered it with a mountain of self-justification, or rationalization, or excuses.
But, he cannot so easily rationalize away the effects of his sin – and so many times the wages of sin are sickness, or calamity, or disaster of so many kinds. THAT a sinner can see, and for that suffering, a sinner will naturally seek relief. Jesus granted that relief; and he directed his disciples to do the same. In the early days of the church there were two things that commended the Christian faith to unbelievers: one was the fearlessness of Christians in the face of death; and another was their graciousness to those in need, particularly the poor, the needy, and the sick.
Behind both of these – the Christian disdain for death and the Christian mercy toward those whose lives, whose very bodies were shipwrecked – behind both Christian virtues we find the foundation of all Christian virtue and all Christian piety – namely, that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And, that with the forgiveness of our sins by the death of Christ on the Cross, all things that are Christ’s are now ours as well.
God grant that whatever our need, whatever trial or suffering we face, we may remember that the greatest of all human needs is met in the forgiveness of Christ for our sins. May be like that paralytic and his friends who found a wonder beyond imagining – that we should be reconciled to God and called his sons by faith in his everlasting Son, Jesus Christ.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
