Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-july-18-2023
Mark 2:1-12
Jesus Heals a Paralytic
A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2 They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.3 Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them.4 Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. 5 When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,7 “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8 Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9 Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10 But that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . .” He said to the paralytic, 11 “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12 He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
This story is one that’s been the subject of some discussion in our congregation recently, since it was portrayed in an episode of the TV series The Chosen. For my money, the creators of that series did a great job of imagining some of the details of the story that make the text hold together well.
Which is great, because this story from the life of Jesus seems to reveal new facets each time you read it and reflect on it.
Recently, a part of the story I’ve been thinking about is that as Jesus was teaching, there was a group of “teachers of the law” listening to him. Older versions of the Bible used to describe these men as “scribes,” but that suggests that they just copied the scriptures, and the historians say these teachers of the law were more like theological scholars than like copyists.
And the fact that they were hanging around listening to Jesus says that by this point in his ministry, Jesus had gained such a reputation as a preacher and teacher that the theological leaders of the Hebrew religion were turning out to hear him. And in the story, Jesus healed the man physically after the teachers of the law objected to his having declared the man forgiven of its sins. So these Jewish scholars had a real role in the story – they weren’t just spectators.
Another interesting aspect of this story is that it seems to have taken place at Jesus’ own house. Jesus is typically known as “Jesus of Nazareth,” because that was his childhood home, but the scholars say he probably lived in Capernaum as an adult. The passage says that “people heard that he had come home.” So apparently Jesus’ reputation had grown to the point that lots of local people showed up to hear him preach and teach when he got back to town.
Of course, the part of the story that catches our attention is the group of people who came carrying a paralyzed friend. They were so committed to getting their friend to Jesus that when they couldn’t get through the crowd, they climbed up and tore a hole in the roof to lower their friend into his presence. The passage actually says that Jesus “saw their faith,” and then he acted in the life of the paralyzed man. So it’s a story that reminds us that our faith might not just change our own lives – it might also change the lives of people we know and love.
But the part of this story that grabs my attention more and more is that when Jesus looked at the man, it wasn’t his physical paralysis that struck Jesus as his most important problem. I’m sure the friends took the man there to get the paralysis healed, but Jesus had different priorities. It was the man’s sins that Jesus felt called to ‘heal’ first. It was only after forgiving the man’s sins that Jesus turned his attention to healing his physical paralysis.
I suppose it’s true that when those of us who think of ourselves as Christians think of the kind of sins that would need to be forgiven, the first things that come to our minds would be things like stealing or sexual sins. But those might be things that would be impossible for a paralyzed person. So what sins might Jesus have seen in this man’s life? Maybe bitterness about his physical condition? Hatred of the person who caused a paralyzing injury? Or even hatred of God for not answering prayers for healing? Clearly Jesus saw something about the man that struck him as sin.
One of the reasons that part of this story catches my attention is that as I’ve gone on in my life of faith, as I’ve tried to listen more closely to what the Holy Spirit is saying to me, the sins he’s been pointing out are often not what I would have expected.
I suspect most of us have things in our lives we’d like God to ‘heal.’ But this story suggests to me that God’s highest priority for the followers of his Son is to be healed of things that God sees. And that’s apparently the burden of sin we carry around. Whatever it is about ourselves that we think needs to be ‘healed,’ apparently in God’s eyes, it’s less important than the self-inflicted wounds of our sins.
So maybe when we go to God in prayer, we should ask to be shown what there is about us that offends him, and then we should ask for help in turning aside from those things before we ask for anything else about us to be healed.
Let’s pray. Lord, we invite you to look within our hearts and minds, within our very lives, and see those things that most need your healing touch. Heal the wounds we cause ourselves by our own sins, and let our priorities change, so that we are more concerned about those sins than we are about the wounds and sicknesses that are evident to the world. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 83 and 84; I Samuel 19:1-24; and Acts 12:1-17. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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