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March 30, 2003
A Paralytic’s Dilemma
A Paralytic’s Dilemma
Psalter 103: 1-14 / Isaiah 40: 21-31
Luke 5: 17-26
March 30th, 2003
One day, long ago, there was great excitement in the little town of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had come. Jesus who could heal diseases was teaching in a house in one of the neighborhoods.
In those days blind people, and people with leprosy, and people with cancer or diphtheria rarely had any hope of getting well. You got sick, and if it was one of the life-taking sicknesses, you died. If you were a leper, you wasted away in loneliness. If you were paralyzed, hopefully you had people who could do everything for you—for the rest of your life. No sophisticated medical treatment was available then in every town as we have it today. It is no wonder that we so often read in the Gospels that people who were sick or maimed called out to Jesus as He walked by, “Have mercy on me.” Because sickness then was usually the end of the game.
So we read about this fellow in Capernaum who was paralyzed—maybe like Christopher Reeves or Joni Erickson, only we assume he could breathe on his own. Caring for a paralyzed person is a very difficult task. It took several people to care for him.
These care-giver friends brought the paralyzed man to Jesus on a stretcher, only to find they couldn’t get to him because the house where he was teaching was packed solid—wall to wall people. Luke tells us that among the people in the house were Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of the Galilee, Judea, and even Jerusalem. No wonder the house was so full.
Some of these people were there eager to hear Jesus teach. The Pharisees and teachers of the law were there to check him out. I wonder if that made Jesus as nervous as it does me, to think he was being checked out. The one who needed him the most couldn’t even get into the house.
We get an inkling just how desperate this man’s friends were to get the paralytic to Jesus as Luke tells us they went up on the roof and took the tiles off so they could lower him by ropes down in front of Jesus. Debris scattered everywhere over clothes and into their eyes, and then down comes this stretcher with a man lying on it.
Jesus saw more than this needy man on the stretcher before Him. He looked up and saw the four friends who were on the other end of the ropes lowering the stretcher. Luke tells us, “When he saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus understood the dimensions of what was happening.
The room got very quiet. Then Jesus must have heard whispers in the back, as His critics finally heard something they could pounce on. “What kind of blasphemy is this? Who can forgive sins except God?” And the paralytic and his four friends must have had their hearts sink. “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner like everyone else. But please, it was my paralysis I hoped you might do something about!”
I’m reading this into the story, but isn’t this how we think? If I were to ask you what you need most, I wonder how many of you would say you need your sins forgiven? Wouldn’t you say what you need most has something to do with your life-situation, your wellbeing, or your family’s well-being. You would want Jesus to fix your body, or your finances, or your job, or your marriage, or your children’s problems. Because you feel the weight of these problems acutely every day. You’ve somehow gotten used to being a sinner. You know it, and know that you have lots of company in this.
I suspect this is how it must have been for this paralytic and his friends. What a disappointment, “Your sins are forgiven you.” Jesus went on to say, “Take up your bed and walk,” which meant the man was healed. But that was the easy part, and not the most important. The man’s biggest need was forgiveness of sin. So is ours. So is yours and mine.
When the Gospel writers tell us this story I think they were thinking about Psalm 103 as they saw what Jesus did. The great 103rd Psalm, in one of its most beloved lines says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” The Lord forgives first, and heals second. Forgiveness lasts forever. Healing lasts until you get sick next, and eventually we all die.
As pious Jews repeated this psalm generation after generation they would no doubt nod piously. “It is so, because it is written so. But how is it so? Iniquity means sin. How does the Lord forgive all my iniquity? I must atone for every sin with a sacrifice.”
Sometimes the promise is made that God will forgive. Moses and others plead with God to forgive the sin of Israel, but we read that God actually forgave only three times. David says in the 32nd psalm, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.” But forgiveness seemed more a hope, a longing, in ancient times than a reality.
When Jesus told the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” all of this must have rushed to the minds of the pious Jews gathered round. “Who can forgive sins but God? And when will He do it? We have to keep offering sacrifices to atone for our sins. The priests sacrifice those animals we bring, but they never tell us afterward, “your sins are forgiven.” Sacrificing animals was taking out on them the consequences of our sin. It was a kind of revenge; they suffered for us. Where is forgiveness?”
So when Jesus told this man his sins were forgiven it must have been shocking. Who can forgive sins but God? Indeed! We Christians read this and think, “Yes, that’s right. And Jesus was God made flesh. That’s why he could forgive.” But even we, I think, little realize what we are saying. Because you and I do not really understand forgiveness.
Forgiveness is one of the largely unclaimed gifts of God in Christ because we don’t understand it. We say, “I forgive you,” but often cannot forget the offense. Thus we pray the Lord’s Prayer uneasily, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We hope God does better than that.
We live in our homes and in our neighborhoods and churches with many unforgotten offenses troubling us. The tensions that linger among us because of past offenses we cannot forget do a number on the “ties that bind our hearts in Christian love,” about which we delight to sing. You and I do not forgiven ourselves. I still wince when I remember some things I did as a boy.
History brims with remembered offenses that pit nation against nation, ethnic group against ethnic group. Serbs and Albanian Muslims erupted in violence not long ago, because they remembered past offenses. Hindus and Muslims in India erupt in bloody recriminations, as they harbor old grudges. Right now our land is engaged in a war because we remember offenses done to us in the past. Will we ever forget 9/11? It is unpatriotic not to remember 9/11! We are big on remembering and small on forgiving. Indeed, am I not right that forgiveness is considered imprudent. “Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me.”
But we read about God, “He forgives all your iniquity.” If we really saw the panorama of our lives clearly, we’d see that what is most needful is forgiveness. Indeed, there would be fewer sicknesses to heal if our hearts were healed of bitterness, of remembered offenses. What tensions tear at our peace of mind that are due to knowing a grudge is held against us, or because we are clinging to the memory of an offense!
How we think affects our bodies. When a sudden fear overcomes you, your blood vessels contract and can cause a heart attack. Despair can make you feel nauseated. You hear bad news and you may find yourself throwing up. Not being able to give and receive forgiveness is the greatest scourge of the human family. It is like a wound that refuses to heal.
But how is it possible to forgive? Who can forgive sins but God alone? The Pharisees meant this question as an accusation of blasphemy. But it was a fair question to ask for other reasons. How is forgiveness possible?
When we read the story of God’s chosen people, Israel, after they became a nation, the most important moment came when God provided a way to be with them very specifically. We say that God is everywhere present, but He was specifically with Israel. God told Israel to build a Tabernacle, a very elaborate tent, and at the heart of this tent was a room in which they put the Ark of the Covenant. God, the Creator of heaven and earth, for whom Planet Earth was a footstool , occupied the little space between the outstretched wings of the Cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies. The very idea of this tiny spot being inhabited by God is hard to imagine. But that’s what God told Israel he would do. He was present with them very specifically.
Thus, when sacrifices were offered in the courtyard outside the Tabernacle, God was near to receive these acts of contrition. Once a year, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies and put some blood on top of the Ark of the Covenant where God rested to atone for the sins of Israel as a whole. It was a very scary moment.
When you stop to think about it, it must have been odd for Israel to contemplate God being so reduced as to be in that one place. They believed there was one God, and God inhabited eternity, and was not to be reduced to a graven image. But God rested on top of the Ark of the Covenant. How could this be? And why? How it could be, I don’t know. But why, I think is that God wanted to make clear His presence in a way they could understand. He was in their Tabernacle at the heart of their community. But God never took part in their daily life. God was hidden by the walls of the Holy of Holies, in which only the High Priest came once a year.
The Gospel of John said of Jesus, that He was the Word made flesh, and He “tabernacled among us.” That is, when the Word of God became man, it was God entering a human being the way God entered the ancient Tabernacle and rested between the wings of the Cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant. But there was one great difference. Now God entered the human experience so that He could understand what it was like to be a human being experientially.
The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that “We do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” Because Jesus was tested in every respect as we are tested, He understands.
A dear friend of mine said to me something the other evening in a different context which illumined for me what Hebrews is telling us about Jesus. “The one who understands everything can forgive everything.” Jesus can forgive us everything because He understands everything about us. Who can forgive sins but God alone? Who can forgive except the one who understands everything?! When God became a man, He learned by experience what our life is like. He understands everything about us and so He can forgive us.
Sometimes you and I understand what made someone do something that offended us, and because we understand, we can forgive them. We may say, “I understand,” which means, “I forgive you.” If you know someone very well, about their childhood, their physical defects, the hardships that have molded them, you can see why they said something, or did something, or a personality quirk. And so you can forgive them. Thus we sing in the song attributed to St. Francis, “Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand.”
Sometimes you may see a critical, unforgiving spirit in someone who holds animosity toward you and you think, “If they understood; if they saw the whole picture, they wouldn’t think this way about me.” We have sayings like, “When you have walked in my moccasins three miles, you’ll understand.” Or, “If I were in your shoes.” Even the courts allow a jury to hear “extenuating circumstances,” that is, to contemplate what made an accused person do what she did.
No doubt the sin nature we inherited is explanation for the fact that we all sin, but very often the particular offenses we commit have a story behind them. A child who is abused develops a personality and character influenced by that abuse. A child who is reared with harsh, critical parents, shows the influence of that harsh up-bringing the rest of his life. Very often our specific offenses are due to sad moments that happened when we were young.
But when we are offended, we seldom understand the scope of the person’s life who has offended us. All we see is the thing they did. All we hear is the word they said. And so, even though we know that we act and think as we do because we were shaped by our experiences, seldom do we extend the same understanding to others who offend us.
But “Jesus knows our every weakness,” as we sing in “What a friend we have in Jesus.” “He knows everything about me, even knows my name. When I make mistakes he loves me still,” we teach our children to sing in VBS. Jesus understand all, so He can forgive all. This is the whole point of the Incarnation, that God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus understands everything, so He forgives everything.”
When the paralytic lay before Jesus, and Jesus looked up and saw the four compassionate friends, He understood everything. And since He understood everything, not only about the man’s paralysis, but about his friends compassion, and all that prompted their compassion, He first gave that most needful gift of forgiveness. He first lifted from them whatever weight there might have been on their consciences. And they sensed it, I imagine. I wonder what connection there might have been between the forgiveness and the man’s physical healing.
Jesus understands your every weakness, and that’s how He can forgive you everything. You don’t need to linger under the weight of guilt because Jesus understands why you did what you did. This doesn’t make it right. It makes it understandable. Jesus already paid the penalty for your sin and mine. And because He understands our every weakness, He forgives us everything.
Two matters follow from this. First, accept your forgiveness. Second, put yourself in Jesus place for the sake of the one whom you are now condemning. She did it for reasons just the same as those that make you say and do things that hurt, or that are wrong. You understand why you offend—because of this or that, that happened when you were growing up. The same thing happens for others. So, forgive them as you want to be understood. How wonderful to know we are un-condemned before God because Jesus understands. How wonderful the community in which we extend to others the benefit of what we have received, God’s understanding and forgiveness.
Let us pray: O Lord God, thank you for Jesus who knows everything about us and loves us still. Amen.
Posted by faithpres at March 30, 2003 09:30 AM