Mark 2:1-12

08/03/11 Mark 2:1-12 GUMC Youth

When we read the first chapter of Mark, we found that he told a whole bunch of stories very quickly. We got the sense that he wanted to cover a whole bunch of stuff really fast so he could set the stage and move on. As much as it pains me to make this connection, it is just a bit like the movie we watched at the lock-in, Napoleon Dynamite. That movie has two main stories in it, getting ready for the school dance and Pedro running for class president. The first twenty minutes or so, however, have almost nothing to do with either of those two stories. However, just because they don't fit into them doesn't mean that they do not contribute vitally to the movie. If we didn't have those first twenty minutes, we wouldn't understand the rest of the movie. We could hardly say that they are what the movie is really about, but we need them so we understand who Napoleon, Pedro, Deb, Kip, Uncle Rico, and everyone else are about. Mark's first chapter is hardly the real meat of the book, but, if we didn't have it, we wouldn't even know how to begin to understand the rest of the book.

Now that we move into chapter two, we start to see Jesus actually start to teach and to do miracles and to interact with both the crowds of people and the leaders of the time. We could say that this is the first real story of the book of Mark. And right out of the barrel, Jesus has ruffled feathers. Imagine this. Jesus is amazingly popular as a healer of the sick and a worker of miracles. So, the moment he comes back to Capernaum, he is crowded into the house where he is staying, which is probably Peter's mother-in-law's home. What is interesting is that, though everyone is coming to see him because he heals the sick, that is not what he does when the crowd comes to see him. Instead, we read that he is teaching them. Again, remember back to last week when we saw that Jesus intentionally left the people who needed healing because he needed to preach to others in the other towns. Jesus is able to heal people, and he is willing to do so, but what he cares most about is that we know God and what God is doing among us.

There are many people in our culture today who don't think that knowing and believing things are all that important; what really matters is doing things. How often do we hear that it doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you do this or that? It doesn't matter what religion you are, or if you are an atheist, so long as you love one another, or at least don't hurt one another. The only problem is that this imagines that there is a big separation between what we really believe and what we do. The fact of the matter is that there is no such separation. We do what we do because of what we believe, that is what we really and deeply believe, and not what we might think we believe. We are only good to one another because we believe that we ought to be or that it is best for everyone if we do so. However, once that conviction is shaken, if it is not rooted deep in the gospel, it is only a matter of time before we abandon that value. It is amazing to me that the people who affirm the loudest that you can be a moral person and an atheist at the same time have a basic ethical position that bears a remarkable resemblance to what the Judeo-Christian tradition has tended to affirm. What I am saying is that I will not be surprised if, as the culture becomes less and less shaped by the Christian message, our culture's standard of what it means to be moral will become lower and lower.

The point is that here we have Jesus teaching a bunch of people because knowing the truth, knowing God, is more important than being healed, though he is healing them, too. However, there are so many people, that a paralyzed man cannot get to Jesus, even to listen to him, much less to be healed. The fact that he can't walk to get himself to Jesus before the crowd showed up means that he has to stay on the outside. And the people of the time would certainly have been fine with leaving him on the outside. After all, he was not a contributing member of society, he probably did not come from a powerful family. Most of the people were so interested in seeing Jesus for themselves that they did not even think to help this man get in.

However, this paralyzed man had some friends who were willing to do some hard work to get their friend some help. They took him up to the top of the roof and, we read, they "removed the roof." Perhaps more graphically, the Greek says that they "unroofed the roof," and lowered the man down on a mat. Think about how the owner of the house would react! Do you have friends who would be willing to help you like this, not because they like to destroy other people's property but because they care so deeply for you that they would take the responsibility and financial cost of such a move upon themselves just so you could get help? Are you that kind of friend?

But after this man was dropped down in front of Jesus, what does Jesus say? We read, "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" Again, because we live in a world that thinks that talk is cheap and it is actions that count, we kind of want to say to Jesus, "So what? He didn't come here to have his sins forgiven, he came to be healed. How can you assume that he has sins that need to be forgiven when you don't even know him?" The fact of the matter is that it would not have been at all uncommon for people at the time to assume that, if you were sick or crippled in some way or another, you must be a sinner and you are being punished for your sin. If Jesus had said, "Son, you never sinned, this paralysis is not your fault," nobody would have bought it. Everyone sins and everyone needs forgiveness. Not only that, saying that the paralysis is not the man's fault might take some guilt off his conscience, but it doesn't give him his body back.

But that isn't the problem that the people had with Jesus saying this. What do we read? "Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, 'Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" Here is the problem as the scribes saw it. Jesus, though only a man in their eyes, was forgiving sin, which is something that only God can do. They are absolutely right when they say that only God can forgive sin. After all, regardless of whatever we might do, when we sin, even when we sin against other people, the biggest problem is not that we have hurt other people or ourselves, but that we have gone against how we were created, we have rejected God and our relationship with him.

Let me put this as strongly as I can. King David, one of the most important people in the Old Testament, had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba, who was the wife of one of his mightiest warriors. She became pregnant from the affair and so David had her husband killed in battle. Shortly after the child was born, that child died. In his grief, David wrote Psalm 51. Hear what he says in that psalm, "For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment." This is a man who is guilty of adultery and murder, who has endured tremendous personal suffering because of his sin, and he says that he has, at the end of the day, sinned against God and against God alone. Does that mean that he, Bathsheba, and her husband, were not sinned against? Of course not, but that David understood that his sin against God was so much greater than his sin toward other people, that it was as if he had only sinned against God.

The scribes were actually pretty good theologians. They understood what we sometimes forget in our twenty-first century American situation: Only God can forgive sins. For Jesus to say, on his own authority, that this man's sins were forgiven is for Jesus to claim the very authority of God. The question is, does Jesus actually have the very authority of God, or does he not?

I think that C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and a convert to Christianity from atheism, puts it well in his book Mere Christianity. "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

But how did Jesus show that he has the authority to forgive the sins of this paralyzed man? What do we read? "At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, 'Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Stand up and take your mat and walk?" But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins' - he said to the paralytic - 'I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go home.'"

This is a really interesting thing that Jesus says. After all, which is easier to say? Well, on the one hand, it is easier to say that someone's sins are forgiven because, after all, it is hard to prove it wrong. You can't tell whether someone is forgiven or not just by looking at them, so there is a sense in which it is easier to say that. However, it is actually harder to forgive sins than it is to heal someone. After all, a great doctor might be able to heal someone, but only God can forgive, so, unless we are God, which we aren't, it is actually harder to forgive sins than to heal someone.

But, just like today, people then knew that talk is cheap. Which is harder to prove? Well, it is harder to fool people into believing that a man is healed from his crippling paralysis when he hasn't been than it is to fool people that his sins are forgiven when they haven't been. So, in order to show that Jesus can actually forgive sins with his word, he commands the paralytic to stand up and go home. By doing so, Jesus shows that his words are backed up by reality in the case of the healing of the paralytic, so he is trustworthy also when he forgives sins. It is a classic argument called a forteriori. If someone asked you if you could lift a hundred pounds and you responded by lifting two hundred pounds, there is a sense that you didn't answer the question, but there should be no doubt left in anyone's minds that you can do what they asked. Jesus can heal the body with a word, he can heal the soul with no more effort.

The point that we need to take from all this is that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, that Jesus is indeed God in human flesh, that God has actually come among us to meet with us, to reveal himself to us, and to transform our lives. Jesus heals so that we can know who he is, that we can trust that God loves us so much that he came to be among us. If we can think about the fact that God became a human being and not be absolutely floored by it, it means that we do not yet understand what it really means that God would do that. This is the God of the universe, who has all power, who can do whatever he wants, and does not have to do anything that he doesn't wan't to do, who came to be born as a weeping and wailing baby, the word of God unable to speak, and submitted himself to grow up just like you and I do, to become an adult, be hated and persecuted, all because he loved us, and finally killed by being nailed to a cross. We hear a lot about bullying and people being picked on today and it is serious business, but we need to always remember that nobody was hated so intensely or as much for no reason as Jesus, and, if he didn't want to, he didn't have to put up with it. But he chose, understand this, he chose to endure it all, just so he could be with us.

The Jesus who loves us is the Jesus who came and was attacked. The Jesus who came is one who was hated by the people who thought they had everything together. The only Jesus there is is one who suffered so that we might be healed. When people accused him of overstepping his bounds, of doing what only God can do, he dealt with their anger, because he was doing the right thing, he was being who he was, is, and evermore will be, God. When you look into the face of Jesus, you are looking into the very face of God. If you want to know what God is like, what God would say to you, look at Jesus. There you will find that God is not at all like what you expected, but is far greater. He has the power to forgive, and he does forgive. He forgave those who put him to death, he will forgive you. Let us pray.

AMEN