Sermon from April 9, 2000
Would you reflect a minute on what Mark 1 has told us about Jesus Christ? He asked four fishermen, Andrew, Peter, James, and John, to abandon their source of livelihood and attach themselves to Him as His disciples, and they did it. His teaching in the Capernaum synagogue persuaded and illuminated the consciences of His listeners. He broke the power of irrational evil over a human personality by virtue of His command. With a touch He dismissed a fever from a woman's body. He got the undivided attention of an entire fishing village. He then declared that what He had done in Capernaum must not be confined to Capernaum. It served as a model of what He had to do. That was why He had come. Finally, in an unthinkable act of love and authority He touched and healed an unclean leper, who represented the dregs of Jewish society.

Such a man has authority where it counts – with people, all kinds of people. He demonstrated God's love and authority in ever-widening circles of public life. His actions bore witness to the authority you need to start a revolution. What do you think a man would do with power like that in our society? What would we want Him to do with it politically, socially, and in health care? According to Mark 1, what did Jesus do unexpectedly with such power at His fingertips?

He told a demoniac in the Capernaum synagogue to be silent, when he called Him the Holy One of God. He told all the demoniacs to cease and desist from making Him known. When expectations about Him had reached a fever pitch in Capernaum, He walked away from it to go elsewhere. He warned the cleansed leper to say nothing about his healing until he offered the requisite sacrifices for his cleansing. Then, He did not openly enter a population center for a while.

He may have had the authority needed to start a revolution, but He did not act like a man ready to start a political revolution. What happened next only adds to His accumulating authority in the eyes of His poeple and to the uncertainity about His ultimate intentions. What happened next proved to be a turning point in His ministry. Look at Mark 2:1-12.

Verse one finds Him back in Capernaum. A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. Verse 2 reminds us of a fact that permeates Jesus' public life. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Jesus acted publicly and attracted large, enthusiastic, and at times (as we shall see) unruly crowds. His was a people movement on an unprecedented scale. No one was prepared for what He did next.

Verse 3 gets us started. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Those men had heard about and maybe even seen the cures that Jesus had done in Capernaum. They convinced their paralytic friend that Jesus could do something for him. So off they went to the Capernaum house where Jesus was preaching. They could not even get near Him. Humanity stood shoulder to shoulder in every door of the house. No one extended courtesy to the paralytic or his friends.

It did not deter the paralytic's friends. Verse 4 says, 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. The house had outside steps that led up to the roof. Up they went with their friend, on to the roof, and they began to dig. I told you they could be unruly.

Wouldn't you like to have been in the room that day? First, you hear a scraping noise on the roof. Then, twigs, dust, and small branches fall into the room. Soon, Jesus stops talking. Every eye in the house turns to what was happening on the roof. Gradually, the hole widens, larger and larger, much larger than Peter's insurance company would like. Then, the amazed onlookers see the paralytic being lowered on his stretcher.

Can you imagine a brief conversation beween two men watching all that? The first man says, "I just don't understand it. Every time I come to hear Jesus, he is interrupted before he can say what he has on his mind to say."

"Oh, is that so? This is my first time to hear him. You think this hole in the roof has something to do with him?"

"Sure! This man causes people to do things they would never think of doing."

"Well, I'll take your word for it, but I'm just as glad it's Peter's roof and not mine."

When I said earlier that no one was prepared for what Jesus did next, I did not have have in mind the hole in Peter's roof. I had in mind what happened after the dust had settled, and the paralytic looked up at Jesus from his stretcher. Verse 5 tells us. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

If at that moment all the birds in Galilee had ceased to sing, and a vast silence had fallen suddenly all over the land, it would have been an appropriate response to what Jesus said that day in the damaged house of Simon Peter. "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Truly, I hardly know which end of the stick to take first. His words rattle categories and open up new possibilities for every hand. Let's take the possibilities one by one. It will take the rest of this sermon and the one next Sunday to become aware of the scope of Jesus' meaning in His actions. Let's begin with the paralytic. He had made the grand entrance. His obvious need had interrupted Jesus' teaching and called for Jesus' compassionate response. How do you think the paralytic felt when Jesus said, "Son, your sins are forgiven,"?

How would you feel if your primary care physician told you that you had strep throat and wrote out on his prescription pad, "Your sins are forgiven?" What would you think if friends brought Christopher Reeve to Jesus Christ only to hear, "Christopher, my son, Your sins are forgiven?" All this talk of sins forgiven is very nice, but what about the strep throat? What about the paralysis?

We have hit pay dirt. Do you remember in Mark 1 how Jesus left Capernaum early one morning without warning? Why did He do that? Plenty of sick and demon-possessed people who needed Him came knocking on Simon's door. There and throughout the Gospels you get the feeling that His healing was selective. It was not the main thing.

But if it was not the main thing, what was? How would you feel if you or someone you loved stood ill on Simon's doorstep, only to learn that the person who could do something about your suffering had left, and no one knew for sure when He was coming back? You would want to know, what could be more important?

If we look at the question from the point of view of the sick, nothing could be more important than "to make me well." It may take a cool head, even a cold heart to ask, "But why make you well?"

We would be quick to answer, "Because it seems arbitrary." It is arbitrary unless Jesus really thought something else mattered more than healing. Could it be that His power to heal served some greater purpose?

It is almost an insult  to say that. What could be greater than healing? What could be greater than health? It feels good to feel good. Medical progress is desirable. Health insurance makes good sense for everyone. We are glad the Center for Disease Control is on the job. "If you have your health, you have everything."

That is a very appealing philosophy of life. Before we believe it, we had better listen to Jesus' exchange with the teachers of the law in verses 6-7. Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus' response in verses 8-12 points to a purpose larger than His power to heal.

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? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ..." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." 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!"

Verse 9 gives Jesus' pivotal statement. "But that you may know that Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins ..." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." Anyone might say, "Your sins are forgiven." Who is going to prove otherwise? But if anyone says to a paralytic in front of a crowd, "Get up and walk," everyone is going to know in short order whether it will happen.

Jesus' logic with the teachers of the law seems to me to go like this. "My healing of the paralytic would not offer indisputable evidence of my authority to forgive sins, but if I can do it before your very eyes, it would offer evidence strong enough for you to stay open to the possibility that I can forgive sins." The power to heal would give powerful, material evidence of Jesus' authority to forgive sins. His power to heal clearly served the larger purpose of vindicating His claim to forgive sins.

So now, would you be more willing to question the philosophy of life that says, "If you have your health, you have everything?" What if you were the picture of health and at the same time the enemy of God, because you were still in the power of your sins? In any case we are all going to lose the fight to keep our health. What then? Then larger issues will become very large indeed. Let me give you an example.

One of the privileges that I consider sacred is being admitted to the private lives of the people I serve. Many years ago, I ministered to a young woman who was dying. As I visited her in the hospital we talked of the disease that was killing her. We talked about her family and her faith. She had been tutored in the faith. She knew scriptural promises.

So, it surprised me one afternoon when she said, "Pastor, tell me one more time. Is God really merciful? Will He forgive my sins?" I proceeded to talk again about the verses from the Bible that promise God's mercy to us in Christ. I talked about Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection as the guarantee of God's mercy toward us. Based on those realities, I could say to her, "Your sins are forgiven."

The message that Jesus preached everywhere was, "The kingdom of God is near." Part of that meaning is this. If we want to see what God's love and authority look like under our conditions, then we need to hear what Jesus said and watch what Jesus did.

One thing He did was to heal the sick and make whole the human personalities disfigured by the demonic. That gives us cause to hope that some day, when His love and authority govern all human life without opposition, all illness and disfigurement will be taken away. We will have resurrection bodies that no longer die. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible than a body that will not die housing within a spirit that is dying all the time. God starts at the other end – from within.

That is why Jesus' power to heal always pointed beyond itself to things more urgent than health. It pointed to forgiveness. God begins there. He goes on to restore in us His image. When He has finished with us on the inside, then we will be ready for bodies that never die. In doing so He guides our priorities. As à Kempis said, "It is folly to wish to live long and to be careless to live well, as living well is measured by the restored image of God within us."

What I have just presented to you is a faith proposition. In fact, I was careful to avoid saying that Jesus' power to heal offers compelling proof of His authority to forgive sins. As we will see later in Mark, a very different interpretation of Jesus' actions could be put forward. Whether we are in good health or poor health, living well as measured by the image of God in us requires faith. Look again at verse five.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven." James the apostle has given the best commentary on this even. He wrote, I will show you my faith by what I do (Jas 2:19). If we accept that, we are bound to say that the holy vandalism of the paralytic's friends revealed genuine faith in Jesus. Jesus did not forgive the paralytic's sins because his friends came through the roof. He forgave his sins because of their faith in Him. But their determined act of digging through the roof showed what kind of faith they had in Jesus. They showed their faith by what they did.