The paralytic: ‘Mark 2 v 1-12: …get up, take your mat and go home’
I cannot imagine a world without friends. Our experience of a time when self-isolating and social distancing became part and parcel of daily life has made us realise just what a precious gift friendship is. The paralysed man in today’s reading was very blessed to have some brilliant mates without whom he would never have met Jesus. Having just arrived back home (v 1) and no doubt in need of some peace and quiet Jesus is besieged with locals who surround his home meaning that these indefatigable friends have to carry the paralysed man up onto the flat roof of the house in which Jesus was staying, dig through the packed clay and lower him to ground level.
The response of Jesus is to the faith of the friends rather than the paralysed man himself yet it is to him that he address the words, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’, (v 5) that lie at the heart of the story. At that time it was assumed that there was a causal link between sin and suffering yet, in a radical departure from received wisdom, we know that Jesus didn’t buy into this (see John 9 v 1-3). Jesus is not saying to the man, ‘you’ve got this condition because you are a particularly bad person’, he is simply meeting a fundamental need, shared by every single one of us, for forgiveness.
The legal experts looking on know (rightly!) that only God can forgive sins but fail to recognise the divine authority of Jesus. Exactly what Jesus meant with his self-designation as the ‘Son of Man’ (v 10) has been debated exhaustively but most obviously is an allusion to a figure described in the book of Daniel (Dan 7 v 13-14) who is given authority and is an object of worship which can only mean he shares the divine nature. What seemed impossible to the teachers of the law was that this authority was being made visible in a residential house in Capernaum that’s just had an enormous hole gouged in its roof. But that is exactly what is happening.
What Jesus does by healing the man is make visible a profound depth of love and care for one vulnerable and sick person that sits alongside the authority he is claiming for himself. The paralysed man himself speaks with actions rather than words in this story; he just gets up, picks up the mat that he is no longer imprisoned on and walks out in a very public demonstration of the authority of Jesus over sin and sickness (v 12).
So there were two very significant things that Jesus did for the paralysed man. Firstly, he healed him, thereby delivering him from total dependency and opening new opportunities to him such as being able to work, to be free to go exactly where he wanted to, to build new relationships, to marry and have children or even to make a mess of things. Whilst his healing ministry was central to Jesus’ vocation and the Christian healing ministry has continued more or less (quite often less) over the centuries, Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12 v 7-9) and Timothy’s frequent illnesses (1 Tim 5 v 23) resonate with our own lived experience that many people of deep Christian faith and commitment are not healed from sicknesses and disabilities. One thing worth throwing in here, of course, is that health care provision is now off the scale better than it was in Jesus’ day and that there is a miraculous element to that which is often overlooked. God is as much at work (and far more frequently!) through surgeons and other health professionals as he is through those involved in the church’s healing ministry. I wonder if God’s response to Paul’s pleading regarding his ‘thorn’ helps us to understand why suffering is as much a part of life for Christians as it is for everybody else; ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12 v 9). So much learning and transformation takes place in the crucible of suffering. I have experienced that as will many reading these words. There are times when we know in our innermost being that, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Cor 12 v 10).
This, of course, leads us away from any thought that sickness or disabilities of any kind are judgements of God. The idea of redemptive suffering, as we see in the suffering and death of Jesus, allows no place for this kind of thinking (which has proved remarkably enduring). Whilst we can sometimes see, for instance in the context of drug and alcohol abuse, that suffering is a consequence of (for want of a better term) sinful behaviour, that does not mean that an illness or disability or any other kind of particular problem any of us struggle with means that we are receiving a specific punishment from God. My experience of pastoral ministry over the years informs me that this is something people do worry about.
A corollary of this is that we are often unable to explain the reasons for specific suffering. There are times when gut wrenching anguish such as that associated with a distressing long term illness means that the search for any kind of meaning is lost in the pain. The French Catholic poet Paul Claudel wrote that, ‘Jesus did not come to explain suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence.’ Many of those who knew and loved Jesus similarly found themselves unable to come to terms with his suffering and death. It was only in the light of the empty tomb that a hope that reached into and went beyond suffering became real.
The second significant thing Jesus did was to offer the paralysed man the forgiveness of sins, (which is what got him into hot water with the legal experts looking on - v 6-7). It is very clear that, to state the obvious, this man is not alive today which means that at some point in the future he got sick and died. So whereas his physical healing was wonderful, increased his quality of life dramatically and filled him with faith and hope, it was of temporal significance. His experience of forgiveness, however, was of eternal significance and reminds us that healing is about more than bodies temporarily being made to work properly again but encompasses our mental, emotional and spiritual lives. Many of us, Christians very much included, carry guilt around with us – I look back even to mistakes made decades ago and still wince every now and again. Sometimes these memories can chain us to the past meaning that we are unable to apprehend the extraordinary beauty of the love that God offers to us today. There is nothing you or I have done or could ever do that will stop God from loving and forgiving us. That doesn’t mean that acts of selfishness, cruelty or thoughtlessness don’t matter and there are times in life when we will need to face the consequences of our actions. Yet God’s love is persistent and addresses us and all of humanity every moment of our lives did we but know it. In receiving God’s forgiveness the paralysed man discovered, probably much to his surprise, the deepest truth about himself; that he was loved by God. That is our deepest truth also.
Questions: Do you still feel guilty for things you thought, said or did in the past? Imagine yourself to be face to face with Jesus; what do you think he would say to you?
Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for your healing love. Help us to open our hearts and minds to you to receive all that you offer to us and to share it with others. Amen.