In the summer of 1967, a teenaged girl named Joni had her whole life ahead of her. She was attractive, athletic, part of a secure, affluent, and strongly Christian family. She was headed for the Olympics as part of the US show-jumping team.
But on a July afternoon that summer, her life changed. Out with her friends at the lake, she dove into shallow water. Her head hit something hard and unyielding, and she felt a sensation something like an internal buzzing. Her body sank to the bottom, and she panicked as she discovered she couldn’t move. Her sister came to see if she was all right, and lifted her out of the water.
Joni had fractured her spinal column and was paralyzed from the neck down. She could feel nothing in her arms and legs. She would never have the use of her arms and legs again.
Later, lying in a hospital bed, despairing and miserable at the horrible turn of events in her life, she pleaded with her friends to help her end her life: to slit her wrists, to overdose on pills, anything that would bring her nightmare to an end.
Writer Philip Yancey interviewed her not long after that. In the course of the interview Joni burst into tears. Unable to brush her teeth by herself, dress herself, go to the bathroom by herself, she wept in terror at the prospect of life as a paralytic.
Paralysis of the body is something most of us cannot relate to, but most of us have experienced a form of paralysis at one time or another.
When I was a teenager, I was paralyzed by fear. After church every Sunday I would go sit in the car. I didn’t have anyone that I would call my friend, or would feel comfortable hanging out with. If I couldn’t have the car keys for whatever reason, I would suddenly be paralyzed with anxiety. I would go stand very self-consciously with the other youth, having no idea how to converse with people, and desperately wanting to get away. I was paralyzed with my own insecurity, and wouldn’t dream of approaching someone and initiating a conversation. (To this day it doesn’t come naturally.)
Maybe some of you feel paralyzed even this morning:
It might be fear and insecurity.
It might be envy, which makes us unable to affirm and celebrate and enjoy other people because we cannot think beyond ourselves.
You might be paralyzed in your marriage, unable to break through to real joy, friendship and intimacy. Maybe you can’t talk to each other right now, or you are walking on eggshells for fear of causing a conflict.
You might be paralyzed spiritually, wondering why after all this time your faith journey isn’t getting any easier. You want to walk the Christian path, but you feel unable to move. You cannot pray. The Bible, for all your good intentions, does not really connect with you.
You might feel paralyzed by financial concerns: you dream of something, that may even be a God-given dream, but you feel you cannot make a career change, or you feel obligated to other priorities.
You might be paralyzed by unforgiveness: you have been hurt or offended in the past, and even today it impacts you and your family. The person who hurt you probably doesn’t even know there is an issue, but you still carry it and you are robbed of joy and freedom. You are paralyzed.
You might be paralyzed by guilt: you are a Christian but something has a hold on you, or you have committed that old sin again, and you cannot live fully because you are convinced God is tired of hearing you confess the same thing again and again. You are convinced God cannot or will not forgive that sin. You want to break into a new level of spiritual health, but you are paralyzed by guilt.
Paralysis comes in many forms.
Today in our lesson from the gospel of Mark, a paralyzed man is brought to Jesus, and discovers what many of us need to know: Jesus the Son of God has the authority and ability to bring forgiveness and wholeness to our lives.
In Mark chapter 2, Jesus is back in Capernaum and the whole town is a-buzz. The last time Jesus was here, he arrested the attention of the town by his teaching, which was unlike anything they had ever heard even from their best trained seminarians and theologians. Here was a man who spoke of the things of God with an authority that seemed born out of experience, in a way they imagined God himself might speak.
Then Jesus had driven a demonic spirit out of a man. That evening he had spent hours doing more of the same, and healing people of many diseases. In the morning Jesus had been an obscure rabbi. By the end of the evening he had captured the imagination and awe of the townspeople.
The next morning, though, he was gone, slipped away before dawn. In the weeks that followed they heard rumors about what he was doing. He was on a preaching tour, and continuing to heal people and cast out demons. The big story that everyone was talking about all over the country was that Jesus had healed a leper, the most astonishing miracle of all. Wherever Jesus went, crowds followed. It got to the point that he could not enter a town at all without bringing the town to a standstill because he would be mobbed by the public.
But here he is back in Capernaum and sure enough a crowd swarms to the place where he is staying. Some are curious celebrity watchers. Others are there to wish him well. After all, Jesus was calling Capernaum ‘home’ these days, and there was the ‘local-boy-makes-good’ kind of pride in the town.
Some, though, are here to monitor him. The religious leaders are suspicious of him. The people think of him as a spiritual teacher, a rabbi, and esteem him more highly than their own teachers. Plus, he had demonstrated real power over demons and as a healer. Jesus is proving to be a significant force on the religious scene, and so the religious leaders are here to check him out.
So many have come that the house is full. People spill out into the street and crowd at the windows, straining to hear what Jesus is saying. For Jesus is teaching. Mark does not record what Jesus is saying. He was probably enlarging on his theme of the ‘kingdom of God’, or calling people to holiness, to live out what they knew to be right. Whatever the teaching, Mark does not tell us. That is not what is important here. Because as Jesus teaches inside, something is happening outside that is soon going to be the focus of the whole crowd.
A group of four men have come to the house, carrying a stretcher on which lies a paralyzed man. He is their friend, and they have brought him to Jesus in the hopes that Jesus might heal him. There is no way he could ever have come to Jesus on his own, but the friends care about him, and so they pick him up and go where Jesus is. Friends do that. Friends bring friends to Jesus, knowing that they need him.
When these four come to the house, however, they are immediately faced with a problem: the house is so full, and people are crowding the door so that they can’t get in. Even if the ones by the door move, it is impossible for those inside the house to make space for four men with a stretcher.
Then one of the four friends notices the outer staircase to the roof. After looking at it for a moment, he suddenly breaks into a smile and runs to the window. Past the other heads crowding the space, he glimpses Jesus inside, and notes exactly where he is sitting. Running back he speaks excitedly to the other three. After muttering together for a few minutes, they nod in agreement. And with some difficulty they make their way up the stairs to the roof, carrying the stretcher and the paralyzed friend.
In the heat of the sun, the houses in Capernaum could be stiflingly hot in the summer months. Most homes in the town have a staircase built up an outside wall, leading to the flat roof, where people often spend time in the cooler outside air. The roof is constructed of layers of matting and dried mud laid over some supporting cross beams.
Once on the roof, the paralyzed man is laid on one side, and the four friends drop to their knees and begin to tear up the materials of the roof with their hands. It is relatively easy going once they have made a start.
Below them, in the house, Jesus has stopped teaching. His audience is looking up, wondering at the scrabbling noise they hear overhead. Simon Peter, who owns the house, gets a concerned look on his face and tries to edge through the crowd toward the door, but Jesus catches his sleeve and shakes his head. Then Jesus just sits, waiting to see what happens.
All at once, a stab of sunlight pierces the room, and in its light a handful of mud particles and bits of wood fall onto the suddenly ducking men inside the house. The hole in the ceiling widens steadily as the men above pull away at the edges, and the men below scramble in an ever widening circle. Jesus looks up, shielding his eyes, but with an amused smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
After a full thirty minutes have passed, the hole is about seven feet long and three feet wide. The men on the roof have disappeared from the view of those inside, but just for a moment. Suddenly, those inside gasp. The four men on the roof are lowering a stretcher through the hole, and on the stretcher lies the paralyzed man. Everyone in town knows him. At various times they had given him alms.
It is immediately clear what is happening, and why. Transfixed, they watch the stretcher as it comes down, inch by inch, and comes to rest on the floor, directly in front of Jesus. Jesus looks down briefly at the man, but then looks up to the hole in the ceiling. From each corner a face peers expectantly. The fact that they are willing to act on behalf of their friend because they believe Jesus can help him, touches Jesus deeply. He smiles at each of them, and nods, before turning his attention to the man who lies paralyzed before him.
Mark records that it was in response to the faith of the friends that Jesus acted. Interestingly, we do not know a thing about the man himself or what he expected. He doesn’t even speak in this story.
Do not underestimate what the faith of a friend can do. Some of you are praying for people. By your prayers you are bringing those people to Jesus and laying them at his feet, just like the four friends. And it will be your prayers, your faith, not the expectation of the one we bring, that will move the hand of God in their life.
The faith of the friends moves the heart of Jesus, and he speaks to the man. Now, at this point, what do you think the people are expecting?. Remember, they’d seen Jesus in action before, when he stayed up half the night healing the sick. They are expecting more of the same, a run-of-the-mill healing.
But Jesus does something entirely unexpected. He says to the man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’
There is a collective gasp, and a murmur ripples through the crowd. Some are sure they must have heard him wrongly. Most turn instinctively to where the teachers of the Law sit in the corner, leaning forward, mouths hanging open, expressions of anger and disbelief on their red faces. They are speechless, but in their minds they are thinking, ‘Why does he say such a thing? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’
And lest we judge these men too quickly, they are entirely correct, and their response is the right one, with the information they had.
I can forgive your sins against me, but I cannot forgive you for your sins against someone else. I have neither the right nor the authority. I certainly cannot forgive your sins against God. God alone is in a position categorically to forgive sins. Forgiveness is uniquely God’s prerogative.
Yet here comes Jesus, carpenter from Nazareth and religious teacher, presuming to speak blanket forgiveness to this man. He is assuming a right and authority for himself that is exclusively God’s. He is putting himself on equal footing with God. It is gross blasphemy. The religious leaders are not overreacting. Jesus has just earned the death sentence.
What will he do? He has stepped over the line. He cannot ‘beep-and-back-up’. But he does not need to. He makes no retraction. He forges ahead.
He speaks to the religious leaders: ‘Why are you thinking like this? What do you think is easier: to say “Your sins are forgiven” or “get up and walk”‘?
The answer is obvious: to say ‘your sins are forgiven’ is easier. No one can quantify that. Who can say whether your word has been effective? But to say, ‘Get up and walk’, it will be known immediately whether you are a fraud or not.
Now notice, of course, that until Jesus spoke, no one said anything about forgiveness. It is obvious that the man is here to be healed physically. I wonder if, when Jesus said, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, the paralyzed man groaned and thought, ‘That’s not what I came for’, or if the four friends looked confused for a moment.
But Jesus knows that the great issue is sin, of which paralysis is but a symptom. That is not to say that the man’s paralysis is a specific result of his own specific sin. It may have been, but not necessarily so. In John chapter 9 Jesus makes it clear that we can never assume that someone’s illness is because of their own sin.
But it is true that it is because of the reality of sin in the world that there is paralysis, disease, and the things we mentioned earlier: fear and insecurity, conflicts between people, including marital issues, envy, unforgiveness, loneliness, or poverty. The world is a good but fallen place that needs redeeming. Jesus came as the redeemer and here he is, in the life of one man, redeeming, forgiving his sin.
The religious leaders are scandalized, and rightly so.
But then Jesus says to them essentially, ‘You are right that only God can forgive sins, and to demonstrate that that authority is mine’ … he turns his attention to the paralyzed man and says to him, ‘Stand up, pick up your stretcher, and walk home.’
And the man immediately does just that. In full view of everyone – his friends, Jesus’ disciples, the suspicious religious types, and everyone else – this man, who the whole town knew as a paralytic, unable to move himself, stood up on his strong legs, bent over to pick up his mat, and strode out of the room.
The whole room celebrates! They slap the man on the back as he makes his way through the crowd. They swarm around Jesus with a strange mixture of happiness and wonder.
Up until now, the people have seen Jesus as a good teacher and healer. He is a charismatic speaker who performs miracles. So people flock to him, hoping to see him in action. Today, something else happened: Jesus makes it clear to the people that he is more than a curiosity. More than a prophet, even. He is giving indications that he is identified with God in a more significant way than anyone suspected. He makes it impossible to ignore his hints when he backs up his statement by healing the paralyzed man with a word.
There are two reactions to this: the people erupt in praise to God. They don’t recognize Jesus yet as the divine son of God, but they do at least recognize that in Jesus, God is doing something. They rightly praise God for what they have just witnessed.
But the religious leaders react differently. They do recognize what Jesus is intimating about his divine identity and they are hardened. This story is the first of five episodes in which Jesus and the religious people clash. And over time, as Jesus’ divine identity becomes more and more evident, the religious leaders are more and more set on bringing him down. In their zeal for God, they fail to recognize him when he comes to them. Later, when Jesus stands arrested, it is the charge of blasphemy that brings his death sentence, that he claimed to be God. It is in this story, the healing of the paralytic, that the cross first looms on the horizon, and every step from now on brings it closer.
It is on the cross that Christ did for us decisively what he did for the paralytic: brought forgiveness and wholeness to our lives.
We say that Jesus died for the sins of the world. There are two facets to that.
By ‘sin’, I mean all those things we do that fall short of God’s perfect character: from murder, to laziness. Whatever actions or inactions, words or thoughts we know are wrong, fall into the category of sin and we are all sinners. All of us have chosen, at least once, to react with a temper, or to lie, or to lust, or to envy, or to ignore someone’s need. There are two camps: one called holiness, where God lives, and one called sin, where we live. And let’s face it: we still choose sin far more often than we want to.
That sin has two effects:
First, it puts us in a position of guilt. All wrong actions deserve punishment: from execution to a ticket to a time out in the corner. Well, our sins against God also deserve punishment, and a day is coming when God’s justice will be administered. We will all be defendants in God’s court.
Suppose you broke an object of infinite worth. You could never pay off that infinite debt. With our sins, we have violated God’s perfect standard and have incurred an infinite debt, an infinite punishment. That is the first thing sin does.
Secondly, it robs us of fullness of life. Firmly outside of God’s camp, we are separated from him by our sin, and since fullness of life is found only in God, sin keeps us from that.
By dying on the cross, Jesus bore the punishment for sin. When he gave his life of infinite worth for our sin, our infinite debt was paid. Should we choose to accept that, that means our sins are forgiven, and in God’s court, all charges are dropped. (If you decide not to accept that, then you are still on the hook for your sins, and will be judged accordingly.)
Then also, since we are forgiven, we are moved from the camp of sin into God’s camp, no longer separated and the wholeness of life with God is available to us again. We don’t have to be crippled by insecurity, for we have God’s own love and affirmation. He has said, ‘You are valuable enough for me to give my son for. So do not fear the opinions of others.’
We do not have to be paralyzed by envy, for in God himself we have all that we need for joy, hope, meaning, and fullness. We can celebrate, rather than resent, God’s goodness to others.
Our marriages can be whole, because in Christ we know how to love sacrificially and humbly.
As Christians, we still often choose to live outside God’s camp, and dwell in the tents of greed, fear, envy, lust, unforgiveness or criticism. But in Jesus, sin need no longer drive us as it once did. Wholeness of life is there for us.
Joni, the girl I mentioned earlier who became a quadriplegic in a diving accident, is still in a wheelchair today. God did not say to her, ‘Get up and walk.’ But in the years since the accident, she has grown much in her understanding and experience of God, through her faith in Jesus Christ. She has seen her life touch countless people with the reality of God’s love. God has used her paralysis to draw people into real life in relationship with himself. Joni herself has experienced God in ways she would not have otherwise.
Today, Joni thanks God for the wheelchair, for through it, God has indeed made her a whole person. Unable to imagine life as a quadriplegic, now she says God has given her a life better than she could have hoped for.
I want to close by asking you where you fit in the story:
Are you the paralytic? Do you stand in need of forgiveness today? I want to declare to you today that forgiveness of sin is available to you in Jesus Christ. Do you need to be made whole? You need to know that by coming to the feet of Christ, your envy, fear, addiction, bitterness, emptiness, shame. You can be released from it. You can be made whole. Jesus the son of God has the authority and willingness to forgive your sins and to heal your life. He may heal your body. He will certainly heal your soul.
Are you one of the friends? There may be someone for whom you are praying, someone who you desperately want to bring to Jesus. Could be your child, your friend, your spouse or a neighbor. God honors and responds to your faith. Do not despair that God has not heard your prayer. Your prayers are powerful and effective. Your life and witness will bear fruit. Do not be surprised when someone who is now paralyzed, unable or unwilling to walk with God, suddenly leaps off their stretcher in response to the word of Jesus.
Or are you one of the religious people, prone to criticize and to doubt? Suspicious of all that does not fit your understanding of how God does things? The danger is for us to miss the move of God. Those people are those who worry more about the hole in the roof than the healing of a paralyzed man. If that’s you, learn to see Christ in unexpected places. Learn to recognize the activity of God, and be careful not to judge too quickly where God may or not be at work. For the religious leaders were also paralyzed, in a sense, and Jesus would have forgiven them if they showed even a glimpse of faith. But they did not.
Three responses:
Either you need Jesus, or someone you know needs Jesus, or you think no one needs Jesus.
Three responses: which are you?
Amen.