Only God Can Forgive Sins Series

ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE SINS—Mark 1:1-12

***It was a Sunday morning, and light was just beginning to dawn. I got up and went to the bathroom, and promptly fainted. When I came around, I panicked, because I felt a tingling in my arm, a marker for a stroke. My wife called 911, and after a couple of hours in the emergency room, the doctor decided it was just a case of the flu. My wife drove me home, and in the middle of the morning I walked up the steps of our apartment building, suddenly realizing that I was in my pajamas! I felt like everyone in the building was staring at me.**

Maybe the paralyzed man was used to being stared at. But when he was lowered into the middle of the crowded room, with everyone staring, he must have felt almost naked. (Some people feel like everyone is staring at them when they enter a church for the first time.)

In this house, everyone WAS staring.

Imagine the scene. The house is packed, because Jesus has returned to Capernaum, where a few days earlier, at Peter’s house, he healed a whole bunch of people. Some of those lucky enough to be inside are the owner’s friends and neighbors, but Mark (reflecting his source, Peter) notes that “some teachers of the law were sitting there,” probably claiming the best seats.

There is a loud pounding on the roof, and the sound of the sticks and straw and sand and tar being torn off. Then a shower of fragments, and finally a cloud of dust and a burst of daylight. The people are scrambling, falling on top of each other to make a landing spot for a man being lowered into the room.

Everyone stares at the man! Some recognize him, and others immediately see that his body is limp—paralyzed. Their stares alternate now between the paralyzed man and Jesus: What will Jesus say and do?

Day after day, this man lay on his bed or mat, pulling himself around with his arms. The world went off to work, but he stayed home, or relied on the kindness of friends or strangers to get him out of the house.

Four of his friends or relatives love him enough to literally tear the roof off the house to get him to Jesus. They have risked the anger of the owner and the expense of repairing the roof because they believe Jesus can heal their friend.

Now the man is lying helplessly before Jesus. What will Jesus say and do?

Jesus looks at him, then at the four men on the roof, and then at the people crowding around him. Then he looks back at the paralyzed man, and he says to him, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

It is like the oxygen has been sucked out of the room.

The man looks puzzled, perhaps disappointed. The men on the roof are stunned; this is not what they hoped for. The people in the room are perplexed, and some begin to whisper among themselves. The teachers of the law are stone-faced, seething with anger.

And us? We are confused.

IS FORGIVENESS THE GREATEST NEED OF THIS PARALYZED MAN?

Some people speculate that the man had committed a horrible sin, and his paralysis was a reaction to his guilt. That is medically unlikely. Others speculate that his paralysis was caused by risky and irresponsible behavior—drunk driving, or a robbery gone bad.

I don’t think this man was a worse sinner than most people. He kept company with four good friends or relatives, whose faith impressed Jesus. He had enough faith to allow them to drop him into a crowd, where everyone would stare at him, in the hope that Jesus would heal him. I think he was a pretty good man.

I also think this man understood, better than most of us, that he needed forgiveness. When things are going well, we might think that we are thriving because we are pretty good people, who deserve to be blessed. People who struggle don’t have that luxury. Some rebel and blame God for their suffering, but others gain a deeper understanding of the evil that permeates our world. The world is not as it should be: cancer, birth defects, depression, arthritis, war, abuse, unfairness. Those things are evil, symptoms of a world estranged from God.

Suffering may force us to recognize the evil within every one of us.

***I once knew a saintly old woman who inspired everyone by her kind and gracious words. Then she had a debilitating stroke. Since she did not have much money, she was sent to the county hospital for indigent care. I visited her in a large ward, with dozens of people in a drafty room, and I was shocked to hear the words that came out of her mouth. The stroke had taken away her inhibitions, distorting her thinking so that she swore like a trooper. Sadly, I had to wonder whether some of those words and attitudes were also rumbling around in my brain.**