Our text for this morning is a really nice story about Jesus, a story that shows a number of things. It shows some beautiful things about his character. It starts to explain to us why such an amazing man was persecuted and even put to death. It shows some deep insight into us human beings. I invite you to turn to it in your pew Bible. It’s Luke 5: 17-22 and it can be found on page 62 of the New Testament section. And then please stand for the reading of God’s word.
17 One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting near by (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem); and the power of the Lord was with him to heal. 18 Just then some men came, carrying a paralyzed man on a bed. They were trying to bring him in and lay him before Jesus; 19 but finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus. 20 When he saw their faith, he said, "Friend, your sins are forgiven you." 21 Then the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, "Who is this who is speaking blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" 22 When Jesus perceived their questionings, he answered them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? 23 Which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven you,' or to say, 'Stand up and walk'? 24 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"-- he said to the one who was paralyzed-- "I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home." 25 Immediately he stood up before them, took what he had been lying on, and went to his home, glorifying God. 26 Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen strange things today."
So, look at verse 17 and somebody tell me what Jesus was doing when this episode started. He was teaching. This is like the wallpaper of the Gospels. Jesus is always teaching. And he was always teaching because he always wanted people to understand. People’s faith grew as they began to understand. As their faith grew he could do more and more things for them. So he was teaching all the time and great things were happening.
And I know that our culture would rather skip the work of thinking and be content with feeling and doing. People who follow their feelings without thinking quickly go astray. People who just want to work for God without thinking about what they should do or why can end up working very hard without getting much in return. Hear this morning that again and again, Jesus devoted his days to teaching. And it wasn’t just Sunday mornings, but every day of the week. God wants his people to understand what they believe and why. Disciples of Jesus Christ are learners above all else.
Luke doesn’t tell us where this happened, but Mark says it’s back in Capernaum, his home base for much of his ministry.
Today we find something new about the crowd that has gathered around Jesus. There’s a new group out there. Who is it? That’s in verse 17, also. Today there were Pharisees and teachers of the law. They had come from all over the place to see Jesus. And it sounds like there were a lot of them there that day.
So who are these people? Every village needed to have a teacher of the law. He would be the school teacher, leading classes for the children in what we call the Old Testament. He would also be something like our lawyers, showing people how to get things done and stay within the law, and something like our notaries public, making documents official. People trusted them. Some Bible translations call them scribes.
And the Pharisees were the most religious people of the time. They out religioned everybody. They had rules for everything and they kept them all and they looked down their noses at anyone who didn’t keep their rules.
The word “Pharisee” means those who separated themselves. They were better than everybody else. And you can see it in our text. They weren’t sitting right at Jesus’ feet. They were ‘near by,’ off a little bit. And our text says that Jesus had been healing people. That should have told them that God was at work here, but it didn’t help. Even when God was healing people that day, they still kept their distance.
I can imagine they were very suspicious of this upstart. “So who is this guy, anyway? He’s not part of our group. He doesn’t follow all our rules. We’ll show him who’s in charge here!” They saw it as a turf battle.
So the teachers of the law and the Pharisees were sitting off at a little distance, checking him out, looking for weaknesses, collecting ammunition, and there were lots of them were doing it.
From now on, pretty much every time Jesus runs into Pharisees and teachers of the law there’s trouble. If this were a movie, you might hear ominous music in the background as the audience meets them. (Darth Vader theme).
And every age has people who sit on the sidelines and find fault with those who are in the battle. They aren’t happy until they can find something to be unhappy about.
Anybody can spot things that should be better. Some jump in and help fix them. Some sit on the sidelines and throw mud.
Well, on this day something pretty dramatic happens. There’s a man who is paralyzed. Did he damage his spine in an accident? Did he have a stroke? We don’t know. But he has some very loyal friends who carry him to Jesus. And their hopes are very high that Jesus can help him. But when they get there, the house is so crowded that they can’t get in.
And this is where I get really angry with people like the Pharisees. There are so many of them and the clog everything up so that the people who really have come to be helped can’t get to Jesus.
These people sit on the fringe and criticize. They shatter the hopes of people who come for help. How many times have people been soured against God’s faithful servants by spoil sports who sat on the sidelines, throwing mud?
On this day, this crowd of self-righteous Pharisees was quiet, but they may very well have prevented this man from ever getting to see Jesus, just by clogging up the space.
But he had these incredibly loyal and determined friends. Houses in those days had staircases outside so you could go up on the roof on a cool evening and enjoy the breeze while it was still hot inside. And they carried their friend up on the roof. And they cut a hole in the roof. They ruined the roof!!! And they did it so they could get their friend to Jesus.
Have you ever had a time when you felt as good as paralyzed? You were just overwhelmed by circumstances. Your energy was drained. Your brain was working at about half speed. Faith in God was a struggle. Those are the times when we need to let our friends carry us for a while.
And it must have been scary for this man. It must have been scary as they carried his stretcher up the steep, narrow stairs to the roof. It must have been really scary to be lying flat on your back, looking up at the sky while your friends lower you into a dark room full of strangers. Maybe the owner of the house is still yelling at your friends to get off his roof. There’s a point where his friends have to let go and strangers had better be there to catch him. But they held their faith together and Jesus saw that these were people he could work with.
And what can we learn about Jesus from this day? Jesus is inside, teaching the people about the Kingdom of God, what God is doing here on earth among folks like them. This is important to him. He hears thumping and scratching noises up on the roof. And suddenly people notice that dust is falling from the ceiling. Everybody looks up. Then some chunks of dried up clay, maybe some big chunks. People dodge to get away. Jesus’ message is totally forgotten. Suddenly there’s bright sunlight coming through the ceiling. And they see these crazy guys up there pulling the roof apart! And then there’s a stretcher coming down through the hole. People push to get out from under it. And as they realize that there’s somebody on it, they stretch to support it and bring it to a soft landing.
And what does Jesus do? Does he lecture them on the poor stewardship of wrecking the roof? No. People are more important than roofs.
Does he tell them to make an appointment and come back after he has finished his lecture? No, people are more important than agendas. So everything stops.
And everybody waits to see if Jesus heals him. But he doesn’t. He says something really weird, something that got him in trouble.
He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” And why did he say that? I can’t be sure.
A doctor friend of mine said he thought that in that age anyone who was paralyzed would die soon, and Jesus was setting him at peace, so he could die cleansed of his sin and free to meet God. That could be.
But my guess is that Jesus saw the depths of this man’s heart and responded to his deepest need first. He needed to know he could be accepted by God.
And what were his sins? Why did he feel guilty? Maybe he got hurt robbing a bank, but I doubt it. Sometimes the Bible tells us about people who were notorious sinners and lists their sins, but it’s silent about this guy.
I do know that in that day many people figured that if something bad happened to you, then that must mean you were a bad person. And that doubles the pain.
I do know that there are a lot of fair weather friends who will run away when you need them. “Oh, it makes me feel so down when I see him like that, I just stay away.” And then those who are suffering feel like they are being blamed for their suffering.
We can carry guilt for a lot of irrational reasons. When a child suffers, there is something inside of most parents that tells them they are responsible and should have prevented it, even sometimes when there was no way that the parent could have foreseen or prevented what happened. It feels like it was their fault.
I once worked with a woman in her 30s who had been sexually abused by her father for years. I asked her ‘Whose fault was it?’ And she said it was her fault. We talked about it. I asked her if she ever did anything to bring it on. She insisted she hated it and did nothing to encourage it. “Whose fault was it?” It was her fault. Often times children just don’t know how to file things away properly in their minds and end up blaming themselves for the sins of their parents.
Children of divorced couples, not understanding all the adult dynamics of a marital breakdown, often come to the conclusion that it was their fault. They feel guilty.
Maybe this man had been a good provider for his family. And then disaster struck and he couldn’t work. And now he feels like a failure. His self esteem is in the basement. Can God accept somebody who has to be carried around and who can’t even support his own family?
Jesus always looked deeper than the needs that we let people see on the outside. He looked for the pain that we hide away. And most of us will go see our doctor if we are having pain anywhere or suspect some part of our body isn’t working right. But some of us carry deep emotional or spiritual pain and we just go on and on, hurting, emotionally crippled. Jesus loves all of us. He wants to set us free from all that pulls us down.
And of course the Pharisees and the teachers of the law didn’t approve of Jesus forgiving someone’s sins. They recognized that only God could do that. They were right about that. And they kept their mouths shut until later when they could talk behind his back without him hearing it. But Jesus knew how they thought and he called them on it. And he called them on it.
He said, Hey, you guys over there! “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?” Those are both miracles that only God can do. They had sat there watching him heal people, which required power and authority from God and they didn’t complain about that. He’d been using the authority of God all day. And they needed to see that and accept it. And when it came to who he was and the divine authority he had, Jesus was very clear that day, even if it made some powerful people mad.
And then to nail his point, he healed the paralyzed man. The guy got up, picked up his cot and carried it home. And he was healed on the outside. And he was healed on the inside. AMEN
