Mark 2.9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and take you mat and walk'?

I love this story from Mark’s gospel: the excited crowds pursuing Jesus, hoping for a glimpse of him healing a leper or casting out a demon. He’s in such demand that he’s worn out and harassed, he hardly has time to sleep, or even to sit down to a meal. All it takes to draw a crowd is a rumor that he’s back in town. In Capernaum Jesus visits someone’s house; people mob into it to hear him. They can’t all squeeze inside; there's a crowd outside too. Out there there's a paralyzed man; apparently he's heard about Jesus healing people. Luckily, this man who can't walk has friends who can. They carry the paralyzed man up to the roof, cut a hole and somehow lower him down to Jesus in the packed house.

Mark says that when Jesus saw what was going on he did something completely unexpected. Surely everyone there expected him to heal the paralyzed man. Instead, he says "Your sins are forgiven!" We don't know what the paralytic's reaction was, but I assume he was surprised and disappointed.
 

We do know what some people there thought, namely some "scribes,” i.e. teachers of the law.  Probably they were there to catch Jesus doing something wrong, something contrary to God's law, of which they were the self-appointed guardians. They're thinking to themselves: "Why does this person talk like that? He's blaspheming! Only God can forgive sins!" Somehow, Jesus knows what they're thinking. This is exactly the response that Jesus wanted from them. Jesus set them up, to say one of the most wonderful things he says anywhere: "Which is easier: to say to the paralytic 'Your sins are forgiven' or to say 'Stand up, pick up your mat and walk'?"

Mark says Jesus wanted to make the point that he has the right to forgive sins, that he's no run of the mill faith healer but in some impossible, terrifying way God himself.  Notice though that he makes this point for these experts on the law, people whose profession is making sure no one gets away with anything, making sure that all the rules are respected, down to the last letter, seeing to it, finally, that no one really gets forgiven for anything but instead gets precisely what he deserves. These lawmen had to see Jesus as a blasphemer, the worst kind of criminal.

Mark’s story tells us a lot about how the human situation looks from God's point of view. It shows us two ways of thinking about ourselves and the situation we're in. One way we can see ourselves is as victims. This is how the crowd must have seen the paralyzed man right up to the moment Jesus brings up the subject of his sins. There he is, on his little mat, almost completely helpless. Laying there - or better - dangling dangerously in mid-air - he represents you and me and the whole human race as victims. He can do nothing for himself; he has no hope and no future.

None of us can do much of anything to escape the fate that awaits us - we all die in the end. Along the way we’re vulnerable to all to kinds of hurt and loss. As victims we are hapless and helpless, subject to forces we can't understand or control, forces that are out to get us. We imagine ourselves free, able to decide for ourselves what to do and what to be. But we’re not all that free. We are compulsive, obsessive creatures, marginally rational, driven by our genes, our unconscious, our environment.
 

The other way to see us is as villains. This is the way those scribes saw the paralyzed man and everyone else. As villains, we are to blame for our situation. Human history is a bloody mess, but it's all because of our wickedness. We’re responsible. Your life might be a world-class disaster, but it's your own fault. There's plenty of pain and suffering, but we've asked for it. The wages of sin of sin is death and they are well earned.

Is either view right? Surely both have a share in the truth, but is either really the way we are? How does God see us?

At bottom the Christian gospel is the message God brings us about how he sees us. St. Mark's story about the paralyzed man is a good place to see this good news because Jesus meets those who see us as villains head-on: "Your sins are forgiven!" No soul-searching, no confession nor evaluation of motives and convictions.  Jesus sees someone turning to him for help and instantly liberates him from bondage to guilt and the promise of punishment. He's not a villain anymore.
 

How the teachers of the law must have hated this! Not just because of the apparent blasphemy; that's probably the sort of outright crime they were hoping to catch Jesus at. I suspect that they must have really hated Jesus for making it look as though God's forgiveness is free and there for the taking. The crowd must have included any number of crooks, drunkards, fornicators, liars, gossips; probably assorted wife-beaters and child-abusers; maybe a murderer or two. How irresponsible to suggest they could get forgiveness just by giving Jesus the chance to forgive them. How dangerous to tell them that! What would become of the orthodox faith if those sinners got off so easily? What would happen to law and order? Jesus declares the villains righteous.
 

Jesus then turns to the victim: "Get up...and walk!" First the outrageous word of forgiveness, then the first wobbly steps toward wholeness. That crowd of sinners Jesus was ready to forgive was at the same time a crowd of victims - foolish, hurting, frightened people, trapped in a world they don't understand from which there's no way out alive.
 

For me, the great thing about this story is the way Jesus refuses to separate the two ways of seeing us. He refuses to see us as victims without seeing us as villains too. He lets us know we are powerless, helpless victims: and yet, ultimately, in a way we barely begin to understand, that what we do and what we make of ourselves matters. God gives us that dignity. He takes us seriously; he empowers us and gives us our freedom. The healed man might, crazily enough, have been tempted to stay put on his little mat.  He might have suddenly found it safe and comfortable when confronted with the need to get up and  make a new life for himself in the world of the walking. The gift comes with no strings attached; he’s healed and forgiven no matter what, but it’s up to him to decide what to do with it.  We don’t know what he did next, but we know the rest of his life must have been an ongoing choice between gratitude and forgetfulness, between growing thankfulness and absurdly letting the miracle go to waste.

Jesus refuses to see us as villains without seeing us as victims too. Christ is victor over the powers of evil outside us, as well as within us. He clears out hell and empties the graves, snatching us from Satan's hand, giving us our lives.

Jesus asks: "Which is easier, to say 'Your sins are forgiven' or to say 'Stand up and walk'?" He takes aim at the whole truth about us: we are victims and villains. If we ignore either we miss seeing why the good news is so good. Sometimes we forget our victimhood, focusing only on the fact that we are sinners. We forget that Jesus came to save us from what's beyond our control. We're tempted to let a campaign against sin take the place of the Christian gospel. Moralizing and legalism push God's grace out of sight. Sometimes we ignore our villainy, focusing instead on our helplessness and our needs. We forget that Jesus came to save us from ourselves. For we are our own worst enemies, willfully taking sides with the powers that hate God and want to humiliate and destroy his creatures. We betray our creator and ourselves. If we forget this we find no cure for the shame and guilt that haunts human existence.

That helpless man carried through the crowd, desperate to get into that house where his one hope was, reminds me of those famous lines from Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man:”  The always unreliable and now useless farmhand Silas has returned to Warren’s farm to die. Wondering why Silas hasn’t gone to his rich brother’s place, Warren muses:

  Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
  they have to take you in.

Less famous is his wife Mary’s response:

  I should have called it
  Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.

In Frost’s poem old Silas, both victim and villain, finds a final mercy. Mary and Warren treat him with grace. But that’s not always true; there’s no end to the homelessness, both material and spiritual, in this world.  There’s no guarantee of finding someplace where they’ll always let you in, where they’ll graciously receive you, forgetting the question of what you deserve and what you can do. The law of this world is that you get what you deserve; your merit weighed and measured, you’re tested and evaluated, tenured or fired, promoted or left behind, rewarded or punished.  For victims and villains like us it can only be a kingdom of judgment and condemnation.

And yet: where Jesus is, that is where they have to let you in, even if, like the fellow in today’s story, you come in by some unorthodox route. Even if you are a broken person who can’t make it in under your own power. Even if the faith with which you turn to Jesus is outweighed by doubt, no more than a dim hope in the darkness.  To come to Jesus is to hear God’s YES to each of us, no matter our condition.  Those teachers of the law that Jesus shocked knew about God’s mercy, his steadfast love, still, when they saw it in the flesh they wanted to say “Yes, but...” Yet, as Paul said in today’s epistle, in Jesus it is always yes: God’s yes to us, just as we are, not to tomorrow’s or next year’s or someday’s improved version of us, but to us as we are now, at once victims and villains, by grace healed and forgiven.

Amen.

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