Mark 2:1-12
There are some funny things about this story. One of those funny things has to do with the question, “Whose house was it?” We don’t know, entirely, but there is a good chance it was Jesus’ home.
The story starts out telling us that Jesus was back in Capernaum. He had been with the disciples traveling around to some neighboring towns preaching the gospel. Now they were back in Capernaum on the north shore of Galilee lake. This town seems to have been Jesus’ home base. Some of the disciples were from there, so it just stands to reason.
So when the story says that Jesus was “at home” it could simply mean he was back in town. But the word that is used for home means a dwelling, a house. Jesus was a carpenter, so it is not too far of a reach to think that he built his own home there in Capernaum where he could have his own space. You can imagine the Son of God building his own home—everything must have been perfect. Maybe he didn’t even have to, like good carpenters do, measure anything. He just knew. He would lay a board down, know how long it was supposed to be and just cut it. Take it over to the wall—perfect fit.
So let us imagine Jesus is in his perfectly built home, teaching and healing. His home is packed with people and along comes four guys with a fifth on a mattress. Not a fifth of booze, I mean. A fifth person. (Kind of like the old joke, “Why is it whenever you get four Episcopalians together there is always a fifth?”) But who knows, maybe there was some alcohol involved in this story.
These guys can not get in because there are so many people, they come up with plan B. They get up on the roof—which wasn’t hard since most homes used the flat roof as a second, open air room any way. And they dug through the stucco roof right above Jesus’ head. They dig a hole through Jesus’ perfect home. They destroy a section of the home built by the Son of God. And imagine this is no small hole. The paralyzed man is lowered down on a mattress. So we are talking at least a mattress-sized hole in the Son of God’s perfect roof.
Can you imagine what Jesus is thinking? Can you imagine the thunder clouds forming over these four guys who are totally messing with the Son of God’s personally built home!! That’s why I think there may have been alcohol involved because certainly if these guys were thinking right, they would not have jack-hammered through the roof of the Son of God’s home. If they were sober, that would not have ever come up as a plausible idea. Kind of humorous, no? But then again, maybe Jesus wasn’t that concerned. He could just heal the hole in his roof.
Well let us move on to some of the more serious elements in this healing of the paralyzed man. Once the guy (whose name we do not know, nor the names of the four buddies who brought him) is laying on his mattress in front of Jesus, Jesus looks up at the guys peaking through the hole in his roof. He is staring at them. He sees something in the look on their faces.
The story says when Jesus saw “their faith,” he then turned and talked to the paralytic. This is important because the faith here is in the four friends up on the roof, not the paralyzed man. When Jesus looked up into those four men’s faces, what did he see in their eyes?
And what was it that Jesus saw that he called “faith”? “When Jesus saw their faith…”? Was it the friends determination to get the paralytic in front of Jesus no matter what? They saw obstacles: people crowded inside the tiny home; people crowded outside the doors and windows; a roof made out of timbers and stucco. But they were determined to get their friend in front of Jesus. They were determined. Is that what faith is?
Or was it the love of the friends for the paralytic to make sure they tried everything to get him to walk again? Love will cause you to do drastic and sometimes funny things for the ones you love. Maybe they were all five brothers, and that family love drove them to get the best for their brother.
Or was it their belief that Jesus was the Son of God, and could do this miracle? The word “faith” in Greek means total persuasion or conviction. As Jesus looked up at those four faces with whatever looks they had on them, did he see their total conviction that they knew he was the Son of God? Did he see that they were totally persuaded that Jesus had the very power of God to heal. Is that what he called “faith.”
John Calvin said the friends faith was shown “by the laboriousness of that attempt”. Calvin’s rationale is that they would never have gone through all that trouble and overcome all the roadblocks if they “…had not derived courage from entire confidence of success.” I like Calvin’s phrase there: “…entire confidence of success.” Like Alan Luttrell’s question put to me a year or so ago, “If you knew you would succeed no matter what, how would you live your life different?” If you had the “confidence of success” what would you do with your faith? How would your life be different?
Imagine those four guys. Failure was not in their vocabulary. They were going to succeed with their intentions. They just knew it. Because they had that confidence, they got their friend in front of Jesus, Jesus called their “confidence of success”, faith; and their friend was healed.
Whatever it was, the paralyzed man reaps the benefit of the other four guys faith. How much do we derive advantage from the faith—the confidence of success—of others? We could start with Paul, preaching to the Gentiles. If Saul had not taken the gospel to the Gentiles—the non-Jews—the Christian faith would have probably become just a Jewish sect under the leadership of James and Peter in Jerusalem. Because Paul had the larger vision of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, we got included in that.
Or there is William Tyndale, one of the men who was influenced by the Reformation. He saw the need to get the Bible translated into the English language from the Latin version that the Catholic church was reading. For translating Scripture into English, Tyndale was imprisoned by the Catholic church, strangled to death, and then burned at the stake. But if it wasn’t for him, we would not be enjoying reading the Bible in the English language.
St. Augustine came to the faith by the prayers of his mother. Also, his conversion happened because he chanced to hear a little girl in a nearby garden reading from the Bible. When you think about it, each new generation must learn the faith from a Godly parent or grandparent. In other words, if it was not for the faith of others who have gone before us, we may not have come to the faith we hold. And then you must think about where you are in that chain of faith, and what groundwork you are laying so that someone else, like the paralytic, might reap the benefit of your faith.
And what do we know about the paralytic, anyway? How did he get paralyzed? Has he been paralyzed since birth, the innocent victim of some birth defect? Or was he doing something foolish like camel tipping while drunk? Or riding his skateboard off the roof of his house into a hay stack and missed? Even if we knew him and the reason for his paralysis, and it was all because of his own stupidity, would we judge him and say he deserves to be paralyzed for doing something stupid?
Did the paralyzed man have faith also, like his friends? Was he a religious person, or was he a godless cuss? Did it matter to Jesus? Did it matter what the reason for his paralysis was to Jesus? Did Jesus first grill the guy about the 14 tenants of evangelical Christian doctrine? And then we have to ask, “Does it matter to us whom Jesus chooses to heal and who he doesn’t?” And what he calls faith, and what he doesn’t?
Jesus does a somewhat strange thing first. He tells the paralyzed man his sins are forgiven. What Jesus is letting the man know is that his problem goes much deeper than his paralysis. The man’s heart is paralyzed as well, by his sin and broken relationship with the Father God.
One of the words for forgiveness literally means to be let out into a wide open place. And the corresponding word for sin means to be cramped and hemmed in, to be in a tight place. Imagine the small world the paralyzed man has available to him. He sees there is a big, wide world out there, but it is not available to him because of his paralysis. Jesus is telling the man, the same is true for what sin has done to his heart. It has kept him from living a life of wide open freedom before God. Jesus took care of that first, by forgiving his sin and freeing his heart to really experience God’s full life.
Then the Scribes enter this story. They have a dialogue with Jesus about forgiving sins. Notice that every part of the initial dialogue between the Scribes and Jesus was in their minds and thoughts. The Scribes were thinking their doubts. Jesus was reading their minds, and answers not their spoken questions, but the questions they had in their minds. That may be a little spooky to you, that Jesus can read your mind—that Jesus knows your thoughts—that nothing of your thought world is private.
There was an ad, once, in the newspaper that simply read: “Help wanted: Mind Reader; you know where to apply.” What do you think about being able to listen in on other people’s thoughts? I used to wonder what it would be like to read people’s minds. Then, when I first got on Facebook, I didn’t wonder any more.
So, what the Scribes are thinking in their minds is a question: “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” OK, so you are a Scribe. You are looking at Jesus when you are thinking that question. As you look at Jesus you have two possible ways to go with it. The standard answer, and the correct answer is, only God can forgive sins. If Jesus just forgave the paralytic his sins, that means Jesus is saying he is God. At least, claiming to be God.
Here is your dilemma if you are a Scribe looking on at this scene. If Jesus is claiming to be God, but only God can be God, then Jesus is who he says he is, or he is a deluded lunatic. As C.S. Lewis once said, Jesus is who he claims to be or he is on the same level as a man who claims he is a poached egg. Jesus is either who he claims he is—the Son of God—or he is a crazy man who needs to be locked up in the rubber room at the local looney bin.
There is no middle ground. Jesus isn’t claiming to be a nice teacher, or a prophet, or someone we can admire from a distance. Jesus either is or he isn’t the Son of God who can forgive sins.
Remember I said that in Mark’s Gospel, every story is forcing you to look at Jesus and decide who he is—Is he the Savior, or not? The Son of God or not?
The fast one that Jesus pulls on the Scribes here is that Jesus gives another sign of his divinity by reading the Scribes thoughts. Jesus is making their private musings about Jesus out loud and public. Their thoughts are that they are ultimately rejecting God in Jesus, because they can’t allow for the fact that God can come at them in the person of Jesus—that God has to come in some prescribed way—but not this way. Now the Scribes have to decide if they have been wrong about Jesus.
Mark wrote that everyone was “amazed”. The Greek word is existemi, where we get our word ecstasy. Now put out of your mind this word as the name for a currently popular drug. Think of ecstatic! Knock your socks off, WOW! Mind blowing powerful! So amazing you are not sure even you believe it! So amazing it is almost even scary. They have just witnessed something higher than they can humanly imagine. They saw something that the only proper response is to fall on your knees and worship God.
Makes you wonder who made the comment, “We have never seen anything like this…” at the end of the story. Was it the people about the healing of the paralytic? Or was it the Scribes about how they had just had their thoughts picked? Whichever you choose, the statement remains: You have never seen anything like this—and you will see more.
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