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Healing the Paralytic
Psalm 56 • Mark 2:1-12
On the surface, this seems like a run-of-the-mill healing story.
Paralyzed man meets Jesus.
Jesus says some hocus pocus over him and the man walks away.
Woohoo!
The crowds go home amazed, and we have a nice side of embarrassment for Jewish leaders thrown in for good measure.
But if we look closer at this Jesus Story, we have some things to learn.
First, what do we learn about God?
What do you learn about GOD from this story?
To God, forgiveness of sin and healing are the same thing.
Look at verse 9:
Jesus using the declaration of healing and the declaration of sins being forgiven interchangeably.
Turn over to James 5. James is Jesus’ brother.
He was not a believer until AFTER the Resurrection.
His faith exploded, and he became a very important leader in the early church according to the book of Acts.
James 5
We learn that in God’s heart, Healing and forgiveness of sins are intertwined.
In this passage, verse 15 says, “...the prayer of faith will restore the one who is sick”.
Whose faith is James talking about?
The faith of the sick person, or the faith of the one praying over them?
Here, we learn something very important about humans.
What do you learn about HUMANS?
YOUR FAITH can heal SOMEONE ELSE!
Charlatans travel the land ‘healing people’.
And when a person isn’t healed, many of them tell the poor person “your faith is lacking”.
But in reality … if the person isn’t being healed, perhaps it’s the praying person’s faith that’s lacking.
Returning to Mark 2, Look at verse 5:
This story is also recorded in Matthew 9:1-8 and Luke 5:17-26.
This phrase is recorded in all three versions in the Greek and in the English … The only difference is that Luke uses a pronoun instead of Jesus’ name.
ἰδὼν⸃ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν πίστιν αὐτῶν
eidon ho Iesous ten pistin auton
Most of us probably hated diagramming sentences, so I will spare you that exercise.
But I will give you a very small Greek lesson this morning with this phrase.
[same slide with English underneath Greek]
literally: seeing the Jesus the faith them
That word order in English is very awkward, and looks like it may even be a statement about the men seeing Jesus’ faith, but the grammar of the Greek tells us that
“the Jesus” (ho Iesous) is the one “seeing” (eidon) (the verb is masculine singular … like Jesus)
and in Greek, the article, noun, pronoun order of “ten pistin auton” indicates possession, so “the faith” belongs to "them” (third person plural)
Jesus sees the faith of this man’s friends … and he responds by declaring the paralyzed man’s sins are forgiven.
We learn that YOUR FAITH can heal someone else!
That’s the good news in this about humans.
However, there’s a warning in here, too.
The scribes miss the connection of forgiveness of sins and healing --- so they miss the healing opportunity because Jesus declares sins forgiven.
Looking at their response in verse 7:
Who do the scribes think can forgive sins?
[only God]
And they take this belief so seriously, what do they call a human forgiving sins?
[blasphemy - the most serious infraction they could lay on a person]
We just learned that healing and forgiveness of sins are intertwined, and that your faith can heal someone else.
Can you forgive someone else’s sins?
Turn over to John 20 for a minute.
This is after the resurrection, and Jesus is preparing the disciples for his ascension.
Let’s read starting in John 20:19:
This statement is being made to “the disciples” - And it says in verse 24 that Thomas - one of the twelve - wasn’t with them.
One of the twelve is different than “the disciples” from verse 19.
This is not just the twelve in the room.
It’s likely a larger group including women, and Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit and tells them all they have the ability to forgive sins.
Who are the disciples of today?
In Mark 2, the scribes don’t recognize Jesus as divine and they don’t believe a human being can forgive sins.
But Jesus tells us … his disciples, his followers, his believers are empowered to forgive sins.
James restates this and again connects forgiveness of sins to healing.
Two things we can learn about humans is that the faith of one human can heal another human --- and all human believers are empowered to forgive sins!
What do you learn about YOURSELF?
How are you using your abilities?
Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation by challenging the Church’s selling of indulgences … effectively selling forgiveness.
He posed the question that if the Pope had the ability to forgive sins, why would he not forgive them for the sake of mercy instead of payment?
I ask you today … if you have the ability to forgive sins, why would you suppress mercy by not exercising your ability?
In my last semester of seminary, I asked one of the most brilliant professors I had, “Do you still find revelations when you study?”
He hedged a bit at my question, but finally offered an answer along these lines:
‘I don’t have as many revelations of things I didn’t know any more.
But I still discover new connections between bits of knowledge that change my faith and grow me.’
Perhaps you’ve been studying Scripture long enough that today’s ‘learnings’ aren’t new to you.
But, I can tell the connections are new to most of us.
How can I tell?
Because I don’t hear of healings among us, and I don’t hear about people confessing sins to each other for forgiveness.
We’ve been wrongly taught that faith is a very personal thing, so we should keep our beliefs to ourselves.
The new connection we learned today is that our faith is interconnected with each other.
Our healing, our forgiveness, our usefulness are all tied into the connective tissue of the Church - the body of believers.
We are sick, we are unforgiven, we are weak — because we think we can have faith and remain disconnected from each other.
We are withholding God’s mercy, and we’ve been convinced that He’s okay with it.
Having said that … let me ask:
What do you learn about yourself?
And...
What needs to change as a result of what you’ve learned?
For those of you who go to lunch together after worship … maybe your conversation can be a little different because of what you’ve learned this morning.
Let us pray.
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