A Pleasing Aroma to God: The Nineteenth Sunday After Trinity (October 6, 2024)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Salvation. Amen.

In today’s Gospel reading, a man with the palsy is brought to Jesus. Palsy is a form of paralysis or lose of movement that may be accompanied by shaking or uncontrolled movement. Whatever the particulars of this man’s condition, we know that it was severe because the man was brought to Jesus being carried on a bed by his friends. His palsy reminds us that we there is much about life that we cannot control—for this reason, Jesus doesn’t look at the man and say “Pull yourself together.” That would have been cruel because the man didn’t choose to have this condition. His condition is a way of providing spiritual insight into the disorder we all experience due to the inability we have because of sin. But the beauty of the story, the beauty of the Gospel, is that healing is available, not just in the form of forgiveness, but restoration.

Throughout most of Jewish history, sacrifices were performed by priests who slaughtered bulls and goats in hopes that God would forgive the sins of the people. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that this system was temporary. It couldn’t be permanent because it was always provisional which is why Levitical priests had to offer sacrifices over and over and over and over again. But today in our reading, Jesus tells the man with the palsy that his sins are forgiven. He doesn’t say “your sins are forgiven pending a new sacrifice,” but rather, “your sins are forgiven.” This causes the Pharisees who were present to object because only God can forgive sins. Even in their objection, the Pharisees provide us part of the syllogism:

Only God can forgive sins.

Jesus forgives sins.

Therefore….Jesus is God.

But this is a conclusion the Pharisees simply can’t admit; and so they accuse Jesus of blasphemy. And they would be correct if the claim to divinity that Jesus was making was wrong. And so, in response, Jesus goes from the easier to the harder. It’s easier to say “Your sins are forgiven” because how can you check? It’s much harder to say “Get up and walk” because if the man tries to get up and he can’t, it becomes clear that the purported healer really doesn’t have the authority or power to do what he was claiming to do. And so to prove he has that power and authority, Jesus tells the man to get up and walk. He heals as a way of confirming his authority to forgive sins. It’s kind of the reverse of when he tells his followers not to worry about those who can kill the body, but to worry about he who can kill the body and throw the soul into Hell. Here, the point is that we should worship not just he who can heal the body, but he who can heal the body and the soul. The animal sacrifices offered by the priests in the Old Testament are types and shadows that faded away; the newer is here and forgiveness comes to us from the full and perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

And note how the crowd responds to what transpires between Jesus and the man with the palsy: they marvel that God would give the power of forgiveness of sins to humanity. Only God can forgive sins, Jesus is true man, therefore God has given humans this power. But it doesn’t just stop with Jesus because he delegates that same authority to his disciples: “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). In 2 Corinthians 5, St. Paul understands his ministry as an Apostle to be about reconciling all people to God using that authority. Even today, Bishops and Priests in Apostolic Succession are deputized to absolve sins; all who share in the priesthood of Christ as under-shepherds have that authority. God does this because he knows we need to be sure. This is what each of the sacraments do: they remind us that what God says is true. And so we need water to remind us of our new birth, the washing away of sins; we need bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ to be reminded of his enduring presence with the Church; we need those words “I absolve you of all your sins” because they remove the doubt and uncertainty.

This is not an abstract matter of theological precision; the forgiveness of sins has a real impact on our lives. God’s forgiveness is not only about the removal of guilt, a negative reality, but positively, God uses forgiveness as a way of giving us what is lacking in ourselves. Our confession for gluttony is a prayer for temperance; our confession of pride is a prayer for humility; our confession of lust is a prayer for chastity. The man in our reading didn’t just have his sins forgiven, but his health restored. We don’t just have our guilt removed, but our spiritual health is restored. This is the beauty of grace: it goes well beyond the boundaries of mercy. Mercy is not giving someone what they deserve; grace is giving us what we don’t deserve.

Every confession ends in absolution. Absolution is the insertion of the Gospel into our stories. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Absolution is God’s story about who we are; and, therefore, receiving his forgiveness changes who we are. What more evidence do we need that God loves us than that he forgives us our sins for no reason other than his love? That is the love that drives the Collect: “forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee.” We were unable to please him by ourselves, and so in his Son, he supplies what is lacking. Only God can transform us from miserable offenders into living sacrifices, a pleasing aroma to God.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.