+Z’ev

Dan. 6:1-15; 2 John 1-13; Luke 5:12-26

Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, “Stand up and walk’?
Luke 5:24

This verse is a challenge. Which is easier to say? Well, to be honest, both are the same. It takes nearly no energy at all to say either, and we babble on about both. We “forgive” people all the time. We even say things in jest like, “be healed!” Neither hurts very much. And we’re used to hearing both and it be meaningless. We’re even used to hearing people ask for those things and it be meaningless.

Which is it easier to say?

Is Jesus saying (in a cultural equivalence) “I can talk the talk AND I can walk the walk.” or is there something else going on here, some other meaning to be read in the question?

The rabbis observing Jesus are scandalised at his forgiving sins. But Jesus knows these folks live in a world where God punishes humans for sin with just such curses. A man is not born crippled but that his parents sinned. A woman does not develop a flow of blood but that she must have done something horrible. So when a man is dropped through the roof with a crippling disease, there’s a number of things going on:

This man is so horribly diseased that his friends are taking a great risk, dropping him in on Jesus, like this: not just because it is an act of faith, but also because it is an act of social rebellion. Jesus knows the first thing everyone is thinking is “Ewwww, what did he do to get in such a state?”

Did he worship idols?
Did he eat pork?
Did he curse the Holy One?
Spit on the High Priest?
Maybe he had leaven in his house during passover?

Superstition? We can translate it into other, more modern sins.

Was he a Muslim?
Did he do drugs?
Did she drink too much?
Did he have sex he shouldn’t have?
Was she attracted to his own gender?
Maybe he voted for the war in Iraq?
Possibly she supported socialised medicine?
Maybe he ordained women?
Maybe he didn’t?

For each of these sins, ancient or modern, the man would have been excluded from public fellowship. The end result would have been crippling - even if God never got around to cursing him. Being cut off from human fellowship is cripping: one can not be fully human when alone. So when he’s dropped in the middle of the room, in the middle of everyone in politie society the first thing Jesus says is, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The things that divded you from us are gone. I don’t even know what they are. They are unimportant. You don’t even need to confess. *poof* they’re gone. Welcome back to the real world.

Oh, and you can walk again.

Church is to be that: forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion all in one, all at once. Our very lives are to be that.

We’re fortunate not to imagine a God punishes us for such things, although it is still so in some Churches: God causes earthquakes and tsunamis and far worse. In thse places we need to beg God’s mercy not as a loving child asking for parents’ kindly reguard but as a slave who has to deal with his status before a horrid and abusive master.

Jesus knows it is the listeners - most than the sick man - who need their positions questioned. They need their sins of pre-judgement forgiven. They need to be woken up and challenged: the Son of Man - that is all of us - has the authority to forgive sins on the earth, each of us has acts of reconciliation and healing to do. We have outsiders to welcome into the centre of the world.