Introduction

I grew up in Stratford. Stratford is famous for the Festival Theatre, and there were also some musical artists of note (like Loreena McKennit) but these days the most famous native of Stratford is Justin Bieber. I remember about 10 years ago visiting my parents and hearing on the news that the Biebs was in Stratford! It’s always exciting when a hometown person becomes an international sensation and graces the place of his upbringing with his presence. We might think this is because we have a celebrity-obsessed culture, but we see it in Jesus’ day as well.

At the beginning of his ministry Jesus relocated to the town Capernaum about 50 km from Nazareth. Jesus began with a flurry of preaching, healing and exorcisms. Just as word was getting out, he and his disciples left town to take the message to the surrounding villages. We pick up the story as Jesus returns to Capernaum to a hero’s welcome.

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!” (Mark 2:1-12, NIV).

What can we learn about Jesus and the work that he’s doing from what happens in this story?

Jesus Sees The Man

I’m sure I wouldn’t react the way Jesus reacts when someone is lowered through the ceiling. If I were in the middle of a sermon when a sawzall blade came through the ceiling, and after some commotion a stretcher-sized chunk falls to the floor followed by a man lowered down on a stretcher, my first reaction would be, “Do you realize how much damage you’ve just caused?!”. The text says this is during Jesus’ sermon, so he might also reasonably be upset that this guy has just ruined his third point. But Jesus isn’t offended by the distractions or the damage. Instead, Jesus sees a broken man in need and that is more important than all the rest.

A couple of months back, Kirkland Lake had to declare an emergency from localized flooding. My basement had been trashed from flooding a week or two before, but I remember asking myself if I would be willing to put people who had been flooded out up in my basement, even if it meant they could trash my stuff. I wish I could say it felt like a no-brainer, but it really didn’t. 

I’m reminded of a story found in Victor Hugo’s book Les Miserables. Set in the late 19th century, the book tells of Jean Valjean who is paroled from prison after serving 20 years. He is given an identity card that tells people he’s an ex-convict, so he’s not able to secure lodging. Eventually he collapses on the front step of a cathedral. The bishop sees him, takes pity on him and invites him in, giving him warm food and a place to sleep. But during the night, Valjean reverts to his old ways and takes many of the church’s most valuable things. He’s quickly apprehended by the police. In the morning when they bring Jean Valjean back to the church, to tell the bishop that they caught him with his stolen goods, the bishop denies that they were stolen, admonishing Jean Valjean for going without also taking the silver candlesticks. He saw Jean Valjean’s need as more important than his possessions. This is what Jesus does too.

Jesus Knows the Man

The man’s friends think they know what his deepest need is: he needs to walk. So they bring him to Jesus to be healed. I have no doubt that this man was surprised when he was lowered in front of Jesus and Jesus’s. First response is to forgive his sins. I can picture him saying, “Thanks Jesus, but that’s not really why I’m here. Do you see that my legs don’t work? Do I really need to spell this out for you?” But Jesus knows this man’s needs better than the man knows them. We often misidentify our deepest needs. I’ve met people who assume that their greatest need is that they’re single and need to be in a romantic relationship. Often, this sort of person isn’t in an emotional state where they can actually be a life-giving partner to someone. They may be mistaking their need for connection and companionship with their need for romance. Perhaps they would more profitably get these things in a friendship. Only when they find themselves secure, would they be able to be a loving and attentive partner to someone else In a romantic context. 

This man’s deepest need is for forgiveness. After all, what good are legs that work if you are alienated from God and dying in your sin? So Jesus attends to his most pressing need first. But this doesn’t mean that Jesus is oblivious to, or doesn’t care about the man’s physical needs. He cleverly uses the healing. This man desires to demonstrate his authority to forgive sins. Which is easier: To forgive someone’s sins or to heal them? Neither. But Jesus asks, which is easier to say. It’s easy to say a person’s sins are forgiven, because no one can disprove you. To say that someone is healed, because if they stand up and fall flat on their face, the healer will be exposed as a charlatan. But what Jesus is showing is that if he has the authority to heal a man, he also has the authority to forgive sins. Interestingly, Jesus refers to himself here as the son of man. While this is a common way Jesus used to refer to himself, he doesn’t do much of that in this part of the Gospel. In the old Testament, son of man could simply mean a human, but by Jesus’s time when someone referred to a son of man, they were likely referring to a very specific instance of the old Testament. Testament. In Daniel chapter 7 Daniel recounts a vision from the heavenly throne.

“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed (Daniel 7:13-14, NIV)

 The son of man is a human being invested with God’s authority and Dominion on the earth. Jesus is claiming to exercise God’s authority and proves that he has it by performing a miracle that everyone can see (allowing this man to walk).

What can we learn from this miracle? We often come to God seeking his favor in one area, but not realizing that we are misidentifying our most pressing needs. I’m reminded of a story about someone who went to work with Mother Teresa. He got a chance to speak with her and asked her if she would pray that he would have clarity. She refused. He was confused and commented, “but you always have such clarity!” She responded, “I’ve never had clarity. What I have is trust.”

Like that man, I want clarity. I want to know in advance where I’m going, so I’ll make sure to go the right direction. But often this leads us away from dependence on God. In the story of Abraham’s call. God tells Abraham to get going before he shows him where he’s going to go. This is often how he works with us. In Isaiah 30:21, the prophet says, “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” In other words, get going and I’ll make sure to tell you if you turn the wrong way.

Before I moved to Hungary to become a missionary, I remember thinking that my greatest need was knowing where the funding was going to come from. I had raised $1,000 here and $2,000 there for short-term mission trips, but I needed to raise $50,000 just to cover my initial commitment of 2 years. I was looking for God to make sure it was all squared away before I left. But God had other plans. He knew that more than being able to relax because I knew where all the money was, I needed to learn to set aside my worries because I could trust that he was faithful. There were times when I didn’t have very much, but I always had enough. And in the end I realized that he was faithful. There are times when we might doubt God’s faithfulness. And this is often when he’s working on priorities that are different from ours. If by faithful we mean that God does what we want him to do, he’s not faithful. But if we submit to his priorities, we will find that he is faithful. And he knows our needs better than we do. 

Jesus knows his adversaries

Jesus also knows the heart of his adversaries. His assurance that this man has been forgiven causes quite a stir among some of the crowd. The people who are offended seem to be the kind of people who have a hard time imagining that God could forgive sin. Apart from the sacrificial system employed in the covenant. It’s true that God had forgiven sin through sacrifice, but the sacrificial system became an end to be defended rather than a tool in God’s hands. So when Jesus offers forgiveness apart from the system it seems blasphemous to his listeners. They confused God’s purposes and God’s means of achieving those purposes. 

Have you ever noticed that in the accounts of old Testament battles, God always leads the Israelites to victory in different ways? In one battle, he tells them to sit tight while he does the fighting for them. In another he tells them to set an ambush. In yet another, he tells them to March out when they hear the sound of marching in the treetops. And of course in another he tells them to March around the city and blow their trumpets. God changes up his modus operandi every time. I think he wants to impress on the Israelites that they win their battles. Not because they’ve stumbled on the winning strategy, but because he is with them. 

The temple system didn’t forgive sin because there’s anything especially effective about animal sacrifice. It was effective at forgiving sin because it was what God had told them to do. It was our way of dealing with sin, but it wasn’t the only way that God could deal with sin. Of course, before he made the covenant with the Israelites, God had to forgive the sin of Adam and Noah and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, among others. That wasn’t a problem for him. Even after God had initiated his covenant with the children of Israel, he was still free to forgive sin apart from it as we see in the example of King. King David. David’s murder of Uriah the hittite is a capital offense. There is no sacrifice that could be offered to atone for it, yet. When David confesses his sin, he’s assured that he is forgiven and that he won’t die. God has made provision for the forgiveness of Israel’s sin, but he still has the prerogative to forgive in other ways. 

The scribes of Jesus’s day weren’t willing to consider that God might choose to work out his agenda through different means than they had previously known. We can make this same mistake. Perhaps we met God in a specific context, and we assume that that’s the only context where a person can meet God. 

I remember when I was growing up in the 1980s, Church buildings tended to have stained glass windows. People sang four-part harmony out of the hymnbook. Women wore fancy dresses and men wore suits. But during the ’80s and ’90s things changed. New church buildings tended to be more functional while music was contemporized. Dress codes were relaxed. But there were some people who were horrified by the changes. In 1994. The church where I grew up added a contemporary service. Instead of singing hymns from the hymnbook, we sang choruses and projected them using an overhead projector. One gentleman in my church was so indignant at the changes that he refused to stand up when the song leader instructed the congregation to stand while singing if the song was projected on the overhead. He indignantly opined that this was bar music. The criticism is ridiculous. Many of his beloved hymns, written by Charles Wesley word bar music with christianized lyrics attached to them he very clearly felt like God would only work in spaces that looked like the spaces he was used to occupying. But times have changed, and God has changed techniques in how he reaches people. Even if the message is timeless. We have to ask ourselves though, how do we react when God calls us to follow him in new ways? Do we dismiss his direction because we’ve never done it that way before or do we adapt as the situation, and our Lord requires? I think Jesus is getting at this reality when in Mark 2:22. He says, “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” God may be doing new things, and if we’re too rigid to contain it, we might make a mess. So let’s remember that God doesn’t need our permission to lead us in New directions. Let’s not baptize our old ways of doing things simply because of their old ways of doing things. 

Conclusion

So what lessons do we learn from this miracle? First, Jesus cares more about people than he does about stuff. We need to be willing to sacrifice stuff when that meets the needs of hurting people. Second, Jesus knows our deepest needs, and he is faithful to address them. But his priorities don’t always line up with ours. We need to be willing to defer to his wisdom and learn to trust him. Finally, while Jesus is always doing the same thing, promoting God’s kingdom of peace, love, joy and reconciliation, he does so in ways that are adaptive to new times. As God is flexible, so must we also be. So let’s remember to be people focused, submissive to God’s direction and adaptive to God’s direction in a changing world.