The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (2:1-12)
At that time, when Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that He was at home. And many were gathered together, so that there was no longer room for them, not even about the door; and He was preaching the Word to them. And they came, bringing to Jesus a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had made an opening, they let down the pallet on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now, some of the scribes were sitting there, reasoning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” And immediately Jesus, perceiving in His spirit that they thus reasoned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you reason thus in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your pallet and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – He said to the paralytic – “I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.” And he rose, and immediately took up the pallet and went out before them all. So that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
Today we read the story of the paralyzed man who was healed in Capernaum. It is also the day we remember St. Gregory Palamas, the 14th century priest and monk remembered for defending the Orthodox practice of hesychasm, or “stillness.” In preparing this for this short homily, I spent time reading St. Gregory’s homily on this same gospel passage, delivered just like this one, on the second Sunday of Lent. There was a moment as I was reading when St. Gregory talks about hearing two weeks ago about the Last Judgement, and then last week about Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise, and I realized that 700 years ago these same Sundays of the Triodion and of Great Lent were already in place. Little did he know that a couple centuries later he would be remembered specifically on this day. I am not going to tell his story today, but by way of honoring his memory, I will be leaning very heavily on the sermon he delivered on this day all those 700 years ago.
All three synoptic Gospels contain this story and place it near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has come to Capernaum, a major city near the sea of Galilee. Capernaum functioned in many ways as Jesus’ home base. Matthew goes so far, when he tells this story, as to call Capernaum Jesus’ “own city.” So when Jesus arrives he is a known entity. He has already taught and healed in the streets and synagogues of Capernaum and almost immediately a crowd begins to form around him. Why? Why did the crowd form around Jesus?
For exactly the same reason a crowd forms when a circus comes to town. For exactly the same reason there are lines around the block whenever the next Star Wars movie hits the theater. They want to see the show! For most of this crowd, Jesus is a performer. He tells stories, gives little lessons, and sometimes does magic tricks. Word of Jesus has begun to spread and the masses have gathered from far and wide to see the show.
But now, for the first time in the Gospel story, we begin see a second tier form within the crowd. Before this point in all the Gospels, Jesus has only ever spoken about the scribes and Pharisees. He is not yet leveling his harshest criticisms, but he is calling upon his listeners to “exceed” their righteousness.
And his growing audience also sees a difference between him and these prominent men. We are told they notice that Jesus speaks “as one with authority, not like the scribes and the Pharisees.” So, before this story, there has been talk of the scribes and the Pharisees, but this is the episode where they make their first appearance on stage.
And with this entrance I’d like to pause for a moment to help translate this story for our modern ears. Because the scribes and the Pharisees really get a bad rap and we need to be careful not to target the wrong people with this smear. It must be remembered that Christianity really grew out of the religion of the Pharisees. From their understanding of the Old Testament to their understanding of the end times, especially the idea of a bodily resurrection, Jesus and his disciples had more in common with the scribes and Pharisees than any other sect of their day. The synagogues that Jesus and St. Paul taught in were run by the Pharisees. Men like Nicodemus are shown as converting within the Gospels and Pharisees like Gamaliel are shown as sympathetic. So when Jesus blasts off in the Gospel of John with his famous, “Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites!” you must understand that he is saving his harshest criticisms for his own people. The Pharisees are not hypocrites because they disagree with Jesus, but because they essentially believe the same thing, but they do not act on it.
And so, when Orthodox Christians read “scribes and Pharisees” in the Gospel, they should mentally translate it into something like “our Orthodox Priests and professors.” These were not the bad guys. These were not the occupying Romans or aristocratic Sadducees. To most in Jesus’ day, these were the good guys, the leaders, the people who should have known better. It would be as if I heard there was a new guy in town. He was Orthodox, he was one of us, but he didn’t even go to seminary, he just started talking as if he knew everything. And he was filling up the Tax Slayer Center. And then he started criticizing the Church and the Church leaders, he started criticizing me, calling on me and my colleagues to do more and to be more. Even if I agreed with him, I’d feel a little threatened. I’d want to go see what was going on. I’d be curious what this man had to say. I’d be curious what it was that the people loved so much. I’d be curious if he was the real deal, or if he was leading my people astray.
So this is the context for our story. A huge crowd has formed around Jesus. And the crowd is full of Jesus’ super fans, but it has also now begun to attract some that might be a little more critical. And the crowd is so thick that a paralyzed man, a man who needs and wants Jesus’ help, is stuck outside.
You get the irony, right? So many people just love to hear Jesus talk about loving God and neighbor that they can’t make room for this neighbor in need. How many of our Church’s are just like this, so wrapped up in our flowers and our festivals, our liturgies and our services, our fasts and our feasts, that the hungry and the poor can’t find a moment to get our attention. How many times do I have to hurry past the beggar on the street so I can make it to Church on time? And just as the Gospel’s critique of the Judean religious leaders needs to be read as a critique of our religious leaders, so to this critique of Jesus’ super-fans needs to be accepted as a critique of us. And we all need to hear these critiques, so we can learn from them.
So the paralyzed man is stuck outside, but luckily he has some fantastic friends who decide to help him out. These four faithful friends go to extraordinary lengths to help this paralyzed man make it to Jesus. They climb up on the roof of the house and make their way over the crowd. They have to create a hole in the roof to get inside and then lower the man on his pallet into the midst of the room.
And when this happens, I hope you can feel the anticipation and the excitement of this room. This is the moment the scribes and the Pharisees had been waiting for; the moment where Jesus will be shown to be the charlatan they already suspect he is. The crowd is excited. The faithful few are expectant.
And Jesus sets out to perform his greatest miracle to date. He has cured the sick, he’s healed lepers, he’s exorcized the demon possessed, but in this moment h edoes something bigger than any of that. With every eye in the place focused on him, he looks at the man and says: “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Really? That’s it? Can you imagine what the people thought? Could there have been anything more disappointing to the crowds than that? Could there be anything more infuriating to the Pharisees? Reconciliation with God was their business! That is what the sacrifices and the temple were for. If this man can just come along out of nowhere and say, “Your sins are forgiven,” what does their role become? In a modern context, you need to hear them saying – “But he hasn’t been baptized!?! He hasn’t been chrismated!?! He hasn’t been to confession!?! Who are you to say that his sins have been forgiven? Who do you think you are? Do you think you’re God?!?”
When describing the reaction of the crowd, St. Gregory Palamas says, “It seemed to the scribes that the Lord was unable to heal the paralysed man, so He had resorted to something obscure, forgiving him his sins. Just to pronounce words of forgiveness, especially in such an authoritative and commanding way, was of course blasphemy; but it was also something anyone could do.”
And how about the paralyzed man and his friends. The Gospels don’t say, but I doubt he came out that day to have his sins forgiven. I think it’s pretty obvious they came that day in hope that he would be healed, that he would walk.
But I also don’t think in this moment that he was disappointed. I suspect he accepted this gift. St. Gregory makes a point of calling out the particularly endearing term, “Son,” that Jesus uses. “What a blessed way to be addressed!” he writes. “He hears himself called ‘son’ and is adopted as the child of the heavenly Father. He is joined to God who is without sin, having immediately become sinless himself through the forgiveness of his sins.” Jesus doesn’t just recognize him, he adopts him as his own. And I’m just guessing, that a paralyzed man in the first century often felt a little ostracized and outcast, and that to be embraced in this way in front of a huge crowd would have been unbelievably emotional. I imagine he felt healed, in many ways, in all the most important ways, long before anything else happened.
St. Gregory Palamas reminds us that each of us are paralytics in need of healing: “Anyone addicted to sensual pleasures is paralysed in their soul, and is lying sick on the bed of voluptuousness with its deceptive bodily ease. Once, however, they have been won over by the exhortations in the Gospel, they confess their sins and triumph over them and the paralysis they have brought upon their soul.” And we all know that when we realize our shortcomings, when we make our way to the Lord, and lay them bare in confession and the Lord offers us his forgiveness, we know the feeling of so many of those other pressures in our life melting away. In the end the heaviest burdens in our lives are often not our physical ailments, but the many burdens we bear within our minds and our hearts and the many obstacles that stand between ourselves and our brothers or sisters. And so, having felt that relief myself, I suspect that this man was happy with what he got. He was happy with the crumbs from the Lord’s table. Happy with his adoption by such a man as Jesus. It may not have been what he came for, but I believe he was satisfied nonetheless.
But regardless of his feelings, Jesus was not done. Jesus senses the tenseness in the crowd. The text says he perceived how they were reasoning within their hearts. And so, looking at the disappointed and critical crowd, he cut immediately to the heart of the matter: “Which is easier? For me to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Or for me to say, ‘Get up and walk?’” That’s it. That’s the whole Gospel story in one single question. Jesus came to reconcile humanity with God and with one another, he came to solve the single greatest problem that ails the entirety of creation, and when he does it, it’s not what the crowd wants. They don’t want it and the religious leaders won’t stand for it. And neither has the time of day for the God who stands in their midst, or for the neglected needy neighbor who had to climb over their heads to get someone to help him.
And so Jesus, in a move of great grace and condescension gives this man - and the crowd - what they came out for. He says to the man, “Rise, take up your pallet, and go home.” And the man does just that. In St. John Chrysostum’s commentary he says that the healing of this man’s soul was actually the greater miracle, but that Jesus, because the greater miracle is unseen, throws in “that which although an inferior thing, is yet more open to the sense; that the greater and also the unseen may receive its proof.” So Jesus gave this man a cure to the illness that had been plaguing all of humanity from the beginning of time and the crowd went “ho, hum.” But he gave him the ability to walk and we’re told “that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’”
I’d like to end by talking a little bit about the faith of our five men. We might get caught up in whether the healing occurred as a result of the faith of the paralyzed man or the faith of the friends, but the truth is the healing occurred so that the works of God might be revealed. St. Gregory points out that Jesus was not concerned with the faith of the servant of the Centurion, or the daughters of Jairus or the Canaanite woman. He was satisfied with the faith of those who pleaded on their behalf. But he also points out that the paralyzed man was present and there was no way the four men could have accomplished what they did without his cooperation. To St. Gregory it is clear that, “being racked with paralysis had not broken down this man’s reasoning, but instead it had broken down all the barriers and obstacles to his faith.” The paralyzed man’s trials, his illness, rather than breaking him down, had grown his faith.
St. Gregory Palamas explains that so many of us have been prevented from drawing near to the Lord, “by lands, by weddings, by worries about the affairs of this life, but the paralysed man’s physical weakness put an end to such things and removed them from his thoughts. There are times when illness is better for us than good health, because it helps us towards salvation and blunts our sinful impulses.”
St. Gregory ends by pointing out that the path taken by the paralyzed man and his friends, the path of faith, is always open to each of us. And that just as all those who witnessed the healing of the paralyzed man glorified God when they saw the miracle, so to the fruits of repentance can garner that same astonishment. “For they see that yesterday’s publican is today’s evangelist, the persecutor an apostle, the thief a theologian. Even the man who used to live among pigs, if you please, is now the son of the heavenly Father. Having decided in their hearts to ascend, they advanced from glory to glory, progressing from day to day towards excellence. The Lord says to his disciples, ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ He does not say this to urge them to show off, but to urge them to organize their lives as is pleasing to God. For just as light effortlessly attracts people’s gaze, so a way of life pleasing to God draws their minds along with their eyes. We do not praise the air which shares in the brilliance of the sunlight, but the sun which is the source of this brilliance and bestows it on us. And even if we do praise the air, we praise the sun so much more.”
Our faith attracts the attention of others, and ultimately it draws their gaze and reverence to its source, to Christ. It is not our invisible faith that draws this attention, not the faith that lives only in our hearts or in our minds, but rather faith made manifest by our hands and our feet, our words and our actions. Sharing your faith with your friends, with your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, your enemies, doesn’t mean you have to teach them something. It means you have to serve them, you have to love them, just like these four men loved and served their paralyzed friend.
As I pointed out at the beginning, St. Gregory Palamas gave his sermon on this same day during Lent 700 years ago. He gave this encouragement and I close by sharing it with you: “Solomon wrote, ‘To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose.’ If anyone is looking for the right season to practice virtue, it is now, in these forty days. Our whole life is intended as a suitable means of attaining salvation, but this season of fasting is more especially so. Christ the author and giver of our salvation began by fasting.” And so, this Lent, may we all strive to reflect ever more perfectly to all who enter our lives the love and glory of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be all glory, might, honor, and worship, together with his Father who is without beginning and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now and forever. Amen.