The Rev. Dr. Timothy Ives

First Congregational Church

Chappaqua, New York

February 4, 2001

Luke 5:17-26

The periscope for today ends with a kind of epitaph that might be able to be applied to the whole Bible story. “We have seen strange things today,” is how verse twenty-six ends and it is quite appropriate to this reading and the Bible as a whole. But don’t worry, that is not a signal that this book is not about truth. When we start talking about improbabilities and even impossibilities we cross line from fact into not fiction but faith and that is the region where the most profound truths are told.

The story for today is certainly in the realm of the improbable and it is not just because there are miracles performed. In this whole story the responses that people have to each other are incredible. Every time I think I know what the next person is going to say they seem to do the exact opposite that I expect. Odd, indeed.

For example, could you in your wildest dreams imagine opening up someone’s roof in order to get into a house? Perhaps if you were going to rob the house you would consider it. Once when I was living in Manhattan the apartment next to me was robbed by people who repelled off the roof down to the top floor apartment. The tenants were naïve thinking they were safe being on the tenth floor! But that was not the surprising part. The robbers, not being satisfied with robbing the one apartment, broke through the wall into the next apartment. That is the kind of determination shown by these men carrying the paralytic. It was outrageous when the robbers did it but it seems impossible that people who were good enough to help their friend like this would do damage to the house that Jesus might have owned especially when they wanted him to do something for them. Doesn’t make sense. Strange days indeed!

But then it gets stranger. Jesus, upon seeing this man being put down in his midst, responds in a way I never would. He never mentions the roof. His only response to the fact that his house is being trashed is to notice the faith of the people who were trashing his house. I guess we could expect it from Jesus but it probably is not what most of us would notice first.

Then, after these men have gone to all this trouble, taken the desperate act of lowering their friend through the hole they made in the roof, so desperate are they to get him healed that they seem like they would do anything, Jesus commends their faith and says to the paralytic “your sins are forgiven.”

What?

In all my days of reading this story I still get to this point and wonder. These men have just carried this guy from who-knows-where, dramatically lowered him into this crowded room so that he could be healed by the master healer and with this opportunity to show off his power Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.” If I am in that house and I am watching Jesus or I have dragged that guy high and low to bring him to the moment of his healing believing that this one man Jesus can, really, I will not be impressed by absolution. I don’t think it is what anyone wanted from Jesus at that moment, but that is exactly what they get. And immediately the place is up in an uproar. And that is the other oddity here.

The way the story comes down to us today is a polemic against the Pharisees. Because in the story the Pharisees are upset with Jesus for even talking like he can forgive sins. That seems way out of place to me. Jesus has barely begun his ministry and the Pharisees are already after him? It is doubtful that anyone would have even noticed by him by this story and the Pharisees had no kind of official authority, they would have cared less what Jesus was doing. That kind of focus on every detail of his conduct will only come many years after his death when people are claiming that he was God. That is when the Pharisees had much more authority and had begun to take notice of this sect who followed Jesus of Nazareth.

I think the interaction was much more like this. The people present would have expected a physical healing. The stretcher bearers did not bring him all that way to have his sins forgiven. Jesus however knows a teaching moment when he sees it.

Please remember a very telling act in the early stage of Jesus ministry. It is reported in the Gospel of Mark. In that Gospel Jesus explodes on the scene doing wonders and miracles. So much so that he immediately gains a large following. He is healing all kinds of sicknesses and ailments and deformities. People get wind of it and come to him from everywhere. The house he is in becomes filled with people needing him just like the house in this story from Luke. But please know that he is clear about his ministry in reaction to all the hoopla over being healed. Jesus does not set up a wellness clinic and continue healing everyone. He does not instruct his disciples in the fine art of healing. He doesn’t do anything more in that place, rather he says “”Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also; for that is why I came out.” (Mark 1:38)

Incredibly healing is secondary to the ministry of Jesus. If you think it is not so why would Jesus say to the paralytic who came down through the rafters, your sins are forgive. Or why would Jesus time and again tell people that he had healed, “your faith has made you well.” It seems to me that it is clear, faith is what he is interested, the spirit is most important. Work on your soul if you want to find the secret to this living. That is what Jesus says in a thousand different ways a thousand different times.

Jesus is saying, it isn’t the physical circumstance that you find yourself in that determines the quality of your life. Just forget that. God could give you every comfort, every success, every dollar, every physical advantage but it would make no difference to that which really matters if your spirit is dead.

God sometimes heals. I have seen incredible miracles. Inexplicable events that I cannot account for. I have also prayed and prayed for healings and miracles that never came to be. I don’t think you will find someone among the clergy who has not experienced both outcomes. I don’t know why it is, except to say that the real interest of Christ does not lie with our physical wholeness. God is more interested in our spiritual wholeness.

The reason for this is clear to me. And it really is simple. It has to do with the abundance that I was talking about last week. That abundance is overwhelmingly powerful. It drastically improves the quality of life of any person in every circumstance. It gives meaning and joy and energy to anyone who can tap into it but the way there is not through getting all you physical realities and comforts in a row. If all you had to do to experience the abundance of God was to be successful, or rich, or to have enough life insurance movie stars would not be so unhappy. But it isn’t so. It is all in the heart. It is faith, and growth, maturity that brings the infinite abundance of God to bear on your life.