We Have Never Seen Anything Like This

This is the final Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the “joyful” season of Lent. Our Gospel fits the movement from Ordinary Time to this holy time of reflection. Physical disability and sin are linked together. It is a good story of friendship and faith. Jesus is preaching and is interrupted by the movement of a paralytic coming through the roof. The four friends expect Jesus to heal his physical impairment. Jesus is aware of the thinking that all physical illnesses are a result of sin. Jesus, for the first time in Mark’s gospel, begins displaying Himself as the redeeming-healer and so announces that the man’s sins are forgiven. He does not say, “Be healed.”

The real tension also begins here. The ever-present scribes make the double-meaning statement, “Who but God can forgive sins?” Their meaning is scoffing and Mark’s meaning is praise and affirmation. The tension continues as Jesus, knowing what the scribes are thinking about Him, tells the man to rise and pick up the evidence of his paralysis and go home which the man does. Jesus is beginning to do His Own “new thing.” “We have never seen anything like this.”

Jesus asks the scribes about what is easier, to forgive sins or heal someone physically. For most of us, admitting physical ailments is not always easy, but a lot easier than admitting the need for being healed interiorly. When going to the dentist I want the hygienist to marvel and the dentist to take pictures. I don’t want to hear them taking a soft-voice consult in my regard. If the evidence of too much sugar and tea is there, well, get on with it. The proof is present. That is easy. To be confronted by myself concerning my failures in responding to God’s grace and call, well, that’s more difficult because the proof is easy to ignore or deny. If somebody in my community confronts me, better said, offers me, some evidence of my communal sin and he has the evidence, well, that’s hard to accept, but easy to admit.

These coming days of Lent might be a good season of allowing Jesus to do a new thing in us. I wonder what one of my brothers, if when I am offered an offering of my offense, would say, “Thank you very much, grace is doing a new thing in me and you are helping God in my new creation.” Hmm, that brings a smile to my face. We are the new thing God is bringing about. Perhaps our not being paralyzed by guilt would be a new thing. We are not angels; we do not need God’s taking pictures of our perfections. We do not need an approver, we have confining ego-illnesses and Jesus enters through our roofs to get past our crowded defenses and He says to each of us, “Rise, let go of the evidence of our sins, and return to our dwelling places.” Lent might be for us an interior homecoming.