Luke 5:17 - 26
One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”
The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up 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 paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”
Usually when I think of healing, it has to do with a cancer diagnosis that has been reversed, blindness that has given way to renewed sight, tumors that have been diminished, or getting up unannounced from the wheelchair to walk across the room.
I am conditioned to think of healing as the reversal of some physical ailment that God has overcome. Often that reversal comes within the context of someone praying desperately for God's intervention.
This is healing, but a small part of healing. Too seldom, I remember that healing can happen in most every realm of life and is not limited to physical difficulties or maladies.
In the Gospel story for today, "the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick." No surprise there. We readily acknowledge Jesus as a healer.
What may be a surprise is the manner in which the healing took place, or rather, the context of the healing. For the healing in this story is a spiritual healing, effected by Jesus proclaiming that the lame man's sins were forgiven. "Friend, your sins are forgiven."
Probably the most important healing any of us could experience would be this kind of spiritual healing, this healing of soul. Physical healing may be limited to those who have specific bodily needs.
Spiritual healing, on the other hand, is available to everyone. And it may be that the beginning of this soul-healing is forgiveness.
What kind of weight is lifted when you know yourself to be forgiven, when you receive pardon. It brings not only relief, but cause for celebration.
The times I've been forgiven by others -- I mean, really forgiven -- there is such a tremendous freedom I can't even describe it. The liberation is huge. The sense that I had been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders -- or within my heart -- and that then the overwhelming weight had been lifted off me, was like no other experience I've ever had.
If you've had the experience of being forgiven in a relationship or of a significant debt or over a wrong you've committed, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
I love the response of the onlookers, who witnessed this spiritual/physical healing, and could only say, "We have seen remarkable things today."
Yes!
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