March 3, 2019 Healing and Forgiveness Luke 5:12-26

            I believe you all know what karma is.  It’s the belief in Hinduism and Buddhism that if you do bad things they will come back to haunt you.  If you do good things they will come back to reward you.  And if you get through this life without suffering the consequences or receiving the rewards, you’ll get them in the next life.

            As Christians we reject the idea of karma, but we still live the idea that actions have consequences.  If you make healthy choices you should be a healthy person.  If you have unhealthy or dangerous habits sooner or later they’ll catch up to you.  We also like the idea that the punishment should suit the crime.  If you’re going 30mph over the speed limit on the New York State Thru Way you can expect to get a bigger fine than if you’re pulled over for going 5 mph over the speed limit.  Although if you’re going 5 over the speed limit you’re probably going to end up as a new hood ornament on a big truck.

            We believe in justice and fairness, and we aren’t afraid to throw God into the mix too.  Often legal oaths involve swearing before God that you will tell the truth.  The idea being that if you lie you’re calling divine retribution upon yourself.  And if you get away with it in this life you’re surely burn in hell for it in eternity.  Any logical person would tell the truth!

            Keep all that in mind as we look at today’s gospel reading from Luke.  The first verses set the stage for the main scene.  Jesus has become such a famous healer that people from far and wide are coming to see him.  The crowds have gotten so big that not everyone can even get to him.  One day while in a house four very devoted men climb up on the roof, tear it off, and lower their paralyzed friend down to Jesus.

            They get an A+ for devotion, although I wonder how their friend felt about being carried and bumped up onto the roof of the house!

            I wonder what Bruce Allen, our insurance broker, would say if we started having crowds here so big for worship that people started tearing off the roof to get inside?  Oh well, we don’t have to worry about that problem!
            A whole bunch of stuff starts getting mixed together once the man is lowered to Jesus.  Luke’s gospel says, “When [Jesus] saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’”  Faith is a big part of all that is about to happen, but we have to set that aside for now and come back to it.

            Scribes and Pharisees, religious experts in other words, begin to question what’s going on, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies?  Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  But Jesus perceives their questions and says, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?”

            I think we easily see that as two different issues.  For us, forgiveness and physical healing are not inextricably linked.  Forgiveness can seem cheap.  We say some words in worship and have communion and that’s it.  It’s all intellectual or emotional, not something we physically feel.  For healing, for physical stuff, you go somewhere else, either a doctor or a hospital.  But remember back to where we started, with karma.  For the people of that day the issues were one and the same.

            Why was that man paralyzed?  The gospel doesn’t tell us.  But it is safe to assume that people figured he must have done something wrong; something to deserve it.  He had sinned and his paralysis was divine punishment.  Or, perhaps his parents sinned and his paralysis was their fault.  Whatever the case, God had ordained that this man would suffer in this way for something wrong that had happened.  It was seen as God’s order.

            So when Jesus says, “…your sins are forgiven you,” this is more than just some traveling preacher making silly proclamations.  This is someone who is challenging the whole order of the world.  He is challenging their ideas of justice and fairness.

            You can’t just tell a paralytic that his sins are forgiven.  No, they’re not.  He’s paralyzed because he sinned.  You can’t just erase the paralysis.  And he’s not truly forgiven as long as he’s paralyzed.  That’s his divine punishment.

            Jesus understands all this clearly.  That is why he shows that he truly has the power to forgive.  Forgiveness means restoration to full life.  He says, “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he said to the one who was paralyzed – “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.”

            That’s more than just about a miraculous healing.  And it’s more than just about forgiveness.  In their minds Jesus just upended the whole way they understand the world.  Where is justice?  Where is fairness?

            Did this man truly repent?  Did he offer the proper sacrifices for forgiveness or make restitution for past wrongs in order to be divinely healed?

            With healings like this suddenly the whole understanding of how the world works and what you can depend upon can’t be depended upon anymore.

            It’s easy to imagine this man as a life-long paralytic who has suffered innocently and he now has wholeness of life.  But we just don’t know.  He could just as likely been a construction worker.  Let’s say it was his job to set up a scaffold beside a high stone wall that was being built.  But he was drunk one day while he was doing it and did a shoddy job.  Then later, when a whole work crew was standing on the scaffold, he among them, the thing collapsed and several people were killed and he was paralyzed.

            Do you see?  We don’t know, but if we did, we might say this man deserves what happened to him.  Let him be a lesson to everyone else!

            And then Jesus heals him and forgives him.  If we take the construction accident scenario a bit further, what about all other families who are now suffering because their loved ones were killed?  How come they don’t get restoration while he gets to walk off without paying the penalty?

            Now of course that’s pure speculation on my part, but I say it to get to the point.  Jesus’ actions potentially upend everything we think we know about goodness and fairness.  Do you see why the religious experts were upset?  What kind of God would do this?  What’s the point of good religious practice and trying to live a good life and be a good person if it doesn’t count for anything?

            The ideas would make us mad too.

            Luke’s gospel is going to return to the ideas of fairness, and especially why do bad things happen to good people, but here he swings our thoughts back to the beginning of the scene.

            When Jesus saw their faith…

            Whose faith?  Is it the faith of the paralyzed man?  No, at least not his alone.  It is referring to the faith of his friends.

            Some would preach that it was the unquestioning faith of all these guys that led to the correct righteousness necessary for the healing to occur.  Faith then becomes about believing without any doubt whatsoever.  And if you don’t get what you want or need then there’s a flaw in your faith.

            There’s a circular trap to that logic, but many Christians believe just that.

            But that is not the faith of these men.  And it is not the type of faith that has to believe without any questions or doubts.  Their faith is one of action driven by relationships.  That is what Jesus is commending.

            Is he seeing these guys have pure motives?  No.  Does he see perfect contrition in the heart of the paralyzed man?  No, that’s not it either.

            He sees people who have oriented their lives toward what God is doing.  And that is forgiveness in and of itself.  Perhaps the key word in this passage is not faith or forgiveness.  It’s not even the healing.  Commentator Joel Green says the key word, and the center of the whole scene is when Jesus calls this paralyzed man “Friend”.  He is a friend of God.

            May we not have our lives bound in issues of fairness and unfairness, or trying to make sense of righteousness.  I’m not saying they’re irrelevant.  They are relevant, but they aren’t ultimate.

Instead, may we build our lives on the ultimate; on being a friend of God, someone in right relationship who turns there no matter whether things are fair or unfair, or seem right or wrong, all is done beside God.