David Bahn – Reflections

Mark 2:6-12

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷ “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸ And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? ⁹ Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? ¹⁰ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹ “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” ¹² And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

There is a paralyzed man before their very eyes. Jesus is in the process of healing him – speaking into his life deeply – and all the scribes can do is worry about Jesus’ authority to forgive sins. They might well have expressed concern about the man’s possible false hopes in Jesus. They could have said, “Why don’t you heal this man, Jesus?” They could at least have expressed concern for the man and his plight, or even spoken to the man’s friends about their misguided idea. But none of that happens. They worry about Jesus. So they “strain at forgiveness;” they worry more about the wrong thing and miss the man before their eyes.

Jesus, on the other hand, is concerned for the man who is before him. This paralyzed man needs forgiveness most of all. Somehow this is true in a way beyond the obvious. We might even need to consider how very much we need forgiveness – just as the paralyzed man did. For the likely sin for which the paralyzed man needs forgiveness is the sin of despair of God’s grace. He had likely given up (nothing in the text tells us this, but experience in life would point us that way). In the face of a daily parade of hours and days and weeks on end, confined to his bed, unable to take care of the base necessities of life, I would surely grow cold toward God; I would be very tempted to dispair of God’s grace.

Isn’t that the temptation of us all. As days march on and our prayers don’t seem to be answered, don’t we begin to wonder? Don’t we question God’s goodness, his attentiveness, his timing? Or, perhaps more subtly, don’t we too often too quickly settle for too little? Maybe we need forgiveness more than an answered prayer. Perhaps we have hardened our hearts too quickly toward expecting great things from God. Maybe we have factored God out of too many equations.

The only thing worse that that is to sit in judgment on others who have done so, or who are trying to help those who have. Straining forgiveness from life is a serious sin of itself.