Readings
for Epiphany 7B:
Isaiah 43:18-25; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 1:18-22; Mark 2:1-12
February 19, 2006
The Rev. Mary B. Blessing
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
Which is more important, to say, “ your sins are forgiven”, or “take up your mat and walk”?
Once again we hear a story of healing. Mark’s gospel lays before us healing after healing after healing. Today’s story invites us to take a look at the connection between forgiveness of sins and healing. It seems as if first and foremost for Jesus is the importance of healing a person’s soul by forgiving sins. Physical healing is secondary.
St. Jude’s Church has done a lot to consider the question of how forgiveness effects physical and emotional well-being. Pastor Karen and I have preached on this, we’ve had guest lecturers, we’ve looked at this in our covenant groups. We have even studied the importance of healing memories by offering forgiveness to those who have harmed us. We have learned that forgiveness is a process that connects a person to God and each other, bringing peace and comfort to our relationships.
But one aspect of forgiveness we have not explored is how to forgive oneself. For some of us forgiving self is the hardest form of forgiveness of all. Often, people who cannot forgive SELF are, I believe, paralyzed—they become spiritually paralyzed, and unless someone like a friend comes along to help, they can remain stuck for years, perhaps even a lifetime.
Maybe that was the sin of the paralytic lowered by his friends through the roof in Peter’s house-- lowered in to meet Jesus face-to-face. Perhaps it was his inability to forgive himself that left him lifeless, unable to move and dependent on others. Of course. it is speculation on my part, as Jesus does not state what the man’s sins are. No where in the story are we told. We know only that the man is paralyzed. Jews of Jesus’ time believed if a person had a physical ailment, such as paralysis, it was understood that the person had sinned. Old testament theology described sin as “disobedience to the divine command, the human desire to overstep the status of creature and to become like God.” (O. Thomas, Intro. to Theology, p.145) And, if you were disobedient, there were physical consequences. All the world would know you had sinned.
Jesus sees sin as disobedience and rebellion, but Jesus also knows that sin is more a matter of the heart, not of the body. Sin is not necessarily a particular act or moral misbehavior. In a more primary way, sin is a matter of our innermost attitude and intention than the act itself. If we turn our heart away from God, acting as if we have no need of God, then, Jesus would say, we sin. For Jesus, turning a heart away from God harms us more than physical paralysis.
One of the ways we re-orient our heart back to God is to recognize our need for God. And sometimes that includes a need to ask God to help us forgive ourselves. Failing to ask for and receive forgiveness for ourselves keeps our hearts turned away from God, keeps us in a perpetual state of sin, keeps us paralyzed. Often it is our friends who see this first, it is our friends who reach out to help us, even when we are too paralyzed to help ourselves.
Mark’s gospel reminds us, that even when we ourselves are too paralyzed to move into relationship with God, we can have our relationship restored through the faith of those who are able to bring us into relationship with God. Perhaps when we are spiritually paralyzed and are unable to “forgive ourselves” we can ask our friends who have faith to help us get into relationship with God again. And remember, if you are someone who has faith and sees a friend suffering from an inability to forgive him or herself, through this Gospel of Mark, Jesus gives you permission to figuratively cut a hole in the roof—to do “whatever it takes”—to bring your friend into the presence of God’s forgiveness, to free your friend of spiritual paralysis.
In today’s story we do not know initially whether or not the man will be healed of his physical paralysis. Physical healing seems secondary to Jesus’ concerns. Primary to Jesus is letting the man know he is in right relationship to God. As Mark tells the story, it was only because the Scribes challenged Jesus’ authority to forgive sins that he went ahead and healed his physical ailment. What if the Scribes had not challenged Jesus’ authority to forgive, and what if Jesus left the man in a state of continued physical paralysis, but with a healed heart, fully oriented to God, spiritually at peace? Is the healing any less significant? After all, one day, at some future date, the man’s body will eventually age, his legs will falter, his body will give out and die. But his soul will still be healthy and strong, his soul will be in right relationship to God. His soul will be at peace because he has accepted God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ. The decay of his body cannot take this away.
There is a modern day story of a paralytic I want to tell you. His story gives us insight into the spiritual significance of another scenario—a scenario showing the importance of spiritual healing even if physical healing does NOT bring a person back to “normal” life. It is the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the Editor in Chief of the French fashion magazine, ELLE.
At age 43 Bauby suffered a massive stroke that destroyed his brain stem. It left him completely paralyzed, except for the ability to move his left eye lid—and, strangely, his brain continued to function in an alert state of awareness. Due to the wonders of modern medicine’s ability to resuscitate the human body, as Bauby himself states: “You survive, but you survive with what is aptly called ‘locked-in syndrome’. Paralyzed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move.” (p.4, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) A brilliant, witty, powerful man is reduced to having his 10 year old son wipe drool from his contorted face, while nursemaids wheel him to the park.
Bauby never receive a physical healing that allowed him to “stand up, take his mat and go home”. But he did receive faith—mostly through the love and comfort of friends and family. He held on to the faith of friends from many religions who lit candles, chanted, burned incense, hiked to Tibetan temples, and prayed at his bedside. Annoyed when he heard that former co-workers gossiped about him being “reduced to a vegetable”, to “prove my IQ was still higher than a turnip’s” he mustered the courage to use the tiny bit of life left in his imprisoned body to create a communication code, blinking his left eye. A patient, caring, interpreter sat at his bedside, painstakingly decoding each word, letter by letter, with the blinking of that left eye. He began dictating monthly correspondence to 60 friends. Then, with humor, raw honesty and without self-pity Bauby wrote his phenomenal memoir. It sold 150,000 copies the day it hit the bookstand. Three days later, he died.
In the year and a half he lay physically paralyzed, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s mind and spirit lived an active life, remembering travels, aromas, the touch of his little daughter’s hugs, books he remembered in great detail, hopes and dreams fulfilled in the wanderings of his mind. It was the love and prayers of so many friends and family that offered him spiritual courage, the ability to accept his physical imprisonment, and still orient his heart toward God. He wrote about “the small prayer (that his) daughter, Celeste, sends up to her Lord every evening before she closes her eyes. Since we fall asleep at roughly the same hour, I set out for the kingdom of slumber with this wonderful talisman, which shields me from all harm.” (p.13) The faith of friends that brought Jean-Dominique Bauby back into relationship with God, brought him peace. He wrote of a life in which he admits failure and a turning away from Christ. Yet in these final months he reveals to those of us who have our bodies fully intact, to appreciate every moment, even the smallest of simple joys. He urges us to remember just how important it is to not “write off” those who are infirmed, those who may never walk again, those who are shut away from the world. His musings are a call to us to have our relationships settled and in good order, to be at peace with one another, for we never know when we may lose the opportunity to set things straight.
Most of all, Bauby’s story is a reminder that Jesus calls us to accept God’s forgiveness, to forgive ourselves in our inmost being, to get beyond inner paralysis, to orient our hearts into right relationship with God. To do so brings everlasting peace, a peace that can never be taken away, regardless of the slow paralysis of our bodies.
AMEN
| Updated 3/10/06 |
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