6th Sun after Pent: Matt 9:1-8 “Forgiveness of Sins”

Today we take up where we left off last Sunday. The people of the Gadarene region, after Christ had healed their countrymen by sending the legion of demons into the pigs, begged Christ to leave them and we heard that terrifying line, “So He got into a boat, crossed over, and came to His own city.” We see that Christ will patiently stand and wait to be invited into our lives, but will obey our wish to have Him leave, should we choose to send Him away. It is always our decision. We need to carefully guard our thoughts.

Today we start with Christ’s arrival into his own base city of Capernaum, arriving back from the Gadarene district across the Sea of Galilee to a more welcoming crowd. Waiting for Him is the paralytic; he whom sin has rendered paralyzed, carried by his faithful friends to Jesus. The paralytic presents an image of where we can end up, if we continually fill ourselves with the paralyzing poison of sin; paralysed and almost incapable of resisting on our own. Note the result of the efforts by the paralytic’s dear and precious friends. Christ sees their faith and immediately acts saying “Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you.” Their friend is restored and able to once again move and choose to come to God. He receives a fresh start. May God grant that we could learn be such faithful friends to those suffering around us.

Once again, while the crowds marveled and glorified God, the supposed wise religious purists and authorities – the scribes – manage to overlook the power, love and glory of the occasion, missing the obvious lesson. Christ is once again clearly fulfilling all that had been written by the scribes and prophets throughout the ages regarding the signs which would identify the Messiah. Within themselves in their thoughts only, not out loud, the scribes protest that Jesus blasphemes only God can forgive sins after all. Jesus, showing them His divinity in yet another way – by reading the evil thoughts of their hearts and minds – answers their unspoken accusation, stating very clearly that He has the power to forgive sins as He is the long-awaited “Son of Man” another title for the Messiah. He asks, “Which is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven you’ or to say arise and walk?” How much more important is the forgiveness of our sins than the physical restoration of our body? The sign that accompanies and demonstrates for the crowd that Christ has the power and authority to grant forgiveness to the paralytic, is his physical healing, but Christ is saying the forgiveness of his sins is the greater blessing.

There are many who suffer with physical handicaps, with sicknesses, with poverty and much hardship yet remain full of faith and light, focusing on God and others rather than their own condition. They will take this wonderful grace and faith with them into the kingdom of God when they leave behind their physical suffering and earthly conditions. There are many others in great health, with a good standard of living and who seem to have all the earthly treasures one could ask for and yet are miserable, self focused and full of criticism for the lot God has given them. Forgiveness of our sins and a fresh start, enabling us to face whatever conditions we find ourselves in with God’s strength is a far more valuable treasure than a healing of any physical condition or miraculous change of circumstance. As St Paul tells us; (Phil.4:11,12) “…for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things,  I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need,” (1 Tim.6:7) “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”

Certainly not all physical handicaps and illnesses are caused by our own personal sin. There are some situations in the Gospels, like today’s gospel reading, where Christ clearly states this man’s paralysis is a result of his personal sin. But there are many other times when Christ does not comment on the cause or even says that it is to the glory of God. That He may be revealed through everything. In general, our sinful environment and the very fabric of much of our life here on earth, can create great suffering and tragedy. As a result of our fall and rebellion, our tragic loss of communion with God the very source of life, we see evil seeming to flourish at times. All physical illnesses, all that which is malformed and twisted and not in God’s perfect image, is a result of our sinful environment and choices, it does not flow from God. All that does not reflect the glory, beauty and perfection that exists in God alone will cease to exist and be burnt up in the fire and love of God at the last judgement. And yet, there is nothing so twisted and broken that it can’t be restored and even used as a vessel to allow God in. As Leonard Cohen so beautifully put it in his song “Anthem” “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Of course long before Leonard we had Christ telling us through St. Paul (2 Cor. 12:9) “…My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

The Fathers talk about the process of sin. All sin starts with a thought, a logismoi in Greek. There is no sin in having an initial thought attack you. Many of these unhealthy and disturbing thoughts are directly from the demons. We are all subject to these attacks, even Christ was attacked with these thoughts by the devil – remember Christ’s struggle in the wilderness. No there is no sin in having these thoughts, no matter how inappropriate or horrible. However, immediately upon having a temptation, we have a choice which will then determine if the thought or temptation leads us down the road to sin. Do we blurt it out, do we act upon it, do we even stop to play with it? The advice of the fathers is to immediately choose to ignore the thought and to not in any way engage it.

As I said last week, the Jesus prayer can be of great help in this regard. If the enemy sees that every time he attacks us it results in us fleeing to Christ in prayer, he will find his attacks very counter-productive and we will find they slow down. The Fathers teach we should just continue on with what ever it is we are doing. Often these thoughts come as we try to pray. If so, continue praying. If we are offended by someone we are told, (Rom.12:14) “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.” Unfortunately however, we often choose to engage and entertain these thoughts, to start an interior conversation with them. This is called “interaction.” While not necessarily sinful in itself, it is already very dangerous. We debate, “hmmm, does this idea have any merit, any value, should I, or should I not,” picking the daisy petals one at a time. “Should I open up that web page? There could be some educational value in it after all?” This then often leads to the next stage, to “consent.” Once the decision is made to act upon a bad thought, we have entered into the realm of sin. We only really have our free will to offer God. Everything is a gift from Him. But our free will is the only gift we possess to offer back to God, to show our gratefulness. The Fathers teach that once we have decided to consent to a sin, it will very shortly follow that we will perform the sin once the opportunity arises. This is called “captivity.” We then desperately need to wake up, repent and confess our sins that we may be able to be forgiven and start fresh in Christ’s strength. Otherwise, as this pattern becomes repeated our ability to resist becomes increasingly more difficult, until we are a slave to the sin and we enter the final stage of sin called “passion” or in more modern language “addiction.” Once this stage is arrived at, we continually give way to this activity and become more and more deadened to the horror and reality that we are killing ourselves, and cutting ourselves off from the love that God is always offering to us. Our consciences become deadened, our hearts become hard and calcified, our relationships with others deteriorate, and we isolate and end up like the paralytic in today’s Gospel; where only the fervent prayers and actions of our brothers and sisters in Christ can bring us to Christ to heal us from the sin we have chosen to yield to.

Thanks be to God, He knows how susceptible we are to this disease, and His love for us never changes. He is always waiting for us to come to Him so He can heal us and give us a fresh start, hopefully before we are so paralysed that we almost can not come by our own choice. Let us turn to God from this very day and repent of whatever habitually sinful ways we have been captured by. Pick one area, you know which one! Our Lord is faithful, He is calling us to come to Him completely, to lay our weakness at His feet and learn to walk in His strength. To come home to His love and forgiveness.

Glory to Jesus Christ!