sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 10/19/2014
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2 A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. 2They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them.
3Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. 4Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. 5When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
6Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
8Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”
So he said to the man, 11“I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
13Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. 14As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.
15While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. 16When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
17On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
In Mark 2, for the first time, the powers that be start getting upset with Jesus. Why?
Because he treats sinners differently than they do. He heals them, forgives them, invites them to be in his inner circle. Thirteen chapters later, this is what gets Jesus killed. Relating to sinners not in the way of the old humanity, but in the way of the new humanity.
Why is this such a big deal? Why is it so threatening to the people in power? And what does it mean to us, either as people who can identify with Jesus’ enemies, or as people who can identify with the people Jesus ends up blessing?
We’ll start with the concept of moral judgment. The idea that we can get a sense of what is right and what is wrong about another person’s actions. This passage is full of moral judgment, isn’t it?
The paralytic is judged to be somehow in the wrong because of his paralysis. A very common judgment at the time, even though it might seem bizarre to us modern people. Although when we look at how the legal system judges beautiful people vs. those who are less so, we see that the same basic dynamic happens even today (even if it only happen subconsciously).
The tax collectors are judged to be in the wrong because of their disloyalty to Israel, and presumably because of the way they have accumulated wealth through dishonest means, at the expense of their fellow Israelites, to boot.
Jesus is judged to be in the wrong because (1) he doesn’t seem to share in the moral judgments of the teachers of the law, and (2) he has the audacity to go so far as to forgive the sins of the paralytic and to share meals with tax collectors, not to mention inviting one of them to be his disciple.
To see what’s going on here between Jesus and the teachers of the law, we need to get to the bottom of a basic question.
What’s moral judgment all about, anyway?
We all do it, don’t we? How does it work? How do we think it serves us?
All moral judgment is rooted in fear.
All moral judgment is a response to the perception of a threat.
Listen to this clip from Edward Scissorhands. Edward (a gentle, compassionate, lonely character with scissors for hands, played by Johnny Depp; don’t ask – it’s a Tim Burton film) has been taken in by a local Avon representative and her family. They begin to engage Edward in a conversation about morality.
BILL
Okay, a little ethics. You are walking down the street. You find a suitcase full of money.
There's nobody around. No human person is in evidence. What do you do?
A. You keep the money.
B. You use it to buy gifts for your friends and your loved ones.
C. You give it to the poor.
D. You turn it into the police.
KIM
That is really stupid.
PEG
Kim!
KEVIN
I keep the money.
PEG
Simmer down.
BILL
Edward…? Edward, we are waiting.
EDWARD
Give it to my loved ones?
PEG
Oh, Edward, it does seem that that's what you should do, but it's not.
KEVIN
You dope, everybody knows he's supposed to give it to the police.
BILL
Good thinking, Kevin.
KIM
Well, think about it, you guys, I mean, that's the nicer thing to do. That's what I would do.
BILL
We're trying to make things easier for him, so let's cut the comedy for a little while.
KIM
I am being serious. It's a nicer thing to do.
BILL
We're not talking nice. We're talking right and wrong.
KIM
Shut up.
PEG
Oh, goodness sake, no wonder poor Edward can't learn right from wrong living in this family.
Think about it yourself. How many of you would answer A – keep the money for yourself? How about B – use it to buy gifts for your loved ones? C – give it to the poor? D – turn it in to the police?
Now, think about how you felt when you heard someone else give a different answer than you.
Perhaps you felt something along the lines of: I’m not so sure I’d like to live in a world where that’s how people behaved. Perhaps you thought, well that seems like a reasonable person who just raised their hand, so I’d like to hear why they say that and then judge for myself if that kind of choice would help create the kind of world I’d feel safe in.
Generally speaking, although we may all have different rationales in our heads for the answer we give, most of us are actually answering the way we answer because we feel like a world where our answer is the right answer is a world we feel safest in. And when we judge a different response to be “wrong,” we do so because it feels threatening somehow to us. We may even feel like we don’t trust the person who suggested that “wrong” answer as much as we did before. Like we’re just a little bit afraid of them now.
Of course this is a low-key, hypothetical exercise. So maybe think about these questions...
How easy is it for a parent to enter into moral judgment about another person’s son’s behavior – when that boy is dating their daughter?
How easy is it to enter into moral judgment about the way your boss handle’s the company’s money – when it threatens to put your job in jeopardy?
How easy is it to enter into moral judgment about a neighbor who you find out is fudging on their taxes – when they are running for office in the state legislature?
All moral judgment is rooted in fear. For some of us, it’s distressing to even think that might be the case, because it’s our moral judgments that we count on to keep us safe! This, of course, is what the Biblical story is getting at when it says that the old humanity chose the tree of knowledge of good and evil over the tree of life. We chose, and we keep on choosing, to address our neediness and vulnerability ourselves, out of our own strength (this is why we feel so strong! when we are exercising our moral judgment), instead of letting our needs and vulnerability drive us to God for him to address our needs out of his love (this is why we feel so weak and vulnerable when we think about withholding judgment and asking God for help).
One last thing about moral judgment and fear, and then we’ll get back to the text. The fear that all moral judgment is rooted in has two faces. A “good” face and a shadow face. “Good” fears are the fears that are concerned with the good of the world around us, for the sake of the many. “Good” fear is wearing an altruistic disguise, and we feel more objective when we think about it (examples…boy, boss, neighbor). The shadow fear is the one we try to hide, but is the one that has the strongest grip on us, and about which we are least able to be objective and reasonable until we can acknowledge it’s presence (examples…boy, boss, neighbor).
All that to say, when the teachers of the law condemn jesus for forgiving sins and eating with sinners, it’s a pretty sure bet that they perceived Jesus forgiving sins and eating with sinners as a threat. All of their moral judgments are rooted in fear, in the same way that ours are.
What’s their fear?
“Good” fear – Israel will remain in exile as long as it remains out of God’s favor because of the presence (and tolerance by Israel’s leaders) of sinners. Jesus welcoming these sinners, and forgiving their sins, would only encourage them to more sin, since sin is fundamentally attractive and exile is the only thing to motivate them to stop sinning.
Shadow fear – Teachers of the law’s power and privilege comes from being the arbiters of right and wrong, who’s in and who’s out. Jesus welcoming these sinners, and forgiving their sins undercuts their power and could lead to the loss of their privilege, rendering them obsolete.
The irony is that their shadow fear is “true” so far as it goes (which isn’t far enough, of course, as is the case with all fear) but their “good” fear is false. Jesus is a threat to their power and privilege; but that’s not a bad thing, since God’s life doesn’t come from power and privilege. Jesus’ forgiving sin and eating with sinners is not a threat to God’s favor delivering Israel; on the contrary, it’s a sign that it’s already happening.
Here’s the thing about fear. We experience it either as actual, naked fear (which can be very helpful to us, actually) or as fear in the disguise of anger / disgust. One makes us feel weak and small, the other lets us feel big and strong.
And when it masquerades as anger and/or disgust, we feel bothered. Something is not as it should be, we think. We either need to marshal our energy and resources to stop the threat (that’s what anger is for), or we need to at least keep the source of that threat as far away from us as possible (that’s how disgust functions).
And remember the role of moral judgment in the sinful world of the old humanity: it’s what we do when we become so uncomfortable with our vulnerability that we decide we need to address our fears ourselves.
We either say to the source of the perceived threat, out of our fear,
you shouldn’t do that!
Or we say,
you disgust me!
Or we turn to God in a twisted way, saying,
you should stop this, because it’s wrong! Or disgusting!
Or we try to use God to stop the thing, saying to the wrongdoer,
you should stop this because God will punish you for doing evil!
or you should stop this because God is disgusted with you!
And of course what we almost never do is simply feel afraid,
recognize our discomfort with our vulnerability,
and in child-like faith bring our fears to God.
So it sure seems that’s what’s happening in this passage. The Teachers of the law – just like us, whenever we enter into moral judgment – are afraid but probably unaware of their fears. They feel bothered.
What’s Jesus’ response?
8Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? 9Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? 10But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”
So he said to the man, 11“I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 12He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
First, Jesus is trying to expose their shadow fears. The fears that lurk in the dark and enslave them to their moral judgments, keeping them from bringing their fears to God like children bring their needs to parents. The fear that Jesus is a threat to their power. Because only if that fear is brought into the light will they have the opportunity to recognize it and bring it to Jesus for him to address.
So Jesus says the bit about which thing is easier, forgiving sins or healing this man’s paralysis. And then, as we see, instructs the man to get up, pick up his mat and walk, and for heaven’s sake, he actually does.
If the teachers of the law were imagining that their moral judgment was all about the good of others and wanting to make sure God was honored, then they are going to have to applaud what Jesus has just done, aren’t they? It would take a special brand of insanity to stand in moral judgment against this man being healed. Which is why the text talks about everyone being amazed and praising God; what Jesus has done can no longer be perceived as a threat to the general good. It’s only a threat to the power of the teachers of the law – and an even bigger threat than they might have previously imagined. Seriously, paralyzed people are walking now? Oh snap. They should feel afraid for their power. Very afraid.
What a beautiful way to bring the teachers of the law face to face with their shadow fears.
But Jesus also addresses their “good” fear in a profound way, when he says the son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
Remember, their “good” fear is that Jesus forgiving sins will keep God from acting powerfully to deliver Israel. Which is why Jesus talks about himself as “The Son of Man.”
Jesus is referencing a prophecy the teacher of the law would have been very familiar with from their Holy Scriptures. It’s from Daniel, chapter 7 (Daniel was the guy in the lion’s den, made famous by Sunday School stories). Daniel, living in exile under Babylonian rule, prophecies about God giving someone called “the Son of Man” power and authority to defeat all of Israel’s enemies, set Israel free from oppression, and establish God’s kingdom on earth. When Jesus calls himself the Son of Man and proves it by exercising God’s power to deliver this paralyzed man – representing Israel under oppression – he’s demonstrating that God is right now, through him, through Jesus, doing exactly what the Teachers of the Law are afraid God might not do because of Jesus forgiving sins. In other words, Jesus forgiving sins and hanging out with sinners is exactly the way to accomplish everything the teachers of the law claim that they want to see happen in the world.
A small but important note before we conclude. When Jesus says he forgives sins, the word the writer of Mark chooses to describe it, the Greek word that is translated “forgive” is aphiemi. Aphiemi means, literally, to send away. It doesn’t mean Jesus says your sins don’t matter, or aren’t a big deal, or anything like that. It means Jesus sends sins away. Kicks them out. Throws them in the trash.
We imagine our sins are sticky, that they’ve made us dirty, that we’ve been corrupted and made irreparably impure by them. But Jesus sends them away. Like he separates them out from us like a world-class surgeon removing a tumor and disposes of them. As far as the east is from the west, the psalmist prophecies, so far has he separated our sins from us.
Remember earlier, how Jesus dealt with the demonized man? He kicked the demon out, sent it away, leaving the man whole and free. Remember Simon’s mother-in-law with the fever? The bible says that the fever “left her” when Jesus healed her. Remember the leper whom Jesus cleansed of leprosy. It says his leprosy “left him.”
Jesus treats our sin like he treats every other aspect of our broken humanity. It doesn’t keep him from coming close to us. He doesn’t stand in judgment over us. He draws near, a friend of sinners (that’s what they called him; they meant it as an insult, but for Jesus it was a title of honor), and with his exousia (remember that word translated “authority” that really means the liberty to do what really pleases him?) it pleases Jesus, it gives him joy, it delights him to send away everything that’s keeping us from a full share in God’s life. And now all we’ve got to do is come to him in child-like faith with our needs and fears for him to address.
Practical Suggestions:
1. Put some notches on your judgment belt. We tend to wear our judgments with pride, don’t we? Keep track of each moral judgment you notice yourself making in a single day. Towards others. And yourself. Just a hash mark on a score-card would do the trick, but if you really want it to sink in, use a leather belt that doesn’t fit any more and put a mark on it. At the end of the day, notice how much pride went into that belt. And think about what you use that belt for. Is it to beat others? To beat yourself? Or is it to keep your pants from falling down and leaving you naked before God and the world, so that you don’t feel vulnerable? Let Jesus talk to you about that belt and do with it whatever he suggests to you.
2. Look under the bed (on which your judgments rest). There is always a fear there, hiding out like a monster in the shadows. Somewhere down there, lurking. Even if your judgments are “right.” That’s irrelevant. Find that fear. Ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to see it. When you find it, let go of your judgment and bring it to Jesus to address. Maybe he’s downstairs watching TV, or reading a good book. No matter, bring that fear to him; he’ll come up to your room and turn on the lights and deal with that fear personally so you can have peace and the rest for your soul that judgment has never truly brought you.
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