We’re doing a series on the transformative power of Jesus by reflecting on Mark 1 and 2. Start with the earlier posts here.
A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since 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. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves,“Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”
Immediately 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?Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” He 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!”
Mark 2:1-12
Another person in need invades Jesus’ space. This time, it’s hard to miss disruptive nature of friends who believed, as the leper did, that Jesus was able to transform. It’s also hard to miss what was certainly disappointment when Jesus didn’t see the man as paralyzed, but saw him in need of forgiveness..
Several years ago I took a friend to the hospital who had just come off an intensive meth induced night of terror. He needed care. He wasn’t functioning. I cannot imagine the anger I would have felt if the doctor had turned to him and said, “He needs forgiveness.”
In this story, four men have carried a friend all the way to the house Jesus is speaking at. They try to push their way through the crowd and when they couldn’t they climbed onto the roof, tore a hole in it, and lowered their friend to the feet of the famous miracle maker.
Jesus assumes he is lying at his feet for forgiveness. He doesn’t lament the medical system. He doesn’t ask the paralyzed where it hurts or how this happened. Doesn’t ask if he needs food or money. Jesus sees the greatest impediment to this man’s humanity is his status with God; not physical stature.
The friends looking down from the roof would have preferred Jesus saw physical disability. The religious leaders would have applauded a healing; they were appalled at forgiveness. Forgiveness, for them, was too sacred to be shared. In the contentiousness of this crowd, we get to realize forgiveness was the most Jesus could have done for this man.
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What sin could this man have done from the mat? If he sinned, surely it wasn’t a big deal. If he sinned, surely, we can see the extenuating circumstances given his hardships and the sin he had received. What guilt could this man need forgiven? But, what does guilt have to do with this man’s ability to live? What does guilt have to do with me and Jesus? Everything.
The Greek words are explicit. Jesus is literally saying: “your guilt is removed.” While guilt is a word for our courtrooms, or a weapon for our societal media discourse, guilt, in the Bible, is like the stain of a leaking fountain pen seeping into the outer layer of your shirt, onto your hands, and transferred onto everything you touch. Guilt is like cholesterol. While the bacon, burgers, and French fries have long left your tastebuds, it’s residue slowly clogs your arteries—slowly dimensioning your ability to live, until your heart cannot beat any longer.
The act of sin doesn’t always stay with us, the burden of guilt does unless someone liberates us from that rusty shackle.
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I had a friend with teenage sons who continually fought with each other and disrespected their parents. His sons were selfish. My friend decided their punishment for anytime they fought would be to go into their yard and grab a stone and put it in pile. He told them at the end of the month they would have to carry their pile stones to the top of the hill behind their house. Each day, they added to the pile. Unable to stop themselves, they yelled, screamed, judged, and cruelly put each other down. What started as a small lump of pebbles became a large pile of burdens. When the day came the sons filled their bags with rocks and lifted them onto their shoulders. The weight of all their guilt literally pressed into their shoulders while they looked up at the impossible path. In this moment, their dad, doing what he had planned all along, took their stone filled bags and hiked up the hills in their place. Their father removed the guilt.
While the the man with leprosy needed shame removed to be whole, the paralytic man needed guilt removed to walk. The forceful thumb on our ability to walk through this life is guilt.
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Guilt declares who you and who you can be is based on what you’ve done. Jesus spends his life with people bound by guilt: “I’m a whore”, “I’m a traitor”, “I’m a villain”, “I’m a criminal”, “I’m a thief”. The creeping words we hear within us sounds something like this: “You are a liar and a fraud”, “You’re vindictive like your father”, “You’re a cheat”, “You’re a coward,” or “you’re an abuser.” We hear these claims, but try to deny them.
Our attempts to push these words of guilt away fail. Sometimes, we belittle the action that causes this guilt: "It wasn’t that bad,” and, “everyone does that”. Other times, we enlarge the moments we didn’t fail: “But, I'm a great dad who is present, shares meals, and provides for your kids!” - “But I’m a great boss!” - “I’m a wonderful person that most people like”. Other times, we compare ourselves to others: “You’re not that bad,” and, “Those people are the real racists/abusers/murderers!”. Still, many of us attempt to hide under the shade of victimhood: “I did that because of emotional, physical, or mental circumstances.”
To escape guilt, we hide and rebrand our actions. We continually create new circumstances that excuse recurring behavior. We adjustment of our own personal standard. Even still, we continually fall short of our newly lowered bar.
No amount of affirmative language can push away the haunting understanding that our actions entered the world as a scourge and remain with us on the arteries of our heart and those we’ve harmed. With each passing day, the guilt overtakes more of our souls. The truth is, there is a gap between how we long to live and how we actually live. The stain of guilt sifts life out of us.
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In Jonathan Safran Foer, depicts the boulder of guilt well in one of his characters, in the book Everything is Illuminated:
He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the mid-afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
This is clarity. One of the biggest problems a human encounters is not our ailments and circumstances but the guilt we carry from what we’ve done. When you make sin so small it is a just a twig you trip on, you won’t see guilt as the paralyzing force of your life. When you cloud the chorus of truthful accusations about yourself, you will not notice your slow death. You will never fully grasp the scope, depth, or height of your sins’ havoc on shalom.
Jesus is unconcerned with your understanding of what you think is wrong with your life—he is here to remove guilt: “You are forgiven, get up, and walk.” The man and his friends knew he needed to walk. Jesus knew he would never live without forgiveness.
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The religious leaders in that room had some internal questions: “Who is he to talk this way? He is blaspheming! Only God can remove guilt.” Where does his power to forgive come from? How can he remove guilt?
Jesus’ power to forgive comes from the same power to fuse broken vertebra in an instant, the same power to heal the momentary illness, the power to defeat evil, and the same power cause someone to become clean. Jesus isn’t a topic of conversation. He isn’t an anecdotal example of peaceful love. Jesus isn’t a teacher of a new way of life. Jesus removes guilt because he is God made into flesh that can take on the sins of the world. Jesus chose the harder thing, to give everything to the point of death, so that you and I might have guilt removed. He did the harder thing when he rose from the dead so you and I could walk and live.
Hope in a removal of guilt from a long-dead rabbi is foolish. Hope in a wholeness born from Christ who has risen takes you off the mat and puts you in stride with abundant life.
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More posts in this series: