Homilies

Back to Homilies menu

The distinguished New Testament scholar Ernst Kaesemann once stated that if he wished to remain a historian, he had no choice but to accept the tradition that Jesus was a healer. Today’s gospel (Mark 2:1-12) is a healing narrative, The Healing of the Paralytic. But it occurs in the section of Mark’s gospel which contains Jesus’ controversies with the scribes (Mark 2:1-3:6) . So in the the middle of the story of the healing we find the scribes questioning Jesus’ authority to declare sins forgiven (Mark 2:7). In fact, if you omit the material between the recurring phrase “he said to the paralytic” (verses 5 and 10) you have a simple healing narrative, like others in the gospels.

But whether or not the controversy (verses 6-10) is a textual interpolation, it is fair to say that the gospels never represent Jesus as simply a wonder-worker: the healing of the body is a sign of inner healing. In the previous chapter of Mark’s gospel, after Jesus’ healing of the sick at evening (Mark 1:32-34), he gets up early in the morning and goes to a lonely place to pray (v. 35). When his disciples tell him that everyone is looking for him (v. 37), he replies, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out” (v. 38). In other words, Jesus did not want the popular enthusiasm over the healings to obscure his primary mission, to proclaim the kingdom of God.

In the healing of the paralytic, what prompts Jesus to perform the miracle is the faith of the man’s friends (Mark 2:5), a faith manifested in the extraordinary action of removing the roof from the house where Jesus was staying, when they were unable to bring the sick man into Jesus’ presence through the door, because of the crowd (v. 4).

In the Prayer Book office for the Ministry to the Sick, we pray:

The Almighty Lord be now and evermore thy defence, and
make thee know and feel that there is none other name under
heaven in whom and through whom thou mayest receive
health and salvation but only the name of Our Lord Jesus
Christ.

Health and salvation, healing of body and soul go together. So it is certainly appropriate, in today’s gospel, that Jesus declares the sick man’s sins forgiven (Mark 2:5) before he tells him, “Rise, take up your pallet, and go home” (v. 11).

Before the absolution in the Prayer Book communion service comes the intention to lead “the new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways.” After his encounter with Jesus, the former paralytic embarked upon a new life in more than one sense.

In today’s Old Testament lesson, God declares through the prophet, “Behold, I am doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19). Not everything new, of course, is a step in the right direction. We must resist the prejudice in our society and in our church that change will always be for the better. We should not infer from the prophet’s admonition to “remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old” (v. 18) that we have nothing to learn from our past.

On the contrary, true renewal in the church has always been a return to the past to recover what has been lost. That was the aim of the 16th century Reformation, and that was the aim of the 19th century Oxford Movement, about which I shall be giving a course in the spring with the title “Anglicanism Reborn.”

As in the reformation of the church, so too in our personal lives we must not “throw out the baby with the bath water” but rather discern what is to be left behind and what is to be retained in our onward spiritual journey.

back to top