Author: Steve

People believe in the power of touch. If you doubt it, just go here for a list of monuments around the world believed to bring good luck to those who touch them. There’s even greater significance in touching or being touched by people of fame or power. We experienced it firsthand here in Eugene as people crowded around Ashton Eaton at a local Safeway store after he set a world record for the decathlon in the Olympic trials here.

There’s a sense that some power or virtue is communicated when we come in touch with famous, powerful and successful people. That sense is certainly at work in our text this week, Mark 5:21-43, in which Mark sandwiches a story of a woman who reaches out to touch Jesus in the middle of the story of a man who desires Jesus to come and touch his sick daughter. In both cases, contact with Jesus is instantly healing.

Which all raises the question for us of how we might come in touch with Jesus in our own time and circumstances? That’s the sense which is at the heart of all real worship, the desire to touch and be touched by the Lord.

That’s why God was gracious enough to give us the tangible, touchable grace of Jesus’ continuing presence in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. We can’t reach out our hands to the hem of His garment, but we can take in our hands and put to our lips His Body and Blood through the bread the cup of His Table.

May our gatherings always we graced with that blessed sense of the presence of our Lord, especially as we come to the Table.

I’ve been on a boat on at least two occasions when it was questionable whether we should have been out. The first time was thirty years ago when my mother treated us to a whale watching trip in southern California. We think our captain was a bit too eager not to lose his fee that day, and so we went out into waves that seemed as high as the boat cabin. My mother and I both tossed our cookies over the side, but Beth was happy as a clam as she viewed the whales. It’s her Swedish blood.

The other dicy occasion was more recent in 2002 when we took a car ferry from England to Ireland. Again, we think our captain had poor judgment. One of the two ferries decided not to sale, and we thought we were fortunate when ours went ahead. We weren’t quite so sure when the huge, usually rock-steady ship began to bounce enough that racks were falling over in the gift shop. We had Dramamine that time, but we abandoned our plan to have lunch on the ship during the ride.

Tourist boats and ferries do have mishaps and I’m glad we didn’t end up part of one. Water travel is subject to both the vagaries of weather and the failures of their human crews, much like our larger journey through life. The text this week from Mark 4:35-41 is a lesson on how the presence of Christ in the boat of life makes a huge difference.

The story of the stilling of the storm is pregnant with images that amuse and inspire, like verse 38 with Jesus calmly asleep in the stern as the storm rages. Overall it is part of the ongoing discovery by the disciples of just how awesome is the person with whom they have connected their lives.

As life’s storms rage around us and threaten our security, let’s reflect on the answer to the disciples’ question in verse 41, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” As we consider what we know of the answer, (much more than the disciples in the boat), let that knowledge of who Jesus is calm our storms.

I think Jesus was talking about zucchini. I don’t know of a more fool-proof garden vegetable. Drop the seeds in the ground. Walk away. Turn around and come back and you will have more zucchini growing than you will ever want to see again.

Continuing the theme of sowing seed found at the beginning of Mark 4, this week’s text, Mark 4:26-34 offers two little parables about growing seeds which, contrary to the images of the parable of the sower, teach us that God’s kingdom is as fool-proof and inexorable as zucchini.

These little stories are here to reassure in those moments when we begin to doubt the success of what God is doing in the world, or begin to imagine that His work depends on our efforts, producing only despair and hopelessness.

The “of itself” (automatae in Greek, i.e., automatic) production of growth by the earth in verse 28 is our reminder that, even in labor-intensive endeavors like farming, the results do not ultimately depend on us, but on God.

Likewise, the size of the results in spiritual work is not correlated to the quantity of sacrafice put in. In the parable of the mustard seed, great things sprout from tiny beginnings.

I’m finding these thoughts a great comfort for the long-time pastor of a smaller congregation. And I’m finding it true as I think how so many of the good things that have happened here in people’s lives have not come from my direct efforts, but have “sprung up” while I was focused elsewhere. Likewise, tiny seeds like a couple member’s heart for the homeless have grown into larger ministries like the Egan Warming Center through which we’ve been able to give a warm place to sleep to several hundred people over the last few years. “The birds of the air will rest in its shade.”

And, as it says in verses 33 and 34, all that God has done in and through the community of our church may not be apparent to those who will not hear, but it’s clear and plain to those willing to hear and understand. Thanks be to God for working mysteriously and wonderfully through our small gathering.

I’m waiting to hear what my friends think of a book I recommended. It’s a silly potboiler, full of magic, guns and fairly non-stop action, but its tone is much like another series we’ve both enjoyed reading.

It’s something we do, part of our friendship, that we exchange book recommendations. A number of years ago now, these friends introduced me to an author they had met personally and recommended his work. Now, I have not only had the pleasure of reading those books, I’ve met the writer himself and have a new friend.

These little exchanges among friends may take all sorts of forms. Recipes, favors, emotional comfor, or actual gifts all may be given back and forth in equal relationships that enjoy and delight in the exchanges.

The persons of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, relate to each other in a perfect and holy form of mutual and reciprocal giving. This is the Trinitarian life of God, which we celebrate this week on Trinity Sunday, June 3. Our human friendly exchanges mirror and reflect the perfect society of God which has gone on for eternity.

However, we well know that our human exchanges can be less than perfect. We are not always willing to give to one another. We are not even always pleased with what others give to us. Our dissatisfaction with one another leads to all sorts of hurt, which is very much at the root of what Scripture calls sin.

What our texts for this Trinity Sunday, Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 3:1-17, teach us is that God’s internal generosity overflows to us. The mutual exchange of the persons of the Trinity flows outward to bring us into its circle of giving. God gives to us even when we are unable to reciprocate.

The first and greatest gift of God, as we see both in Isaiah and John, is the gift of forgiveness. Isaiah senses his sin and the sin of his people. They have failed to be generous with God and with each other. Yet God freely offers him in verses 6 and 7 the gift of forgiveness, “your sin is blotted out.”

In a remarkable verse in John 12:41, the Gospel tells us that Isaiah’s vision was actually a vision of the glory of Jesus, in and through whom God offers forgiveness and an invitation to join in the generous life of God.

In His conversations with Nicodemus in John 3, Jesus makes it clear that the generosity of the Trinity is spilling over to humanity in the Father’s gift of the Spirit who brings new birth into the divinge life to human beings through the gift of the Son, sent into the world so that world might be saved through Him.

As we enter into the mutually generous life of God through faith in Christ, the best response we can offer is to grow in generosity ourselves. We learn to offer forgiveness and gifts to a growing circle of new life around us.

“What a privilege it would have been to walk and talk with Jesus, face to face, like those first disciples!” Most Christians have probably indulged in similar sentiments. We just know that our faith would be so much deeper and better if we could only have seen the Lord with our own eyes, heard Him teach with our own ears.

Yet our text for Pentecost Sunday suggests that however sweet may be those dreams of sitting at the feet of Jesus at the very beginning, we may be longing for something which is no better and perhaps not as good as the spiritual blessings we enjoy now. In John 16:4b-15, Jesus talks to the disciples about the gift of the Holy Spirit and says very clearly in verse 7, “it is for your good that I am going away,” speaking not only of His death, but His ascension out of this world.

Jesus goes on to explain, “Unless I go away, the Advocate [Paralete=The Holy Spirit] will not come to you.” In what follows, Jesus obviously regards the gift of the Holy Spirit as a grace which goes beyond Jesus’ own physical presence. Verse 12 talks about what Jesus has to say, but which the disciples cannot bear at the moment. But (in verse 13) the Spirit will guide them into the all the truth. We are better off now, now that Jesus has made it possible for us to receive the Holy Spirit.

The cryptic heart of the text lies in verses 8-11 in which the work of the Spirit is described as “he will prove the world to be in the wrong [“convict,” “expose,” “convince” are alternate translations] about sin and righteousness and judgment.” Conviction about sin is fairly straightforward, but it is difficult to ascertain the sense of convicting about righteousness or about judgment.”

There are several different interpretations of 8-11, and the discussion is complex. However, the best I can discern is to connect with what is said about the Holy Spirit’s ministry being on behalf of Jesus in verse 14. “He will will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you,” says Jesus about the Spirit.

So the world is to be convicted about its sin in failing to believe in Jesus, about the righteousness of Jesus despite His condemnation on the Cross, and about the world’s own ultimate judgment by Jesus. All this is designed to make manifest and plain who Jesus is as the righteous Son of God and the Savior and judge of the world.

Hence what we have now is the Spirit constantly with us, pointing us toward Christ and revealing His grace and love to us. Without the Spirit’s work we would be left in sin and unbelief, unable to understand who Jesus is and what He has done for us.

So we are better off now, with the Holy Spirit to counsel and guide us, than we would have been otherwise. And that’s true in inumerable other ways, as we consider all that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, does for us in comfort, encouragement, inspiration, direction, warning, etc. So Pentecost should be the reminder for us that it’s better now.

As we work our way through Mark this year, we are skipping the first twenty verses of Mark 4. The Parable of the Sower and its explanation is probably already familiar to us and appears in fuller form in Matthew. But as we come to Mark 4:21-25 we find thoughts from Jesus that, while familiar in different contexts in Matthew and Luke, appear in unique arrangement and form in Mark.

My first response on reading verse 22 is to understand it in the context a similar thought has in Luke 12:2, where Jesus warns against hypocrisy and seemingly against the revelation of all our darkest thoughts. However, a little time with this context and the related ones in Matthew 10:26 and Luke 8:17 shows that here Jesus is talking more about the light of the Gospel penetrating and being revealed despite attempts to cover or obscure it. This fits well Mark’s context of these sayings occuring in the midst of Jesus speaking in parables. In other words, despite the “hidden” messages of the parables, what Jesus means to say will be revealed to those willing to listen.

So the further injunctions in verses 24 and 25, to pay attention to what we hear and that the one who has will receive more, while the one with little will have even that taken away, begin to make sense. The who is already receiving the Word will enjoy even more understanding. The one not paying attention and obscuring what the Lord says will have even what little understanding there is removed.

There’s a nice grammatical point in verse 21 which gets swept under the bed by most modern translations. The lamp is the subject of the sentence, not the object. So it’s not that the lamp is “brought in.” It’s that the lamp “comes in.” The light is Jesus Himself and His teaching. The whole point of the text is that when the light of the Lord’s Word arrives and begins to illumine our lives, we ought not try to hide it or cover it over, but pay attention and let it change us.

How family friendly is Jesus, anyway? If a presidential candidate said what Jesus does in our text (Mark 3:31-35) for this Sunday (or in Luke 12:52-53 or Luke 14:26), it would probably be the end of that campaign.

On a couple different levels this text challenges us not to presume too much on our familiarity with Jesus. First, as I’ve suggested, we might want to revisit our assumptions about what He thinks about family. Our Lord’s position is more subtle than just “pro-family.” Second, the narrative itself suggests that those who might have the claim to know Jesus best (His immediate family) are the very ones left outside the circle closest to Him at this point. We might want to consider our own sense of closeness to Jesus and whether it’s based on unfounded presumption or on the true discipleship of one who “does God’s will.”

Yet the text also offers a marvelous sense of inclusion to those who might feel outside the “family” when confronted with the Christian community. A committed and faithful relationship with Jesus by doing God’s will trumps natural connections like friendship and family. And on the basis of discipleship everyone has a place with Jesus. This is seen by Jesus deliberate inclusion of women in His family in verse 35 by adding the phrase “and sister” to what up till now has only been a mention of His mother and brothers.

Anyone who spends a little time reading Scripture eventually comes across the troubling warning from Jesus in verses 28 and 29 of our text from Mark 3:20-30. And for sensitive souls the worry ensues, “Have I committed the unforgivable sin?”

Reading the warning in context makes it clear that the unforgivable sin is the attitude of ascribing God’s good work of salvation in Christ to spiritual forces of evil. Mark very clearly explains in verse 30 that the scribes had committed or were on the verge of committing “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” by attributing the work of God’s Spirit to demonic forces (Beelzebul in verse 22).

The standard answer to worries about committing this unforgivable sin is correct. If you are worried about it, you haven’t done it. That is, if there is enough fear of God in you to be concerned about how He would judge your sin, then your spiritual state is not and never was in the bleak condition which identifies something good as something evil.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit–in the form of seeing the work of Christ as evil–is unforgivable because it removes one from the possibility of salvation. The very thing which saves, the work of God in Christ, is denied and falsely judged and salvation becomes impossible.

Actually, in the process of delivering the warning about the unforgivable sin, Jesus offered the utmost reassurance about forgiveness in verse 28, “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter…” That is, everything is forgivable except denying the possibility of forgiveness by seeing Jesus who brings forgiveness as possessed by an evil spirit.

So all the sins Christians have sometimes treated as though they were unforgivable–murder, adultery, divorce, etc.–are within the scope of grace. The true wideness of God’s mercy and forgiveness is revealed as we contemplate the very narrow field of what is unforgivable.

This Sunday’s text brings to mind the opening scenes of “The Dirty Dozen.” Lee Marvin as WWII army Major Reisman meets twelve life or death sentence military prisoners who become his team for a suicide mission against a posh Nazi retreat for top officers. One tries to imagine how the major will even keep the group of murderers, thieves and psychopaths together long enough to get to their target, much less succeed in their mission.

In Mark 3:7-19, we find Jesus responding to the press of huge crowds by assembling His own “dirty dozen,” a motley crew of fishermen, a tax collector, a couple political radicals ( one of who may be a terrorist assassin), and several men so non-descript that we don’t know much more about them than their names.

It’s all a wonderful image of the reality of the Church, as our Lord continues to assemble a motley crew of people of all sorts, including many disreputable or undistinguished characters. Somehow Christ welcomes and accepts all of us and transforms us together into a force that keeps going forward with His good news and with acts of love that bring hope and healing to our world.

As Paul says in I Corinthians 1:26, not many whom the Lord calls into his church are wise or powerful or particularly well-born. None of us deserve our place on the team. Instead, what we see in our life together as the Church is the Lord’s wisdom, power and noble birth as the Son of God, living in us and knitting us into something greater that we cannot be on our own.

Thanks be to God for the “dirty dozen” that got it all rolling, and thanks be to Him for continuing that same program of including even the most unlikely of us in His Church.

Why didn’t Mark finish his gospel? As readers of most any modern Bible translation discover, the second gospel, like a movie out on a bonus DVD, has a couple of alternative endings. But neither of those endings has much manuscript support for authenticity. It’s likely that Mark did not actually write either one of them.

Just check it out and you will find that Mark 16 ends abruptly at verse 8, with alternative endings set off in brackets or whatever. So our Easter text for this Sunday is just Mark 16:1-8.

One solution to this problem says that the true ending of Mark’s gospel is lost to us. That seems likely. But I prefer the more tenuous but intriguing suggestion that Mark actually left the story unfinished. And whether it was Mark’s intention or not, God’s providential care for His Word has allowed the real ending, if there was one, to remain lost.

What I find intriguing is the suggestion that the unfinished ending of Mark invites us to put ourselves into the end of the story. The women who discover the empty tomb react with fear and uncertainty. How will you and I respond to the good news that Christ is risen? That’s the question I believe Mark puts to everyone who hears that news.

So, in a sense, you and I are the ones who end Mark’s story of Jesus. It’s in our lives and the lives of all believers that the significance of the risen Savior is played out and completed. The question is not how did the story end, but how will we end the story?

On our Covenant pastors group on Facebook, one of my colleagues started a discussion about how Palm Sunday worship this year might be related to the fact that it falls on April Fools Day. It’s interesting that this happened also not so long ago in 2007.

Actually I keep hoping, but haven’t seen it yet, for Easter to fall on April 1, so that a sermon could exploit the obvious point that the Resurrection of Jesus is a huge joke played by God on sin, death and the devil.

Nonetheless, there’s plenty of “foolishness” in the Palm Sunday story, which we read this year from Mark 11:1-11. If it needs to be a classic “April Fools” joke, then, as one of my colleagues observed, there is the main point that Jesus enters Jerusalem with the sort of processional appropriate to an earthly, military king, but then turns out later in the week to be up to something entirely different by dying on the Cross. That works very well as the sort of “gotcha” expected on April Fools Day.

Yet I’m going to focus on another sort of foolishness involved in the triumphal entry, the seeming silliness of the whole arrangement. First there is the concept of riding a donkey, not a very dignified business if you’ve ever seen anyone do it. Moreover, pilgrims generally walked into Jerusalem on Passover (there is evidence that those who could not walk were excused from the pilgrimage requirement).

Then there is the “password” Jesus gave His disciples to obtain the donkey in verse 3, “The Lord has need of it…” Unless “Lord” is taken in an unusual sense of “owner” and there is either a prior arrangement or a deliberate deception, the phrase sounds pretty foolish. Would we be inclined to let off observed car thieves if they justified themselves by saying “God needs it.”? The bystanders for the donkey procurement would have needed to be awfully gullible.

The processional itself involves carpeting a dusty unpaved road with clothing and tree branches. A little imagination of what that scene actually involved and the result to the clothing utilized also feels pretty crazy. Would you or I take off our coats and lay them in the dirt for an animal to walk on?

Last, there’s the cry of “Hosanna,” which we sing and shout in our own Palm Sunday worship. There’s some reason to think it might have been part of what Passover pilgrims said anyway as they approached Jerusalem, pronouncing the following benediction, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” upon themselves as they came into Jerusalem in God’s name for the holy festival. However, it’s also clear that the literal meaning of “Hosanna,” which is “Come save us!” was largely forgotten in much the same way as “Hallelujah,” which means “Praise the Lord!” has often become a mere shout of celebration. In other words, the pilgrims were somewhat foolishly shouting a word the significance of which they did not understand.

Yet the foolishness of Palm Sunday conspires to remind us that on the surface all worship is foolishness. As I preached last Sunday, worship accomplishes nothing, it has no practical outcome, no net worth. From the perspective of ordinary life, the view from the other six days of the week, Sunday worship is a temporary escape into foolishness that bears no discernible, empirical connection with reality. Yet it is in such moments, moments like that first Palm Sunday worship of Jesus, that we touch and affirm that which is most true, most real, most significant for every day of life. Whether we realize it or not, the foolishness of worship is the deepest wisdom.

Happy April Fools Day!

I’ve always been moved by a scene near the beginning of “Fiddler on the Roof.” A Jewish family rushes about on Friday afternoon in preparation for the beginning of the Sabbath. There’s a visitor, there’s news about pogroms in other villages, there’s matchmaking for weddings, there’s Tevya’s work of delivering milk and feeding the animals and Golde’s cleaning and cooking. But then suddenly they all sit down together at the table, candles are lit, and a lovely Sabbath prayer is sung. Peace descends on the seeming chaos of the family’s life and concerns.

Sabbath was understood by the Jewish people as a gift from God. It set them apart from other people. It marked a moment when they remembered that their very existence came from God and not from their own labor. Generally, the Sabbath was regarded as precious time to be carefully guarded from all encroachments.

From that perspective of love for the beauty and peace of Sabbath, it’s a little easier to understand the dismay and anger with which Jesus’ critics approached Him when it was perceived that He and His followers were violators of the Sabbath.

Our text this week, Mark 2:23 – 3:6, includes two accounts of Sabbath “work,” first by Jesus’ disciples, than by Christ Himself. On the face of it, Jesus fails to observe the Sabbath properly, ignoring the strong warnings against any form of work on that day.

In reality, what Jesus and His disciples is very much within the spirit of Sabbath as a gift of God meant to refresh and renew human life, especially with a sense of peaceful dependence of God’s provision. The disciples eat by simply gleaning what is provided growing for them in a field. Jesus offers a healing which no physician could have provided to the man with the withered hand, restoring wholeness and peace to his life.

The issue for us is not the wholesale rejection of Sabbath keeping in the belief that these stories amount to Jesus doing away with that part of the Jewish Law. It’s more the difficult question of where true Sabbath time full of peace and the experience of dependence on God fits in the lives which we’ve accepted as normal in our time. Is there anyway we can experience Sabbath as Jesus described it, as a gift “made for humankind?”

Over the years, I’ve learned to go to the reception. I’m not a party person. So as a young pastor I had the notion that I could perform a wedding, wish the couple God’s blessing, say goodbye and then go home and be done. I would skip the reception with all its waiting for the bride and groom to show, too rich and/or too sweet food, loud music, and silly traditions like tossing bouquets and garters.

I quickly discovered that skipping the reception left me out of something key to that man and woman’s lives at that moment. Pastoral care was not complete with just the wedding service. It was important to join in the celebration, to eat some wedding cake (which I really don’t mind) and to lift a glass of punch in a toast. Some wonderful and new was beginning there and it was not right to hold oneself aloof from the joy being expressed.

Something like but deeper than my lesson about wedding receptions was being taught to those who questioned Jesus about why His disciples did not fast, as we read in Mark 2:18-22 this week.

The inquiry probably came from ordinary people who observed that the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Pharisees both observed a traditional weekly fast, on Mondays and Thursdays for the Pharisees. However, Jesus’ disciples did not join in this practice. The implication was that the ministry of Jesus must somehow be suspect if His followers were lacking in this visible measure of devotion. Fasting, along with giving alms and prayer, was one of the pillars of Jewish practice at the time.

Jesus took the opportunity to highlight the uniqueness of His person and ministry with three brief parables. First, there’s the image I began with, that one does not abstain from or at a wedding feast. Jesus the bridegroom is present and so His followers join in the party. Then there are a couple of tiny parables about not sewing a patch of new cloth on an old garment or putting new wine in old wineskins. The point is clearly that the fresh beginning found in Jesus could not be confined to the old forms of the Judaism of His time.

The question for us is what application to make of these little parables and the overall story about fasting. It’s easy for those who are young and iconoclastic to suppose that Jesus was giving license here for the overthrowing of all tradition and structure in Christian life and worship. They suppose that an exciting encounter with Jesus must always dispense with old garments and be poured into fresh containers of practice, song, etc., leaving all the old ways (and the old folks) behind.

However, in verse 20 Jesus clearly assumes that there will be a time after His ascension when the traditional practice of fasting will resume among His disciples. The call for new wineskins to contain the Good News of the Gospel is not a total iconoclasm and rejection of the past. Jesus is not declaring that forms and traditions are bad, only that His mission of redemption takes precedence over them.

The point of the text is that we not miss the joy of life in Christ because of an inflexible adherence to established practice. We must especially avoid a rigid legalism regarding our spiritual disciplines. It’s a good thing to remember in the midst of Lent.

The Bridegroom has come. Let’s not miss the reception.

As contenders for the Republican presidential nomination heap loads of dirt on each other, one can only imagine the field day the others would have if some delicious scandal were uncovered, say that one of them was known to have dined regularly with prostitutes, or with organized crime bosses, or Wall Street bankers known to have committed fraud and embezzlement. I guess that last isn’t such a big a stretch of the imagination.

In any case, it’s standard practice to judge a person, especially a public person, by the company he or she keeps. It’s even biblical to do so. Proverbs 24:1 says, “Do not envy wicked men, do not desire their company.” And in I Corinthians 15:33, Paul quotes a Greek poet to offer a very familiar proverb, “Bad company ruins good morals.”

So why then do we find Jesus in Mark 2:13-17 flouting both social opinion and Scripture to enjoy a meal with a collection of sinners? And lest we think that these folks were only nominal or relative “sinners,” with the word in quotes as the NIV translates, let us remember that Jewish tax collectors worked for the occupying forces of a conquering country and that they regularly defrauded their own people with excessive taxes that went into their own pockets. No, these weren’t just nice but misunderstood people Jesus was hanging out with. They were sinners.

In verse 17 Jesus reminds us that His whole purpose was to find and redeem sinners, not righteous people. The exercise of trying to find oneself in a biblical story might be a good one especially in this text. Are we willing to admit our sin and welcome Jesus into our company. Or are we standing aloof from the sinners of our society and perhaps missing the company of Jesus like the scribes and Pharisees?

And how do we put all this together with the moral and biblical worries about the corrupting effect of bad company? Of course, we are sure that Jesus couldn’t be corrupted. But how about us if we try to follow Him and place ourselves in the midst of bad people? What’s it mean to be like Jesus in this regard?

Lots of questions in this little text. May our Lord give us hearts of discernment and love like His own so that we can be in His company, whoever else might be there as well.

How would you choose? You’re dying of cancer, heart disease, whatever, you name it. And God offers you the choice between being healed of your physical illness or being assured of the forgiveness of your sins. Which would you accept?

As people steeped in Protestant Christian culture, it’s hard for many of us to fully grasp the difficulty of a choice between forgiveness and healing would be like. We are supremely confident of the fact of forgiveness, generally taking it for granted like the German poet Heinrich Heine on his deathbed, saying, “God will forgive me. It’s His job.” We are so assured of forgiveness that I’m guessing that we would almost certainly choose healing on the assumption that God would likely toss in the forgiveness as a little bonus.

That whole perspective of an assumed, easy forgiveness for our sins blinds us to the signficance of what Jesus offered the paralyzed man in our text for this week, Mark 2:1-12. The Lord looked into the eyes of a man who could not move from his bed, who had to be lifted to the roof and let down into the presence of Jesus by his friends. He looked at a man totally helpless in regard to his body and offered that man first, not healing, but forgiveness.

We wonder what sins the man might have committed that Jesus discerned forgiveness was the greater need? Murder? Betrayal of a friend? Adultery? What sort of spiritual guilt would overshadow the great physical disability?

Perhaps one form of reflection for us this Lent would be to consider our own spiritual illness and whether it does not in fact handicap us more than any physical ailment we experience.

Jesus’ forgiveness of the man sparks a consternation among the scribes as He takes to Himself one of the perogatives that seems to belong solely to God. What Mark wants us to see, of course, is that Jesus is God. But in this age when there is much talk about therapeutic self-forgiveness it may be a good caution to remember that the scribes’ complaint is true. Only God can forgive sins. And with sin being a more serious illness than total paralysis, we ought not try to self-medicate, but instead rely on the Physician who is able to heal both body and soul.