There are very few slow news days anymore. Every day, there are more than enough problems to fill columns of newsprint and hours of newscasts. The question is which story will rise to the top and get a piece of our attention. Recently, stories about mass shootings were among them. Last week in Boulder Colorado. Ten people, as innocent as any of us, dead. And we grieve it, as we have grieved so many other similar incidents.
We had barely finished absorbing the details of another event in Atlanta the previous week, which cost eight human lives.
When we hear about these violent incidents, one of the first thoughts we have is, why? What reason did this person have for committing such a terrible act? Why?
“Why” is a fundamental question of life. We often ask why things happen. When a loved one gets sick, we ask: why? When they die we ask: why? When we suffer great losses of any kind, we are likely to ask the same question: why?
Why, we ask God, are you letting this happen? Are you angry at us, Lord? How have we sinned against you, Lord, to deserve this pain?
In the gospel story today Jesus makes the connection between sickness and the brokenness of sin, and brings us into that uncomfortable space where we have to examine the connection for ourselves. Which is sometimes easy, and other times impossible.
There are times when we find it easy to play the role of diagnostician. Even those of us with no particular expertise are often eager to tell others what they have done to cause their particular ailment. There are times when we are ready and willing to say, “here, let me get that speck out of your eye. No, don’t worry about this log in my own eye – I can see around it quite well.”
This is nothing new in the history of the world. John’s gospel tells the story about Jesus’ encounter with a man who was born blind and his disciples are puzzled by this matter. For them, it’s a question of “why.” They ask Jesus, “Who sinned? Was it his parents, since he was born this way? That must be it. This young man must be paying the price of his parents’ sins, that could be the only explanation.” Cause and effect – it helps us make sense of the world.
Still, I don’t think this paralytic man in Matthew’s story, nor his friends who carried him to Jesus, were thinking at the time about his parents, or their own, sins. They had heard about this Jesus, an amazing healer, and they just wanted to get close to him. So great was their desire for healing, their love for their friend, that they came together and picked up his bed with the man in it, and carried it to Jesus.
They came for healing – and yet words of forgiveness were the first thing Jesus said to them. Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven. The reader might feel a disconnect between their need and his response – but I wonder if these men did. Perhaps they never doubted that somehow their spiritual brokenness was all intertwined with their bodily brokenness.
Jesus’ critics took exception, however. They would not have objected to a simple healing – but for Jesus to declare forgiveness of sins, that is blasphemy. Humans can perform acts of healing. But only God can forgive sins.
Yet, we see, Jesus is insisting that they are inseparable.
And even while I say this, I am mindful of the fact that these are harsh words to our tender souls. In our hearts we harbor the fear that, like most everything else in this world, our relationship with God is transactional. We bear the suspicion that God, like so many people we know, will be nice to us if we are nice to God. But that, if we are not nice enough, God’s displeasure will show.
Yet the message of the gospel resists such notions. Through Jesus we have come to know a God of extravagant love, of boundless forgiveness. Jesus, in his acts of healing, never asked anyone to bow and scrape, to show themselves worthy of this gift. He gave it freely.
He gave so much, so freely: he gave everything – freely.
For God so loved the world, he gave his only son. Freely.
And still, we live each day in a world that is wracked with brokenness, suffering, and death. And we cannot help but wonder why.
Many years ago I knew a family whose son had cancer. His parents did everything in their power to beat the disease. His doctors did everything in their power to heal him. His church family prayed for him constantly. They loved this boy and his family very much. One member of that church, deeply troubled by their suffering, asked the pastor: Why would such an awful thing as this happen?
It is always dangerous to try and answer these “why” questions. But this pastor did. He answered with one word: sin.
And the member became angry. This young child is innocent. He has committed no sin that could possible justify such punishment, Pastor. What is wrong with you? How can you say such a thing?
But the pastor said, no. I don’t mean any particular sin. I don’t mean he is responsible for his illness. I am referring to the state of the world in which we live. This is about the brokenness of everything. It is about the human condition.
It is always about the human condition. We are part of a fallen creation, with brokenness at every level; we are suffering in every way because of our brokenness, but with a dim memory of our original wholeness. Once, we remember, we were holy; once we were created in the image of our creator, holy and whole.
When Jesus walked this earth, his every word, his every act, was a reminder of this truth. His very presence was a promise that our wholeness may be restored.
There were many witnesses that day to the miracle of healing. When the paralytic man stood up and walked, they were all filled with awe. And they sang praises to God, who gave such power, such authority to human beings.
Human beings – Jesus … and through him, the church … you and me.
For he said: you who gather in my name are given authority to bind and to loose, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. All of us together, the community of faith, have this authority to begin to repair the brokenness.
It’s a heavy lift, no doubt. There were 20,000 deaths in our nation from gun violence last year – a year in which we had hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from COVID-19. The brokenness is on full display. Yet we are called to join in the effort, to lift up the broken, the hurting, the grieving and carry them to Jesus.
We are called to sing songs of God’s grace that rains down on all of creation. To sing our hosannas – save us, Lord; heal us, Lord!
We are called to lay a path for King Jesus to come today.
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