“REAL HEALING THROUGH FORGIVENESS OF SINS”
Saint Matthew 9.1-8
Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity: 28 September Anno Domini 2008
Fr Watson SSP
People who are paralyzed don't go to the doctor's office on their own. Those who are confined to bed don't go into the city to meet Jesus by themselves. There is no Church of one; there is no family without family. There is no flock without sheep and shepherd. The palsied man was like a baby brought by its parents and Baptismal sponsors to the font of life. The font is where the love and life of God is washed on to the child and in to the child. The Sacrament is Jesus healing the babe so that it is no longer condemned by its sinful nature but an heir to heaven. The palsied man's cot, or bed, or pallet, or stretcher, is like the Book of the Gospel with its own four corners-each supported by the friends of both the sick recipient and of Jesus. Four corners of a bed pointing to the four-fold Good News of Matthew and the other three evangelists.
Jesus is permanent and not temporary. Medical doctors give temporal relief but only Christ gives eternal peace. The palsied man and his friends wanted the Lord to heal him of his paralysis. They received an even greater gift. The sick man wanted to be able to walk around like other people but instead God forgave him all his sins.
There is nothing in all creation greater than having sins forgiven, sins remitted, and sins taken away and buried in the depths of the sea never to be any more.
If you have heart disease or your child is dying from leukemia you want instant and complete physical healing. If you have lost your job or your pension you want instant and complete financial restoration. Your sinful self only sees with eyes of proof. Your natural man knows nothing of the supernatural and spiritual and thus can only think in terms of the "here & now," the observable, and the practical. Jesus loves you too much to let you be so short-sighted, that is, blind. Jesus loved the paralytic too much to just give him back his use of arms and legs, so that he could go walking off, and waving off to hell. The Lord took away his sin. The Lord abolished that which had made him a child of disease and decay. Jesus made the man spiritually clean and placed him into His own bosom. There is nothing greater than that kind of real absolution and healing.
There will come a day when surgery and technology will be able to repair broken necks. There will be a time when science may banish heart attacks forever. But unforgiven sin will always drag healthy bodies down beneath the embers of the sea of fire. Only the God/Man can release the shackles of damnation; of sin.
The instantaneous healing of an incurable palsy was truly miraculous and showed that the healer was no mere man. The miracle showed the Nazarene to be the uncreated Son of God-but only to those who had faith. The reading of the minds of the scribes was likewise a demonstration of the omniscience that the Logos, the Word of the Father always had at His disposal. But Who Jesus was, as important as it was, was only part of the Good News. The even greater evangel was why God took flesh and came into your midst.
The paralytic saw a minor miracle, a small mystery, when he was given back the temporary use of his limbs. We don't know whether he was later at Calvary to see the penultimate miracle of the Atonement of the World. We know he was not with the Ever-Virgin in Bethlehem to witness the ultimate miracle of the Incarnation of God.
The Second Person took on flesh so that He might soak up your sinful flesh into His pure flesh; so that He might take all your badness and sickness, and palsy into His healthy God flesh and have it nailed to the Cross in perfect payment. God the Son took flesh that He might perfectly obey the Father as Man, the Second Adam, and perfectly love His brother as man, the Second Perfect Cain & Abel. The Christ had blood so that He might shed it in a flood of forgiveness on Calvary's tree.
Everything Jesus did in absolutely obeying for thirty-three years He gave to the paralytic at that meeting, and at every meeting He subsequently had with Him through that healed man's faith. All that Jesus won on the Cross in His six bitter hours of passion was pressed into that palsied man's soul when he heard those indescribably wonderful words from the Savior's lips: "it is finished, your trespasses have been wiped away, Son be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven."
Jesus is God and He can do wondrous miracles of physical healing. He is awesome and that is good. But even better Jesus is God in the Flesh, FOR YOU, Who came to obey and pay so that your inability to do either is taken care of. He is good and gracious and gives you something far better than fallen human bodies healed for a time. He gives you His God/Man Body and Blood glorified in perfection for eternity. You have peace, peace of mind, body and soul, with the Father through the Forgiveness of Sins. You have a guarantee of everlasting joy in heaven at the end of time through the Forgiveness of Sins. And right now, you have that remission of sin through your on-going Washing in His Blood & Water, in His Spoken Release, and in the pledge of ever-presence in His Supper.
Son and daughters be of Good Cheer. Sons and daughters you have been again carried on the restful bed of the Scriptures to this your home of homes. God has indeed given great power to men through the Man/God Jesus.
Your sins are forgiven you.
In the Name + of Jesus
The Peace of God which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus