Healing begins in the spirit

A homily based on the following daily office reading from the Book of Common Prayer:

Matthew 9:1-8 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

“And after getting into a boat he crossed the sea and came to his own town.

And just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Then some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.” And he stood up and went to his home. When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.”

A group of unnamed, unnumbered men brought a paralyzed man to Jesus, and Jesus calls it faith. This story is told in three of the gospels, and none of them say anything about their relationship to this man. Maybe they were his friends, maybe they were strangers who passed him on the road, since paralytics were often found begging in this society which had no other place for them. However they knew him, what’s important about these men is the fact that even though they couldn’t heal him, they believed this man Jesus could. Moved by faith and compassion, they carried him in on a stretcher, and when Jesus saw their faith, he healed him.

But before he performed a physical healing, Jesus engaged with the man on a spiritual level. He says, “Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.” That’s because he knows physical healing and spiritual healing are inseparable. Our bodies are as real of a part of our experience as our minds and spirits. In a time and culture like ours where we live much of our lives in our heads, we miss the connection of our psyche to our bodies—our self-concept in our physical state. This is the realm of the spirit. The spirit bridges the gap between our minds and bodies—a gap that was never really there at all, we only imagined it to be. Before Jesus could speak life and healing into this man’s body, life and healing had to first touch his mind and spirit.

When Jesus spoke to him, he first removed the shame and fear of his own sin—which he had, no doubt, been told was the cause of his disability. That was common belief in his day! But Jesus offers him an alternative understanding of himself—healed, forgiven, son.

Meanwhile, he encounters a little grumbling from the scribes. Authority is the name of the game here. Scribes don’t want to lose their perceived authority, and Jesus was a threat to it. In outrage, they whisper to each other that Jesus is breaking the law—but they don’t see that he is the fulfillment of the law. The scribes cling to their systems of authority and power because it’s served them well. They know their place in society, and they don’t like their comfort being jeopardized by this teacher who comes from outside of their system.

Just like you and I do, the scribes have created a solution to their greatest fear, and they’re holding it close to their hearts. They’ll do anything they can to protect it.  Jesus turns to them and puts his finger directly on the thing they fear. To Jesus, their fear is the obvious root of their resistance to his identity as the Son of Man. When they resist the Son of Man, they resist the kingdom of God—the kingdom of healing, life, unity—they resist the very thing their precious laws were meant to create in the hearts and lives of the people of Israel. And they miss out.

For the person at the end of herself, the authority of Jesus is good news. What the Son of Man offers to that person is healing, forgiveness, belonging. Imagine the delight of the men who brought this paralytic to Jesus—all of these people encounter Jesus as a giver of life. But for those who benefit from power structures and human authority, it’s much harder to step into the greater power of the Spirit realm. To the ones who cling to their mental systems of right and wrong, good and bad, cause and effect, the realm of spiritual authority won’t infiltrate their rigid concept of reality. But this is the same realm where healing is found. This is the realm of eternal life.

At some point our structures of clarity, certainty, and human authority prevent us from participating in the abundant life of Christ. We put these systems in place because they serve us well—they make sense of the world, create order out of chaos, and institute predictability in which we all have a better chance of survival. But at the point when we cling to them too tightly these systems cease to lead us to life, and they bring about death and separation instead. If we want to see the miraculous work of Jesus, we have to lift our eyes beyond our narrow understanding, and with eyes of faith, accept our new identity as daughters and sons, forgiven and beloved in our sins, and live as people resurrected from death.