Stupid Faith [part 1 of 3]...

Does what you believe in make sense?  Does it make sense to you?  Why?  History sometimes acts as a razor against our beliefs.  History demonstrates to us what is possible, from what is impossible.  When we examine our lives through the lens of History, what do we find?  Are our beliefs supported by the facts of History, or by tales we have told so long they have reached mythic proportions but have yet to include any certain demonstrable facts.  This is not a 20^th century problem or dilemma, this is a phenomenon that has gripped mankind since the fall in the Garden of Eden until now.  You only needed to live 1100 years or so after the fall, to have lost the first-person account of what happened there in form of Adam and Eve.  By then, only Seth could recount the stories his parents had told him, even though he himself had never been in that famous Garden.

But then, no one had.  An angel stood at its entrance, armed with a flaming sword, intent on keeping all interested parties out, so man could not again eat from the Tree of Life and find himself immortal.  As a side note, what is the point of guarding this entrance if the soul of man is immortal anyway?  It was guarded because upon death we sleep, knowing nothing, until our Lord returns to us and pulls us out of our rotten slumber and in to a life only He could create, re-create, or restore.  In this context, an angelic guard is needed, and was present.  Mankind could see this angel all the way up until the flood (when it is likely the Garden was relocated to heaven, until it could be returned to a New Earth after the end of all evil).  What you believed was not important.  Go to the entrance of the Garden and what you found was an armed angel to keep you out.  Nearly 4,000 years pass by this way.

But a demonstration of the divine does not repel evil.  During the 4,000 years man became so evil, it made God sorry He made us; excepting for Noah, and Noah far from perfect.  Pass by another few centuries after the flood to the time of Moses.  The children of Israel witness miracles beyond what History could have ever dictated.  They pass through the Red Sea, and have a cloud of perfect temperature in a desert of normally scorching heat.  The snakes and creatures of the desert remain hidden in their dens while Israelite feet are nearby.  At night, the cloud turns into a pillar of fire, providing light, and heat in a desert that is otherwise very cold and dark.  And nocturnal wildlife stay home while Israelite feet are nearby.  Forty years of these conditions, but evil arises from time to time, sometimes in nearly absolute rebellion.  What you believed did not matter, over your head was a cloud, or a pillar of fire, depending on the time of day.  But pass by only a century later, and all that remains are the written accounts of Moses.  A century more, and writings are everything.

And now Jesus has reached the scene.  He is preaching and teaching.  He is healing, loving, and restoring us.  And the leadership of His church rejects Him for want of power over the people.  Was it stupid to believe in a still coming Messiah that Jesus now embodies?  Was it stupid to believe in Adam and Eve, and a talking snake?  Was it stupid to believe in Moses, and the miracles of the sky that happened every day while in the deserts of the Middle East?  Crowds of Israelites now wrestle with these beliefs because once again there is a material witness to the facts of History, instead of just the stories of History.  The leadership tell the people that Jesus is a blasphemer.  They tell the people that Jesus is a false prophet, possessed of the Devil himself.  To listen to Jesus is to be expelled from the Temple, cast away from the sacrificial system whereby salvation can be achieved.  To be expelled is to cut one’s self off from the forgiveness of sins.  Or is it?

Matthew now recounts in his gospel a story in three parts.  In act one, the context is set.  It picks up in chapter nine beginning in verse 18 it says … “While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live. [verse 19] And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples.”  So many things to unpack in only two verses.  First, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus told a man his sins were forgiven him, then proved it by healing him from a lifelong debilitating disease.  This meant, that being cut off from the Temple was no longer a death sentence of retaining one’s sins.  Being attached to Jesus was to find the only real outlet for the forgiveness of one’s sins.  The threat of the Temple leadership is no longer what it once might have been.  But this is what happens when God replaces men at the center of our religion.

Next, understand the position this supplicant maintains before this encounter.  He is a ruler.  This would mean that up until this request of Jesus he was in the Sanhedrin or ruling class.  He did not suffer from poverty, or even oppression by the Romans.  He was respected.  He likely had servants, nearly all rulers did.  In worshipping Jesus publicly, he would be putting everything he had at risk.  The Romans were not certain of Jesus yet, but He was being watched.  Anyone associated with Jesus would join that watch list, but anyone rich doing it would draw intense scrutiny.  The Romans did not need a worshipper capable of funding a war against them.  Poor folks were only desperate.  The rich could accomplish quite a bit more.  Worshipping Jesus publicly declared to his family and friends where his allegiances would lie.  He was out.  He was public.  He would be immediately cast aside by the Temple leadership, and you can believe, lies would be crafted about him right away to make this “sin” worse.

And finally, he was stupid.  What else do you call it, when someone believes something that History has never demonstrated is possible?  What else do you call it, when you search for life from a condition beyond the grave where death has already set in?  Is that resurrection, or is it salvation?  Do you see the condition of death you abide in today?  Your heart beats, your lungs move, but your “life” is one of pain, death, and mediocrity.  You “live” only a tenth of what you could.  Not because of poor health, or poor means, but because of poor thinking.  You trust to the habit of trying to save yourself from your sins, trying to gut-it-out and not commit certain things you know are wrong.  But all the while the desire to do those things is as strong as it ever was.  Failure heaped upon failure.  And History acts as a razor against your beliefs.  But it is not Jesus that is wrong about what you believe, it is what you think the role of Jesus is.  Jesus is the source of whatever new life you are bound to have.  Jesus cleans you up.  Jesus takes away the desires you cannot remove.  And salvation from the “death” you abide in, begins to take place.  Now who is the stupid one?

And note the response of Jesus to this request to breathe life back into what is now dead.  Jesus does not ponder the idea.  Jesus does not send it out to committee to insure there is a consensus before He takes action.  Jesus drops what He is doing and immediately leaves to find the home of this little girl, because of the request of her father.  It is not the faith of the dead one that will be tested here.  It is only her father that through his humility and submission to Jesus has sparked what will happen next.  Let the world think of him what they will, this father has a plan to see love restored.  This father has a plan to see the love of his little girl burn bright in her eyes once again.  This father has buried his hope and his faith in the person of Jesus Christ.  Whether we think that stupid or not.  And Jesus is moving, moving right away.  Those who will follow Jesus are indeed following after Him.  For Jesus always moves decisively towards seeing life return to the dead, even when that condition is only spiritual.

What this ruler did, is what you and I do, asking for life in the context of our death, each and every day.  If we have never witnessed salvation against death, it is because we have never really allowed Jesus to fix what is dead within us.  This was not a story of a father raising his daughter from the grave.  This was a request by a father for Jesus to do, what only Jesus can do, bring life.  This father makes that request, no matter how stupid it sounds to those around him.  No matter what history has demonstrated, History is about to be up-ended.  There will be a new History after this.  There will be a new set of facts from which we can derive a belief.  There will be a new set of eye-witnesses.  But then over time, all that will remain again is the written word of this account.  And centuries past that, the written word will be everything.  The story will not prevent all evil, but it will demonstrate the power of Jesus against evil and the death it brings.

Is it stupid to believe what you have not seen yourself?  Is it stupid to rely upon the witnesses of others?  What about believing something you do not at heart think is possible.  The power of Jesus is beyond what you could ever imagine.  No matter what others believed, there was an Angel in front of the Garden for 4,000 years.  There was a cloud over the desert, and a pillar of fire at night for 40 years.  There was our God on earth in the form of Jesus Christ for 33.5 years.  And now, there is a tried and true way, for you to see the death of your life ended, and a real “life” beyond the imagination of this existence waiting for you in the here and now, not just in some far removed afterwards.  Find Jesus, give to him what you call your life, and watch what He does with it.

And this was only the first act of three in this story …

 

Badly Packaged Truth ...

In our world, marketing is an art.  Swaying your opinions is a science.  Advertisers look to combine the two and create something that grabs your attention, holds it even if briefly, and implants a message that you should like the product they sell.  If they cannot make you like it, perhaps they can make you curious about it.  If they cannot make you curious, perhaps they can have you associate feelings with it.  The packaging of a message has become the way we tend to judge the message itself.  Imagine trying to sell a pizza in a cardboard box with a car tire track/print clearly running diagonally across the top of the box.  Seeing a tire track across the box, would make you think this pizza was run over, and is probably crushed inside.  No one would want it.  Imagine attempting to sell soda inside a dented, scratched, and bruised up soda can.  You would naturally think this soda can will have way too much pressure in it, and when you open it, it will explode.  Even if you could secure the contents without incident, the packaging would make you think that the can had “been through the mill”.  It would do little to inspire confidence in the quality of the drink.

People get used to seeing packaging of a certain type for the products they buy.  When the packaging does not match the historical expectations of what it should look like, it draws attention, but most often negative attention.  It is like introducing a third wheel on a motorcycle.  At first no one sees the value in this, and then a niche market is carved out in biker clubs for the unusual, or as utility in a side cart.  Surely no one would introduce a fourth wheel, but then they do.  And voila, the All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) is born.  But wasn’t that a Jeep?  No, the ATV is a motorcycle on 4 wheels, exposing you, the rider, to all of nature’s elements including massive injury if it rolls, or throws you from its grasp at high speed.  And yet the ATV market continues to grow.  Just like the idea of putting a motorcycle on the water, and voila, the watercraft market is born and thrives as well.  It would seem there is no limit to how we could apply the principles of a basic motorcycle with a little imagination.

And while we are now open to seeing perhaps a new kind of airplane based on a motorcycle given its rapid recent evolution; we are not so open in church.  All too many Christians, expect to see their leaders in a certain kind of package; a three-piece suit to be exact, something with a tie, and shiny shoes.  A deacon, or deaconess can get away with small variances.  But elders hardly can.  And a pastor, is chained to this image of appropriate packaging as surely as they are, to carry a Bible with them at all times.  And using your phone is a cheat, you must have a printed red-letter edition King James Bible, if you are to claim the title of preacher or pastor in this day-and-age.  Packaging sold to us by tradition.  Packaging in sync with our ideas about doing our best for God, but out of sync with what Jesus wore.  Even in His day, Jesus did not wear fine clothing.  He only wore clean clothing, certainly a by-product of baptizing so many people in the Jordan river.

Jesus did not take much of an interest in fine clothing.  In fact, he must have shunned it, at least for Himself.  It would have been remarkably easy to ask for it, from His followers.  They would have either given to Him, or secured it through taking up an offering, like so many modern ministers do believing this is the only way to secure the Lords favor.  It’s not.  Only at His death, is Jesus finally given a royal robe to wear, for the purposes of mocking the King of the Jews.  This is the robe the soldiers eventually gamble for as it still has value, even when Jesus dies above them.  But somehow, modern Christians cling to the idea, that simple, and clean are not enough.  Practical … for hands-on ministry to the poor and to the diseased never even enter our minds.  By this logic we would all be better off wearing scrubs.  With disposable clothing we could embrace the poor, and hug the sick, throwing away our scrubs later and buying new ones if they could not be cleaned in the wash.

But then, scrubs are not the most flattering of garments.  And our ministries are not designed for physical contact with those in need.  Our ministries are designed only for the listening ear, and contributing wallet.  So we expect 3-piece suit packaging, complete with tie, and shiny shoes.  Should a minister take the pulpit dressed in cargo shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with tennis shoes, we would rise up of one accord and throw him out.  Or at minimum, remove ourselves from the blasphemy that is sure to occur in a place that would permit this.  But it is not only clothing that marks our acceptance of a messenger of His truth.  It is behavior.  We have standards after all.  Biblical standards (or at least our interpretation of what those might be).  And we rigidly enforce our standards on everyone … including … Jesus.

Matthew marks the beginning of this thinking (or at least one of the first times it was publicly exposed) in his gospel in the ninth chapter picking up in verse 9 saying … “And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.”  As Jesus is leaving his home country or city, He sees Matthew engaged in the practice of collecting Roman taxes.  This is the MOST hated position in the entire nation.  The guy who cleans the poo out of the swine pen would be considered high-society, compared to a tax collector.  Tax collectors are thieves by profession.  Even if they do not steal more for themselves (which most do), they steal Israelite wealth and transfer it to Roman coffers by the nature of what they do. 

Asking Matthew to become a disciple, was literally like asking public enemy number one, to become one of your chief ambassadors.  No thinking modern minister would ask a deformed, lesbian, overweight, stuttering, loud-mouthed, aging minority woman, dressed in shorts and a tee shirt with bare-feet, full of skin disease, and right up to the last minute, a thief of everything you owned, person … to come and follow them, and secure a prime place in your ministry for Christ.  The packaging is ALL wrong.  Any one of those things could perhaps be OK, but the entire combination would make them public enemy number one in the Christian community.  To make them an Apostle of Jesus Christ, is simply unthinkable.  This was the emotional equivalent of selecting a Roman tax collector in the time of Christ.  Matthew would begin his discipleship with Christ as the MOST hated man of the 12, and of the nation at large.  And what does this hated man do … he invites Jesus and the others to come dine in his home.

Matthew continues in verse 10 saying … “And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.”  The friends of the hated, are hated themselves.  Matthew opens up his home not only to Jesus, to but too everyone else that would be willing to dine there.  His friends are the dregs of society.  Prostitutes, beggars, whoremongers, other thieves, even a gentile or Roman or two.  The list of people willing to associate with the most hated, are by nature also hated themselves.  Though on the social scale, Matthew is clearly the worst, the lowest, and the most hated of any of these groups.  They all serve a purpose.  Matthew and tax collectors serve only Rome.  None the less, Jesus comes and dines with them all.

Matthew continues in verse 11 saying … “And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?”  Enter organized religion into the story.  Enter centuries of tradition passed down within the church, even if they are wrong, or misguided … they remain traditions.  The behavior of Jesus was simply unacceptable.  His behavior rules Him out as being our Messiah.  How many things do you do in your church, or church service, because you have always done them that way?  How many rules and burdens have been placed upon you from the organized church, having nothing to do with the example of Jesus Christ, that you follow because someone said you should?  And when the pastor says you should, how many search the life of Christ, and through this lens, the scriptures for themselves to see if what even a pastor says is what really should happen?  We don’t.  We don’t take the time.  We just do what we are told, as sheep are known to do.

Matthew continues in verse 12 saying … “But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. [verse 13] But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  Yikes!  Questioning the need for the sacrificial system itself in favor of mercy, was tantamount to blaspheming Moses and the history of that system that Jesus setup in the first place.  But then, Jesus setup that system because we care little for mercy, and so are in need of sacrifice to remind our hardened hearts what mercy should be.  To kill the innocent animals, was supposed to be hard for us to do.  It was supposed to be a reminder that the mercy we feel for the innocent would one day take the Saviors life for us all.  Because we prefer sin to mercy.  Because we prefer the love of self, to the love of others.  And in this preference, our mercy wanes.  And we are ALL unrighteous.  And we ALL have need of the mercy of our Lord to save us from ourselves.  Jesus reminds us that mercy underwrites our very salvation.

If the incident or the story ended here, we might feel good being able to criticize only the religious leadership of the establishment, about their narrow ideas of packaging, and their hypocrisy.  But even the fringe have ideas about packaging as well.  The fringe folks of our community look down on 3-piece suits as being haughty, as being condescending, as being un-enlightened with what is truly important.  The fringe folks have their own music, and methods, and ideas.  And as they rebel against the establishment, they become like the pilgrims of our ancestry who fled religious persecution, only to establish it themselves.  The fringe folks harden in their own ideas about what is important, and become inflexible to change, or adapt to something new.  And it is like looking at two sides of the same coin; both chained to the metal of insistence of being right that binds them. 

Matthew continues in verse 14 saying … “Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?”  John the Baptist was definitely NOT mainstream Israelite society.  He dressed weird.  He ate weird foods.  His hair was uncut.  He bellowed messages of repentance and baptized people under that banner in the river Jordan.  This was not the Rabbi you followed for a traditional experience.  This was the fringe.  The out there, the weirdo of the church.  He fit no mold.  Yet he and his followers maintained a few traditions like fasting.  And as they observed Jesus, they begin to see the unfairness of them fasting all the time, and the followers of Jesus never fasting at all.  It bothers them.  Even from a fringe perspective the packaging begins to look wrong.  Both the organized Pharisee and the fringe disciple of John are questioning the same thing … could the packaging of Christ that is different from both indicate He is not actually the Messiah?

Matthew continues in verse 15 saying … “And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. [verse 16] No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. [verse 17] Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.”  Jesus tells both audiences the same message, what He brings is new, it is a new life.  The traditions that burden us were never supposed to be there as burdens.  They were meant to free us, or we should be rid of them.  Fasting is not meant as a burden, but as a tool, to clear the mind to see the will of God clearer … or not at all.  Association with the dregs of society is not a sin, it is meant to show them love from a God of love, not to become them and like them participating in the same sins they are held captive to.

It is the love of Jesus that can free us from who we are, whether traditional Christian or fringe Christian.  Our freedom is not found in how we package ourselves, but in how much we love others, and burn to make their lives better.  How much we burn to point others to Jesus as the way to escape the pain of their lives, is the basis of our freedom, nothing else.  His mercy defines our freedom, nothing else.  When we love, we remove the need for sacrifice.  When all our minds are consumed with love of others, there is no room for sin to enter in.  Better that kind of love, then a cycle of sin-and-forgive we are content with today.  Better to love others so much, we do not have time to sin, we do not have desire to sin, we only want to see people find the love of Jesus Christ.  It is not up to us to clean them, that is the work of Jesus.  It is not up to us to judge them for who they are today, but instead to point them to Jesus and have faith that He will clean them up over time.  Jesus is not just looking to meet someone, and then turn over their salvation to you.  He is looking to meet them, love them everyday, and see them freed from pain of sin.  That is what salvation is all about.

Does it bother you that Jesus does this in a homespun garment and simple sandals?  Does it bother you that Jesus gets dirty on dusty roads?  Does it bother you that Jesus picks up all kinds of germs as he embraces the lepers, the demon possessed, the crippled, the folks with diseases of the skin and bloody wounds?  It is not clean work healing the folks in need.  Love is not clean, it is messy.  Love that redeems is messy to.  It has to be, to get to the place where you are, and remove you from it.  The Truth has a name.  It comes to us from the inspiration of His Holy Spirit still today.  Even if it is not wrapped in the package we traditionally accept, we can still listen for His Truth even when the person who offers it, may not be perfect yet.  It was never the package that mattered.  It is not the 3-piece suit that lends credence to what is said.  Only the content of what is said, can be measured against the Truth of Jesus Christ.  A lot of lies are said in 3-piece suits, just as they are in cargo shorts and tee shirts.  But a lot of truths are offered in both as well.

Let us open our minds to His Spirit, focus on it, and discard the package for what it is … meaningless.  It was not the homespun robe and simple dusty sandals that gave Christ His passion for us, and they did nothing to deter it either.  All they were, was clothing, nothing more.  No significance.  What He said matters, not in what clothing He said it.  The same is true today of ALL of His messengers to us.  Truth still has a name.  And Truth can still come to us from the most unlikely sources, if we will but see it.  Leave the packaging up to the influence of His Spirit, and focus only on the Truth that is uttered.  If Jesus is in it, the package is meaningless.  But if Jesus is not in it, no matter how well it is packaged, it is still worth nothing.  Jesus reminds us, if we want to do our best for Him, we should show mercy, and love others.  The recipients of that mercy and love will be looking in to your eyes, not at their reflection in your shiny shoes, or at the wrinkles in your cargo shorts.  Your eyes will reveal your passion … or not.

 

A Bigger Gift ...

Perspective can change your mind, or your priorities.  We make decisions, and set our priorities, based on how we can assess a situation, on what we believe we know of it.  Introduce more facts, expand the vision to a wider time frame, understand those consequences to our actions, and our minds can be changed, even our desires altered.  I’m certain the folks on the Titanic’s biggest concern was which party to attend, wearing which outfit, right up until the iceberg hit.  If that knowledge had been common before that event, not a single person on that ship would have cared about parties, or outfits.  To a person they would have either prepared for the inevitable with far more time to do it.  Or attempted to prevent the event entirely thus changing the history of the maiden voyage of the ship that “could not be sunk”.

It’s not just the big calamities we would avoid.  It is the little ones as well.  Driving just a bit more carefully, or being aware of the erratic or careless behavior of the other driver intent upon hitting us; we would take additional precautions, change our route, and avoid driving altogether if needs be.  But avoiding calamity requires some degree of additional foreknowledge, or does it?  Where it comes to our health, we seem to make one set of decisions before something goes badly, and another set, only after damage is done.  Science has warned us of the dangers of smoking and alcohol consumption for decades, maybe longer.  But the young are willing to “take the risk” believing themselves to be invulnerable, until history catches up with them, and the long-term consequence outweighs the short-term risks they took.  These days it is not just the young.  It would seem the fastest growing segment of our population suffering from sexually transmitted diseases are the old.  Whether the logic is there is little time left, or based on a history of not having to pay the consequences up to now, disease is finding a home in the population you might least expect.

This brings up the question … what do you want?  When you are healthy, the answer might be widely different than when you are sick.  Everyone would want to avoid the fatal car crash, but suffering from a condition for which there is no quick remedy, colors your response.  While the desire for wealth may be strong in us, when we suffer, we look for relief.  Finding that relief becomes more important than nearly anything else.  Therefore perhaps it is understanding what we suffer from that might surprise us.  Matthew records for us an incident in the life and gospel ministry of Jesus Christ that may provide some context on this topic.  Picking up in the ninth chapter beginning in verse one it says … “And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city.”

This text has more meaning than might first appear.  Our encounters with Jesus must always be voluntary.  Jesus does not force Himself upon us.  The prior passages outline the story of Jesus healing 2 demoniacs on the far coast of the Sea of Galilee.  The demons entered the pigs, the pigs ran into the sea and died.  The villagers came to see Jesus, and promptly asked Him to leave their coasts.  It is hard to know why.  Maybe they were afraid more pigs would die, or that they would lose further wealth with Him being there.  At the end of the day, their motives do not matter, the outcome does.  They asked Jesus to leave, and leave He did.  Going back to His “own city” could imply Capernaum as He spent much time there, or Bethlehem as that was the town of His birth.  But most likely it was Nazareth where He was raised.

The story continues in verse 2 saying … “And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”  This portion of the story may have hidden meaning.  From a what is more important perspective; we suffer from our sins, more than we suffer from poor health.  Jesus attacks the more important problem with the blessing He offers.  But there may be more to it than that.  In the time of Christ, it is widely believed that disease only comes to those who “deserve it”.  Only sinners of unusual evil proclivity are attached with diseases to match their crimes.  This belief further states that it is not Satan who is allowed to torment them this way, but God Himself who punishes them for their evil.

The long-held view of a punishing God has yet to be extinguished even in our time.  Many Christians still hold to the idea that God is just waiting to “judge” the wicked and send them to hell for all the evil they have committed.  Many Christians further believe that the bad things that happen here, are just a taste of the punishment God has in mind for those who refuse to believe as they do.  In effect, we still believe AIDs attacks those who have sexually sinned.  Ebola attacks those who commit sins with animals (or at least that is how it started).  There is a whole host of misinformation to which the typical Christian mind looks for the punishing finger of God upon the wicked He is just waiting to kill in the flames.  And this with modern minds, and a complete Bible that should dispel this kind of thinking.  But it does not.  Negative interpretations, completely absent of the lens of Jesus Christ and what His life was to give witness to, support in the deceived mind, the continued idea of a punishing God.

So when Jesus says to be of good cheer, and forgives the sins of this victim of palsy, He is undoing the source of why a man would suffer from disease in the first place.  The man is not healed.  But the man is no longer guilty either.  Jesus is destroying the link between the guilt of sin, and the condition of suffering we often find ourselves in.  It is not our sins that cause lung cancer, it is our continual smoking that does.  It is not our sins that cause liver disease, it is the tons of alcohol we consume.  It is not our sins that produce someone else as a bad driver and cause us harm.  They are simply careless, even if only for a moment.  Satan would punish us all.  God would provide us with relief from our suffering.  But there is a distinction.  Sin itself is a punishment.  You do not need additional harm, the harm is buried right in the sin itself.

When we gossip, we hurt people.  When we lie, we hurt people.  When we betray our spouses and our marriages we hurt them, hurting the people we claim to love most, and who do love us the most.  When we dishonor our parents, we cause them grief.  They are flawed, but they have loved us since we were so small we could barely lift our own heads.  Their motives have never been in doubt, but now our actions of rebellion sometimes are.  We treat our God much the same, when we dishonor Him as well.  There is no need for additional punishment for our crimes, our crimes are punishment enough.  When we come to realize this, it is often behind the pain of knowing who we hurt, how much, and why it was so unnecessary.  Our God would provide us relief from this suffering by changing us, and acting as a preventative from sin entirely.

Jesus having broken the connection in the minds of those present between poor health, and guilt over sins, has undone a central tenet of local Sanhedrin doctrine.  The Rabbi’s present immediately jump to the idea of blasphemy, but they dare not utter the words, or the local crowd might stone them.  Jesus is popular after all.  Matthew continues in verse 3 saying … “And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. [verse 4] And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?”  Only our God can read our minds and thoughts.  Only our maker has this insight, is this omnipresent, and omnipotent.  Satan is a created being.  Satan can read our body language, and he is pretty good at guessing what we think.  But he is no mind reader.  Our God is.  Our God reads our very motives, and knows what we are going to say even before we say it.  This act of reading them should have convinced them of who He was.  But it didn’t.

So Jesus addresses the concern.  Matthew continues in verse 5 saying … “For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? [verse 6] But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.”  Jesus is sad, that anyone would look at the forgiveness of sins as being something evil.  Forgiveness of sins, gives us a fresh start, a ground zero from which to renew a relationship with our God.  And yet preachers of the organized religion, use that event as a basis to accuse of blasphemy.  So Jesus, adds the miracle of healing to this man, to show all in attendance, that forgiveness is as real as healing is.  From a priority perspective, the most important thing this man suffered from was the burden of guilt, and the burden of improper doctrine that exacerbated that guilt.  When Jesus broke that burden, the health of this man was not even in palsy stricken man’s mind.  He was free from the burden of his sins.  Made free by Jesus Christ.

His physical healing was only to be a symbol of his spiritual healing.  The short term, as well as the long term, priorities.  Matthew continues in verse 7 saying … “And he arose, and departed to his house. [verse 8] But when the multitudes saw it, they marveled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.”  The witnesses to this event understood, what apparently, we have yet to grasp.  They marveled.  They glorified God.  That is worth considering.  They glorified God.  For the forgiveness of sins, our hearts respond by glorifying God.  For the relief that comes from being unburdened from our guilt, and reformed to be likeminded with our God, we give glory.  Not just for the start of our salvation, but for the finishing of it.  For the relief God brings us, not just for sins past, but for sinning no more.  No more do we ever wish to do, that which brings harm to so many.  That is the relief our God wishes to bring us all.  He looks to punish none, but to redeem all.  Everyone.  From Adolph Hitler, to Saddam Hussein, to you to me; our God loves each of us, and wishes to redeem each of us.

If we can rid God of the false attribute of punishment and guilt, perhaps we can embrace God as the healing of what is wrong with us.  Perhaps we can finally understand that we suffer from our sins, not because of what God does, but because of what our sins do.  We suffer more from the disease in our minds that would actually have us crave sin, than we do from standing on the deck of the Titanic, or being hit by the car, or having our smoking habits finally catch up with us in our health records and lives.  Our sins are worse than all of these.  And the relief from each and every sin comes offered to us as a gift from Jesus Christ, just as He did for the man brought to Him on a bed unable to carry himself there.  That man would have gone home, still sick, but no longer suffering.  What was important to heal, was done at the forgiveness of sins, and the changing of his mind about the nature of God.  Healing his palsy then was only after effect.  The man knew it.  The crowd knew it.  And now the religious leadership knew it.

But their response would not be so positive …