Hi everyone. Welcome back.
Once again, to daily gospel exegesis, where we try to do,
really solid exegesis of the Gospel, text to help you
understand, maybe some things that you might have missed.
If you just skim read the text, we want to really dive into the
very text of the gospels. And today if you go to Mass, I
would hear from Matthew chapter, 9 verses 1 to 8, Jesus got into
the boat crossed the water and came to his own town.
Then some people appeared, bringing him a paralytic
stretched out on a bed, seeing their faith.
Jesus said to the paralytic, courage my child, your sins are
forgiven. And at this, some scribes said
to themselves. This man is blaspheming Knowing
what was in their minds. Jesus said, why do you have such
Wicked thoughts in your heart in your hearts?
Now which of these is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to
say get up and walk. But to prove to you that the son
of man has Authority on Earth to forgive sins.
He said to the paralytic, get up and pick up your bed and go off
home. And the man got up and went
home, a feeling of awe came over the crowd when they saw this and
they praised God for giving such power to men.
So, what's the context here? Jesus has been doing various
healings in the Galilee region and on the previous day, he had
crossed to the Eastern side of the Sea of Galilee to heal the
demon Iraq. That's at the end of Matthew
chapter 8, And now Jesus gets back into the boat.
In verse one, crosses the water and came to his own town so he
gets back in the boat on the western shore.
Sorry on the Eastern Shore and goes back across to the western
shore where his home town of Capernaum.
Is, that's basically where he lives for the first few years of
his ministry. So he's going home back to
Capernaum. He probably went into his own
house or certainly, he went to Peter's house according to Marx
version and there's a question about whether Jesus may have
actually lived in Peter's house or whether he had his own.
But marks version of this story says, at this point, so many
people collected in the house, that there was no room left,
even in the front door. So they're in Simon's house and
there's people everywhere. There's people crowding to get
to Jesus and there's no room verse to our translation in the
lectionary says then People appeared.
Now, the original here, just says, behold they brought him a
paralytic, so it's just some people from the crowd
apparently. The cause of his condition is
not described here. Although, apparently the
paralytic has been paralyzed since birth, it seems that way
verse to sing their faith. Now, what about this is
faithful? Well, Mark actually gives us
this detail in marks version. We see the friends carrying the
paralytic, believe in Jesus so much.
They have so much faith in him, that they actually would willing
to go to the lengths of opening up a hole in the roof and
lowering him down. Roof.
So you probably know that story. This is the same story, but
Matthew doesn't include the details about making the hole in
the roof, but it's the same story.
So, Jesus sees their faith and Hell far.
They're willing to go to get this man, to Jesus.
So he says to the paralytic courage, my child or more,
literally their take heart, my son.
Now, that phrase my son or my child that could imply the
paralytic was a young man, not necessarily though.
It could just be an affirmation of Jesus.
Daya T my son, he sort of, in the position of God here,
perhaps and maybe it's just a tender phrase, he's showing
tenderness to the man. And then he says these
controversial Words, which have echo through the centuries?
He says to the man, your sins are forgiven.
Now, this was a bombshell to his original Jewish hearers the Jews
believed that only God, could forgive sins and that was taught
in the Old Testament. In lots of places.
Particularly Psalm 103 verse 12, Isaiah 43 Verse 25.
The Old Testament is very clear that only God could forgive
sins. Even if you go to the temple to
get your sins forgiven, it's not the priests.
That would do it. It was God.
But here, Jesus just says your sins are forgiven.
So, this is interpreted as blasphemy because he's basically
claiming to be God. Now, we as Christians know that
Jesus is God, so it doesn't count as blasphemy, but, of
course, Jesus, Jesus never comes right out and says, I am God.
So, the scribes and the other here is in the crowd.
Don't realize that he's God, so they see it is blasphemy.
Now, many scholars have pointed out, that notice, Jesus hasn't
even healed. The man first, his just starts
talking about the man's sins. Why focus on the man's sins,
rather than his physical healing?
Well, it seems that Jesus always wants to go to the root problems
in our hearts and deal with the more serious paralysis of sin,
rather than physical maladies. So here Jesus sees into the
man's heart, he sees that the man has some sin in his life and
he releases him from a burden of guilt that he had.
Possibly for years. So in this story, the healing of
the man sin is the precondition to the healing of his physical
handicap, verse 3, some scribes. So these are the teachers of the
law. So their job was to interpret
the Old Testament for the Jewish community.
And at this stage, they're probably here to see Jesus.
Well, he hid it here. Jeez, is that this point?
They're not openly hostile to him.
They're genuinely interested in his teachings, his
interpretation of the Old Testament because that's what
they specialized in. So they come to the house of
Peter, where everyone's crowded, they want to hear Jesus too.
But as soon as Jesus says, your sins are forgiven to the man,
the scribes say to themselves. Now.
Marks translation makes it clear that they don't actually say
anything. They're actually thinking it
internally, and this is what they think to themselves.
This man is blaspheming because from their perspective, Jesus is
claiming to be able to forgive sins, and they know that only
God can do that. In fact, even to forgive sins,
you had to go to the temple. Whereas Jesus is out here, just
in someone's house and he apparently claims that the man's
sins are forgiven. So there's this element of
Jesus, getting rid of the old Covenant here and the way that
it used to work for forgiveness of sins, Jesus is introducing a
new way of forgiving sins. So, in summary here, what they
notice is, that Jesus is putting himself on par with the father
and his bestowing on this man, the Forgiveness of sins.
That's We are only associated with the temple system, so the
thinking, this man is blaspheming, but Jesus knows
what's in their minds or more literally, he knows their
thoughts. So, Jesus reads the minds of the
scribes here. That's fascinating.
He does do this every now and then where he reads the minds of
those around him, but he only does it sometimes.
And this is what he says to them.
Why do you have such Wicked thoughts in your hearts?
So, Jesus perceives not only what their thoughts are, but he
actually comes right out and says, their thoughts are wicked?
Why their thoughts Wicked? Well, it's not entirely clear
but probably because they deny the truth that Jesus has
Authority from God to forgive sins.
Verse 5. Jesus now says to the scribes
after having said the thoughts are wicked now, which of these
is easier to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and
walk. So this is a teaching moment.
Jesus is asking them a rhetorical question.
The answer is supposed to be obvious.
The answer to the question is supposed to be the saying that
your sins are forgiven is the much easier thing to do than
actually telling a paralyzed man to get up and walk.
And so the idea here is that from their perspective, the
scribes perspective, it's much more likely that the man's sins
would be forgiven or at least to say that his sins are forgiven
then for the man to get up on walk.
But if that's the case, if saying the man sins are forgiven
is the easier option. Jesus is about to show.
That he has the power to do the harder one, which is to give the
man, his physical walking ability back, but if he can do
the harder one then he's also in that same moment going to show
that he has the power to do the easier one as well.
You notice how that works? He says which is easier and they
would have said to themselves well saying, the men's sins are
forgiven easier. And so, Jesus says, well, I'm
going to do the harder one which will prove that I can do the
easier one to Notice the language he uses here is, I want
to prove to you now. That's a key phrase in the Old
Testament. God often Works a miracle, not
always, but sometimes so that the people will know that he's
God as a kind of a proof thing though that has to be held in
Balance because there's other places in the gospels where
Jesus specifically says, I'm not going to perform a miracle for
you because that would be too easy.
Now in this case he uses this title, the son of man.
Now that's a Mysterious Messianic title, son of man
appears a few times in the Old Testament, but it's particularly
in the Book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 8 products that there's
in one of Daniels Visions. There's this human messenger
from Heaven, that's going to come one day, sent from God to
the Earth. And in Daniel chapter 8, that
figure is called the son of man. Now, in the original context,
the son of man probably represented the people of God
perhaps, but in the time of Jesus, the Jews had come to see
the Son of man as a title for the Messiah.
So, son of man, basically means Messiah.
That's the title Jesus uses for himself.
So as people who are interested in learning and studying the
gospels, whenever Jesus says, the son of man, blah blah blah.
He means the Messiah. And he's calling himself the
Messiah essentially, although they don't always fully perceive
that a lot, or they don't always fully agree with him.
And this is what he says about this.
The Messiah, the Son of Man, I'm doing this to prove to you.
The son of man has Authority on Earth to forgive sins, so he
wants to show the scribes and the crowd that the one of the
things, the Messiah can do is to forgive sins.
They didn't really realize that when they studied the Old
Testament, there's a whole lot of things.
The Messiah can do that are predicted, but it doesn't
clearly predicted that the Messiah can forgive sins, but
Jesus wants to show them that. Notice the language he uses.
He doesn't say, son of man has authority to forgive sins.
He adds in a phrase on Earth, the son of man has Authority on
Earth to forgive sins. This phrase is really important
for Catholic theology. Let's think about what Jesus is
saying here. Jesus is affirming, the God is
the only one who can forgive sins in heaven, but he is
telling them. Something new has happened.
God has delegated his authority to forgive sins to the Messiah.
While the Messiah is on, Earth, interesting.
The Messiah has Authority on Earth to forgive sins.
That same Authority is what's passed on to the apostles later,
the authority to forgive sins on Earth, because later Jesus says
to them, whatever sins you forgive, are forgiven, whatever
sins you retain are retained. So Jesus passes on his own
authority to forgive sins on Earth to the apostles and as
Catholics, we believe that's the basis for the sacrament of
confession, which is passed down to the Bishops and the The
priests today, we'll talk more about that when we get to verse
8 because the crowd and maybe perhaps Matthew, realizes the
significance of the fact that now people on earth have the
ability to forgive sins. Jesus finishes by saying and get
up, pick up your bed and go home and that's what the man does.
He gets up and goes straight away.
Notice Jesus didn't touch him here.
Apparently it was just the word of Jesus himself.
That's what he also man. So, the man gets up and he goes
home, and imagine you're in the crowd.
That would be quite amazing to see.
Probably most of the people here, listening to Jesus a
locals. They knew this paralyzed man,
and they probably knew he'd been paralyzed his whole life.
All of a sudden he gets up and walks out.
So this is their reaction verse eight, a feeling of or came over
the crowd when they saw this and they praised God for giving such
power to men. So at this point in Jesus
ministry, everyone is still very positive about Jesus.
And in fact, when they see these Miracles, they glorify God,
which is an excellent outcome. Now, they probably don't
recognize him as the Son of God. They probably don't at least
this crowd, don't seem to recognize that he's the Messiah,
but they do recognize here. According to Matthew, that God
has given power to this man. Soon though.
As we know, if you read on the scribes, begin to develop a
grudge against Jesus. At this point, it's all pretty
positive. But later on for different
reasons, The Scribe start to be quite hostile to Jesus.
Notice the language that's used here.
The when the crowd saw this, they praised God for giving such
power to men. Some Scholars have pointed out
that the crowd here. Apparently doesn't think only.
Well God has given power to this man.
Jesus they say God Given power to men.
Perhaps this is a hint that at the time, Matthew is writing, it
was well known that the apostles were also associated with the
ministry of forgiving sins, men in the plural.
And so Matthews, audience would know that this authority to
forgive sins. Had passed through the apostles
as well. That might be what's in view
here, really interesting. So we'll leave it there for
today. There's no catechism references
for us to look at today, but we'll continue to work through
the gospel of Matthew, this fascinating, very Jewish gospel,
in tomorrow's episode