Hi everyone and welcome back to the logical.
Bible study podcast, where we take a look, at the literal
sense of the text and really want to unpack the text itself.
So we can learn what the author is trying to convey to his
original audience. I've got a really interesting
passage to look at today. So the Gospel reading from
today's mass is from Mark chapter 2, verses 1 to 12.
So let's start by reading the passage When Jesus returned to
Capernaum word, went round that he was back.
And so many people collected that there was no room left,
even in front of the door. He was preaching the word to
them. When some people came bringing
him a paralytic carried by four men, but as the crowd made it
impossible to get the man to him, they stripped the roof over
the place where Jesus was. And when they had made an
opening, they lowered the stretcher on which the Clay.
Seeing their faith. Jesus said to the paralytic, my
child, your sins are forgiven. Now, some scribes were sitting
there and they thought to themselves.
How can this man talk like that? He is blaspheming, who can
forgive sins, but God, Jesus inwardly aware that this was
what they were thinking. Said to them, why do you have
these thoughts in your hearts? Which of these is easier to say
to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven or to say, get up pick
up your stretcher and walk But to prove to you that the son of
man has Authority on Earth to forgive sins.
He turned to the paralytic. I order you get up, pick up your
stretcher and go off home. And the man got up picked up his
stretcher at once and walked out in front of everyone.
So that they were all astounded and praised.
God saying, we have never seen anything like this.
So here we are at start of Mark, chapter 2.
And in verse 1, Jesus returns to Capernaum.
So recently, he's been avoiding the villages.
You remember that things were getting too busy in the Villages
so he had to go into the Wilderness but now he's back
home and it says that so many people collected in the house
and we're probably talking about Simon's house again that there's
no room left even at the front door.
So Jesus is inside the house with Simon and some others and
everyone is crowding into The house to hear him in verse 2.
We learn what he's doing, so on this occasion.
Jesus is preaching the word to them.
So probably means that he is talking about the Old Testament.
Remember, they didn't have a new testament yet at this stage, so
Jesus would be providing a commentary or some sermons about
the Old Testament. Then comes the paralytic, man.
In the four men who are carrying him, they can't get near to
Jesus because of the crowd. So obviously they want healing
for the man but they can't get there because they've got this
stretcher and it's too hard to get the stretcher through this
massive crowd. So they come up with a solution,
they decide to strip the roof over the place, where he was
now, that might seem a bit actually quite rude to us.
Just making a hole in someone's roof, but in that culture, the
roofs were made of things that could be repaired reasonably
easy. So, they'll probably beans.
Wooden beams, made of thatch and Clay.
So all they really had to do is just take apart some of the mud
and Clay, make a big enough hole and then lower him down.
Probably have a couple people at the other on the floor,
receiving him as he came through the Whole.
And then they would have to do a little bit of repair work on the
roof, but it wouldn't take too long.
Now the think about what it would have looked like from
everyone else's perspective though, so they're listening to
this wonderful sermon by Jesus and then all of a sudden, some
clay starts to fall down from the roof.
And that would have been quite strange seeing someone being
lowered down through the roof, verse 5 when Jesus saw their
faith. So he's probably talking about
the men because he says their faith.
So the four men. So Jesus sees how much they
believed these four men believed that the man would be healed if
they can get him to Jesus. He's impressed.
So he says to the man on the stretcher, my son.
So that could imply the paralytic was a young man.
If he's calling him my son or it could be quite a gentle
affirmation of Jesus day, it is in Jesus Is God and he's being
tender to one of his children here.
So it could mean either of those and he says he drops a
bombshell. He says to the man, your sins
are forgiven. So, this is a bombshell for the
Jews at that time. Jews all Jews regardless of
which Camp they fell in believe that only God could forgive
sins. The priests couldn't do it, only
God, can forgive sins. But now he is Jesus saying your
sins are forgiven. So by Jesus saying, this is
basically committing the sin of blasphemy, which is actually
what he would be accused of later on in his life and
blasphemy was punishable by Death.
Now if they don't that, no one comes right out and says,
blasphemy and accuses him of it at this stage because they're
probably quite confused and taken aback by what he said.
Now for us as Christians, it's easy for us to come up with a
solution to this. We can say I, yep, Jesus was God
and so there's no problem. Jesus can forgive sins.
Jesus Is God, that's the solution.
But notice Jesus doesn't. That's not the solution.
Jesus gives, Jesus doesn't come right out and say yeah, I'm God.
So I can It he never is that blunt.
He has to be little bit more careful about it.
And as we'll see, later on, in the passage, the reasoning, he
gives as to why he can forgive sins is actually quite
interesting. Now, many scholars have pointed
out the fact that Jesus focuses on the man's sins first.
He doesn't say to the man. Okay, I'm going to heal you now.
He says my son, your sins are forgiven.
So Scholars, have you know written a lot about what this
means in terms of Jesus. Getting at the root problem in
the man's heart which is sin and he's dealing with them deeper
paralysis. The man experiences, which is
the paralysis of sin. So Jesus is obviously seeing
into this man's heart. And he releases the man from a
burden of guilt that he has maybe even an unconscious one
that he's carried for years. So for Jesus, that's the
necessary precondition before he's going to give them an
physical healing. He has to spiritually heal the
man from his sins first, and that's pretty common for Jesus.
You'll notice the Jesus often links forgiveness of sins with
the healing of the body, he tends to want to forgive the
sins, do The underlying root issue before before he does the
physical healing. That's not to imply that the sin
causes the disease. So Jesus is a bit more nuanced
than that. He says that sin is the root
cause of or perhaps a better way of putting it.
Is this the Dominion of Satan is the root cause of both sin in
our lives and illness Satan is ultimately responsible in some
way for both of those to and by Jesus bringing the kingdom of
God, he's come to undo the works of Satan.
So he wants to undo both of those symptoms sin and physical
illness. Verse 6.
So Jesus just said he's going to forgive the man sins or he man's
sins are forgiven. Some scribes were sitting there.
So these are teachers of the Old Testament quite prominent in the
Jewish Community. Their job was to tell the people
what the Old Testament meant. And at this stage, they're
probably come to hear Jesus because they're genuinely
interested. They want to know how he
interprets. The Old Testament verse 7 says,
they thought to themselves. Notice they don't say anything
here, they just thinking to themselves, So how can this man
forgive sins? But Jesus inwardly aware that
this is what they were thinking. Or another translation says
Jesus perceived in his spirit that they thus questioned within
themselves. So, Jesus here is basically
reading their minds. This is a power that only God
has but here Jesus is doing it. So, this is another affirmation
in Mark's gospel, but Jesus Is God, it's an ability.
That Jesus only uses. Sometimes, Jesus doesn't know
everything that everyone is thinking all the time in the
Gospels, Only sometimes is he kind of switch on this
mind-reading ability and the catechism talks a bit about this
ability that Jesus has to perceive people's hearts.
Verse 9 says he is Jesus responds.
It's sort of interesting reasoning.
He says to the scribes which of these is easier to say to the
paralytic. Your sins are forgiven or to say
to the paralytic, get up pick up your stretcher and walk.
Now this is a rhetorical question.
It's supposed to have an obvious answer.
So the answer to this question is supposed to be that saying,
your sins are forgiven is the easier option than telling the
man to get up and walk. It's much more likely that the
man sins will be forgiven then that the man is actually going
to get up and walk. So that's what Jesus means.
It's a lot easier to say the form of into say the ladder.
But if that's the case, if it's easier to say that the man's
sins will be forgiven, Jesus is about to show that he has the
power to do the harder one. Which is sorry.
Yes, he's about to show that he has the power to do the harder
one. He's about to get the man to get
up and walk, but if he can do the harder one then that shows
that he can do the easier one, as well.
So it's sort of a logical thing of reasoning from.
If I can do the harder thing, then I can do the easier thing
as well. So a very clever response by
Jesus. Now, here's the key phrase and
it's we need to unpack this phrase a bit verse 10, but to
prove to you that the son of man has Authority on Earth to
forgive sins. So what he's saying here is to
prove that I have just performed the easier one.
I've just forgiven the man sins. I'm now going to perform the
harder one. That's basically what he's
saying. I'm going to prove to you that I
just did the easier one. And the way that I'm going to
prove that to you is by doing the hard thing by telling him to
get up and walk a few key phrases here in this sentence.
So when he says to prove to you or another translation is so
that you may know this is a key phrase.
In the Old Testament, God often works miracles so that the
people will know that he is God and Jesus is using the same
language here. I'm going to do this so that you
know, my identity. Son of man.
This is a phrase that this is the first time it appears in
Mark, but Jesus uses a lot for himself.
It's quite a mysterious title, son of man.
And it's capitalized, the s in the air, my capitalize there.
So it appears a few times in the Old Testament.
And probably the most important place that appears in that is in
the Book of Daniel chapters chapter 8.
So that chapter predicts, that sort of a vision that there's
going to be a human messenger from Heaven who's going to come
and be presented before God. It's a human messenger comes
before God receives a crayon. And in the Book of Daniel, that
figure is called the son of man, probably in its original
context, in the Book of Daniel, how they originally, would have
understood it. The son of man, probably
represented the people of God as a whole being presented before
God. But by the time of Jesus, the
Jews had reflected on that a little more.
And they perceive that this is actually a description of the
Messiah. The Messiah could be considered
to be the son of man. And that's particularly true
amongst the S seems at qumran. So in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they
discussed the Messiah, being the son of man quite a bit.
So the Jews at the time, saw the son of man as a title for the
Messiah, and Jesus is quite comfortable to use that title
for himself. He says I'm the son of man.
He says, the son of man has Authority on Earth to forgive
sins. So he's performing this miracle
of. He's about to tell the man to
get up and walk. So that the crowd understands
that one of the things that the Messiah can do is forgive sins.
That's new, they didn't realize that before that the Messiah
will be able to do that key thing in this phrase area.
And it's well worth thinking about because when I learned
this certainly transformed my understanding of the passage but
it's To miss notice the phrase on Earth, the son of man has
Authority on Earth to forgive sins.
Why does he add that in there? Why not just say the sudden band
has authority to forgive sins. So what Jesus is doing here is
he's performing that God. The father is the only one who
can forgive sins in heaven. That's true.
The Jews are right about that. However, he's now telling them
something they didn't know before, which is that God has
delegated his authority to the Messiah.
While the Messiah is on Earth. So on Earth in heaven, God,
forgives sins on Earth. The Messiah has the power to
forgive sins. Now, this, this is the cool
part. This Authority, that Jesus is
the Messiah, has to forgive sins on Earth is the same Authority.
That's passed on to the apostles later.
It's actually transferred to them later.
So, later in the Gospel of John, just before he goes back to
Heaven. Jesus breathes on the apostles.
So you transfer His authority to them and he says, whatever sins
you forgive are forgiven, whatever sins you retain are
retained. That is seen.
As Jesus, transferring his authority to forgive sins on
Earth to the apostles from that point on the Apostle's, have the
power on Earth to forgive sins, so, it's pretty cool.
When you read link those two passages together verse 11.
Coming towards the end, he says to the man, I order you get up
your get up, pick up your stretcher, the stretcher and go
home. Oh, and he does it straight
away. He doesn't touch the man,
apparently, it's just the word of Jesus is what heals the man,
and he walked out in front of everyone.
So think of how bright about how amazing it would have been to
see that if you were, there are probably people from the
community with their and they knew this man and they knew that
he'd been paralyzed for a long time and now he just gets up
walks out in front of everyone. Pretty incredible scene.
The people were all astounded and praised God.
So at this point, everyone's really positive.
They think they see that he's a messenger from God and they
praised God as a result. And that's what Jesus ultimately
wanted for his ministry. Things get a bit complicated
later on though. But at this stage things are
pretty positive. Soon, the scribes who were there
will start to develop a bit of a grudge, but at the moment, it's
reasonably positive. And I say we have never seen
anything like this. So the people had heard good,
rabbis good good scribes before but they've never seen these
kind of Miracles. So no wonder, he's attracting
such a crowd because of the kind of stuff he can do like telling
a paralytic to walk. So that's the passage.
I hope you found something interesting in there.
Now, because of Jesus phrase, there my son, your sins are
forgiven that first phrase earlier in the, in the passage
and then later in the passage, when he says, the son of man has
authority to forgive sins. The catechism has quite a bit to
say here about this passage, so I'm going to put all the, all
the paragraphs in the show notes, but I just want to read
out a few key ones here. The really shed light on how
this passage connects with Catholic teachings paragraph 14
21 in the discussion about the sacraments of healing.
It says the Lord Jesus Christ physician of our souls and
bodies who forgave their sins of the paralytic and restored him
to bodily Health has willed that the his church continued in the
power of the Holy Spirit, his work of healing and salvation,
even among her own members, this is the purpose of the two,
sacraments of healing. Like the sacrament of penance
and the sacrament of anointing of the sick.
So that's pretty profound the church.
He says that just as Jesus healed the paralytic and that
uses the paralytic as the key example here.
The church has the power to heal through Penance and anointing of
the sick. And that's Jesus Will in
paragraph 14 41, in the discussion about only God
forgives sins. It says, only God, forgives sins
since he is the Son of God. Jesus says, if himself, the son
of man has Authority on Earth to forgive sins and exercises.
This divine power, your sins are forgiven Further by virtue of
his Divine Authority. He gives this power to men to
exercise in his name and that was what I just talked about
when he transfers his authority to the apostles in paragraph.
1484 in the discussion about celebrating the sacrament of
penance. It says Christ is at work in
each of the sacraments, he personally addresses every
sinner, my son, your sins are forgiven and so you'll hear that
quote comes straight out of Mark chapter 1 just as Sorry Mark
chapter 2. Just as Jesus addresses, the
paralytic, my son, your sins are forgiven.
He says the same to us when we go to confession.
And I also want to read that paragraph 5 8 9, which is a
discussion about how well the relationship between Jesus and
God. It says Jesus gave Scandal above
or when he identified his merciful conduct toward Sinners
with God's or an attitude towards them, he went so far as
to hint the by sharing the table of Sinners.
He was admitting them to the Messianic banquet But it was
most especially by forgiving sins, that Jesus placed a
religious authorities of Israel on the horns of a dilemma.
Were they not entitled to demand in consternation who can forgive
sins? But God Alone by forgiving sins.
Jesus either is blaspheming as a man who made himself God's
equal, or is speaking the truth. And his person really does make
present and reveal God's name. And as Catholics as Christians,
we know the answer to that one, it's the ladder.
Jesus, Is God, he does make God present.
So there's actually quite a bit of commentary on this passage
from Mark chapter 2 and I'll put all those paragraphs in the show
notes. So, and the end of a really
interesting passage. I hope you learn something new
in today's podcast, please keep telling other people about it.
The podcast is continuing to to get more and more popular and
I'd love to hear from you what you're getting out of the
podcast. So please feel free to leave a
voice message and the link to that is in the show notes as
well. Thanks for listening.
We'll see you again tomorrow.