Can only God forgive sin? Sunday Readings B 7 (Y-not question the Sunday Readings)

I offer something about the roof openers from my friends reflection.

Isaiah’s words ring out: ‘God is doing a new thing’. In Mark, Jesus is referred to as the ‘Son of Man’ who has authority ‘to forgive sins on earth’. The ‘Son of Man’ or ‘Human One’ is always connected with ‘true justice’ in the Old Testament. It emphasises ‘humanity’. Jesus' forgiveness of sin is connected with justice. God in the passage from Isaiah is unwilling to accept the way things are; neither is Jesus in the Gospel. Where we see need and perceive ‘defect’ we are called to engage the impulse of compassion.

People with physical disabilities were inferior in the community. Again, the gospel is not concerned merely with a cure but to challenge a system that held people in bondage. Purity laws and debt systems led to a segregation and exclusion – not restoration, inclusion and reconciliation. Jesus’ exorcism and healing confronts this injustice. The view that illness is a ‘defect’ or ‘moral failure’ is challenged by the Gospel. Also being challenged is the tendency to marginalise people and make them expendable. We may not tie sin with illness but certainly we are quite capable of treating people who are ageing, living with mental illness as expendable. The gospel is enacting an inclusive community. Jesus is preaching and the roof is removed so that the one excluded by the mainstream can be received [2:4]. The ‘human One’ forgives sin and the man's place in the ‘body’ is reinstated.

We are confronted daily by good and evil. Some is more visible than others. Some of the ‘demons’ can be named: greed that leads to exploitation and human trafficking, violence that tears families and communities apart, political domination that silences dissent, and sexism, racism and homophobia that suggests some people are more equal than others. These demons paralyse us. It is seen in withdrawal from political and social engagement because we believe that nothing can change. Nothing more can be expected! Fait accompli! But people suffer because of our ‘paralysis’, our inaction and the rationalisations that nothing can be done. The people of West Papua suffer because successive governments in this country have failed to speak out and remained silent in the face of oppression of Papuan people at the hands of the Indonesian military. People suffered when the Indonesian invasion of East Timor was accepted as fait accompli. Nothing could be done. But history tells us otherwise. The God of Jesus is involved in history, our history, in suffering humanity and our lives, and shows us that we create life and hope by walking the path no matter how dark it is. Each day is epiphany of God and becomes part of the history we create.

But when we shrink inwards to our safe and comfortable little worlds, our our humanity is threatened. e. e. cummings says that we cannot live ‘the mind of winter’, and render ourselves speechless and apathetic. There is no hope and no affirmation of life, humanity, creation, goodness.

The four roof-raisers in gospel were not waiting for something to happen. They made it happen. They collaborated in the process of liberation. Jesus called their action by its name — faith. They expected their action to bear fruit. This led them to take whatever means possible to order to bring their ‘friend’ into a place where he could be helped and healed. Their action challenges us as to the lengths we might go to help another. How heavy a load might each of us be willing to bear for one another? How ridicule are we prepared to accept for defending the rights of minorities or calling for peace with justice when all around others are calling our for more war.

God always calls us to what is new. When Isaiah reassures the people that their time of suffering is ending, it was not only God who bring that about but those who follow faithfully. Around our world there are 27 million people are trafficked. More people are in some form slavery than when it was abolished at the time of William Wilberforce. The modern form of slavery occurs in Australia – and it is not just young women, but men and children. God, through Isaiah, and through many people, mostly women, are proclaiming that their time of suffering in exile is over. The Anti-Slavery Project and Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans are two organisations that collaborate and seek, along with a number of other organisations are proclaiming that ‘their time of suffering is over’. What appears as a hopeless situation becomes hope-filled as women, children and men are freed, one by one, and restored to the community of humanity rather than the world of commodity. Unfortunately, many do not believe that it is a problem for us in Australia. It is! It seems that given that most of the people involved in these organisations are women, it runs the risk of being seen as a women’s problem. Slavery is not over and it is not just a woman’s issue. God does not stop being faithful. God can see suffering and always says yes to us and comes down on the side of humanity. A remote God does not matter. It is not the God of Jesus. Jesus is God’s ‘yes’ to us, God’s ‘yes’ to humanity. If God is doing a new thing, something is being disrupted. We have to be part of that ‘yes’ in promoting and making possible ‘the new’.

‘Behold I am doing something new’. Where people gather together in solidarity – as those in today’s gospel – God does new things. This is very clear in the bushfires that have occurred in Victoria in the last week till the present. The stories of generosity and disregard for self-interest that have emerged and will continue to be told are signs that ‘new things are possible’. People have come back to see that their relationships, their connections, the humanity of others is far more important than the possessions they have.

Leonardo Boff in an article, ‘It is dark, but I sing’, quotes the poet Thiago de Mello, who in times of repression had the unprecedented courage to proclaim: ‘It is dark, but I sing!’ When we join together with whoever says ‘yes’ to God's creation, to our common humanity, to justice and to peace, then it is possible to challenge the ‘demons’ that promote death, violence, greed, lies. Those ‘demons’ still terrorise many people in Aboriginal communities and towns. How is it possible to move forward in dignity unless the shame of past and present injustice is unacknowledged? This is not a ‘yes’ to life, to humanity, to liberation, but a deeper form of paralysis. The disciple’s first and most important work is to reconcile, to bring reconciliation, forgiveness and love into the place he or she stands. Where barriers are erected, can we reach out and include? We are part of the new thing that God does every day. We might be astonished, not only at the new things God does, but what we do. We will be different people and being different means taking a different approach to people – reaching out in loving forgiveness will bring peace into our relationships and sensitivity to justice and injustice in the wider world.

Learning to see and perceive and act with compassion rather than self-interest remains at the heart of following Jesus… and it is way out of our paralysis.

My purpose is to remember the love that created me in God one with my brothers and sisters and with all life. My function is to extend that love and unity each moment to all.

Thank you Tony yet again for leading our reflection on the Sunday Gospel. Before I get onto the gospel itself, I must say I like your description of this passage as being a tapestry with many threads. In fact, largely through your weekly reflections, I am coming to appreciate that Mark's Gospel, which I had always thought of as being fairly straightforward and simple, does have quite a number of layers and different strands to it. So, I'll now follow a couple of different threads from what you did Tony, and see where they take us.

One thing which really strikes me about this story, as with the gospels of the last two weeks, is how Jesus responds to the needs of people as he encounters them, even when he had set out to do something else. In a recent gospel, Jesus is quoted as saying that he plans to travel round the countryside preaching, as that was the reason for which he had come. Obviously, he is also fulfilling that mission in this passage, as we are told that he was in the house "speaking the word" to people. Then he is interrupted in a particularly spectacular way! But, far from being angry with the interrupters, he makes them the point of his lesson, a lesson in faith. Then we once again encounter the power of Jesus to heal, both physically and spiritually, or is it that his presence inspires people to draw on their own power to heal themselves? What's more, he challenges those who would deny humans the right to share in divine forgiveness, as Tony has so beautifully discussed. So, for me, the point here is that Jesus did NOT just follow his own plan, his own ideas of what his ministry should consist of, but instead responded to people's needs as he encountered them. Perhaps even more remarkably, he didn't just respond according to his own ideas of who was worthy of his help and what he thought they needed. Instead, Jesus allowed his ministry to be shaped primarily by the people he encountered. Alas, this is one aspect of Jesus' ministry that all too often has NOT been imitated!

Getting back to the actual healing: while I'm not altogether sure about some of the other miracles attributed to Jesus, I'm utterly convinced that the healings did actually, literally happen. This story is a particularly good example of one reason why I'm so convinced. Of course it is true that it's easy to say that you forgive a person's sins: there is no visible sign as to whether or not anything has happened, people just have to take your word for it (or not). But obviously, to physically cure someone who is known to be an invalid, that really is something that you can't fake! The point I'm making here is illustrated by the reaction of the witnesses to this miracle: "They were all amazed and glorified God." Jesus didn't expect people to just take his word for it that God loved them and desired their greatest good, he didn't expect them to have to struggle to accept God's love while their own experiences made this hard to do. Instead, he demonstrated God's love to them in a way that they could understand in a natural and totally human way. Another thing that seems to have got lost over the centuries (though with some exceptions, maybe.)

Next week, I believe, we leave ordinary time behind and get into Lent. It will be interesting to see where the Gospel reflections take us then!

Cathy Taggart

I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused. - James Broughton

Tony,

I really like the way you approach this miracle story, and especially your observation,

First thing I notice is that in this episode Jesus raises his mission to a new level. Instead of just curing the man, he opens up the subject of sin and forgiveness: Your sins are forgiven. I can think of three reasons that may have moved Jesus to say this: (a) because he saw that the man's soul/spirit was in fact paralysed by sin; (b) to teach that his real mission, why he had come, was not to heal physical ills but to heal disease of the spirit; (c) to show that the bodily ills he was curing - blindness, deafness, leprosy, paralysis, frenzy - were all symbols of the spiritual ills that humankind needed liberation from.

It is interesting how this is developing.  Last week, it was just the miracle story and Jesus' seeming reluctance to be seen as a miracle worker.

This week, there is the miracle, but then, as you say, the conversation moves to a different level, the whole question of sin and forgiveness.

Thinking about modern miracles, and the quest for miracles in canonizing of saints, and about the interest in miracles as some sort of indicator of the reality of a spiritual dimension, I remembered a modern dispenser of miracles and went exploring the stories around Sai Baba, an Indian guru who died recently, but who attracted thousands, many of whom regarded him as an incarnation of God.

This article comes from an ex- devotee who was close to Sai Baba.  Some of it is quite thought-provoking when compared to the story of Jesus.

http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/2/Healing_Cures_Faith_-_Sai_Baba.htm

Sue

Thank you Tony for a great reflection

I wonder could we say that the underlying message of Mark's narrative here is that every son of man has power on earth (here and now) to forgive sin and give the healing that comes from that release. What a way to live, liberating those we love, instead of heaping guilt on them and binding them with reminders of how they 'always' miss the target.

Francis thank you, especially for:

Learning to see and perceive and act with compassion rather than self-interest remains at the heart of following Jesus… and it is way out of our paralysis.

Cathy thank you, especially for:

Jesus allowed his ministry to be shaped primarily by the people he encountered.

Sue, thank you for the ‘miracle cures’ information. It reminded me of something I read about Lourdes. Apparently the healing success rate that occurs there is about 1 in 3 million.

For what it is worth here follows my reflection:
The gospel story reminds me of the logo that the St Vincent De Paul Society uses in Australia

There are 3 hands. They represent those who seek help, those who try to help, and the blessing, sanctifying presence of God in Christ.
It seems to me that the gospel story is telling that as a community we must help and support each other in solidarity and with compassion. There are no winners and losers in such a community. It is a community in harmony, because it recognises that the common good is more important than the individual desires.

Being human our lives are littered with mistakes, but that is how we gain the experience to build our future.
In our solidarity with others we seem to gain power and strength to live a life of hope.
And the Creator spirit is right there in the thick of it.
Spiritual healing comes before physical healing.

‘She’ll be right mate’
‘Forgiveness is when you no longer need to punish or hate.’
“Forgiveness is not just an occasional act: it is a permanent attitude.” Martin Luther King Jr.