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Evensong - Revd Marianne Foster
Sunday 26th September
I wonder, what is your greatest need? How you answer of course may depend on how your day has been! Your may feel that your greatest need is a financial need, a health need, or some other need… The truth is, unless we see the greater picture we will never be able to properly assess our greatest need.
Our two readings today reveal two mediators. The book of Exodus is about God redeeming His people through the work of the mediator Moses. The Gospels are about God redeeming His people through the work of the mediator Jesus. Moses was a type of Christ which means that he was a picture of Christ and of what Christ would represent.
I’m not sure whether Moses knew the greater picture but in the Gospel reading we’ve just heard we discover that Jesus sees the big picture. Jesus knows what really matters, and we discover what our greatest need really is.
In the previous chapter (Matthew 8) Jesus has just exorcised two demon processed men, he sent the demons out into a group of pigs and the townspeople got together and asked Jesus to leave. So Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed the river and arrived at his own town.
Some men brought Jesus a paralysed man lying on a mat. You don’t need to be a genius to work out what these men wanted from Jesus. They believed that Jesus could heal their paralysed friend. Jesus knew that they believed this about him. Chapter 9 verse 2: “Jesus saw their faith”. There is no mention of the paralysed man’s faith which is interesting. He may have been quite sceptical.
We might expect that the first thing Jesus would say to the paralysed man is: “get up, take your mat and go home”. But he didn’t. Of course that’s what they wanted Jesus to say. That’s what we might assume of Jesus, particularly because of everything we see in the previous chapter. Jesus was confronted by a leper (chapter 8 verse 3) Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man and said: “be clean”. When a Roman Centurion asked Jesus to heal his suffering servant Jesus said (in verse 13) “go, it will be done just as you believe”. In verse 15 Jesus heals Peter’s mother in law. In verses 23-27 Jesus stilled a furious storm just by putting his hand up and saying: “Be still”!
So after all of that, as we read about the paralysed man, we expect Jesus to heal his legs don’t we? Verse 2 is a great surprise because what Jesus actually says to the paralysed man is: “Take heart son, your sins are forgiven”. What is that? Well, if it’s a surprise to us it would have been disappointing to the paralysed man and his friends.
It’s obvious what the paralysed man wanted isn’t it? He wanted his legs healed. So why is Jesus talking about the forgiveness of sins? If it is a surprise for us, disappointing for the man – it was blasphemy to the religious leaders in the crowd. Verse 3: “This man is blaspheming”. You see it is God’s prerogative and His alone to forgive sins. No wonder the teachers of the law reacted as they did because to them, here was a man taking God’s place and doing only what God can do, forgiving sins, that’s blasphemy. But Jesus wasn’t just a man.
Indeed the only wickedness here is in the hearts of the teachers of the law. You see in verse 4: “knowing their thoughts Jesus said: “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?” It’s amazing that Jesus can actually read our hearts. Let’s not forget that. The problem here isn’t with Jesus’ words but with the teachers’ thoughts. The teachers of the law hadn’t recognised who was standing in front of them, they jump to conclusions and say to themselves in verse 3: “This man is blaspheming”.
They hadn’t realised who Jesus was, so Jesus proceeds to teach them who he was. He sets these religious teachers an exam. Now this exam is my sort of exam. I never enjoyed exams at school but if I had to sit exams it was always the multiple choice exams that I thought I could do well in because someone once told me that if you select “B” as the answer to every question you’re likely to pass the exam just because of the law of averages. Well the multiple choice exam that Jesus sets is easy. We see it in verse 5. It’s a multiple choice question with only two answers, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of getting it right. Verse 5: ”Which is easier, says Jesus, to say your sins are forgiven or to say get up and walk”? Of course the easiest, if you’ve got a paralysed man in front of you, is to say: “your sins are forgiven”, because no one actually knows if you have the authority to say that. On the other hand if you say: “get up and walk” we’d soon realise whether you were faking it as a healer. So it’s easier to say your sins are forgiven but, says Jesus in verse 6: “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, and only then does he say to the man: “get up, take your mat and go home”, and the man got up and went home.
Jesus demonstrates by healing this man that he does have the authority to forgive sins and of course it’s another astonishing miracle in verse 7. The man got up and went home. No wonder the crowds were filled with awe in verse 8. The crowd marvelled at the miracle but they still missed the point. Verse 8: “They praised God who had given authority to men”. That’s quite a revealing sentence. God hadn’t given authority to man, he had given authority to Jesus Christ. If they had said that they praised God who had given authority to the Son of Man or to Jesus Christ they’d have seen the point. The point of this is that Jesus has authority. The point is not only that Jesus has the authority to heal but also to forgive sins, in doing this He reveals Himself as mediator and introduces the idea of the New Covenant.
Jesus wants people to know that he has the authority to forgive sins because that is our greatest, our primary, need. Of course Jesus is interested in all of our needs and we are encouraged to pray about anything that makes us anxious. If you’ve had a bad day, tell Jesus about it. Still, the biggest thing he is concerned about is our need for forgiveness. Jesus healed the paralysed man to show that he had authority to forgive sin.
What is your greatest need? Well, Jesus shows us through this story that our greatest need is to be forgiven. To be friends with the Lord Jesus Christ.