by James Martin
In her beautiful poem “Cure of the Paralytic,” Irene Zimmerman, OSF, tells the story in the voice of one of the friends, who remembers, “We lowered the litter / and swung ourselves down / in a rain of dust and straw.”15
The men’s love for their friend has always moved me. They care for their friend so much that they carry him on his krabattos, which must have taken a great deal of effort on their part. They love him so much that they are willing to make a spectacle of themselves. If any of your loved ones has ever had a serious illness, you know that you would do anything if it meant a possible cure. And they want him to meet Jesus so much that they risk angering Jesus (or Peter) by destroying an important part of the house. But no matter—these men want healing for their friend.
A few years ago in Lourdes, I met a woman whose middle-aged husband was crippled with a muscle-wasting illness. As we sat one afternoon beside the Gave River, I commented on how difficult it must have been to travel from the United States to France with someone with disabilities. “I didn’t care what it took,” she said to me, “I was going to bring him here, come hell or high water.” It is this kind of love—a physical love, a love that does something—that the man’s friends demonstrate.
Commotion must have ensued. In the middle of the crowd’s straining to see and hear and touch Jesus—people probably were already on edge—the four friends climb onto the house, tear apart the roof, and lower their friend into the overwrought crowd. We can imagine people being shocked. “Stop!” “Jesus is speaking!” “What are you doing to his roof?” Some may have been infuriated by the rude intrusion into the house. But perhaps some, seeing the man’s condition, sensed the generous motives of his friends. Did they stretch out their arms to help the man down? There was probably a good deal of arguing and directing: “No, this way!” “Hand him to me!” “Don’t let him fall!”
Jesus experiences strong emotions, but they have nothing to do with the roof. The man new to Capernaum is affected not simply by the plight of the paralyzed man, but by the loving faith shown by his friends. Jesus must have been able to recognize the effort it took for these men to carry their paralyzed friend all the way through town (or perhaps from a neighboring town) to see him. This evokes a response from Jesus. Mark says, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”16
Jesus seems moved to see people demonstrate such faith in him so early in his ministry. In Mark’s Gospel, faith is intimately related to Jesus’s abilities to perform miracles; later Jesus will say that he could not perform any miracles in certain towns because of their lack of faith. As Thomas D. Stegman, SJ, a professor of New Testament at Boston College, reminded me, Jesus’s power to heal remains the same no matter where he is. “The question is,” he said, “are people willing to receive the gift he is offering?”
Faith moves the friends of the paralyzed man to break through boundaries—social and physical—in order to find healing for their friend. Overall, faith is also intimately coupled with love and compassion: the friends’ love for their infirm friend, Jesus’s compassion for the friends, and finally his compassion for the paralyzed man.
As I mentioned, illness in Jesus’s time was widely thought to be a result of sin. And paralysis was closely related to lameness, an impurity in the Old Testament, a stain that meant exclusion from some social settings. Thus the forgiveness of sins would have been a signal blessing for the man and the cause for celebration.
But not everyone is happy. The scribes who are present, perhaps attracted by the crowds or intent on investigating Jesus’s activities, are bothered. Mark reports that the scribes say “in their hearts” that only God can forgive sins. In the Greek it is unclear whether Jesus is declaring that he is forgiving sins or pronouncing that God had forgiven them and he is acting as a kind of proxy for God. The scribes’ reaction, however, shows that they think Jesus is presenting himself as the agent of forgiveness.
Somehow, Jesus perceived “in his spirit” what they were thinking. Now, to understand that Markan phrase we don’t need to think of Jesus as a mind-reader. Rather, he may be showing a keen grasp of his surroundings. If a person says or does something shocking, the faces of those nearby often convey their reactions. “Who does he think he is?” say their faces.
Mark recounts their concerns, which are religious in nature: “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy!” But houtos, the Greek word used for “fellow,” is derogatory. It can be translated not as “Why does this rabbi or teacher speak blasphemy?” but “Why does this guy speak blasphemy?”
Blasphēmein meant to insult someone or injure a person’s reputation. In the Gospels it connotes profaning the name of God, and of course has much earlier roots in Jewish law. (The Book of Leviticus prescribes stoning as the punishment for that sin.) When Jesus offers the paralytic forgiveness, he is taking upon himself the prerogative of God. Besides, forgiveness of sins would normally require a confession of sins, along with some sort of reparation. The paralyzed man has done nothing.
But, as noted in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, it is inaccurate to portray Judaism as a harsh, rule-based community that restricted forgiveness and to paint the scribes as maleficent, though they are sometimes portrayed that way in the Gospels. For one thing, Judaism had a variety of ways of understanding the forgiveness of sins, and for another, the early Christians themselves engaged in shunning sinners.17 So a black-and-white, good-versus-evil portrait of Jesus versus scribes and the Pharisees (two distinct groups with distinct roles) is inaccurate.
That kind of approach can also lead us to ignore not only the Jewishness of Jesus but the beauty of the Jewish law, which, as E. P. Sanders notes, “brings the entirety of life . . . under the authority of God.”18 We should also remember that the scribes, devout Jews bound to interpret the Law, no doubt were caught off guard by Jesus’s offer of forgiveness. Who wouldn’t be?
Still, Mark reports a definite controversy, and it is just as important not to water down the threat brought by Jesus’s ministry. One of the reasons Jesus was crucified is that he posed a clear threat to certain powerful groups in his time. A bland, unthreatening Jesus who never ruffled anyone’s feathers would not have posed a threat to some of the Jewish leaders, nor would he have been executed by Rome.
In this account, Jesus then responds to the doubts of the scribes. Now the passage moves into what scholars call a “controversy story,” in which Jesus contends with religious or civic leaders. As he does on many occasions, Jesus poses a clever question. In this case it is not a rhetorical or indirect one, but a clear challenge.
Which is easier, he asks: to forgive sins or to say, “Stand up and take your mat and walk”? That puts the scribes in a bind. If they say, “Forgiving sins,” they are belittling what is rightfully God’s work. If they say, “Healing a lame man,” they are publicly declaring that it is easy for Jesus to heal, thus supporting claims about his divinity.
The crowd must have been thrilled: “He is going to heal him, right here!” The scribes must have been worried: “He is going to heal him, right here!”
Mark recounts Jesus’s dramatic words and includes some stage directions: “‘But so that you might know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.’”
And immediately—kai euthus—the man rises and picks up his mat. But he does not return home euthus. Instead, he goes out “before all of them so that they were all amazed.” The newly healed man wants to show everyone, including his four friends, what God has done for him. All are amazed—existasthai, literally, standing outside themselves. They are beside themselves! Then they glorify God—a subtle rejoinder to the scribes who suspected Jesus of blaspheming against God. What joy there must have been, among the crowd, in the healed man, and among his faithful friends.
Then comes a phrase that always makes me smile, because it seems at once so honest and so utterl
y understated. The onlookers say, “We have never seen anything like this!”
For the most part, Matthew and Luke hew closely to Mark’s narrative. Luke, however, ends his story this way: “Amazement seized all of them, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen strange things today.’” Robert F. O’Toole, SJ, a Lukan scholar, told me that Luke’s ending to many miracle stories is “joy, wonder, blessing, and praise,” a fitting tribute to the works that God does in our lives. Any thoughts of the roof, of blasphemy, or of the man’s sinfulness are swept aside in the wake of God’s power.
Was Jesus intending to heal the paralyzed man from the moment he was lowered into the crowd? It’s impossible to know, but to my mind, yes. Otherwise the man is reduced to a prop in a controversy with the scribes. It seems more likely that, if Mark’s recounting is accurate, Jesus first intended to offer him forgiveness and then physical healing, conceivably as a sign of what was equally as important as the ability to walk. That is, he was implicitly saying to the crowd: “You think that a person’s physical infirmities are bad? Sin is worse. First, therefore, I will forgive whatever sins he has committed.”
But why did the man need forgiveness? Was Jesus simply recognizing that all of us are in need of forgiveness? Very likely. Was Jesus implying that the man’s condition was the result of some hidden sin, as was often thought at the time? Less likely. In the Gospel of John, Jesus comes upon a “man born blind” and he is asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus’s answer is blunt: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”19 That is, illness is not a punishment, despite what some believed in Jesus’s time.
And not just in Jesus’s time. Last year, a friend called me to share a wrenching story. She was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor and had received a visit from a group of women from her church, who told her that her illness was the work of the devil. My friend was shocked and hurt. These women may have meant something entirely different, but my friend heard their words as a condemnation, and an accusation that she had somehow brought this on herself—and their words stung. I reminded my friend of the story from the Gospel of John, where Jesus decisively rejects this line of thought. Who sinned? “No one.”
So again, why the need for forgiveness for the paralyzed man?
ON A WEEK-LONG RETREAT at a Trappist monastery in Massachusetts, I was offered an imaginative answer. My friend Jim is a former Jesuit and has been a Trappist monk for more than twenty years. That week he served as my retreat director. One late afternoon in February, with a light snow swirling outside the windows of the monastery, I spoke with him about this passage, sharing with him much of what I described in this chapter: the love of the paralyzed man’s friends, the likely reactions of the crowd, and how I could connect the friends’ actions with the concept of Christian community.
Often, when we are in trouble, or doubting, or struggling, we rely on others to carry us to God. Just as often we must do the carrying, to help friends who are struggling. This is one of the many benefits of organized religion, as we all need others to help us find God. Even though we may disagree with others and find life in a community occasionally annoying and sometimes scandalous, we need others, because the community is one way that we are carried to God, especially when we are too weak to walk to God on our own.
But I wondered about the paralyzed man. He may have felt shame for his illness or for being unable to support himself. Maybe his friends carried him in spite of himself. Sometimes when we are too embarrassed to approach God, someone must bring us there—even drag us there. Many times when I am discouraged, demoralized, or angry at God, it is friends who remind me of God’s great love and who carry me to God. We cannot come to God without others.
This may be what evoked Jesus’s compassion. He recognizes the man’s dark feelings, and so he says, in essence, “Whatever you think you may have done to make this happen, you are forgiven.” William Barclay believes that Jesus is saying, “God is not angry with you. It’s all right.” Jesus is showing him how God truly looks at us, and it’s often not the way we think God looks at us. While the scribes are horrified that a human being is doing the forgiving, the friends may have danced for joy.20
But I wondered aloud, “Why did Jesus feel the need to forgive the paralyzed man? Could he not have said that the man had not sinned, as Jesus did in the case of the blind man?”
Jim told me that one day as he prayed over this Gospel passage a story came to him. Of course he admitted it’s highly unlikely that it happened in this way, but our conversation reminded me that the people in the Gospels were real people who had full lives before and after they encountered Jesus. They are not mere literary characters or allegorical figures, but individuals with histories. Jesus steps into the rich and complicated lives of people in first-century Palestine, as God steps into our own.
The man was a roofer in a nearby town, said Jim. One day he is working on a job with his friends, and from atop the house he spies the owner’s beautiful wife. A good man and faithful husband, he still finds himself staring. So fraught does the situation become that the roofer thinks of quitting the job, but he can’t—his family needs the money. One day, overcome with passion, the roofer sleeps with the beautiful woman. Immediately he is consumed with guilt over what he has done to his wife.
The next day he returns to the job and, while working atop the house, slips and falls through the roof onto the hard dirt floor. He is paralyzed. Instinctively, the roofer blames himself for his sin. His friends carry him home to his wife, who suspects what has happened (for she knows the beautiful woman). But she cares for her husband out of love.
When his friends visit him a few days later, they tell him about the wonder-worker who lives in Capernaum. But he resists. Weighed down by shame, he feels unworthy of seeing Jesus. But his friends carry him there, unroof the roof, and lower him before Jesus. Jesus himself has already heard the story of the roofer in the nearby town, and he has pity on the paralyzed man. This is why Jesus tells him to go home. Jesus knows he will not only rejoice in being able to walk about, but in being freed from his sins. The man rushes home to kiss his loving wife and hug his children.
In both Mark’s original narrative and Jim’s imaginative retelling, sin and paralysis are connected: sin can paralyze us, preventing any forward motion. We are stuck until we are able to be forgiven, until we meet God in some way, or until our friends take pity on us, unroof our world, and let in the light.
* * *
THE HEALING OF THE PARALYZED MAN
Mark 2:1–12
(See also Matthew 9:1–8; Luke 5:17–26)
* * *
When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
* * *
CHAPTER 12
Parables
“He began to teach them many things in parables.”
HERE’S A STORY SPANNING several decades. It shows why it sometimes takes a long time for people (including me) to understand a Gospel story.
The first chapter happened when I was a Jesuit novice. Twenty-five years ago, during the first month in the novitiate, I read about a place called the Bay of Parables. While I can’t remember what book this was, I remember the vivid impression it made.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus finds himself so hemmed in by crowds that he climbs aboard a boat and asks Peter to row out into the Sea of Galilee, so that he can preach from the boat.1 The Gospels of Mark and Matthew also report incidents of Jesus’s preaching from a boat.2 In Galilee, said this book, there is still a place known as the Bay of Parables, where that Gospel passage most likely happened. Near the shoreline is a naturally occurring amphitheater, where people would have been able to sit comfortably to listen to Jesus; moreover, the unique acoustics of the site made it easier for the large crowd to hear Jesus.
The notion that people could identify exactly where a particular Scripture story happened captivated me. I remember thinking, Cool! But the explanation baffled. Why would Jesus get into a boat to address a crowd? (I imagined the carpenter standing up in the boat, wobbling, and falling into the water.) Why wouldn’t he stand on the shoreline? Because of its oddness the tale of the Bay of Parables stuck with me.
The second chapter of my story: A few years later, I was on a summer vacation at a Jesuit house outside Boston, in a town on a bay that empties into the Atlantic Ocean. After breakfast, a few Jesuits would sit on the broad lawn that overlooks a harbor and spend a relaxing morning reading books or chatting. One morning, we heard a commotion in the harbor, which turned out to be the ruckus from a sailing school for some boisterous kids. The distance between us and the group of miniature sailboats was about a mile. To my surprise, we could easily hear the kids talking (or whining) as if they were only a few feet away: “I don’t know how to fix my rudder!” “My sail isn’t working!” You could also hear the frazzled instructor encouraging her students: “No, do it this way!”