Take Heart

A reading from the gospel according to Matthew.

Matthew 9:1–8

Chapter 9, verses 1 through 8.

And getting into a boat, Jesus crossed over and came to his own city.

And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed.

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming.

But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts?

For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk.

But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.

And he rose and went home.

When the crowd saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Everyone knew just by looking at the man on that bed what he needed.

This was no secret to anyone that he could not move.

And so when those friends of his brought the paralyzed man to Jesus, it seems the point and the purpose of that bringing was clear.

Jesus had been going around from place to place, and wherever folks brought their friends, their loved ones who were sick or needed healing to Jesus, they would often leave healed.

And so the situation, the request goes without saying that they present this paralyzed man to Jesus so that he can be healed.

And then Jesus says to the paralyzed man, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

Now I imagine there may have been a long pause there for the friends waiting, and the paralyzed man waiting for Jesus to finish the sentence.

Because just by looking at the scene, it wouldn't have been obvious that that is precisely the word that the paralyzed man had wanted to hear in that particular moment.

It'd be kind of like if you went to your doctor to address some pain in the knee and they ran a variety of tests and they came back to you and they say, I have good news.

Your car insurance balance is current.

It is paid.

You'd say that's lovely, glad to hear it, but that's not really why I came here today.

And so perhaps it was that way for the paralyzed man.

But today I suggest that Jesus was not avoiding the subject or changing the subject, but indeed was getting right at the very heart of the matter when he said those words Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

See, I think there are a couple ways that people go on divergent paths in how they read this account.

Some might say the real miracle here, the one we should really pay attention to, is that forgiveness of sins and the healing of the body was just a kind of extra that Jesus threw on at the end.

As if in reality God cares only about souls, but kind of just shrugs at the cares and concerns of our body.

The other reading is to say that the forgiveness of sins was a kind of prerequisite for the healing, because the paralysis must have somehow been the result of a sin, maybe a punishment against sin aimed at this particular man.

And so then Jesus here needs to kind of cleanse the heart before he can restore the legs.

But in the actual text, in the reading we have here, we know that Jesus does heal the man's body.

He doesn't just say your sins are forgiven and we'll stop there.

And at the same time, we get no indication here or even elsewhere that this kind of paralysis was intended to be a particular punishment that Jesus needed to blot out a particular sin in order for the paralysis to go away.

And so what Jesus is doing here, I think, is putting things in their proper order.

Just think about what that man would have been kind of ruminating on in the weeks, months, and years leading up until this moment.

Surely, as he looked at his life, the kind of life where he had to be carried around by others to get from place to place, he must have thought to himself on many occasions, if only I could walk, well then everything would be okay.

If only I had my legs working, then I would have a life that isn't so full of grief and pain and despair.

If only I could walk.

And that's not a foolish hope or a foolish want, because walking is of course good.

It's very good.

It's a part of a flourishing human life, and he was lacking this.

But isn't that often the trouble with these very good things we have in life?

Is that we often load a whole lot of hope into having those things and having them work well or work the way we want.

And so I guess if we examined our hearts, we could ask what would be on our list of things that we might have wanted to ask Jesus to deal with that day.

What are the things where you begin the sentence like this, if only, then there's something there that you want or need or aspire to or crave.

And then if you had it, you conclude, then everything would be okay.

If only this.

If only I could land that promotion or just that job.

If only I could get that relationship to finally click, to finally work.

If only I could get that situation with the kids solved, if only I could have a body that worked the way I want it to work.

Then, if only then, everything would be okay.

We could probably take some time thinking that through, but I think it's safe to assume that all of us have something or another like that, or have had something or another like that, where we say, if only I had these things, well then everything would be okay.

Now suppose in this occasion that Jesus had done what I suppose a lot of people would have expected, that he had just started by saying, Look, I'm going to heal you.

You are now healed.

Think of what would have happened then for this man in the gospel.

It would have looked the same, he would have stood up, he would have rolled up that bed of his, he would have walked home a healthy man on healthy legs, but he would have done so in a broken world.

He would have done so with the same heart he had while he was lying down on that bed.

We would have the same fears, he would have the same grudges, he would have the same maladies of thought.

He'd be the same person in his heart as he went home.

Yes, even with those working legs, he'd be like everyone else, on their feet, but still lost, still lost in transgression and sin.

And because of that, even those good restored legs would have in the end failed him.

Because where do our legs end up walking us to?

They walk us to a deathbed and they walk us all the way to the grave.

That is where our bodies get us, even the ones that at a time are sure and sound.

This is what he was facing no matter what, just as you and I must face the reality of our mortality.

In fact, you could say that's kind of the trouble at the heart of our if-only lists.

They do identify what hurts, or what maybe is lacking, or what grieves you in your heart and your life.

But they do not reveal what's ultimately wrong.

And solving those if-only lists, we probably even know from experience, even when we've gotten those things, it doesn't actually solve what's at the very heart of our problem, the problem of our sin.

A heart curved in on itself, a heart that is estranged from God and is therefore subject to corruption, and a body that is the same.

That is what is at the core of what our problem is.

That we need that to be fixed, as it were.

And it's not something we can deal with on our own.

You can't forgive yourself from the inside.

It has to come from someone else.

It has to be spoken to you in a word that came from another.

In fact, that is exactly what Jesus did.

He says, Son, your sins are forgiven.

And that is what got the scribes who were there all up in arms.

They said this, this man is blaspheming.

That is, he is basically saying something only God can say, or crediting to himself something that is true only of God.

And I suppose we could give those scribes there due credit because their logic is sound.

Forgiveness belongs to the one who was wronged.

If you dent someone's car, or if sorry, if someone dents your car and they come and say to you, Don't worry, my brother said it was okay, you're going to feel as if something went wrong in that situation.

Because of course, if you've been wronged, then only you can do the forgiving, not someone else.

And the scribes understand this about God, even.

And so when Jesus looks at this stranger in front of him, this paralyzed man, and says, Your son, your sins are forgiven, he's saying, I am doing what only God could do.

He's saying, essentially, all these sins you've committed, they have been against me, Jesus says.

And therefore I forgive them.

They are forgiven.

And so the scribes understood exactly what Jesus was claiming.

The problem was they did not like the reality of what Jesus was claiming to be the Son of God, the very Messiah that was promised.

And so they object.

Then Jesus turns on to them next.

And to answer their objection, he asks a kind of rhetorical question of his own.

He says, which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, rise and walk?

And I suppose in one sense the answer to that is pretty obvious.

It would be easy to just say something like, hey, take heart.

All your sins are taken away.

Because that's not the kind of thing we can necessarily see.

There's no instrument we can apply to measure that.

And so Jesus, I think, is alluding to this idea that that's kind of invisible.

You're not necessarily going to see that.

And yet, he says, I'm going to do something that you can check, that you can see, that will show that the one who has the authority to do this thing you can see, this remarkable thing, means the same authority is given to him to do the thing you cannot see.

And so he says, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home.

And I like how Matthew reports it, just so plain and matter-of-fact, he rose and he went home.

There it is.

When Jesus says something, it happens.

And so the conclusion can be very clear for the people in that situation.

If Jesus can say this about these legs that will not work and they are restored, then yes, Jesus is the one who can deliver the forgiveness of sins.

This is his point, that you can count on him as being the one who has the power and the authority to do this.

That the healing everyone could see proved the forgiveness that no one could see.

But there's an interesting little irony in this, that the thing that was easy to say, your sins are forgiven, is actually the one that cost the most.

Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had explained that someone would have to come and because of the problem of sin, actually deal with it, to deal with the wrong that had been done, to pay for it in a way that actually satisfies true justice and mercy at the same time.

And the promise was that someone would come, a son of man, who would be crushed for our iniquities, who would be pierced for our transgressions.

And in this moment we begin to see this start to play out, and Matthew unfolds it again and again.

We know that Jesus, who could restore this man's legs, is the one who had his legs nailed in place on the cross where he could not move.

And that the one who could say, Your sins are forgiven, is the one who would take all the sins that man had ever committed, all the sins of those scribes, of everyone around, the sins of the whole world, right on up to yours and mine.

And Jesus carried them all on the cross in himself, so that as he died, he was doing that very hard thing, and atoning for my sin and yours, and redeeming you and me from its curse and penalty.

You see, these enemies of Jesus, in the end, they got their blasphemy trial, and they were able to put their enemy Jesus to death, and they condemned him to death.

And there he carried the sins of the world, and there he brought forth the very promise and the gift that is at the heart of everything that we need.

And on the third day, the word that was spoken about this paralyzed man was used to describe Jesus.

He is risen, he has gotten up, he is not here.

He now lives.

All of that is what stood behind the words of Jesus to this man.

When he said, Take heart, my son.

Before he spoke about his legs, he spoke about his heart, and he spoke about the need for forgiveness, and he delivered it.

All of that is behind this word to this paralyzed man.

This word to a stranger that he then says, You are now like a son.

He says, I'm delivering you into a family where you have a father.

You see, that's what this forgiveness does.

It shows where we stand, it shows to whom we belong, to the one who gave himself for us, to the one who has provided for all of our needs, the one who has made us and preserved us and kept us.

This forgiveness shows that we are now in a place where it's not just about keeping a record, it's about having a true and full standing to our God and Father.

That this is then at the core of what Jesus is revealing, and it addresses the core of what we need in our heart and our life.

Because, yes, you and I might wish for a time that perhaps we could have been where this man was and bring one of those things, at least one of those things on our if-only list, and saying, Jesus, could you at least take care of this?

Because if you would, well then everything would be okay.

But you and I have the greater gift that Jesus wants to accentuate in this act today.

In fact, Matthew tells us that the crowd glorified God because he had given such authority to men.

And the fact of the matter is that the risen Christ has handed this same authority that he used here.

He has given it to his church, so that week in and week out, every Sunday, you can hear a man say to you, Your sins are forgiven, and you can know that that is the word of Christ, and that word of Christ comes from someone who has the power and authority to do this for you, which means you then have everything this paralyzed man had: the standing, the comfort, the hope, the peace, that the very heart of what ails you has been dealt with decisively by Jesus our Lord.

So then, what does that look like as you go out from this place, as you go home, as you go to work, as you come and go in your days and weeks?

Because you know you go to the same house, you go to the same job, you have the same body, you have probably the same, if only list that perhaps comes to your mind as you drive or as you try to sleep.

But you can go home knowing that the promise is not that Jesus will cross everything off that list by this coming Friday.

That's not really the promise.

And some of you may be waiting for a healing or something that God will do, it just hasn't happened yet.

But all of us can know that when we leave this place today, we have this forgiveness, this standing before our God.

That just as that man had walked home carrying his bed, you and I can leave here, perhaps, yes, carrying some burdens, but not in the same way that we came.

For now they no longer define us.

They are not the very thing that stands between us and peace, that actually now we can carry them knowing that God our Lord has perfect love for us, has redeemed us, restored us, and has given to you and to me everything he gave to this man.

He came that day asking for restoration, and he did receive it.

And so God has given you the same.

He has given you a father, a God who loves you and cherishes you, and bends all the power of the universe to bless you and keep you now and always.

And this God is your father who loves you and cherishes you, and will stop at nothing to keep you and protect you.

And even your body, yes, the body, even that God has a plan for.

That he blesses and keeps it, and yes, as it ages and ails because of sin and death, still the Lord's promises that he is preparing you, not just in soul, but in body, to the day when your body will be fit and restored to live forever.

And that this is God's plan for you and for me, that even that promise he will keep all the way to the end.

And all of this wrapped up in a word from Jesus that says, You are now right with God, you are forgiven, you are loved, and now he can say, with have having given all this to you, the same word he said to this man, that you too can take heart.

Amen.