The accounts of most events in St Matthew’s Gospel are notoriously lacking in detail in comparison to St Mark and St Luke, as I noted last week in the account of Jesus casting out the demons from the possessed man. This Sunday’s Gospel (Mt 9:1-8) is no exception, for in Matthew’s version of the healing of the paralytic, we get only the bare essentials of the story. I’m not sure why this is. 
Perhaps Matthew was more interested in communicating Jesus’ teaching, which he does much more fully than St Mark, so he saved a little space by leaving out some of the details in the miracle stories. In any case, the healing of the paralytic offers both a striking miracle and some important teaching from the Lord.
This Gospel is mainly about the power and authority of Christ as Son of God and Son of Man. This power is manifested in two different ways: spiritually, in the forgiveness of sins, and physically, in the healing of the crippled body of the paralytic. One of the overriding interests of all the evangelists was to show us who Jesus is: the eternal Son of God who became man for our salvation. Each of the Gospels, while more or less telling the same story, gives us somewhat different perspectives or emphases on the Person of Christ, so that our understanding will be as complete as possible.
By time we get to chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus has already worked several miracles, and so the reader of the Gospel may be asking himself, as did the disciples after Jesus calmed the stormy sea: “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” Shortly after that episode, it was demonstrated that evil spirits are forced to obey Him as well.
According to St Matthew, it was right after Jesus returned from casting out the demons that a paralytic was brought to Him. Those who brought the sick man, as well as the people in the area, would have known by now of Jesus’ reputation as a miracle worker. So when the paralytic was brought to Jesus, everyone (including the crippled man himself) would naturally assume that Jesus would cure him as He has cured so many others.
But the intention of the Gospel is to reveal who Jesus is, and Matthew perhaps takes his readers somewhat by surprise by relating something more than a physical healing. Every age and culture has its healers, who are successful to a greater or lesser degree. But if the Gospel is to be faithful to the truth about Jesus, it must manifest that Jesus is more than a healer. For in this case He did something only God could do: He forgave the man’s sins.
We don’t know what the paralytic initially thought of this. After all, he didn’t come for forgiveness but for physical healing. He may have thought to himself that he could go to the temple for the annual Day of Atonement services if he wanted his sins forgiven, but from his perspective the more pressing issue was the pain and shame of his broken body, which made it impossible for him to lead a happy and prosperous life. But, as we hear from the Prophet Isaiah, God’s ways and thoughts are not our ways and thoughts. For God, and hence for his Son, forgiveness of sin is always the more pressing issue. God created us for eternal happiness through union with Him, and sin is the only thing that can hinder and even render impossible this union and hence this happiness. So sin must be removed as the first priority, because God’s first priority—whether we agree with his way of securing it or not—is our happiness, that is, our spiritual well-being and salvation.
A spiritual bond is created between the Lord and the sinner when sins are forgiven. A rupture is healed, a relationship is restored, shame is removed and replaced by peace and joy. This is what Jesus wanted first to do for the paralytic. This act was a divine act, indicating the divine nature of the one performing it. This fact wasn’t lost on the religious authorities who had gathered along with the crowd to assess this wonder-worker and try to figure Him out. After all, He was not one of their number, not accredited by their school of Torah study, nor was He born into a family of sufficient dignity to rate him a position of authority in the community. Imagine their indignation when they heard Him speaking words that properly come only from the mouth of God: “Your sins are forgiven.” Being already somewhat biased against Jesus, they seized the opportunity to accuse Him—if only among themselves at this point—of blasphemy.
It’s rather ironic that as the scribes were thinking evil of Jesus for attempting something only God could do, Jesus did something else only God could do: He read their thoughts! “Seeing their thoughts,” writes St Matthew, Jesus said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” This must have taken them off guard, since we hear no further word from them during this event. All the more so, since Jesus did something to support his implicit claim to divinity in the forgiving of sins. He showed them a visible manifestation of his power by healing the body of the paralytic once He had invisibly healed his soul. This really made the paralytic’s day! He was restored to health in both body and soul, and He found in Jesus both Healer and Savior.
As Matthew’s Gospel goes on, we’ll find that Jesus was continually harassed by those who just didn’t want to believe He was what his works testified that He was. In the very next account, we hear “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And in the one right after that: “Why do the Pharisees fast but your disciples don’t?” Why, why, why? Why don’t you fit the mold, why don’t you conform to our image of what you should be, why are you making us look bad? We’re supposed to be the religious authorities around here, not you! Why are the people following you and not us?
Jesus knew what was in their hearts, and so He asked why they harbored evil there. From our perspective, reading the Gospel accounts with the benefit of hindsight, the situation is pretty black and white. We would never have stood against Jesus, who was only trying to do good and bring the power of God to bear upon the body and soul of a needy person. But don’t we ourselves sometimes harass the Lord with questions about what He is doing and why? Or are we sometimes like the paralytic who initially wanted something other than what Jesus actually gave, or who at least had different priorities? Do we sometimes think we know it all better than Jesus, as his opponents seem to think? We would never come right out and say that, but we might harbor it in our hearts. We might doubt that He really is doing what is best for us, especially if it seems like nothing good is happening in our lives. We might minimize the importance of the forgiveness of sins and want some other tangible benefit instead.
Whenever we withdraw, to whatever extent, from a strong faith and confident trust and unwavering love for God, one of two things is likely to happen. Like the scribes, we might become frustrated or angry or enter a kind of adversarial relationship with the Lord, arguing with Him because things are not the way we would have them, or because He is not the way we would have Him—He is not doing our will. Or, we might become spiritually paralyzed through self-pity or doubt or sloth or self-indulgence, any of which could ultimately lead to despair.
Sometimes it doesn’t take much for the process of paralysis to begin. It may be a certain unforeseen turn of events that ruins our day, or some other sort of disappointment, or a prayer that seems to have gone unanswered. Our hopes are dashed, we feel unhappy or out of sorts, we withdraw into our own sense of hurt or dejection, we don’t feel like praying anymore, we don’t think God is interested in helping us. So we tend to give up, or at least we become weaker and more vulnerable to temptation and prone to sin. Little by little our spiritual life flows out of us and we are as it were paralyzed, and we must seek forgiveness and healing.
It is important to keep our relationship with the Lord alive and growing all the time. Through faith and trust we come to Him in our need, aware of our faults and failures. But we are bonded to Him more closely through repentance and the forgiveness of our sins. Every time his mercy pours over us like Precious Blood, we become closer to Him; we enter more deeply into our relationship of love with Him. Love and forgiveness are closely related, and in the end I wonder if the only criterion for judgment will be love. (Surely we will be accountable in particular and not just in general for all the acts of our lives, but everything we say or think or do either expresses or does not express love, in one way or another.)
When Peter met Jesus on the shore after his resurrection, he hadn’t yet confessed his denial. But Jesus didn’t ask him: “Do you remember what you did to Me? Are you sorry for it?” No, Jesus just asked: “Do you love Me?” Peter’s whole heart and whole life, his failures and his repentance, his shame and his hope, were all summed up in his simple answer: “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.”
Perhaps we can also remember, as we struggle our way through life, a verse from the epistle reading (Rom. 12:6-14), which I’ve had many occasions to recall: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, persevere in prayer.” Each of these elements of the spiritual life will help us bond more closely with Jesus, who hears our prayer, strengthens us in tribulation, and gives us the hope that is the foundation of joy. He knows we are all in need of forgiveness and healing. But He asks us at least not to harbor evil or destructive thoughts in our hearts, things that would put distance between us and Him. He wants to be able to attend to his first priority for our lives: to take away forever all our sins, so that we can rise with Him and enter the joy of our Lord.
