“THY SINS BE FORGIVEN THEE”
Saint Matthew 9: 1-8
19th Sunday After Trinity: 11 October Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Lord enters the ship you are on. This ship of fools is truly a tramp steamer filled with migrant immigrants and refugees driven away from Eden not so much by Seraphim as by your own misdeeds and treason.
You don’t want to be catechized because that would be to admit you don’t know everything. Your hubris and pride, like that of the Serpent, wants to worship your own works and knowledge. You don’t want to admit, to confess, that you are both empty and naked. Jesus comes into your house nonetheless to talk, teach, and give. The Lord is no inanimate object that you can use to exercise your own self-invented rituals or routines of semi-obedience. Jesus is The Word and He reveals His heart and will by His Holy Scripture—both written (preached) and mysteriously attaching…
You are sin—seasick on the boat puking out your guts and starving for real food. You are palsied on your back unable to walk much less live a full life of joy and wholesome adventure. Without the Healer and Liberator you would die condemned in Satan’s jail flat on your broken back or face down in your own vomit of trespasses.
The palsied didn’t decide to heal himself. He didn’t cooperate and choose to do “his part” to become holier or more disciplined in his “walk” with God. He probably didn’t even “go to the bathroom” without someone doing all the cleaning.
Jesus came for him and was there for him nonetheless. Jesus came for + you across water as well…and comes into His own city this morning to bring you “good cheer.”
The Lord comes to forgive sins and to begin the restoration that will culminate at His final visible return. He remits sin and absolves guilt because that is the cause of all symptoms—all disease, brokenness, dysfunction, heartache, pain, and ultimately death. The Lord in a single Word could heal all sickness and make all bodies perfect again, but, without forgiveness it would be mere seconds before sinful man jumped straight back into the flesh pots of Egyptian bondage.
The Christ is God. The Son is God. The Scribes who were superb scholars of Torah were not believers in what Moses and later the Prophets wrote concerning God. They rejected Gospel. Intellectual exegesis is worthless without worshipping faith—Liturgy of Christ—Gottesdienst. It is Jesus’ activity to forgive. Jesus carried the weight of the 10 Commandments on His back for his entire visible earthly ministry. He carried the bed, the palsied, the friends, and every one of you. He forgives with a Word, His Word, but only because it, and He—His Body and Blood is connected to His Cross of suffering and death.
Christ can heal physical deformities because He is God. Jesus can heal emotional and psychological deformities because He is Light of Light. But the peace that passes understanding is that Jesus forgives sins because He loves you with a Grace of sacrificial, fatherly, brotherly, nuptial, and total love of action. You may never blaspheme by denying His ability to forgive…though you mostly think you don’t really have that much to forgive: REPENT!
But viewing The Lord as a merely a super-powerful antidote to disease misses the mark. Every time Christ healed in the Gospels He was showing them and you the coming of His end-time Kingdom of Glory. Every time a palsied body was healed or a blind man given sight it showed what awaits you all; but only because of forgiveness. Where there is forgiveness of sins…where there is Jesus’ Body, Blood, and Loosing Word, there is life and salvation!
Your old-Adam hearts are evil but Jesus’ heart, His God/Man heart, is perfect and good, and it’s true Blood you will again drink in a moment. Regardless of your walking skills, your physical vigor, or your Scribe-like memorized Bible passages, Jesus arises you, lifts you up and carries you on His bed—His hands—and brings you to His house. He gives you this day power, His power, joy, His joy, Peace, His peace… “thy sins be + forgiven thee.”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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