Jesus Is Savior -- Period.

          Friday’s Gospel continues Mark’s rich theology of conversion from sin while teaching us even more about whom Jesus is.  In the lection, friends of a paralyzed man bring him to Jesus.  They have undoubtedly heard of Jesus’s cures and want to help their friend.  But Jesus’s reputation and a lot of other sick people preceded them, so they can’t get to Jesus. 

          They’re bold, like the leper in yesterday’s Gospel.  They’re not going to give up.  They’re going to approach Jesus by hook or crook.  Can’t get through the door?  Cut a hole through the roof and drop in – literally!

          Says a lot about their faith, their determination, and likely the man’s suffering (and the friends’ getting tired lugging him around).

          When Jesus sees all this, He says: “Your sins are forgiven!” 

          Probably not what the paralytic or his friends expected.  They were likely hoping for some televangelist making a big fury about “arise and get ye about!”  “Your sins are forgiven?”  Huh?

          The Pharisees heard that, though, and they begin thinking to themselves: “who does this guy think He is?  Only God can forgive sins!”

          A gloss on both perspectives.  First, as we previously observed, man’s fundamental “sickness” is sin.  His basic ailment is moral.  Both the Jewish and Christian traditions recognize that suffering, sickness, and death are consequences of sin – perhaps not in a straight line (this sin/that suffering) but they are correlated.  Second, because of that truth, we get to know who Jesus is.

          The very reason Jesus was standing in that house was because He came to be our Savior.  Saviors “save” people from what is bad for them.  Jesus was not born into this world to be a moral teacher, to dispense some refined morality.  Even less did Jesus come to do nice things or improve first century Israel’s public health. 

          Jesus came to save people from sin.  That is what He is about.  It’s what the Gospel has focused on this week, e.g., yesterday in healing the leper, today in this encounter with the paralytic. Let's not succumb to what Pope Leo has called modern Arianism: regarding Jesus as everything BUT the divine Savior He is.

          But the Pharisees are right: only God can forgive sins.  So, either Jesus is deluded … or He is God.

          And that is precisely the point Jesus makes in the Gospel.  Aware of the Pharisees’ thinking, Jesus lays out the stakes bluntly: what’s easier to do – tell this guy his sins are forgiven or to heal his paralysis?  Tell him his sins are forgiven and, without faith, he gets carried out the same way he came in (OK, maybe through the door rather than the roof). 

          But Jesus is not a liar.  “So that you may know that the Son of Man has power to forgive sins, I say, ‘Rise, take up your mat, and walk!”  The man is cured physically but as evidence of whom Jesus is.  The tangible, visible healing is a sign for everybody to see: if you will take this cure as a sign of my claimed authority to forgive sins, well, look!  Cease being unbelievers and believe!

          No doubt Jesus wanted to cure the man, as He had many other people up to this point in Mark’s Gospel.  But this case has a particularly important Christological twist that explains all Jesus’s healing miracles.  They are not some divine public health improvement project.  They are not just because Jesus is a nice guy who doesn’t like people to suffer.  They are because Jesus is Savior whose job one is to heal us from our worst affliction: sin.  All other healing is a corollary of fixing that fundamental evil.  And, if you want proof of those priorities and Jesus’s mission – look at the formerly paralyzed man who came in on a stretcher and left on his feet.

          So, today’s Gospel should center our attention on two things: Jesus came not to be nice but to save me from sin and, therefore, am I focused on eliminating the really important and only obstacle that stands between me and God?  Christianity is not a social improvement or public betterment project.  It is the work of moral salvation.  It starts with the name "Jesus," which means that He will save His People from their sins (Mt 1:21).