In the Name of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
“When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”
Good Morning!
I am honored to be here on your recovery Sunday. It is a true blessing to be in a church that so actively supports recovery by having Sunday services like this and by allowing six recovery groups to hold their meetings here. I would like to thank my friend, your deacon, Barbara Ann, for recommending me, your priest Fr. Frank, and the recovery committee for selecting me.
“When Jesus saw their faith,” but whose faith? The paralytic never says a word, so surely He is referring to the faith of those who carried the paralytic. After all, Jesus had seen their faith demonstrated through their actions. Those of us in recovery can see ourselves helpless as the paralytic, but we do not often see or even think about those who carried us and the faith that they had for our recovery.
I grew up and was very active in the Episcopal Church. In high school I even became a member of the Episcopal Honor Society and was well grounded spiritually. However, when I got married one month after turning twenty, many new temptations caused me to quickly stray away from the church.
In the twenty-five years that I separated myself from the church, I became an alcoholic and broke several of the Ten Commandments. I forgot what sin was because alcohol had become my god and had given me a new set of rules to live by. My life as an active alcoholic gave me plenty for which to repent. I lied, … stole, … cheated, … and even committed adultery. I repressed everything that I had learned as a child. I was not only physically bankrupt, but was also mentally, and spiritually bankrupt. I was lying on that cot. I needed to be carried and placed in front of Jesus.
I now know that members of my family were praying for me and that some of my siblings even tried to get my husband to do an intervention, but he would not. The progression of this disease now had me drinking from the time that my eyes opened until I blacked out at night. And yet, I could not see my problem. A large part of my denial was due to the fact that I went to work every day – drunk - but I went to work. Well my boss finally had enough and called me into her office. She suggested that I might have a problem with alcohol and that I should go to see the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) counselor. To her suggestion I replied, “I don’t think that I have a problem with alcohol, but I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll go back to church.” On my own, those words would not have come out of my mouth. It was the prayers of those who were carrying me, along with my boss as the final person, that picked up that cot and brought me to Jesus by sending me back to church.
Now back to today’s Gospel. The story takes place in Capernaum perhaps at Peter’s house, where Jesus “was at home.” Two story houses were common in Palestine and it is likely that the room with the overflowing crowd was on the second floor, where most socializing was done. The roof of the house was often used as a place for relaxation in the cool of the day and frequently for sleeping on hot nights. So it was not uncommon to have stairs built all the way to the roof.
When the afflicted man’s friends could not get into the crowded room, they did the next best thing. They carried the cot up to the top of the house and proceeded to dismantle the roof until they made enough room to lower the man into Jesus’ presence. They were willing to do whatever it took to get their needy friend to Jesus, just as our friends are willing to do whatever it takes to bring us to Christ. They knew that he could be healed and that Jesus was the one who could do it, just as our friends and family know.
Like the paralytic, cripples of all kinds have always suffered social stigma and neglect. In today’s society those crippled by addiction, be it alcohol, drugs, food, gambling, sex, the list goes on, suffer from the same social stigma and neglect. But in Jesus’ day, the stigma was made even worse because all disease and affliction was believed to be the result of someone’s sin. This attitude is clearly reflected in the disciples’ question to Jesus as they passed a man who had been blind from birth: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?” (John 9:1-2) In the mind of the paralytic and in the minds of most people who saw him, was the belief that his paralysis was a vivid representation of sinfulness and of God’s judgment. This belief gave crippled and diseased people more reason to shun crowds. And today, addiction continues to drive people into isolation.
But the faith of his four friends compelled them to push through the crowd. Their strong conviction that Jesus could help their friend led Jesus to address a far more important area than the physical condition first - - the man’s need for spiritual healing. Only Jesus, the Great Physician, can bring to the human soul the thing that it needs most: forgiveness of sins.
So instead of healing the paralytic, Jesus pronounces his sins as forgiven. Jesus recognizes the faith of the four companions, singling out for the first time the importance of faith to His miracles. The focus is on the faith of these friends, but the paralytic’s faith has a deeper lesson. He needs physical and spiritual help from Jesus. He does not receive merely healing for his body but also forgiveness of his sins.
Jesus’ supreme words to him were, “your sins are forgiven.” Those words represent a divine miracle that is perhaps the greatest of all miracles and certainly the most desirable for the recipient – a holy God forgiving the sins of an unholy person. Just as with a word Jesus stilled the storm, with a word He dismissed the paralytic’s sins and gave him His most precious gift to meet his greatest need.
Being forgiven is the basic idea of sending or driving away, of doing away with. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us,” David declared in one of his psalms (Ps 103:12). When God forgives sins, He casts them “into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:19). Paul rejoiced that, even though he was “formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor,” he was yet “shown mercy” (1 Tim 1:13). Paul then goes on to say, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom I am foremost of all” (1 Tim 1:15). You see Jesus sometimes heals people who have little faith and even some who have no faith. And this is especially good for those of us who enter into recovery in all stages of belief and unbelief.
So forgiveness of sin is God’s greatest gift because it meets our greatest need. Sin subjects us to trouble, emptiness, lack of peace, and to eternal hell (Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.); if we do not repent (Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him). Sin is incurable by us alone; (Step 5 –
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human
being the exact nature of our wrongs.); it
affects all people, and affects the total person, body, mind, and spirit. It is so persistent in our heart that even
the regenerate or spiritually reborn person needs to continually fight against
it (Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it) and (Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to
improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for
knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out). Recovery
is not an overnight process; it is a lifelong process of change through the
twelve steps.
You heard me mention earlier the sins that I had committed as an active alcoholic. Like Paul, I felt that I was worst of all and not worthy of forgiveness. But, I came back to my childhood church in humility and poverty of spirit. Yet, the people welcomed me back just as if I had never left. It took nine months of coming to church before I was finally able to admit that alcohol was my problem. I was six months in a recovery program, when I felt like I was hitting a brick wall. All of my sins came crashing in and I was at a turning point. I needed to do something to get rid of the pain. I was going to church every Sunday and feeling more and more unworthy to be there. But instead of picking up a drink, I talked to my priest. I told her everything, especially about the adultery. Her response to me was, “God has forgiven you, now you need to forgive yourself.” And with that I was able to continue to progress in recovery. At this point things started to move quickly in my life so much so that I often felt like I was on a roller coaster. I was finally doing what God wanted me to do and it has taken me to places I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams. If you are struggling with forgiveness, talk to someone you trust honestly about everything that is bothering you and let Jesus forgive your sins. So that you, like me, can learn to accept God’s forgiveness. And then just step back and see where the miracle takes you.
I would like to close with something from the 12 Step Prayer Book by Bill Pittman. It is called Thy Will Be Done.
“If I were to chase each particular care, each particular worry, and each particular sorrow, I would have business on hand for the rest of my life; but if I can rise into a higher state of mind, these cease to be annoyances and cares. Ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the cares of life are cured by one single salve, and that is, “Thy will be done.” The moment I can say that, and let go, that moment more than ninety-nine parts in a hundred of my troubles drop away.”
Amen.