Gospel of Mark: Who Is This Man? (part 10) by Dr. Bill Senyard on 07/28/13

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Who Is This Man? 10

Lookout Community Church

July 28, 2013

Mark 2:1-12

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” ⁶ Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, ⁷ “Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸ Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, “Why are you thinking these things? ⁹ Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins….” He said to the paralytic, ¹¹ “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” ¹² He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Slide 1

In this narrative section of Mark, 2:1-3:6, Mark presents us with an historical overview of the build-up of the legal case against Jesus.  It will end with 3:6 with the Scribes and the Pharisees conspiring with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.  What did Jesus do to deserve such a response?  At one level, four things are happening:

1) In 2:1-12, He forgives a man’s sin.

Slide 2

2) In 2:13-17, Jesus hung out with sinners. Therefore rejecting the holiness codes.  I would observe that it does seem that Jesus seems to prefer sinners,

Slide 3

3) In 2:18-22, Jesus wasn’t religious enough—He breaks the law—Therefore antinomian.

Slide 4

4) In 2:23-28 and again in 3:1-6, Jesus broke the Sabbath.

 

In the end, they will accuse, convict and murder God for deeds unworthy of God.  Ironical and tragic.  Their religion—1st ct. Judaism was grossly out of sync with God!  One stark example of this in the text is the posture of the religious leaders.  Mark clearly points out that they were ‘sitting’—doing nothing, while a man was suffering.  This is a clear picture of Hebrew unrighteousness.  The religion had become rational and self-serving to some.  In the end, they will use their interpretation of the Torah to kill God and feel perfectly justified in doing so.  Frightening.  But we are implicitly doing it today.

Slide 5-Jesus Heals the Paralytic

What was happening in this narrative?  You know the basic story.  Jesus is teaching in a small 1^st century rock and thatched dwelling.  There is no room to enter and so the men do something radical, in fact very un-neighborly.  They go onto the roof and destroy it.

 

Climbing on the roof would have been likely quite easy.  But to tear up a neighbor’s roof unwanted would be wild.  Jesus looks at the scene- observes their faith (plural) and says, “Son your (singular) sins are forgiven”- and later—Get up, take up your mat and walk.”  Four observations.

Slide 6

1)      Jesus was claiming to be God. 

The typical analysis of the event is that the 1^st ct. religious leaders were upset that this person was usurping the authority that only God has.  Only God forgives.  In the OT the only word that is purely translated as “forgive” is salach.  And only God salachs.  Either Jesus was a deluded blasphemer who deserved harsh judgment or He was in some mysterious, indescribable way– God.

Slide 7

2)      Jesus was implicitly firing the Religious Leaders

According to the interpretation of 1^st Ct Judaism, not only did God forgive, but He did it through the Priesthood and religion.  Though there are regulations for individual sin offerings throughout the year, once a year only–at Yom Kippur, after 10 days of deep public repentance and confession, fasting and expensive sacrifice, could a person at least hope that God might think to forgive them for their many violations—and only for some crimes.  It was an expensive highly controlled ritual after all—lots of drama and words, lots of blood.  In the end, the Priest proclaimed that you were in God’s favor.  The difference between Yom Kippur and the regular individual sin offerings?  Only at YK does God bring the offering for you.  And His hands are clean, yours are not.

 

But how do you know that it worked really?  When it was all said and done, what looked any different?  How did you really truly know that God was smiling at you?  That He accepted your religious efforts as suitable payment for the many violations of the last year?

 

But now, Jesus totally bypasses—actually supplants/replaces the whole Yom Kippur gig.  In fact, the Priest aren’t necessary anymore. In fact, Jesus has just given the priests their pink-slips.  Jesus just casually forgives the person on God’s behalf without all of the sacrifices, shophars, the penance, the fasting, the confessions, etc.  Jesus implicitly fired the priests.  The religious leaders had enjoyed years of being the gatekeepers to God—far more of a pagan notion than of the Torah.  An entire priestly industry had risen up around the people’s need and desire for a relationship with God.  So much of Christianity repeats this today unfortunately.  Jesus totally cuts against that.  Jesus just reaches out and forgives a man without the priests, without the temple, without even sacrifices of goats.  Of course, we can see now that he is looking ahead to his actions on the cross, where he will finally rightly interpret all of torah.  He is the Yom Kippur goat provided by God.  So there is no more need for Yom Kippur anymore.

Slide 8

3)      God forgives unrepentant sinners

But it gets even better.  This I think is the really big deal that really rocks 1^st Ct Judaism and should rock our world today!  God forgives unrepentant sinners!  Here is a guy—an unnamed regular Joe—who isn’t – at least not clearly stated seeking forgiveness from God for sin at all.  He is sick and wants to be healed.  We know nothing at all about the guy.  Is he a good guy?  Is he righteous?  Is he Jewish?  Is he even conscious?  He could have been a pagan warlord, or a Baal priest?  Who he was or believed wasn’t important to the story obviously!  But there is no way to infer that he wanted forgiveness.  He wanted healing.

 

And based upon the immediately preceding verses, we would narratively expect that Jesus would heal the guy.  That is what he wanted.  But no, this is a wonderful dramatic scene written, produced and directed by God to teach a powerful theology corrective.  Jesus first forgives him sin against God.  Fascinating—surprising—I can only imagine what the man thought?  Or his friends. “Jesus, forgiveness is great but what about my legs?”  By the way, it is a bit awkward if you were the guy.  You feel pretty helpless afterall, probably feel religiously unclean, and now you are dragged unwillingly into a very heated religious showdown.  It is only later that Jesus actually gives the man what he was looking for.

 

Let focus on the forgiveness.  On what basis did the man merit – or deserve forgiveness?  Well the quick typical knee jerk response is ‘his faith’.  But the text doesn’t support it much.  Grammatically, the text is unclear.

First, whose faith did Jesus refer to by ‘their’ (pl)?  Was it the friends?  Was it the friends and the paralytic?  Unclear.  By the way, if you argue that it was their faith that earned Jesus’ forgiveness, then the four friends were gypped. Right?

Secondly, what was their faith in?  Did they come to Jesus believing that He can forgive man’s violations against God?  Or did they come ‘believing’ that Jesus was a magic healer of some kind?  Or did they desperately hope that Jesus could touch their friend?  It is highly unlikely that they had any notion at all about Jesus’ authority to forgive sin.  But this is what Jesus does—not as a direct response to their faith in His ability to forgive at all.

 

This is radical!  Jesus unilaterally forgives a guy with no apparent specific, what we would call today ‘salvation’ faith—who isn’t even asking for forgiveness.  He came to Jesus for a different reason.  The forgiveness was not a function of a request of the man, or repentance, or sorrow over sin—or fasting, confession– anything at all.  Jesus just unilaterally forgives the man without strings attached, without prerequisite sorrow over sin, desire for forgiveness.  Does Jesus force forgiveness perhaps?  Is this fair?  Is this Torah? (Remember Jacob, Abraham).

 

Either way, this cuts against all the grain of the current understanding and practices of the religious gatekeepers.  I can relate to questions they may have asked.  “How can anyone take the Rabbi Jesus serious if Jesus is tossing forgiveness around so willy-nilly?”  Does Jesus even know the man?  Is he a good Jew? Did he bring a sin offering?  Did he take a ritual cleansing bath?  Now that Jesus has come, everything has changed.

Slide 9

4)      Forgiveness is more than a legal concept

Have you noticed how often the Bible blurs the line between ‘healing’ and ‘forgiveness’?  Look at how fluidly healing and forgiving are used.

Slide 10

Isa 6:10¹⁰ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

 

Mark 4 ¹² so that, “‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'” (Matt 13:15 says ‘healed’)

 

This is very radical—hold on to your hats.  This is a whole new understanding of sin.  This is sin defined by its tragic root.  Before Jesus and the Kingdom ripping onto the scene, sin was completely defined by the Judaism of the 1^st Ct. to be the breaking of a standard of law as interpreted by the religious standards and legal codes of holiness.  The Torah is instructive in how to live in order to please God.  Here is the Law of God, to be a God person, you need to do this and don’t do that.  The Priest and Scribes were trying to be and shape god-people.  What Would Moses Do (WWMD)?

 

But Jesus has a higher—more all-encompassing view of the goal of Torah.  Our problem is not just that we are sinners, rebels, violators of God’s covenant.  It is that.  But there is another tragedy.  For Jesus and the KOG, sin is an ‘alienating violation’, a break in the life giving, joy giving relationship that God offers mankind.  The first step to being a God-person is to be birthed out of alienation into the community of God. To become re-attached to the life giving power of God.

“Revival takes place when people stop seeing sin as an isolated act of disobedience and they begin to see it as an organic network of compulsive beliefs, behaviors and thoughts that issue out of their basic alienation from God.” (Richard Lovelace)

 

We sin when we are looking for intimacy, personhood, purpose, meaning, name outside of a relationship with God.

 

The bed-ridden man is a picture, an image, a living metaphor for a person alienated from community.

1)      He was crippled according to the religion of 1^st ct Judaism, and therefore out of God’s pleasure.  A picture of post-Edenic man.

2)      He was not able to enter the place where Jesus was.  He was marginalized in community.  Jesus healed him—and so now he could re-enter community with man and with God.  Likewise, he healed the rip in his relationship with God. He was now a God-person and could now pursue God—be a participant of the new God community—he could worship, he could serve the others, he could assist the widows and orphans.  He was ritually clean now.  For this man, Jesus proclaims the whole tamale.  “My friend, you are sick and marginalized.  I will heal you so that you can be a community man, and I will pay for your violations against God, man and creation, so that you can be a full God-person.”  Go and tell people that the Kingdom of God is finally here.  Show them your physical healing.  Something new is here.

 

It is all about being ushered into, rebirthed into, made alive into the new Kingdom of God.  This is why Jesus came— it was a new community made up of regular people, who didn’t make the grade of the Priest and Scribes.  We were not holy.  We didn’t pursue God—not really.  We were crippled, marginalized—it was hopeless really.  We couldn’t even get close to Jesus.  Every year the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur said that God has covered our sin, but it was a bit of a disappointment ritual really.  Our lives stayed relatively the same.  Plaintiff’s still had great difficultly forgiving the defendant.  The Defendant had huge difficulties getting rid of shame and guilt.  The community couldn’t process reconciliation.  And then the moment we left Jersualem we blew it again.  But not now!  Something different is here.  There is a proclamation of forgiveness—but also healings that we expect with the Kingdom of God on the earth.

Slide 11

Isaiah 35:1 The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus,  ² it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.  ³ Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way;  ⁴ say to those with fearful hearts, “Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.”  ⁵ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.  ⁶ Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

Slide 12

 ⁷ The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.  ⁸ And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it.  ⁹ No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there,  ¹⁰ and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

 

Listen to the community, the many reconciled.  They will enter Zion with singing…Gladness and joy will overtake them.  This is the plan of Jesus.  The man was not just forgiven—or just healed—he was invited into something far greater than his wildest dreams.  You too.  Me too!

 

Q: He was a poster-child for the Messianic Kingdom.  Who would you believe?  The Priests?  The paralytic man who had been to dozens of Yom Kippurs, had heard the priest say that his sins are atoned for a dozen times but left paralytic?  Or Jesus, the incarnation of Yom Kippur who not only said your sins are atoned for—but healed the man a la Messianic Kingdom?  On one side, the Priests at Yom Kippur—and the man was still on his pallet?  Or Jesus and the lame leaping for joy?  This is the fruit of Jesus and his Kingdom—not fear and anxiety, shame- driven religion—bland irrelevant ritual.  There is a new Kingdom– now.

 

Q: The Priest couldn’t get it.  Why?  [Fear!]  It was too huge of a change.  It would be difficult for them to deny what they had spent their lives building and defending.  But that one man got it.

 

We should not read this as New Testament versus Old Testament—or grace versus law.  The age of works versus the age of grace.  Jesus didn’t come to challenge the Torah—but the counterfeit corrupt interpretation of the religion that choked the true expression of God through the Torah.  Jesus was the manifestation of everything that the Torah proclaimed.  Torah was supposed to look like Jesus and how Jesus acted and treated people.  He had active compassion on the hurt and marginalized.  He was the human fulfillment of the Torahic image of human fulfillment in God-community.  This was stunning irony.  The so-called keepers of the Torah didn’t recognize Torah fulfilled when it looked them in the face.  Not everything that bears the name of God or Jesus or law or Bible is actually of God.

 

Si, in the secular and religious courts, Jesus will die not only for implicitly claiming to be God, but for offensively challenging the priest’s authority as the keepers of the gates of heaven and their understanding of how God offers his favor upon man and their minimalistic view of what healing humanity looked like. But…

Slide 13

God’s favor is indeed a function of perfect religion or religious/moral observances—but the good news is that we don’t mean yours or mine.  We are referring to Jesus’ record of faithfulness and righteousness imputed mysteriously to you and me.

Slide 14

1)      God unilaterally forgives unrepentant sinners—that’s all there is.

Slide 15

2)      God’s ‘forgiveness’ is not just a legal transaction, but a renewed rebirth into a new Messianic community where reconciliation, restoration, and consolation are natural.

 

You may have come here with another agenda, but surprise. maybe God’s agenda is to ‘forgive’ you—to take you as you are into His present Messianic Kingdom on earth.  Not religion at all.  It is described in terms such as ‘rejoicing’, shouts of joy, ‘gladness and joy will displace sorrow and sighing’, fear is replaced with strength—the Kingdom is a broad place, safe, all of the wounds caused by mistreatment, or by thoughtless, destructive people and relationships healed by God’s justice and consolation—healed!  This is a Kingdom where even the unforgivable is forgivable.  There is no such thing as irreconcilable differences.  You are immersed in a love that loves you so much—as you are.  You have come as a paralytic in so many ways—Hear Jesus say, your sins are forgiven, take up your pallet and walk.