Commentary on Mark 2:1-12

After some days, Jesus returns to Capernaum from his refuge in the desert. Immediately the crowds gather in and around the house where he is staying. It is so crowded that there is no room to get in or out. The ‘house’ is not identified and it is not important. In the early Christian communities, they gathered in one house to celebrate the Eucharist. Jesus was there among them. Some people are inside the house with Jesus; others are still on the outside.

Then, four men arrived carrying a paralytic friend. They were anxious to get to Jesus. Seeing no way in, they went up by the outside staircase and on to the flat roof, removed a few tiles, and let the man down right at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus is touched by their faith, trust and confidence in him—all essential conditions for healing. Jesus says to the paralysed man:

Child, your sins are forgiven.

This must have been a surprising statement to the paralytic. He had come for healing, not forgiveness. Some scribes who were also present were not only surprised, they were deeply shocked, thinking contemptuously to themselves:

Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?

They are perfectly right, but their eyes are closed to drawing the obvious conclusion. They don’t see because they do not want to see, because—even worse—they think they can see. Even today, we meet Christians like that, who are convinced they and they alone are in sole possession of the ‘truth’.

Jesus, knowing their thoughts then challenges them:

Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’?

Then he tells the man:

I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home.

Of course, telling a person their sins are forgiven is certainly easier, but does the fact that Jesus could heal the paralytic instantly also mean that his sins were forgiven?

We need to realise the close links the Jews of the time made between sin and sickness. Many kinds of sickness were seen as punishment for personal sin or even the sins of parents (see also the story of the man born blind in John’s Gospel, chap 9). The man in this present story was understood to be paralysed because of some sin in his life. If Jesus could clearly remove the illness, then the cause of the illness was also being taken away. In so doing, Jesus makes it clear that in forgiving the man’s sin, he was not blaspheming. He was what he claimed to be.

In our time, we realise that there can be a link between physical illness and the way we act and relate with people. We know that there is a mutual influence between our thinking and our attitudes, feelings and behaviour. Some sicknesses can be psychosomatic, the result of stress or an imbalance in our relationships with others, our work or our environment. The words holiness, wholeness, health and healing all have a common root. The whole person, one in whom all parts are in perfect harmony, is the truly holy person.

That wholeness is something we need to pray and work for. The paralysed man represents all those who are paralysed in other ways, those who are not able to behave with the freedom that a well-integrated person has. And that integration and wholeness concerns our relations with others, with ourselves, with our environment and, of course, with God.