Forgiveness and the folly of lockdown churches
by Julian Mann, TCW:
THIS Prayer Book Gospel reading shows why the Church must always resist the secular health-and-safety cult.
The passage is from Matthew’s Gospel and describes Jesus’s healing of a paralysed man during his Galilean ministry:
‘And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into his own city. And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men’ (Matthew 9v1-8 – King James Version).
Jesus’s first words to this man are astonishing under the circumstances: ‘Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.’
This is a man whose physical predicament was dire. He could not walk and had to be carried about by his friends. The account in Mark’s Gospel of this event is more detailed. Mark describes Jesus speaking to a packed house in Capernaum. The paralysed man arrived on a stretcher carried by his friends who could not gain entrance because of the crowd. So they climbed on to the roof, made a hole in it and lowered the man down to where Jesus was. Mark also records Jesus’s first words to the man when he saw the friends’ faith: ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee’ (Mark 2v5).
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