Trinity 19
Mt
9:1-8
10/11/15
Did you hear what that guy said just
a little while ago?!? The
arrogance! The presumption! The hubris!
He stood there before all of you and said, “I forgive you all your
sins.” Now he wasn’t saying that some
person had done something to him, and so now he was going to forgive that
individual. No, he spoke those words to all of you.
And that means something much bigger
was going on. It means that when he said
“I forgive you all your sins” he was speaking like he was God. Now let me tell you. I know that guy, and I can tell you for
certain that he is not God – not even
close. I mean have you seen him try to
help his youngest son pick out clothes to wear to school? It’s not pretty. You know, there is a
difference between black and navy blue shorts.
And now that I think about it more,
what’s up with this obsession with “sin” anyway? “Sin”?
As if there is some kind of absolute standard of right and wrong that a
person keeps or violates, and some vindictive God in the sky who is just
waiting to zap the poor schmuck who does something wrong. Give me a break! How about he get out of those weird looking
clothes, and join the rest of us in the twenty first century?
Every Sunday you hear me stand in
front of you and say, “in the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ
I forgive you all your sins.” It is
something to which you have become accustomed.
Often it is not until you bring someone with you to church who is not a
Christian or who comes from a tradition outside of Lutheranism or the Roman
Catholic church, that you are reminded about how radical that statement really
is. People take offense at the language
of Holy Absolution. They recognize
exactly what is going on and bristle at it: “Who is he to speak like he is
God?”
The same thing happens with the very
word “sin.” Because you see, as soon as
you define sin as a violation of God’s law you have said that there is indeed
some kind of absolute standard. You have
said that there is right and wrong; truth and error. That puts limitations on
people and means that they don’t get to do whatever they think is right. And in doing so you have also said that there
is a holy and just God who judges and punishes.
Now there’s a view of God that will raise people’s ire. Because if there
is anything in today’s world that you
had better not be, it’s judgmental. So
if you go and try to ascribe that to God
… watch out, because you are going to hear about it.
In today’s Gospel lesson, we see
that the Gospel is indeed about forgiving sins.
It is about the forgiveness that Jesus Christ provides – the forgiveness
that he gives. This forgiveness – the way it was won and the
way it is delivered – is offensive to fallen man. And we see that actually, sin is even worse than the description of it that
people find offensive. Yet when received
in faith Christ’s forgiveness is the powerful word of salvation. And we learn that his forgiveness reaches
into the grave itself.
In our text this morning we learn
that after conducting his ministry, Jesus returned to Capernaum. Matthew tells us that
some people brought
to him a paralytic who was lying on a bed. The man couldn’t walk, and because
they believed that Jesus could heal him, people who cared about the man went
out of their way to carry him to Jesus.
Jesus saw their faith. And we should certainly understand this faith
to describe the paralytic as well as those bringing him. It’s not like they were taking him to Jesus
against his will! And because Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic,
“Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”
Now if we are honest, this probably
strikes us as odd. I mean, is our Lord
dense? They are carrying a man on a bed
to him. It is pretty obvious that they
are bringing him for healing. It is
pretty obvious that the paralytic wants healing. He wants to walk! And what does Jesus say?: “Take heart, my
son; your sins are forgiven.”
What would you have been thinking if
you were the paralytic? Would you have
been confused? Would have been disappointed?
Would you have been angry?
Actually, it’s not a hypothetical
question. For you see, quite often you
are the paralytic. You come here to
where God is present for you in a unique way.
You come with physical ailments that need healing. You come with mental illness that needs
healing. You come with family and work
situations that need healing. And what does Jesus say to you?: “Take heart, my
son. Take heart, my daughter; your sins are forgiven.” He doesn’t give you the thing that is
foremost in your mind. Often he doesn’t
give you the thing you want. Instead, he
gives you the forgiveness of sins.
He does this because he knows
something that you do not … or rather something that you are prone to forget.
Sin is your real problem. Sin is the root cause of all that is wrong in
your life. In fact, it is the root cause
of all that is wrong in the whole of creation.
People are offended to hear that sin is a violation of God’s law. But what they don’t realize is that sin is
not just about things that we do. As
fallen people sin has caused us to be turned inward on ourselves and away from
God. Sin as caused all of the issues we
experience in the various relationships of our life. Sin has caused all the things wrong with our
bodies that produce pain and suffering and frustration. Sin, you see, will kill us.
Of course, the scribes weren’t worried about
what Jesus hadn’t done. They are angry
about what he had said. We learn that “some of the scribes said to
themselves, ‘This man is blaspheming.’”
The scribes perceived that Jesus had spoken in a way that only God can.
Our Lord knew their thoughts, and so
he replied, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say,
‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know
that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the
paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.”
We learn that the man then rose and went home. And when the crowds saw
it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to
men.
Jesus shows that he has authority to
do the harder thing – to forgive sins.
He does this by doing the easier thing – he heals the man. Jesus came to bring forgiveness. He came to
bring salvation from sin. The angel said
to Joseph about Mary, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins.”
This forgiveness; this salvation would extend to the very depths of
every way that sin has warped our life.
It would extend to death itself.
As Jesus was about to enter
Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week he told his disciples, “See, we are
going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief
priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to
the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on
the third day.” Sin is a violation of
God’s law and so Jesus came to receive God’s wrath in our place. He said, “the Son of Man came not to be
served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
But in his saving mission, Jesus
came to bring salvation from sin all the way into the depths of the grave. He came to bring a forgiveness of sins that
defeats death. And that is exactly what he did in his resurrection on the third
day. In his resurrection Jesus Christ
was the second Adam who overcame every way that sin has harmed us. He defeated death and began the renewed
humanity that is free from every single
harm that sin now causes in our life.
It is this renewed humanity – this transformed resurrection body – that
Jesus Christ will give to each one of us on the Last Day when he raises the
dead.
That is why when Jesus says, “I
forgive you all your sins,” he has given you everything you need. True, it’s
not everything we want. Our Lord is
gracious beyond measure, and according to his will he does give those things
too – he gives healing, recovery, health and resolution of problems. But no matter whether those things are his
will or not, he always does for us
the harder thing. He gives us the
forgiveness through which we again have fellowship with God – a life with God
that is eternal and will extend into a resurrection body and the new creation.
The events in our text occurred two
thousand years ago. The incarnation of
our Lord occurred at a specific time and place.
We don’t live then. We don’t even
live there. But Jesus’ authority is not
limited by time and space. When he had
risen from the dead he said to his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with
you always, to the end of the age.”
Through baptism Jesus has washed
away your sins and given you forgiveness.
And he does indeed continue to be present with us in ways that reflect
his own incarnation. He continues to use
located means to provide forgiveness where we are at.
Here at his altar he uses bread and
wine to give you his true body and blood, given and shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins. He comes into our
midst as he gives his body and blood into your body. Through that gift you receive
forgiveness. Through that gift the Holy
Spirit nourishes and strengthens faith.
Through that gift the risen Lord guarantees that your body will be
raised and transformed to be like his.
And our Lord still speaks his
forgiveness to you. This brings us back
to the way that I began this sermon, and to our text. Jesus does still say “Take heart, my son;
take heart my daughter, your sins are forgiven.” He does it through his Office of the Holy
Ministry, and the pastor he has placed in that Office here in this place. Jesus has given the gift of Holy Absolution
to his Church. He has given authority to forgive sins. He has promised, “Truly, I say to you, whatever
you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth
will have been loosed in heaven.”
It is Christ’s Office of the Holy
Ministry – that’s why in Holy Absolution the pastor says “by virtue of my
office, as a called and ordained servant of the Word.” That is why the pastor says, “in the stead
and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ.”
And therefore, it is the risen Lord who says, “I forgive you all your
sins.” He does the harder thing by
giving you forgiveness of sins and salvation. And because he is the risen Lord,
you know that on the Last Day he will give you everything else as well.
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