More (Mark 2:1-12)

This Christmas I received a beautiful fan. As I slowly unfolded the fan I went back in time. I remembered clearly how I felt as I approached my father with my huge request. It was the summer of 1961, and the days had become unbearably hot. Several of my friends had cheap plastic fans that to my eight-year-old eyes looked like the most elegant thing ever invented. I wanted one. I climbed up onto my father’s lap and presented my plea for a fan.

The next day I was thrilled when my father came home from work and told me to come out to the car with him, he said that he had something that he wanted to show me. I can still remember the look on his face. When I got to the car he triumphantly opened the door, and there on the back seat were not one but two window fans. I was stunned, and not quite sure how to respond. My father’s magnanimous gift wasn’t the cheap plastic fan I’d asked for, but instead a way to cool the house with cross-ventilation. Later, my father gave me the little fan I’d asked for.

When I think about how in Mark 2 the friends brought the paralyzed man to Jesus, believing and wanting Jesus to heal their friend, I am reminded of my request to my father for a fan. My father began by giving me more than I had asked for. The men who carried their friend to Jesus had heard about all the people He had healed. They had enough faith to dig through the roof of the house where Jesus was and to lower their friend before Him. However, I wonder if they were as surprised as the scribes were when, in response to their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5).

It is one thing to remove paralysis from the body, but it is a far greater gift to have the paralysis of sin removed from the soul! I have known those whose lives are paralyzed by the choices they have made. Like the prey of a poisonous spider they are entangled in a web that seems to bind them. I have watched helplessly as they struggle only to find themselves wrapped tighter and tighter in the web of despair.

They brought their friend to Jesus believing that He had the power to heal, but they discovered that He was more than just a healer. Jesus had come with the power to break the curse of sin and to release those paralyzed by the hopelessness of their condition. In my imagination I can see the amazement on their faces as they look down from the hole they made in the roof in their efforts to get their friend to Jesus. Jesus shows who He really is by not only by healing their friend’s body, but also by releasing him from his sins.