Chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark ended with the story of the healing of the Leper. It is a story that all of us can appreciate because we all have been sick. And we understand that anyone could end up in that situation: through no fault of our own at the mercy of a faceless, arbitrary, deadly enemy. I don’t know anyone who would not shout “Praise the Lord” at the outcome of that story. But chapter 2 is going to raise the bar: It is going to challenge some of our assumptions… about “no fault of our own” and the “facelessness” of the enemy.

Sometimes, when reading the Bible, we need to remember that dividing the books into chapters and verses was a later addition. I don’t think Mark would have ended “chapter 1” where our New Testament has that division because the next two scenes are connected to that healing of the Leper, thematically. (In other words, the chronological gap of time in verse 1 of chapter 2 is immaterial.)

As we read this next section, let’s keep in mind that in both Greek and Hebrew, the words that talk about healing are used for both physical and spiritual healing. The Leper was cleansed of his sickness, as Darby translates, and so were we: when we believed, repented of our sins, and were baptized at the Jordan by John, we were cleansed of our sins.

As we learned from the leper, faith brings healing:

Mark 2:1-2 And he (Jesus) entered again into Capernaum after [several] days, and it was reported that he was at [the] house; and straightway many were gathered together, so that there was no longer any room, not even at the door; and he spoke the word to them.

The healing ministry of our mission always begins with the Word. Because it is from that Word that the Power to heal comes. It is that Word that brings faith to life.

Mark 2:3-4 And there come to him [men] bringing a paralytic, borne by four; and, not being able to get near to him on account of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was, and having dug [it] up they let down the couch on which the paralytic lay.

Again we have another beloved Sunday School story: The sick man’s friends know Jesus can heal him and therefore there is no barrier they will not surmount to get him to Jesus. I hope we all have friends like that. I hope we are that kind of friend.

Mark 2:5 But Jesus, seeing their faith, says to the paralytic, Child, thy sins are forgiven [thee].

This is how we know those friends knew that Jesus could do this… even more: that they knew He would do it. They had faith! That “their” in verse 5 must include the paralytic. But his faith that brought him there was altogether different. The healing that he desired, that he really needed, even if none of his friends knew it, was the healing of his heart.

And even if his friends did not know it, Jesus, who knows the hearts of all humanity, knew it. And with the same compassion with which he touched that leper’s body, He reached out and touched this man’s heart: He forgave his sins.

Sometimes we read this story and keep on going as if there was nothing extraordinary about Jesus’ words… We do that because we know, or we think we know, having the advantage of 20 centuries’ time, that Jesus is God and – of course – He can forgive sins.

But we need to pause and put ourselves there with that crowd. We need to imagine being contemporary with them, with Jesus, and with His disciples. Just a few days earlier, we saw Jesus do something else extraordinary: He touched a leper!

Don’t forget that.

That He healed a leper was not necessarily extraordinary. If we, His followers, are convinced that He, like John, is a prophet sent by God, then there should be nothing extraordinary about Him being able to perform miraculous healings. The prophet Elisha healed the Syrian army commander, Naaman, of his leprosy (2 Kings, chapter 5). But he never touched him.

According to the Law of Moses, anyone touching a leper was as unclean as the leper. And such people, ceremonially unclean, were barred from entering the community, from going to the temple, until they were cleansed. And for a sickness like leprosy, which had no cure, this was the equivalent of a life sentence or exile.

Jesus could have healed that leper with a word, but He wanted to make a point. By touching that leper, he became – in the eyes of the world – unclean…  but that didn’t bother Him one bit because in that very same action, He destroyed that leprosy. It was as if it had never been: the sickness taken from that man as far as the east is from the west.

So, Jesus did not have to go through some cleansing rite because of having touched a leper. Instead, he sent the former leper to the priests and the Levites in the Temple to proclaim to them that the miraculous eventuality that God had written into the Law (see Leviticus 14), about a leper being cured (in violation of every natural law they knew), had taken place… to let them know that a new move of God was taking place in their lifetime.

That leper’s faith moved Jesus to do the extraordinary.

Likewise here, the faith of those five friends moved Him to do the extraordinary: He goes ahead and gives that man the healing that he craved, the assurance that his sins were forgiven… Jesus does that, even if He has to do it in front of Teachers of the Law:

Mark 2:6-7 But certain of the scribes were there sitting, and reasoning in their hearts, Why does this [man] thus speak? he blasphemes. Who is able to forgive sins except God alone?

You see, for the sake of that man Jesus has precipitated the beginning of the hostility between the religious leaders and Him. As I said before, probably every move in Jesus’ life was orchestrated by Providence from the very beginning. So, for sure Jesus knew that, eventually, this conflict would begin, and that He would have to contend with them hindering His mission from that point on.

The conflict was coming… But was this the time to start it?

That conflict was not something to take lightly.

Those people were the religious leaders of the community, respected by many; and that meant that their words had influence; and, therefore, that their words had the power to cause many to stumble away from God’s Plan. (Or the power to lead many to Jesus.)

Yet Jesus went ahead and precipitated that conflict for the sake of this one man, who by his own choice, by his own faith, cried out to the Lord for healing.

Have you ever thought about the extravagance of God’s Love…

…the extremes to which He will go, to which He has gone already, unbeknownst to us, in the pursuit of our heart?

What is done is done. The conflict has started. But God can still do His work. (Romans 8:28).

Jesus will give these critics the chance to see that they are being blinded by their own prejudice, maybe by their own pride at being the religious leaders of the community.

Mark 2:8 And straightway Jesus, knowing in his spirit that they are reasoning thus within themselves, said to them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts?

He, as it were, throws down the gauntlet. Part of the objection to a man forgiving sins is that God, according to Scripture, is the only one who can hear the hidden thoughts of men. Therefore, How could Jesus even know what (horrible) sins He was forgiving this man of? Well, off the bat, Jesus dispels that objection: He shows them that He knows what they are pondering in their hearts.

And now, He is going to give them the opportunity to openly discuss this; openly wrestle with this extraordinary event. He is trying to get them to be open to consider that, maybe, they were too hasty, that maybe they are the ones in the wrong. (Because, after all, who can decide how sins are forgiven except God alone?)

Mark 2:9 Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, [Thy] sins are forgiven [thee]; or to say, Arise, and take up thy couch and walk?

Here is His invitation to THINK; just like when His Father said in Isaiah: “Come now, let us reason together”. This is not sophistry. Jesus is not wasting His time putting to them a “riddle”. He really wants them to analyze this question.

Which is easier?

The question cannot mean which words are easier to say because we can say whatever we want with little effort. The question must mean: Which declaration is easier to say, in light of the consequences that will follow?

And the answer to that question depends on who is doing the saying. Any human being can declare to another human being that their sins are forgiven… but what consequence follows? Even if it came true there would be no external evidence. But if a human being claims to be a prophet and openly declares to another man that he is healed of a physical ailment then there’d better be external consequences to prove that. Because if nothing happens, that prophet is proven a false prophet, and false prophets were to be killed by stoning in Israel.

To a human being, there is a difference on the expected consequences between those two declarations. But to God, to the Son of God, there is no difference.

Mark 2:10-12 But that ye may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins, he says to the paralytic, To thee I say, Arise, take up thy couch and go to thine house. And he rose up straightway, and, having taken up his couch, went out before [them] all, so that all were amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it thus.

I think it is interesting that Mark, who is telling us this story, has already told us that Jesus is the Son of God. Not only that, he also told us that the people standing around the day that John baptized Jesus, also knew that, because they heard a voice from heaven saying, “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But the people here were not necessarily witnesses of that event.

So, Jesus calls Himself, the Son of man: a term used by the prophet Daniel to refer to the Messiah, the holy one of God. Everyone in Israel new about those verses in Daniel, they were part of the hope of all who longed for Israel to be set free of the Roman oppression and become again God’s favored children. The religious leaders certainly understood that term. And it is as if Jesus is telling them: “Let me show you what the Messiah is all about… This is His authority. This is His mission.”

In the same way that Jesus used the healing of the leper to send a message of salvation to the priests and Levites in the Temple, He is using the healing of this man to give that same message of salvation to these teachers of the Law gathered around Him:

The Messiah has come… Can you recognize Him?

Another kind of healing

Mark 2:13-14 And he went out again by the sea, and all the crowd came to him, and he taught them.  And passing by, he saw Levi the [son] of Alphaeus sitting at the tax-office, and says to him, Follow me. And he rose up and followed him.

Whether it be sickness of the body, sickness of the spirit, or sickness of the society, the Messiah has come to heal them all. Matthew Levi was a tax-collector: in the eyes of his fellow Jews, that made him a traitor, collaborating with the hated Romans. That community would have had nothing to do with him…

According to Alfred Edersheim’s, Sketches of Jewish social life in the days of Christ; 1870 (as referenced by James Rochford.) https://evidenceunseen.com/theology/historical-theology/tax-collectors-in-jesus-day#fn-maa887mz

• The Babylonian Talmud placed tax collectors alongside “murderers and robbers” (Baba Qama 113a; Nedarim 3.4).
• The rabbis taught that tax collectors were disqualified witnesses in court, societal outcasts, and utter disgraces to their own family (see Sanhedrin, 25b).
• The rabbis excommunicated tax collectors from the synagogue (Nedarim 3.4).
• Tax collectors weren’t allowed to exchange their money at the Temple treasury (Baba Qamma 10.1).

They were hated, and many of them earned that hatred because they could exercise the power the Romans had given them, almost arbitrarily. They decided how much your goods or property were worth and based on that they demanded the tax due; and then they skimmed off the top for themselves. Thus, they became wealthy at the expense of their brother Jews. And if you had to go to one of them for a loan, they charged you high interest. (Something that was forbidden in the Mosaic Law).

As a result, a tax-collector had no extended family, no community to share life with except other tax-collectors and outcasts of society. And here we see Jesus asking one of them to join His community. And to show that He is serious, He Himself joins their community:

Mark 2:15 And it came to pass as He lay at table in his house, that many tax-gatherers and sinners lay at table with Jesus and his disciples; for they were many, and they followed Him.

Isn’t that interesting… hated as they were, rejected as they were by their fellow Jews, no one could keep them from walking through the crowds, going wherever they wanted (Rome protected them). And, so, it turned out that many followed Jesus!

Jesus’ preaching: His Word, His authority, His power, His kindness… His whole mission drew them to Him. Why? Because it was supernatural; it was the fulfilment of God’s purpose; it was the Voice of God calling to His children, and they all had human hearts to hear it.

Mark 2:16 And the scribes and the Pharisees, seeing him eating with sinners and tax-gatherers, said to his disciples, Why [is it] that he eats and drinks with tax-gatherers and sinners?

The religious leaders have chosen conflict. In so doing, they end up asking a question whose answer they think they know (namely, Jesus is just as bad as those sinners and tax-collectors). But that question was put in their lips by Providence so that Jesus could reveal to them again the mission of the Messiah:

Mark 2:17 And Jesus having heard [it] says to them, They that are strong have not need of a physician, but those who are ill. I have not come to call righteous [men], but sinners.

I wonder if those scribes and Pharisees paused to consider this answer or if they just scoffed and turned away. If they had pondered it, if they had tried to understand, they would have realized that Jesus had been saying that from the very beginning:

… the kingdom of God has drawn nigh; repent and believe in the glad tidings.

They would have realized that He is telling them:

“This is my mission and nothing is going to change it. There is only one way to enter into God’s kingdom and that is through repentance. If you don’t think that you too are a sinner, if you don’t think that you too need healing, then that is your problem. But the good news is that anyone who knows how desperately sick they are, can call out to Me and be healed. They are the reason the Messiah is here.”

I think we see here the contrast that our attitude makes when we choose to do God’s work.

I pointed out last time, that if we follow the Messiah with a worldly attitude, when tribulation comes, we will be tempted to ask the powers of this world to protect us. Which to me says that we think God’s power is not enough… that we actually think the world has greater power to defend us than God does.

Here we see another aspect of the same “dynamic”. Jesus, fully confident in the power of God, is not afraid to touch a leper or to eat dinner with sinners. He knows that they cannot “contaminate” him. He knows that he will not become unclean, dragged down into the gutter – like them – by association. On the contrary, He is there to lift them up.

But the religious leaders, who claim to be serving the same all-powerful God, are afraid of even coming close to these people. They think they will be contaminated, they think they will be unclean by association. And they cannot afford that because they think that what God values is their personal ceremonial purity and (external) “holiness”.

The religious leaders were driven in their mission by a self-centered (and, dare I say, self-powered) view of salvation. But Jesus’ mission, the mission of God’s Love, is about a salvation that is meant for everybody and is powered by God.

HOPE

I said in the Introduction that in this chapter the bar is raised.

You see, the leper was sick through no fault of his own: sick because the fallen state of this world, through a random roll of the dice, singled him out for a life of misery. That happens, you know.

But then we are introduced to the paralytic, who, though terribly sick in body, had a worse sickness: a hidden sin. But sin is never hidden from God. And it doesn’t sound to me like that paralytic was trying to hide it from God… not the way Jesus responded to Him. He had faith and that faith was rewarded: He was forgiven. Then Jesus healed his body too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if James, the brother of Jesus, had this event in mind when he wrote in his Epistle (James 5:14-15) Is any sick among you? let him call to [him] the elders of the assembly, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of [the] Lord; and the prayer of faith shall heal the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he be one who has committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.

You see, it is possible for the sin in my life to overflow into sickness of my body.

Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians suggests a similar thing: Rebuking the Corinthians about the disrespect that some exhibited when sharing Communion, he says (1 Corinthians 11: 27-30 (NIV)) So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.

So, the bar is raised because, often, the sickness in my life, the troubles I contend with and which eventually bring me to my knees to cry out to Jesus for help… often, they are my own fault, the result of my own failings, of my own faithlessness.

But there is hope because the pain can shake me awake back into faith.

In the passage about the calling of Matthew Levi we are no longer talking about hidden sin. The lives that Matthew and his friends lived were the definition of sin to their society! Look at the reaction of the Scribes and Pharisees when they see Jesus going to dinner in his house. They are scandalized. They lump tax-collectors and sinners together in the same breath not as hyperbole but in what sounds to me like a proverbial phrase… everyone says it that way, everyone understands what it means.

Think about that. I know we would like to believe that maybe Matthew was an honorable tax-collector, that he was fair in all his dealings, that he never treated anyone harshly. But would you be? Living in that society? Could you? When every person you go to settle accounts with looks at you with hate in their eyes, when they call you insults behind your back (but still close enough for you to hear them), would you treat them all kindly? Tax collecting with a smile… would that be your motto?

That is not the way we are, is it?

It is not, especially when the only companionship we can get is to gather together with all the others that have been likewise rejected by that society. Don’t you think we are going to share stories? Talk about how mean and ugly those oh-so-holy people are?

That is the way we are… even if we know that doing that, living that way, will only serve to make things worse because all it does is keep feeding the root of bitterness that has taken hold of our lives. The sickness, the enemy, is no longer faceless: It is everybody out there that hates me… So, I hate them.

But it is also me when I look in the mirror… until eventually I start hating myself.

Why?

Because, even if we don’t say it out loud, we know deep in our hearts that this is not what life was meant to be, that this is not why God made us His children.

So, indeed, the sickness, the enemy, has a face and it is the face of fallen humanity.

But there is hope, because it is precisely for that fallen humanity that the Son of God has come.

He came to bring healing to all of us.