2 July 2026 - you won't carry that weight

Today's Readings
(Audio)

And there people brought to him a paralytic lying on a stretcher.
When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic,
"Courage, child, your sins are forgiven."

The friends of the paralytic spared no effort to bring him before the healing power of Jesus. Their friend had a real problem that severely impacted the quality of his life, that prevented him from thriving and him becoming all intended by God. Unless they were aware of the particular sins with which the man struggled they probably found the pronouncement of his forgiveness as anticlimactic. It would be like going to the ministry of some famous healer hoping for a cure to a longtime ailment but only being able to receive sacramental confession. This would probably feel like a let down, and yet to Jesus forgiveness is a greater and more important gift than merely physical healing. Healing of the soul, which lasts forever, takes primacy over healing of the body, which will again begin to decay the moment is temporarily restored. But this is not to say that Jesus does not care about the problems of the body such as sickness or disability.

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 stretcher, and go home."

What was the main purpose of the healing? Was it to merely restore the man to health so that he could live the normal life of which he had been until that moment deprived? No. It had that effect, but that wasn't the primary point. Rather it was to help people to experience a spiritual truth through a physical sign. It was meant to help the friends who brought the paralytic to Jesus to appreciate that their effort meant more than they knew. It was to help those skeptics in the crowd who heard his words understand that Jesus was able to do something merely by speaking that would otherwise require the whole sacrificial system of the temple. It revealed that he was in the unique position to offer forgiveness on behalf of God himself, and this, ultimately, because that was who he was. It was very much a revelation, a pulling back of the curtain on his deepest identity.

He rose and went home.
When the crowds saw this they were struck with awe
and glorified God who had given such authority to men.

It seemed that the forgiveness of the paralytic followed by his healing had every effect Jesus intended. It resulted in the man rising and going home to a new life. It resulted in the crowds coming to understand a little better who Jesus was. But no doubt, the most profound result was actually in the soul, not the body, of the former paralytic himself. This part we don't see described in the story. We know nothing of the way sin had distorted his very identity. But we are sure that it was a deeper paralysis than the merely physical. It probably seemed even more intractable, more rooted in his very identity, more inseparable from who he was as a person. And yet, he left without that weight. However light his body felt when he stood for the first time (perhaps ever), we believe that his spirit felt lighter still. 

Darrell Evans - Trading My Sorrows