Holy, Wholly
Matthew 9:1-8; 21:1-11
March 28, 2021
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Image: Palm Sunday by Evans Yegon, at www.TrueAfricanArt.com
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/brW9-FLqb9M
Very often, first century people drew a direct line between sin and sickness. For them, physical health was directly related to spiritual health. It followed that if you were a little bit sick, then you had probably been a little bit sinful. And if you were very sick, then you had sinned a lot. If you were so sick that you were flat on your back, unable to walk and had to be carried, then you were probably one of the worst sinners around.
That is the context when some friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus. Most of the onlookers probably think that man is bad news, maybe that he doesn’t even deserve to be healed.
Jesus sees the man and says “Take heart. Your sins are forgiven.” It kind of makes sense that he would say that. The people understand sin and physical suffering to be so intertwined that forgiveness is going to seem like a necessary part in the healing process.
As soon as Jesus says “your sins are forgiven,” the authorities say “Blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins.” And Jesus says, “You are so right! And so that you may understand that God is at work in this place, I say to this man, ‘Take up and your mat and walk!’”
And he does.
Just before that, Jesus raises the question of whether it is harder to forgive sins or perform physical healing. This is kind of a rhetorical question. Physical healing requires external observable proof, so it is harder in that sense, but forgiving sins is more controversial. It is what gets Jesus into trouble.
Many other humans were healers, but only God could forgive sins. So, it would have been easier for Jesus if he had just stuck to physical healing. It would also have been easier for Jesus to stay out of the public eye, to avoid the confrontations that led to the cross, but Jesus’s way was the way of faithfulness and obedience, not the way of ease. [1]
So, this time, he presses the point. He does not simply say “Your faith has made you well” as he has in other cases, but he names a link between healing and forgiveness.
Jesus is concerned with human suffering on all levels. What we see here is not simply the forgiveness of one person’s sins, but a symbolic act that demonstrates that Jesus is empowered by God to overcome everything that corrupts human existence and to usher in a new era of human wholeness.[2]
The first century people often drew a direct line between sin and suffering, between behavior and sickness. We do too. We know the dangers of smoking, of poor nutrition, of inadequate exercise. Sometimes, that leads us to a place of blaming those who are ill for their own illness. But the line is not usually so direct. We are careful not to suggest that physical illness is divine punishment for wrong-doing.
So, we need to speak about this carefully, but also to recognize that there are connections between our spiritual and physical and social health. There are links between our thoughts, our internal narratives and our behaviors, and correspondingly between our actions and the sense of wholeness and shalom we find in our lives.
This is the only story in Matthew’s gospel which suggests a link between sin and illness, a connection between healing and forgiveness. It may be instructive for us to also notice that before Jesus forgives his sins, he notices their faith. Not the faith of the individual man but the faith of his companions who carry him. And so, the community is involved. In this story which is the only one to make a link between sin and illness, there is also a link to the faith of a community. In Matthew’s gospel there is a sense that forgiveness is practiced and lived out in community.
I want to suggest that our spiritual health is bound up with our physical health, and that Jesus intends wholeness in every aspect of our lives. The best way I know to understand this is in an example from humans acting in community. So, I have a long story to share. Please bear with me.
You remember Maya Angelou. She was a poet and writer and civil rights activist. Incredible person with incredible stories. She lived on the East Coast but got to be good friends with a man in California. One time when she was out there, she called him up on the phone. They were catching up on their lives.
He had recently been in Europe, dealing with some issues related to American soldiers stationed there. She said, “How did it go?”
He said, "The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."
She said, "What did you say?"
He repeated himself “The black troops have a particularly hard time because they are black and there aren't many blacks around. But our boys, also..."
and again, she said, “what did you say?”
The third time, he heard himself and he said, “This is the most awful thing I have ever done. I can’t continue this conversation. I have to hang up.” He couldn’t believe that in conversation with Maya Angelou, he had talked about black soldiers as others and referred to the white ones as “ours.”
But Maya Angelou said, “No, don’t hang up. We need to talk about this, because this is what racial prejudice is, a deeply ingrained sense of difference between our boys and them.”
So, they agreed to meet for more conversation. But when she tried to get ahold of him after that, to set up a meeting, he didn’t take her calls and didn’t return her messages and the whole thing fizzled out.
Fifteen years went by. She went back to the Bay Area for another conference. At the end of one session, she was asked about racism and she said that story, about that relationship which had fizzled out. The next day, she addressed the audience again. She said, “Remember yesterday when I said that story? Well, as I was leaving, a man in the audience stood up and said, “Here I am.”
It was the man she had been talking about. As she said that, the man himself again rose up, a small, white, Episcopal clergyman as it turned out. He walked up to the platform and threw his arms around Maya Angelou and she around him. They embraced one another and they wept.
Frederick Buechner happened to be there. He said that it was one of the most moving moments he had ever been a part of. He said it was moving because it put on display not only racial barriers, but so many different kinds of barriers that separate human beings -- fear, mistrust, misunderstanding, anger, loneliness, the inability to communicate with each other, even those we love the most and are closest to.[3]
We are all susceptible to those barriers, all caught by insidious forces that are beyond our control or comprehension. That Episcopal priest caught himself saying “our boys” but not until the third time he said it.
I say this is insidious because we don’t seem to be able to learn from previous generations. We seem to be caught in the same cycles of fear and violence and separation. You undoubtedly saw the same story that I did yesterday. About the arrest of George Representative Park Cannon who dared to call attention to the suppression of black voters in her state. She repeatedly knocked on the door of the Governor as he signed the 98-page bill. She disturbed the peace, calling attention to what was happening. You probably saw, as I did, that within that chamber were 6 white men witnessing the signing while behind them on the wall was a picture of a historic plantation where more than 300 people were enslaved. [4] Many are saying that this is simply the latest version of Jim Crow. It certainly feels like a cycle that has been seen before.
Some might say that racism is a social sickness that starts with the sin of prejudice or not loving your neighbor as yourself. That is one way to look at it. But there are ties to physical illness as well. A recent study found that white people live, on average, 5 years longer than black people. The average white person is more likely to have health insurance, flexible work conditions, a nearby grocery store and a less polluted neighborhood.[5] Can we see a direct line between sin and sickness now?
That is the nature of sin and sickness – they are both part of the human condition, part of our fallenness. Generation after generation, we are unable to free ourselves from their grip. This is why when Jesus parades into Jerusalem, the people cry out “Hosanna” which means “Save us.”
Jesus claims the authority to forgive sins, but more importantly he owns his authority as One empowered by God to defeat everything that corrupts human existence, to usher in a new era of human wholeness. You and I need that every bit as much as the man lying on the mat in Capernaum. This is why rely on Jesus for liberation and healing. This is why we live as those who are forgiven and those who extend that same forgiveness to those around us.
This is why, on Palm Sunday, we continue to cry out “Hosanna – Save us”. May it be so for you and for me. Amen.
[1] Brian P. Stoffregen at http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark2x1.htm
[2] Walter T. Wilson, Healing in the Gospel of Matthew, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), p. 148
[3]https://day1.org/articles/5d9b820ef71918cdf2003ceb/in_honor_of_maya_angelou
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/27/georgia-governor-painting-slave-plantation-voting-bill-signing
[5] German Lopez, The Black-white life expectancy gap grew in 2020 — but it can be reversed, Vox, February 24, 2021 https://www.vox.com/22285868/black-white-life-expectancy-gap-covid-19-health