There are two things that stand out to me in our Gospel passage, about Jesus healing the paralytic. The first is that in healing the paralytic, Jesus recognizes not the faith of the paralytic but the faith of the people who brought Jesus to the paralytic. For as Saint Matthew records: “When Jesus saw their faith.” And the second is that the healing of the paralytic means for Jesus that the sins of the paralytic are forgiven. Again as Saint Matthew records: “He said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.’” And as Jesus says a couple verses later: “That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” There is much to say about both of these things, which in a moment I will look at. But to speak simply, what this points to is the mystery of Christ’s healing, which we turn to today.

We know that the paralytic was sick because he was sinful. This is the straightforward interpretation of the text according to the letter, even according to our Lord’s words and actions. Jesus tells the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, and the paralytic is healed. He was able to rise and walk home, after being previously bound to a bed, unable to walk. What happened is that in being healed, the paralytic learned who Jesus was. He learned that Jesus Christ, the man before him, has authority given to Him by God to forgive sins. He did not know this before, and now that he knew it, and believed it, he was healed. This points to an important aspect of the mystery of Christ’s healing: that knowledge about Christ heals us. Without knowledge of Christ, we are living in our sins. With knowledge, we are able to live in truth.

Living in truth, in the truth which is Christ, is what separates Christians from non-Christians. Hence Saint Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “You must no longer walk as the gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance which is in them.” Ignorance of Christ, not knowing about Him, leads to a life of darkness; such a life of darkness for Paul means hardness of heart, callous, slaves to the sensual, greedy, impure, speaking falsehood, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. A life of darkness is alienated from the life of God. This is the life of sin, the waters darkened by the Devil and his unholy angels.

What a difference it is to know about Christ, for Paul. To learn about Christ allows us, again in Paul’s words, “to put off our old self, which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of our kind, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness.” This is healing. This is the way of healing—we are healed so as to be able to begin to live this way, and living this way heals us more and more. We can think differently, we can speak differently, we can treat people differently, we can forgive ourselves and others. Knowing about Christ allows us to rise and walk: to rise in a resurrection like His, and walk in His footsteps and do all such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in.

It remains to understand why it was that the faith not of the bedridden man, but rather the faith of the people who brought Jesus to him, that stirred forth the healing of Jesus to the man. Again the words from Saint Matthew: “And when Jesus saw their faith,” He then pronounced the paralytic’s sins forgiven, by which he was healed, and able to rise and walk home. The key to this is to remember that the Christianity is lived in community. Specifically, Christianity is lived in a community of the baptized. Paul, for whom baptism was truly life-changing, writes: “having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” The knowledge of Christ in the community around the paralytic, their faith in Christ as healer, led Jesus to pronounce the paralytic forgiven and healed.

Christian community teaches us; Christian community forms us; Christian community—called in Acts 2 “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship”—heals us, because in Christian community we meet Christ, we walk among Him, and He walks among us. And He Who walks among us does so that we know Him, and are known by Him. He Who walks among us is Son of God and Son of Man, with all authority given to Him by the Father Almighty. And Christian community knows Christ as He is revealed in the opening of Scripture, the unveiling of Scripture, and in the breaking of bread, in the Eucharist. Give us this day our daily Bread, because Christ is our bread, and the heavenly Bread which is Christ is our salvation; Jesus Christ is our healing; Jesus Christ hears us, feeds us, and gives us strength: He will always be our Lord: He Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one God, world without end. Amen.

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