WHICH IS EASIER?

 A SERMON FOR THE 18TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Did you notice in today’s Gospel that when they brought the man sick of the palsy to our Lord, Jesus had no intention of healing him.  It says that our Lord “saw their faith” already.  So he didn’t need to perform a miracle.  Miracles were our Lord’s way of reinforcing the credibility and authority of his teaching by showing people he could do things they couldn’t.  People needed to have faith in him and in what he taught them, but for most of them, their faith was not strong enough to make them change their lives.  No, what they needed was something that that would astonish them, something that would make them stop in their tracks and go “Ooh” and “Aah”.  So very often, Our Lord would deign to grant their wishes and would perform a miracle.  He made the blind to see, the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak; he made lame men walk and cleansed lepers.  “Ooh!  Aah!”  But in this particular case he “saw their faith”, he saw that these people who brought him the man sick of the palsy already had a sufficiently strong faith and didn’t need any miraculous displays of his supernatural powers.

So even though they had brought him this sick man, presumably so that our Lord could heal him, Jesus was prepared to refuse that healing.  Perhaps it was better for this sick man to earn a higher place in heaven through his suffering, perhaps our Lord wanted to test the man’s faith by allowing his sickness to continue.  Whatever the reason for not curing him, our Lord nevertheless wanted to do something for this poor man.  So he did.  He forgave his sins.

Think about this a moment from God’s perspective.  When God looks down on us, living our lives in this world, lives which have no other purpose than to test us and see if we love God enough to merit heaven, what do you think is most important in this divine inspection of his creatures?  Is God primarily interested in whether our bodies are healthy?  Or whether our souls are healthy?  Which is more important to God—that we avoid temporary suffering in this vale of tears, or eternal suffering in hell?  While God is certainly compassionate for our temporal suffering, obviously he has more care for our souls than our bodies.  Thus, when they bring to him a man suffering from the palsy, our Lord seeks to reward them, and him, by curing the man’s soul rather than his body.  He says to the man “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”  And hopefully, since this was far more consequential to the sick man than merely curing his body, both he and those who had carried him there were indeed “of good cheer,” believing that he was far better off with this spiritual healing he had received.

But then of course, as is always the case, there are those nearby who do not have such good faith in our Lord.  “Certain of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemeth.”  These men of little faith refused to believe that Christ was the Son of God and that he had power to forgive sins.  Of course, it was not Christ who blasphemed.  The blasphemy came from those who accused the Son of God of blasphemy.  Our Lord knew exactly what they were thinking and replied to their evil thoughts: “Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?  For whether is easier, to say Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise and walk?” 

Let’s ask ourselves at this point in the story, whom do we more closely resemble?  The people who were perfectly content with the spiritual healing of the man with the palsy, the forgiveness of his sins?   Or the scribes who needed proof that Christ had such power, who needed a miracle before they would even consider believing in him?  Are we of good cheer when we come out of the confessional with our sins forgiven?  Or do we come out complaining because we have a headache, or because the chapel is too warm, or the sermon too long?  Do we secretly wish for miracles, that our physical ailments and discomforts may vanish away in a puff of smoke, or that I might finally have written a sermon that’s less than ten minutes?  That’s one miracle that isn’t happening today.  But think about it, are we men of faith?  Or men of little faith?  Can we be content with the supernatural miracles hidden in the sacraments, the miracle of forgiveness in Confession, the miracle of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist?  Or are we constantly seeking wonders?   Hollywood has succeeded to a large extent in making amazing events and astonishing superpowers normal.  From Clarence the Angel to the Bionic Man, we can “ooh” and “aah” all day long.  And if we stop to think for a moment, isn’t this what the devil wanted all along?  That we become numb to the truly miraculous, and treat with contempt those hidden miracles that we cannot see, those that truly count?

Let’s pause and reflect on the truly amazing powers of God.  Whether we see them, as the people in Fatima back in 1917 saw the Miracle of the Sun, or whether we see them only through the eyes of faith, such as the real presence of God on our altar this morning, God’s powers are awesome enough that we should indeed stand in awe before them.  We don’t need to hear the equivalent of those words, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.”  We don’t need to be cured of our diseases, we don’t need for all our sufferings and tribulations to just go away.  What we do need is the faith to be of good cheer, that the sacraments of our Holy Church will provide us with the graces we need to save our souls.  That really is something that should make us rejoice.  For that is really all we need.