Monday, January 4, 2021 The Good Book Club, Mark 2:1-12
Mark 2:1-12 The Voice
5 Jesus recognized the faith of these men.
Jesus (to the paralyzed man): Son, your sins are forgiven.
6-7 Some scribes were sitting in the crowd, and they didn’t like what they were hearing.
Scribes (reasoning to themselves): What does this Jesus think He is doing? This kind of talk is blasphemy, an offense against the Most High!Only God can forgive sins.
8 At once Jesus realized what they were thinking. He turned to them.
Jesus: Why do My words trouble you so? 9 Think about this: is it easier to tell this paralyzed man, “Your sins are forgiven,” or to tell him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk”? 10 Still, I want to show you that the Son of Man has been given the authority on earth to forgive sins. (to the paralytic) 11 Get up, pick up your mat, and go home.
12 The man rose to his feet, immediately rolled up his mat, and walked out into the streets. Everyone in the crowd was amazed. All they could do was shake their heads,thank God for this miracle, and say to each other, “We’ve never seen anything like that!”
This is a great story, isn't it! Mark skillfully cultivates our contempt for the conniving, self-satisfied, certitudinous characters who will grow to hate Jesus and eventually plot and kill him. Here it's the scribes, the lawyers of the day, whose religious specialty was interpreting the Law of Moses. Today they damn Jesus, saying only God can forgive sins. Next thing you know, they and others will be condemning Jesus for doing God's works of lovingkindness on the Sabbath, but we're not there yet.
The pictures are of Capernaum, which Jesus made his hometown as an adult.
So far, everyone but the bad guys seems delighted with Jesus. Here, Mark says those in the crowd were ἐξίστασθαι, they were flabbergasted. Of course they were, they're in Capernaum, a town of about 1,500 people at the time, everyone knows, or knows of, everyone else, and everybody, including Jesus had known this paralyzed man all their lives as friends and neighbors together.
From 1984 to 1998, Linda, Tass and I lived in Apalachicola, a wonderful small town of some 2,500 people, and in those fourteen years we got to know of almost everyone in town. In Apalachicola, if I needed to see a parishioner or friend and s/he wasn't home, all I had to do was drive around town a few minutes until I found their car. Capernaum is even smaller, everyone knows everyone and everyone's troubles, so, I'm saying these five guys already knew Jesus, and they knew the owner of the house where Jesus was, well enough to go up on the roof and open a hole big enough to lower their friend on a pallet.
How must it have been, everyone knowing Jesus as that sort of eccentric but likeable young man, quieter than most of the guys (?), more a loner and thinker than his closest drinking buddies Peter, James and John [not so sure about that, as later it seems he was called "a glutton and a drunkard"], who got involved with John the Baptist, got baptized, got religion, found himself, came home to Capernaum, and - - jeepers, look at him now, he's healing people, really? let's go see for ourselves!
There are those swarms of people, Mark makes me think everybody in town was crowding around the house, and the crowds don't lighten up as Mark's story develops.
One thing that especially intrigues me. Here, Mark quotes Jesus introducing the term Son of Man, which we will hear often before the story ends. Scholars point out that there are at least three ways "the Son of Man" can be understood, and each time Jesus uses it you need to consider the context to sense which of the three meanings is implied; although more often than not, it's ambiguous:
- there is our understanding that Jesus is talking about himself;
- the term can simply mean people, human beings in general;
- but the term is already known to the Jews in the crowd as the apocalyptic figure in Daniel 7, whom Daniel saw in his night vision as the One whom the Ancient of Days (God) will send to earth to take charge of the new Kingdom of God on earth. Look at the passage:
Daniel 7.13 “In my night vision I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
The footnote (a) says that the Aramaic term bar enash, which we translate Son of Man, simply means a human being.
Anyway, here it's ambiguous. What does Mark think Jesus means by it? I think Mark means for us to start acquiring the notion that Jesus is, and realizes himself to be, that long-expected bar enash sent by God to proclaim, establish, and reign over the Kingdom.
And the cosmic bar enash surely would have God's own power to forgive sins, eh?
But as I say, Mark leaves it totally ambiguous. Jesus may mean that every human being has the power to forgive sins. At least we can forgive those who sin against us.
Mark is introducing early, the thought that Jesus, whom Mark introduces as the Son of God, is also the Son of Man.
All this takes place in and around a house in the fishing village of Capernaum, where Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee made his home as an adult.
I'm going to add a Sunday School class idea for your thought. In Mark's gospel,
- Jesus is "called" at his baptism.
- Goes off on his own for a long time to think about it. Realizes he's not meant to be a carpenter like Joseph or a fisherman like his friends in Capernaum.
- Finds himself in God's call and goes home to get to work.
Maybe you can see your own life in this sequence of life events, as I can find myself, my own life, my personal Heilsgeschichte. Growing up in Panama City, Having a sense of Call very early, but at college, Rejecting the idea and going off for twenty years in the Navy, Returning to real life and finally giving in to the sense of call that was Pressed forcefully on me by friends at church and relatives. Looking back, my first day at theological seminary may have been the most peaceful day of my entire life, realizing with overwhelming relief, Finally, Home, Home at Last.
Do you have such a story? Think about it. Maybe you DO, and it never occurred to you until now, Jesus coming home to Capernaum.
T+
Capernaum pics pinched online, including artists' sketches visualizing what the town must have been like in Jesus' time.