The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (9:1-8)
In today’s gospel reading we encounter the story of a man who is a paralytic. We are not told his name or anything about him. Only one thing we know for sure. He is paralyzed and cannot walk let alone move. When we hear this story and similar stories we are struck by the degree of suffering and the difficulties caused by such an illness. We look at this man with our all too human eyes and we think that we understand the situation, that we understand what is really wrong. Yet glory be to God that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, does not see the world through our merely human eyes. The Lord goes much further, much deeper in His examination of the person who is before Him. This should cause us to tremble and also to be joyful. We should tremble because God will see the truth about us. We should rejoice because in that truth lies our salvation and our real healing. In God’s truth we see who we are and what we are. We are exposed before God, as Adam and Eve were exposed in the garden. Yet this is to our benefit because what is not exposed before God is not healed.
Through our human understanding we think that the greatest issue with the man is his paralysis. But Our Lord Jesus Christ wipes away this understanding. The greatest enemy of this man is not his physical paralysis, but rather his spiritual paralysis. The paralysis of his soul. This is the deeper point of the gospel. And we are beyond comforted to hear the most gracious and beautiful words spoken of by the Lord Jesus to this man who is suffering in a way that is deeper and more profound than what the onlookers could imagine. He suffers from the sickness of his sins. Yet the Lord sees this man in his entirety and breathes forth words of mercy, healing and life: “Take heart my son; your sins are forgiven.”
Through this gospel passage we learn that the most critical aspect to our human healing is the healing of the soul even more than the healing of the body, although the two are closely tied together. It is the primary and most important aspect because our Lord forgives the man before He causes him to get up and walk.
We each deal with sin in our lives, whether sin of words or deeds or thoughts, whether large sins or small sins. But sin is a paralyzing agent. Sin makes it impossible to live a truly human life, to live a life that reveals us as created in God’s image and likeness.
When I was with some of the kids at camp I asked them a simple question: “why do the commandments of God exist?” I received so many answers, many of them were good answers. They might say “they exist so that we will obey them.” But I asked them to go deeper. Why do the commandments exist? Finally I revealed the answer to them. The commandments exist because God loves us and wants to protect our souls. Sin is not failure to fulfill the letter of the law. It is about protecting the soul from damage and corruption and ultimately death. But not mere death, since everyone has to die. But the death of the soul, which is an everlasting death that stays with us forever.
So in the gospel we see many aspects of the truth although they are often hidden at first glance. We are reminded that sin is the very worst human condition. And we are encouraged by the Lord to take heart. No matter how bad we may seem, no matter what life we lived, no matter what the world may think of us, God still loves us and wants to heal us. He wants to redeem us from corruption. He wants to wipe away our sins and make us whole. For the Orthodox Christians it is clear that this process of complete forgiveness and healing happens in the context of the sacraments of the Church, primarily through Holy Communion, Holy Unction and the Holy Confession.
Some of the saints have mentioned that the greater our confession is, the more it is bold and truthful and humble, the greater the healing that will come through the sacrament. You hear the gospel and you wish that the Lord would offer you this healing and unloose your burdens…then come and confess your sins and do not hide them. God already knows the situation but you have not shown humility and faith in trusting God and the sacraments of the Church to bring you healing and forgiveness. If you are afraid to mention your sins and the things that bring you shame to the priest who is a mere man during confession, then how will you stand before the living God with unconfessed sins?
In the life of the Church, the priest is like those who carry their friend on a stretcher to place them before Christ. The priest does this during confession and he does it even more profoundly during the offering of the liturgy. The priest stands before the table to make an offering on behalf of himself and all of the people and their sins so that Christ who loves mankind may have mercy and see our act of faith through worship. The offering is not in order to pacify or appease God, it is an offering of ourselves, our hearts, our minds and our bodies in order to unite ourselves with the divine life of God. In order to make God’s life, our very life.
St. Paisios (whom we commemorate today) said “God wants us, above all, to be happy and to enjoy inner peace. God is not a tyrant who pesters and intimidates us, but instead he wants us to be free.” Christ is waiting for us to appear before Him with all of our brokenness and with a desire for healing. We do this when we come to the church with and when we pray in our own homes from a pure and humble heart. He did not reject the paralyzed man and neither will he reject us. He desires to forgive us, he desires to heal us, he desires to be with us, so take heart.
Source: Sermons