Advent 2025: Sun 14 Dec
Mark 2.6-7 Religious indignity
6 Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, 7 ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’
The verse above may not capture the shockwave that went around the room when Jesus forgave the man’s sins. For the religious authorities it was BLASPHEMY! They were truly shocked by what Jesus had just said to the man. For them this was not some philosophical point for discussion or an intellectual argument to chew over, balancing one view against another. This was a holy action that was the reserve of God alone. Only God can forgive sins! That’s why they had the priesthood, a major role of whom was to accept and dispose of the sacrifices people paid as the specific penalty for the sin they’d committed. We can’t do away with that industry, surely? It’s ordained in the holy Books of Moses.
Some of those teachers present may have been there to see if they might catch Jesus saying or doing something which they could use as evidence against him. Perhaps he might commit an infringement of some minor point of law (these teachers were experts in minutiae!). I’ve had an Ofsted inspector watching me teach, and I felt the pressure on my every word or action in that classroom. But these teachers didn’t need to watch the detail – here, in this very room, amid the swirling dust and sharp light cutting in from the sky, the rabbi Jesus had the effrontery to speak words that belonged to God alone. They weren’t expecting words of forgiveness to come from his mouth!
Jesus knew exactly what would happen after saying that, and we might wonder whether he could have avoided the charge of blasphemy by, well, just healing the man and moving on. Wouldn’t that avoid a confrontation? Jesus was not looking for a confrontation for its own sake. He spoke forgiveness because he had to. The friends had shown faith enough for the man’s healing – healing was a given, except that Jesus knew the man had hidden issues that needed forgiveness before he could be healed. Only Jesus and the man knew what that sin was, and that is the way it stayed.
Jesus pronounced forgiveness, fully aware that he’d set off a grenade. But he wasn’t done yet.
How did Jesus know the man had sins in need of forgiveness?
Father God, you know me better than I know myself. There is nothing I can hide from you, and you know things about me that I may not realise or do not wish to come to terms with. You love me, you want the best for me. Help me be honest with you so that you may create in me the person you want me to be. Amen.
Follow the familiar words and ask yourself if the promise in them has been fulfilled.
Paul