Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in the healing presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today's gospel story includes several details that emphasize the poverty of the situation.

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay.

The dwelling is typical for the poor people of the era. It has an earthen roof, which explains why the carriers of the paralytic can dig through it in order to gain entrance to the crowded house. The "mat" or "stretcher" on which the man lies is a poor man's bed or mattress (a word sometimes used for a bedroll used by soldiers). Even though the crowd is large, they crowd into the small single room that is the only enclosed room of the home. The paralytic is carried in by friends on a stretcher, not ushered in by servants who present him in style. And having no status, he and his friends are forced to make an opening in the roof in order to get near Jesus; not a single person moves aside or makes way for a man such as this paralytic.

All the more reason for Jesus to be impressed at his presentation before him that day:

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

And so, at the first word, Jesus acknowledges this poor and afflicted man as a whole member of the community, a brother in faith, kin in the family of believers. "Son" he says to him. Some translations read "Child", implying the same thing-"child of God." Both would indicate that this person, rejected by the community by virtue of his disease, belongs already. And when Jesus opens his heart with the word "Son," he also offers the gift that comes with being a part of the community of faith. That gift is wholeness and healing. It comes with those precious words, "your sins are forgiven."

The subject of wholeness and healing brings to mind a story that I heard on one my trips with my wife to her home in South Haven, Michigan. It is a simple story of her sister, Carol, and her niece coming across a dead skunk while walking along the road one day. Kendall immediately notices the pungent and acrid odor and asks. "What's that?" And mother replies, "Oh, that's normal for skunks. The smell is how they protect themselves." Kendall pauses for a moment and observes, "Didn't work, did it?"

It is that kind of problem that the healing and exorcism texts we have considered these past several weeks poses. We need a new way of looking at what seems a common thing. We read these healing stories week after week, year after year, and our minds begin to blur the distinctions among them and to forget the separation of time that exists between ancient Palestine and today.

I came across a uniquely clear account of this matter of healing and wholeness in a commentary on Mark. Perhaps it will help you enter into the mindset of the people who inhabit the stories of scripture. It makes the important distinction between illness and disease-one that Alicia noted last week as between "cure" and "healing" and two words we might think of as totally interchangeable. The author distinguishes between two approaches to the social meaning of sickness—the modern and the ancient—using the words "ethnomedicine" and "biomedicine". It cuts the distinctions too sharply, but it's useful.

"Ethnomedicine places primacy on the culturally (ethnically) construed causes of illness. In contrast, biomedicine places primary emphasis on biological symptoms and pathogens. Disease derives from a biomedical perspective that sees abnormalities in the structure and/or function of organ systems. These are pathological states independent of whether or not they are culturally recognized. Disease affects individuals, and only individuals are treated. Illness (on the other hand) is a sociocultural perspective that is concerned with personal perception and experience of certain socially disvalued states including, but not limited to, disease. Illness inevitably affects others: the significant other, the family, the neighborhood, the village."

Marie and I read recently a wonderful book by Tracy Kidder called "Mountains Beyond Mountains." It details the work of Paul Farmer and his organization Partners in Health in the nation of Haiti. He learns quickly that healing is not only a matter of biomedicine; he had to learn ethnomedicine too—related to the faith and the superstitions of the people he seeks to help.

"In the context of the health-care system of rural Palestine, Jesus and all healers of that period...only perceive(d) illnesses and not diseases.... Notice in each healing the almost total disregard of symptoms (something very essential to disease). Instead there is constant concern for meaning.... Jesus' activity is best described...as healing, not as curing. He provides social meaning for the life problems resulting from the sickness." (Myers, "Binding the Strong Man," Orbis, 1988, 145)

Mark's Jesus seeks always to restore the social wholeness denied to the sick or impure. And that is why his healing of the diseased or ill is virtually interchangeable with his conversation with them. To one "leper" (encountered last week), Jesus offers a declaration of wholeness (1:41ff.), to another simply the solidarity of table fellowship (in chapter 14). Both acts defy the order that segregates anyone lacking bodily integrity; both challenge the prevailing social boundaries and class barriers. This is why Jesus the healer was a threat to "civic order."

The man's illness—his lack of bodily wholeness—would have been attributed to either his own sin, or, if a birth defect, inherited sin; he was thus denied full status in the community. But Jesus summarily releases him from all debt by saying, "Son, your sins are forgiven." He thereby restores his social wholeness and thus his personhood. That, in turn, is equated with the restoration of his physical wholeness. The man walks, and the crowd glorifies God: the community—a physical, social, and spiritual entity—has been restored. And the scribes are upset because they are the ones who are designated, as officers of the synagogue, to mediate the power of God. Their charge, "He blasphemed" is the same one leveled at the end of the story (14:64); Mark already lets us know that the passion is not far off.

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, "Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, "Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is it easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk'? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"—he said to the paralytic—"I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home."

What could be easier or more gracious? In defiance of everything that excludes, Jesus speaks simply the word of acceptance and grace. What for the scribes is bad news is abiding good news for the paralytic. And the response is immediate:

And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

It is indeed an amazing thing whenever the sinner or the ill, who have been placed on the margins of the community, are restored. It is worth glorifying God when the body of Christ, once broken, is made whole again.

Isn't it intriguing that what Jesus pronounces here was already realized in the act that brought the paralyzed man before our Lord? Four among a group of people come carrying this man to Jesus. It seems to me that this is a foreshadowing of the forgiveness of Jesus—even a realization of it prior to its being spoken. This group had done the accepting on a small scale that Jesus did on behalf of the entire community and of God. For if we understand that wholeness is granted by inclusion in community, his friends were already surrounding the paralytic with a caring society.

So, now that we have a different perspective on skunks and gospel healings, I'd like to suggest that the text portrays for us a parable of our own lives. Jesus is calling us to feel the caring community that already surrounds us, to recognize the friends who have carried and continue to carry us bodily into the space of worship and renewal, to received the forgiveness that is offered with a word-"my son", "my daughter", and to know the wholeness that comes from canceling our common debts one to another in a community that feels just a bit like the heaven for which we aim and upon which our lives are modeled. Jesus is speaking to us when he says:

Son, your sins are forgiven.

I traveled back to my hometown-Richmond, Indiana—in order to attend a funeral on Friday for a friend who was one of those who bore me into the community of the church. I sang in the church choir with Jim for about twelve years—from 8th grade until I left for seminary. He was one of those special people who knew how to surround others with grace and caring, with an acceptance that pointed to the love of God. He called me "one of his boys." Perhaps you too have friends who carried you into the faith, bodily or spiritually, and who spoke to you words like these:

"Son/daughter, you are welcome here." Or even, "Your sins are forgiven."

Is this easy, or what? To hear the proclamation of kinship, of belonging, and of forgiveness, with a word, seems the simplest of matters. Even Jesus considered it the most straightforward way to create restored community-easier certainly than a longer set of instruction related to getting up, taking the mat, and walking. There is a certain elegance here, an anchoring of speech in the rock of basic meaning, ignoring social and religious convention. Jesus cuts simply to the heart. And though simple, I know that it is not always so easy, either to hear of another forgiven or to accept the forgiveness offered to the self. We too have our scribal objections, our obfuscations, our excuses not to hear or accept.

A poem based on this story by David L. Bartlett begins: