7th Sunday Year B - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2012

Jesus had been on the Galilee circuit for some time before today's incident.  Over that time, he had healed a lot of people, and set many free from their compulsive, destructive demons.  I wonder how he felt after so much of that? whether he reflected much on it?  How fruitful had it been? What had it achieved? Was that what he had come to do? Was it  what people really needed? what the world needed?  Had Galilee become a happier, more peaceful place?  We might ask: What does our world need?  What do we need to be saved from?  Is our world a happy world?

I wonder if today's Gospel incident reflects a change in perspective, and a deeper insight, on Jesus' part?  His spontaneous response to the paralytic was to focus on his sin and to respond to it by affirming the availability of God's forgiveness.  There are two significant issues here.

The first is the reality of Sin.  And let's be concrete.  Our concrete sins are all practical expressions of deeper sin [or sinfulness].  They reflect a generalised hostility towards others, a rivalry, a competitiveness, a choice for, or affirmation of, self-interest at the price of others.  On the world scene it is obvious – just tune in to the evening news: a constant barrage of hostility and violence.  What has driven/is driving the economic crisis?  And, in the fall-out, who looks after whose interests?  A similar dynamic operates at national and state levels: self-interest, lobby groups, power-seeking, hostility – generating little more than negative criticism, adolescent bad mouthing, and refusal to cooperate.  It all so easily happens wherever people group together – in business, in Church, in family, etc..

At the heart of the world's problems lies sin.  The dominant factor undermining people's peace and happiness is sin.  People can be as healthy as can be, as wealthy as can be, as famous and as powerful as can be, and, yet, desperately unhappy, unsatisfied, eaten away by envy, resentment and bitterness.  What we need is to be set free from the sin that takes over our hearts and destroys us and our world.

I wonder if it was this growing insight that led Jesus to respond to the paralytic with the message: Your sins are forgiven?  [Interesting to note, too, in passing, the response of the scribes sitting there and observing everything: He was stepping on their turf, challenging their expertise – so: resentment and criticism.]

This brings us to a second point in today's Gospel.  Jesus' response to the paralytic's sin, [indeed, to the world's sin],  was not stronger law-enforcement measures [which can never touch the heart], not even insistence on sorrow or purpose of amendment; but simply affirming God's offer of forgiveness, unconditional forgiveness.  God's remedy, Jesus' remedy, for the pervasive destructive mess of our world begins with forgiveness.  The world's salvation from its own inescapable unhappiness and absence of peace is forgiveness.

Remember the message of the risen Jesus?  As the Father sent me, so I send you.  Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and [sadly, because we can totally ignore it], whose sins you retain are retained.  Our mission is not complicated, though perhaps we have done more retaining than forgiving, because, despite its simplicity, forgiveness is very difficult.  What society needs, if people are ever to enjoy true peace and happiness is to  learn to forgive, to prioritise forgiveness, to run the risk of forgiveness, to try what seems , at times, impossible – but may not be.

And now we move into Eucharist, hearing in our hearts the voice of Jesus assuring us where he is at, at least: My child, your sins are forgiven!