Which is easier?

https://biblehub.com/niv/mark/2.htm

Mark 2: 1-12

Jesus Forgives and Heals a Paralysed Man

As a graduate of English Literature and English Language, I find myself fortunate in that I am used to analysing language. My students in my days as an English teacher often suggested that I “read too much” into the specific words in a text, but I always tried to show them that language is a device that contains power and, above all, meaning.

The passage early in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus first forgives and then heals a paralysed man is one such example of this. As I always find in the Gospels, a close reading is necessary for not just true reflection but also a deep understanding of the Lord and ourselves.

On the surface, this is a story of simplicity: Jesus enters Capernaum, the people gather outside his place of rest, they lift a paralysed man down into his home via the roof, and Jesus forgives and heals him – much to the disgust of local “teachers of the law”, who see nothing but blasphemy.

However, what is particularly resonant is how Jesus responds to this challenge. He reads their hearts and says to them: “Which is easier: to say to this paralysed man, ‘Yours sins are forgiven’, or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk?’” before then openly proving his abilities by commanding that the man does just that.

Again, it is vital to look closely at the language here. It is Jesus’s rhetorical question that is most challenging to the teachers and to us today: “Which is easier?”

A lay person may answer to Jesus that surely it is easier to tell someone that they are forgiven than to cure them of paralysis. The best medical doctors in 2022 cannot simply just cure a paraplegic. Yet the rhetorical question is obviously deliberate from Jesus; it is a challenge to us to reflect that sometimes we find it impossible to forgive someone who has hurt us. Indeed, sometimes it does seem more likely to us that something as impossible as finding a cure for all the medical ills of the world would happen before we can countenance forgiving our enemy’s sins. The paradox here is the paralysis of the man: once his sins are forgiven, he can move again. Likewise, the paralysis of the forgiver is removed once bestowed.

Therefore, which is easier to you? Jesus shows us that we can forgive and accept forgiveness, and to do so is to be Sons of Man, just like him.