Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, 2:00pm service of Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

admin | 26 October 2014

“That ye may know”

Jesus wants us to know that he is the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins connects us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The forgiveness of sins is about the death and resurrection of Jesus in us.

St. Matthew’s story of the paralytic abbreviates St. Mark’s account. St. Mark’s fuller story reads like a burial-scene. The paralytic is helpless as the dead, he is carried out like the dead by his four bearers; a hole is opened for him, as for the dead, he is lowered into it, as unto his grave. But falling, he does not fall into clay, he falls before the feet of the Son of God, who says to him, first, “thy sins are forgiven thee” and then “arise and walk” (Austin Farrer).

With Matthew, too, we are brought dead in our sins into the presence of Christ. We are brought by faith and Jesus, seeing the faith of those who brought him, says, “Son be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee”.

We cannot understand the forgiveness of sins unless we understand that we are sinners. Here the acknowledgment by Jesus that we are sinners and, yes, that suffering is somehow connected to our being sinners, is not judgment leading to despair, but good news leading to resurrection and new life – resurrection and new life in us through Jesus.

Jesus is by his own death the forgiveness of our sins; he is the resurrection and the life through his own resurrection. We are thrown into the life-giving sepulchre of Christ, we touch the slain and living Christ, his body and his blood; our sins are forgiven us and we live by him; we arise to walk in all the good works that he has prepared for us to walk in (Austin Farrer).

Jesus wants us to know that he is the forgiveness of sins. To that end, he teaches us that we are sinners – outwardly in the suffering of our bodies, inwardly in the hardness of our hearts, calling what is good evil. But he shows us, too, that he is God with us, Jesus the Lord, the one who can forgive sins and who is the forgiveness of our sins. “That you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, then saith he to the sick of the palsy, ‘Arise and walk’”.

The forgiveness of sins is just like that – we are identified with the death of Christ in our sins; we are identified with him in his resurrection; his life lives in us. We arise to walk in all the good works that he has prepared for us to walk in. The pattern of our life is the death and rising to life of Christ in us. It is what he wants us to know. It belongs to who we are.