Marking the Gospel. Jody Seymour
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does seem to spend a lot of time in Capernaum. Does Jesus’ family move to Capernaum later? Tradition has it that Joseph dies while Jesus is young. It is possible that Mary moves to Capernaum to be with or near relatives. Go ahead, reach into your own bucket and imagine.
One never knows how much weight to put on one piece of tile. It may be that Mark simply puts in a tile that he is given, or that he is making a theological statement. It is important to remember that the Bible is a rich mosaic and not a simple paint-by-number, one-dimensional picture. We must honor the nature of how our Scriptures are put together. Since no one is looking over Mark’s shoulder, there will be different opinions as to what Mark is doing as he tells the Jesus story.
Theologically speaking, maybe we are not to know where Jesus’ home is. Jesus’ home is where the works of God happen. Jesus is at home where people believe in the Son of Man.
Whatever home means, and to get back to the story, Jesus is there when four people show up carrying a paralyzed man. The four men cannot get near Jesus because of the crowd that has gathered. Mark has already made Jesus a star by the end of chapter one, with his brief mention of how Jesus’ fame is now established throughout all of Galilee. Remember, he is telling the Jesus story with a sense of urgency.
Mark simply states, “It was reported that he was at home,” and that is all it takes for a crowd to gather. One can imagine the scene of people packed into the tiny dwelling. Jesus does not hang out with wealthy people nor does he come from rich stock. Home is a one room, hut-like dwelling with a thatched roof. Stairs are placed on one side of the small house for perhaps climbing onto the roof to catch the cool evening breezes. Air-conditioning is a few centuries away, and creativity is the order of the day when it comes to getting cool.
Mark wants us to really see this scene. The clue to this is that he takes so many verses to describe the picture. Mark has evidently put two scenes together. Those who study such things tell us that Mark takes a healing story and puts it with another theme that he wants to portray, that of Jesus’ forgiveness of sins.
Healing stories usually take the form of a description of the person to be healed, an action by the healer, a pronouncement of the healing, and a proclamation by the person healed. Mark inserts into this standard formula the added element of the forgiveness of sins. Even the original language betrays an interruption in the text. Mark puts in another tile in order to tell his story. Mark knows that it is the fact that Jesus is going around forgiving sins that gets him into real trouble with the scribes and authorities. Mark wants to get this into his story early.
For those of us in the present day who read Mark’s words, his mosaic creates questions. Does sin cause illness? In Jesus’ day many people believe that it does. The old Deuteronomic ethic teaches that if something is physically wrong with you, either you or your parents must have committed a terrible sin. Jesus appears to be participating in this ethic.
Stepping back from the mosaic pieces and seeing the total picture allows us to see that while Jesus probably does understand the intricate relationship between psychological health and physical well-being, he definitely does not believe in the causal relationship of sin and sickness that his peers share.
The scribes, conveniently, are present in this crowded scene. It is crowded literally and theologically. The scribes do not get that Jesus is bringing in a new kingdom in which sins are forgiven by the Son of Man. All the scribes can think about is that their old kingdom has no room in it for some upstart to be forgiving sins.
Jesus “perceives in his spirit” that the scribes are questioning his actions and asks them if it is easier to say, “Get up and walk, you are well,” or, “Your sins are forgiven.” Jesus is a good reader of faces. He does not even have to wait for the scribes to raise their hands at this first-century press conference. Jesus notices their whispers and their looks of disbelief as he deals with this bound-up man struggling with paralysis.
Jesus perceives a lot of things. He knows what the scribes are thinking, and he knows that sin did not cause this man’s legs to be paralyzed. He may also know that the man on the pallet likely believes that sin is his captor. Remember, Jesus is dealing with people who are living around him at that time. We sometimes think that Jesus is talking only to us—”Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”—True, but Jesus loved the people in the Bible first. We often forget to honor who they are. Probably this man believes that his sin or his parent’s sin caused his illness. Jesus here frees him from both the bindings of his erroneous past beliefs and the physical bondage of paralysis.
Jesus has the ability to deal with whatever comes up. The poor old scribes are one-dimensional in their view. They simply cannot handle this man whose difficulties are both physical and spiritual. That is part of the scribes’ problem. The scribes have made religion one-dimensional and empty. The people are, as one song puts it, “standing knee deep in a river and dying of thirst.” Jesus comes to give people some much-needed water. He does it by opening up the gap between the physical and the spiritual world and showing the relationship between the two.
Mark puts these two worlds together in this one story. Jesus’ whole life is a story of helping people see the relationship between the physical and the spiritual, but after all, papyrus is a rare commodity and Mark has only so much time. Mark puts a number of elements together; those of us who read his words can step back and look at the total picture.
Jesus calls himself “Son of Man” here for the first time. The people of Jesus’ day hear this as a reference to the triumphant apocalyptic figure in Daniel to whom was given “dominion, glory and kingship.”(See Daniel 7: 13–14). Jesus evidently wants people’s ears to perk up when he uses this title. He wants them to know that for sure that something big is happening.
Jesus later turns this apocalyptic image on its head by the way he lives out the role. Many people do not like this change. The people in Jesus day are weary of waiting for deliverance. They want an angel-like, conquering figure to come in and vaporize the Romans, use a magic wand to alter the hearts of the religious leaders, and cut Caesar’s throat. This Son of Man fails on all counts.
Jesus is at home in Capernaum because he forgives sins and releases a man from the bondage of infirmity. Home is where the heart is and Jesus’ heart is wrapped around forgiving sins and freeing people for a new life. The scribes cannot see the forest for the trees nor can they see the big picture for the tiles. All they can see is a popular upstart who does not have the proper credentials to be messing with the forgiveness of sins.
Forgiving sins is a monopoly, and the established religion as it is practiced at that time, with its specific Temple rituals and sacrifices, has a market on the product. The Temple is rather like the old U.S. telephone system, Ma Bell. It does not want the break-up of what it considers to be a good thing.
Jesus is not interested in monopolies and knows that it is time for a change. Mark’s telling of the story is built around a threatened break-up of the religious monopoly. The solution to keeping the monopoly in place is handled in a late night negotiation resulting in a crucifixion. The seeds for a “final solution” are planted in this chapter.
The first twelve verses of Mark chapter two can be seen as a parallel of the entire Gospel of Mark: A new kingdom is being initiated that will not be tolerated by the old kingdom. Mark knows the end of the story and wants the reader to already begin seeing the handwriting on the wall.
On one level, the healing of the man affected by paralysis can be understood as an allegory. Sin binds us. Faith can free us from our bindings. We can walk into a new life if we believe. Does this mean that the story does not literally happen?
If I see a butterfly and tell a child that the butterfly is like resurrection, it does not mean the butterfly is not a butterfly. Jesus heals a man who is brought to him by people who believe that Jesus has power to set people free. Their efforts are rewarded by a healing story that we now have forever. Jesus heals the man’s legs and then frees his soul from the burden of the heavy chains of shame. He does the latter at no extra charge since the first liberation is also free. Unlike the professional scribes who murmur to themselves about this release, Jesus does not charge for his services of forgiveness.
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