Thinking Anew:"NOW some scribes were sitting there, and they thought to themselves, 'How can this man talk like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God?'" (Mark 2: 6-7.) That was the response of the experts and leaders of society when Jesus responded to the plight of the paralysed man brought to him on a stretcher.
It was something close to madness to mention God’s name or to try to say anything about God, and it was inevitable that the scribes would throw doubt on Jesus’s claims to divinity.
Christians take it as a given that Jesus Christ is God, but that does not mean we understand exactly what we are saying or that we can rest comfortably in the completeness of our understanding. Surely it has to be an ongoing discovery and process of faith in the world in which we find ourselves living.
Once we say we are Christians and believers in Jesus Christ, we are declaring our belief in the opportunity of eternal life with God. But we are also saying that our journey has already begun and that we are playing our part in making God’s presence ever more real and tangible in the world about us.
The scribes and learned men had difficulty in accepting what Jesus did. Why? Probably because what he did was outside their way of thinking and acting and also because it would ultimately mean they might lose their power and control. And they would therefore no longer be people of importance and high standing in the community.
It seems to be part of the human make-up that we always need people to look up to, people to put on a pedestal.Very few of us had the wisdom to foresee what is currently unfolding in the world and in Ireland. Not long ago people considered it a privilege to walk into a bank and open an account.
Just five years ago I heard a senior banker say it would be impossible for his bank to fail! In every town in Ireland the presbytery and bank house were buildings of note and inside them lived people who were considered important in society.
We, the people, made them important. And now we clearly see that, like the rest of us, they are mere mortals with all the failings and limitations to which every human is prone.
It is always dangerous to give too much power and adulation to any individual person or group, no matter what their claims to greatness. In our current climate it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that people will begin to look about for some sort of “saviour” who would offer simplistic solutions to the problems that are currently befalling us.
History is strewn with such demagogues and canny opportunists, who offer frightened people attractive vistas.
And just as we crave to put people on pedestals we also seem to need scapegoats whom we can blame for all our woes and troubles. Must we have an endless cycle of heroes becoming scapegoats? It is the ever-inspiring mystery of Christianity that there is only one saviour and that is Jesus Christ – the same Jesus Christ, God-man, who had it within his power both to forgive the paralysed man his sins and then cure him of his affliction.
Of course the scribes were upset and annoyed. Not only was he usurping their power and privilege but he was also letting it be known that real salvation was only to be found in God.
None of the other four great religions of the world – Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism – believes that Jesus Christ is God. We Christians say it is so. An act of folly or madness? We say it in faith but with respect for the other great religions, never forgetting that all reality is made up of a broad mysterious tapestry.
Tomorrow’s Gospel reminds us in these troubled times that we can never put absolute trust and belief in any individual person or human organisation. Total loyalty is due only to the truth; and truth manifests itself right across the panoply of human existence. But as believers we can say that God is truth and as Christians we dare say that Jesus Christ is God, the truth and the light; and in him we place all our trust.
When the crowd saw that Jesus had cured the paralysed man they praised God saying, “We have never seen anything like this” (Mark 2:12). Our hearts and minds too can be moved by the greatness and love of God.
MC