As we approach the season of Advent, which is right around the corner, my sermon series on the eucharistic life will reach its conclusion. Still left to reflect upon under the banner of eucharistic life are the topics of stewardship and the parish, and over these last weeks I will go back and forth between them. Today I begin with the parish.
There are two things that stand out to me in our Gospel passage. The first is that in healing the paralytic, Jesus recognizes not the faith of the paralytic but the faith of the people who brought Jesus to the paralytic. For as Saint Matthew records: “When Jesus saw their faith.” And the second is that the healing of the paralytic means for Jesus that the sins of the paralytic are forgiven. Again as Saint Matthew records: “He said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.’” And as Jesus says a couple verses later: “That you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” What this points to is the mystery of Christ’s healing, the traditional word for which is “salvation,” and how salvation itself works.
We know that the paralytic was sick because he was sinful. This is the straightforward interpretation of the text according to the letter, to the simple meaning of our Lord’s words and actions. Jesus tells the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, and the paralytic is healed. He was able to rise and walk home, after being previously bound to a bed, unable to walk. What happened is that in being healed, the paralytic learned who Jesus was. He learned that Jesus Christ, the man before him, has authority given to Him by God to forgive sins. He did not know this before, and now that he knew it, and believed it, he was healed. This points to an important aspect of Christ’s healing: knowledge about Christ heals us. Without knowledge of Christ, we are living in our sins. With knowledge, we are able to live in truth, and living in truth heals us: truth gives salvation.
Living in truth, in the truth which is Christ, the revealed truth of God in Jesus, is what separates Christians from non-Christians. Hence Saint Paul writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “You must no longer walk as the gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance which is in them.” Ignorance of Christ, not knowing about Him, leads to a life of darkness; such a life of darkness for Paul means hardness of heart, callous, slaves to the sensual, greedy, impure, speaking falsehood, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. A life of darkness is alienated from the life of God. This is the life of sin, the waters darkened by the Devil and his unholy angels. The life of darkness is the life of disease.
What a difference it is to know about Christ, for Paul. To learn about Christ allows us, again in Paul’s words, “to put off our old self, which belongs to our former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of our kind, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness.” This is healing. This is the way of healing—we are healed so as to be able to begin to live this way, and living this way heals us more and more. We can think differently, we can speak differently, we can treat people differently, we can forgive ourselves and others. Knowing about Christ allows us to rise and walk: to rise in a resurrection like His, and walk in His footsteps and do all such good works as God has prepared for us to walk in. This is the Gospel, which the archangels make known to us through their service.
It remains to reflect on why it was that the faith not of the bedridden man, but rather the faith of the people who brought Jesus to him, that brought salvation to the man. Again the words from Saint Matthew: “And when Jesus saw their faith,” He then pronounced the paralytic’s sins forgiven, by which he was healed, and able to rise and walk home. The key to this is to remember that the Christianity is lived in a parish. Specifically, Christianity is lived in a parish of the baptized, those called by God to assembly in a local, specific place, at a particular Altar where the Eucharist is offered in sacrifice and worship. Paul, for whom baptism was truly life-changing, writes: “having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” It is the worshiping parish transformed into the new humanity of Christ which can offer the world back to God. The purpose of a parish is to make Christ present, that He can be known. The knowledge of Christ in the community around the paralytic, their faith in Christ as healer, led Jesus to pronounce the paralytic forgiven and healed. The faith of a parish heals the sick.
Parish community teaches us; parish community forms us; parish community—called in Acts 2 “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship”—heals us, because in parish community ordered around the Eucharist and common Baptism, we meet Christ, we walk among Him, and He walks among us. And He Who walks among us does so that we know Him, and are known by Him. He Who walks among us is Son of God and Son of Man, with all authority given to Him by the Father Almighty. The parish knows Christ as He is revealed in the opening of Scripture, the unveiling of Scripture, and in the breaking of bread, in the Eucharist. Give us this day our daily Bread, because Christ is our bread, and the heavenly Bread which is Christ is our salvation; Jesus Christ is our healing; Jesus Christ hears us, feeds us, and gives us strength: Christ is our Lord, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one God, world without end. Amen.
