In our reading from Isaiah, the tone God sets with His people is remarkable. Most people associate the Old Testament with a God of vengeance and fury, of a God who, in His majestic power, rains down His righteousness in the form of devastating punishments. We get none of that in today’s reading. Instead, we hear a vulnerable God trying to reclaim his people’s affection by offering a “new and improved” relationship. God remarks that “It is I, I, who wipe out, for my sake, your offenses….”. For God’s sake? This is one of the most powerful statements of God’s broken-hearted statements of honesty in the Old Testament. Think about it. Why would God forgive offenses for His sake; isn’t the one who receives the forgiveness the one who receives the greatest blessing? God is indicating this might not be so. His great love is that wounded love where one accommodates the beloved because love is sacrifice and, at times, unreasonable. God complains that the people he created has abandoned Him, has grown weary of Him and continues to sin. Instead of threatening to destroy them or send them again into exile, God blesses them with making the desert bloom and providing a way through the desert, a metaphor for making the return enticing rather than burdensome. God wills a forgetful forgiveness. This incredible vulnerability is a foreshadowing of the vulnerable God who comes among His creation as Jesus, the Christ.
God coming among us is once again in response to deepening our relationship at His expense; God is doing “something new” again. Who ever heard of a god bowing to gain the love of his creation? Jesus, in today’s Gospel, offers forgiveness to the paralytic with what appears to be the typical association between sin and disease common in Jesus’ time. Jesus perceives the hearts of some of the scribes, how easy it would be to discern that the paralytic considered God was angry with him for some unknown sin. Jesus’ response is often related to what he perceived in one’s heart where we are most vulnerable. Jesus’ question as to which is easier to say is answered as both are equally easy to say; which, though is most difficult to do? This question is left for us, along with the scribes, to ponder until we see the paralytic get up, take his mat, and walk at Jesus’ command. The paralytic didn’t do this in response to Jesus offering forgiveness, but did this in obedience to Jesus’ command. Jesus’ words of forgiveness worked in combination with his command to get up and walk. The healing power of forgiveness is always yoked with the command to live our healing. For one who believes his paralysis is a product of sin, walking is the response to forgiveness. What better image for sin than that of paralysis. It is precisely what sin does; it freezes our relationship with God and those whom we have offended. Jesus as God renews our frozen legs and makes the desert of our sin bloom with promise. The forgiveness we receive though is for the journey, it is to get us “walk” our salvation, to carry this forgiveness with us to complete this in forgiving others. What better way to begin Lent this Wednesday than considering the phrase we say in the Lord’s Prayer to God: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. We are asking God to forgive us to the extent we forgive one another. Have we ever seen anything like this?
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