A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus came back to Capernaum after a lapse of several days and word got around that he was at home. Notice a good bit of our lord's activities took place around Capernaum, not around Nazareth, which was his real home, of course. Now at at that, the people began to gather in great numbers. There was no longer any room for them, even around the door of the house where Jesus was staying.
While Jesus was delivering God's word to them, some people arrived bringing a paralyzed man with them. The four who carried the man were unable to bring him to Jesus because the crowd. So they began to open up the roof over the spot where Jesus was standing. When they had made a hole, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, my son, your sins are forgiven.
Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, why does this man talk in this way? He commits blasphemy. Now notice that. He commits blasphemy, and that crime was was subject to the death penalty. So here they are sitting around, and when they hear Jesus say, my son, your sins are forgiven, They say he commits blasphemy.
Who can forgive sins except god alone? Jesus of course, their thinking was absolutely right. Jesus was immediately aware of their reasoning, though they kept it to themselves. And he said to them, why do you harbor these thoughts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say to him, stand up, pick up your mat, and walk again.
That you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralyzed man, I command you, stand up, Pick up your mat and go home. The man stood up, picked up his mat, and went outside in the sight of everybody. They were awestruck. All gave praise to god saying, we have never seen anything like this, and this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit, amen.
It's very difficult not to say a few words about this passage because this is one of the most explicit statements of our blessed lord's divinity. And again, if he wasn't divine, you can see how how what a tremendous hypocrite, liar, forger, any words you want, he was. Because the reasoning here is perfectly straight, only God can forgive sins, I forgive sins ergo. It's our first rate Aristotelian syllogist. And our blessed Lord made no attempt to explain or to correct or to tell them now look you misunderstood me and try to explain it, not at all.
So if if he was not God, he let those people be deceived in thinking that he was claiming to be God. Because he certainly made no attempt to set them straight if he wasn't what he said what the what his actions here point to his being. What I do want to lay before you people this morning is this, way way back when we were talking in classroom about, oh, the future life, immortality, and existence of heaven, and you know, ticadillo's like that. We hadn't anything else to do between football games. One of the arguments for heaven or for immortality was this, that if there's a God, then there's got to be justice.
And there is not justice in this life, ergo, there must be some kind of a hereafter. Because one of the very very very obvious things in life is this, that good people often get clobbered and that's the only word I know for it. I mean they get clobbered. They not only get a little bang or a little wound or a little injury or a bit of damage, they get clobbered. Good people often.
And men and women who are obviously and sincerely first rate sinners prosper. They seem to have the benediction of of the just God. This is the great problem in the book of Job and it's it's all it's always with us. Now if there's any justice, if there's any equity in the world, it's not in this life, that's for sure. So ergo there must be another life if there's a just God.
Now, here's the you all I have been grieved, awestruck by that tragedy on the 14th Street Bridge when that Miami bound flight smashed into it. Now, there are two stories of great heroism about that. One which was very much dramatized and will probably become a classic picture of the young man diving into the water and bringing back the a woman who had lost capability of hanging on to the ring. He saved her. He he saved her.
We know who he is. They had a picture on television of the young man sitting with his wife and his family, and they asked him why did you do it? He said, I just did what it seemed to have to be done at the time. It was a very imprudent thing for him to do, believe me. Because one of the first first things you learn about life saving is, you don't have two deaths for one.
Because this guy, with in complete dress, shoes, and everything without any any life jacket or any roper, he plunged into that water and swam. I've tried to swim in water with my clothes on. You'll try it sometime under the best conditions. Anyway, he's a great hero and rightly so. I'm not taking one iota from him, but there's another anonymous hero in that.
There were six people who managed to climb on the tail of that ship. One of them was a man. We no one knows who he is or who he was because he he is no longer with us. He insisted on all the others having their chance getting off the tail by that ring that the helicopter was dangling and then taking them ashore. When the helicopter came back the sixth time to pick him up, he was gone.
Gone. All we know he was a middle aged man, that's all. Now, I don't know about the validity of these are, that's not the point I'm making, but what I do is if there is justice in this life, there is an example of absolute heroic charity. I don't know what was going through that man's mind. And another thing, how many people adverted to the fact that this accident, this tragedy took place right at the foot of the land which goes up into Arlington where you have thousands and thousands and thousands of crosses and the tomb of the unknown soldier, the anonymous hero.
Now those crosses don't all cover the graves of heroes or heroines. We all know that. All kinds of people are buried over there, but there are a lot of heroes and heroines over there and for all practical purposes anonymous. Men and women who have given their all and only one being in the universe knows it and that's God Almighty. And if if the if the if the great commandment is the commandment of love, and if the standard of love the absolute standard is giving your life for your friend or those who aren't your friends, then men and women who have done precisely that certainly have kept to the perfect as perfectly as a human being can do it, the commandment of love.
Now I'm not going to try to weave my way in and out of all kinds of theological problems this raises, but the point is they did it. That man in cold blood, and his blood probably was very cold, believe me, sitting on the tail of that ship out there in the middle of that icy Potomac and allowing with plenty of time, this wasn't a matter of just an impulse. This wasn't like the man just who saw the woman drowning and just plunged in on an impulse. He sat there and insisted upon these other people going ahead of him. It was calculated.
It was cool. It was thoughtful. It wasn't done on the with the impet impetuosity of a great sentiment, or maybe just an utter feeling, and he is completely anonymous. He must have known what he was doing because he did it in cold blood. And the point I'm making is this, we underrate human beings.
I know, I know I can quote Horace, but you about how he says ody, vulgus, profanum and all. I hate the crowd crowd. And that's true. People people collectively are pretty repulsive, but individually men and women are good. Not totally, but there there's an enormous amount of good in human beings individually if they're given a chance.
It isn't that we didn't need a savior. I don't know a thing about that man. Nobody knows he'll be he'll never be known. He's just one of those who perished. And there's no way of identifying him, of sorting him out from the other 73 or however how many there were on that ill fated aircraft.
So he's totally anonymous. Only God knows him. But you can't tell me that before almighty God, what that man did is not a gesture of charity and of love, and that before God it will not reap its reward. You certainly can't put this on any ordinary scale of human conduct because you see it is superhuman. Superhuman.
It isn't too common, but it does happen. It just happened there two days ago. And so in thinking of this tragedy and all the lives that were lost and above all of the people who are left behind to put their lives together in some way or other. Let us remember those who came out of that only to step across the threshold from this life into the next where we certainly pray that a benevolent judge will know how to judge them. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit.
Amen.