A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus came back Capernaum. That's up in the lake country on the northwestern corner of the lake where a good bit of excavation work has been done in late years. So Jesus came back to this very important city of Capernaum after a lapse of several days, and word got around that he was at home. At that, people began to gather in great numbers.
There was no longer any room for even around the door. While Jesus was delivering God's word to them, some people arrived bringing a paralyzed man with The four who carried the man, the paralytic, were unable to bring him to Jesus because of the crowds, couldn't get into the house. 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 around asking themselves, why does this man talk in this way? He commits blasphemy. Who can forgive sins except God alone? Jesus was immediately aware of their reasoning, and their reasoning was exactly right and correct, though they themselves kept it to themselves. So Jesus said to them, why do you harbor these thoughts?
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, or to say, stand up, pick up your mat, and walk. That you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then 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. They 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 of the holy spirit. Amen. Today, for all practical purposes, there is no dispute among people who have any sense or who have any eagerness to know the truth that there was an historical person named Jesus Christ. They have taken him out of the realm of fiction and now have accorded him the honor of admitting he existed.
That's an important step forward. So there's no question about the fact that a man named Jesus Christ lived at a certain period of history. As our holy father would say, there's no doubt about the existential facts of his life. There may be today in some people's minds this question, was he? What was he?
Who was he? It's a very fair question, very fair. And there's nothing wrong in asking the question. But there's a lot wrong if we stop with the question. There's a lot wrong if we say, well, it doesn't matter because we'll admit he and we we admit that he just and we'll admit he was a good man.
What more do you want me to admit? There was Gandhi, there was Socrates, there was Doctor. Martin Luther King, there you know, they even bring that name in now. So he was a good man. He gave us a wonderful example.
He left us a life of inspiration. So why not be satisfied with that? The point is you can't be satisfied with that and be honest. And be honest. Because if all Christ was was a good man, he wasn't a good man.
He was probably the worst devil that ever walked the face of the earth, if he was not something more than man. Because the very same texts, which tell you a lot about Jesus Christ, give you evidence for this. Whether you can consider it conclusive or not, that's another question. But you can't turn your back on the issue and say you're intellectually honest. It's impossible.
Now this text today is a tremendous text for anyone who says, who or what was Jesus Christ? Here is a situation where we don't rest our argument. We don't rest our conviction. We don't rest our pursuit of truth on how you interpret this word or that word. Whether this text rests upon document q or x or y or z, or whether this is an authentic text.
Do we have the Greek? Is it complete? It rests on none of that. It rests on the overwhelming fact of how the people who saw and heard Christ, and saw what he did, and heard what he said, how did they react to it? What put Christ on the cross?
They didn't put Christ on the cross because he was a good man like Socrates, much less like Gandhi, and much less like doctor Luther King. What put Christ on the cross? Two things. And there's no question about this. The Jews could not they did not have in their power under the Romans the right of capital punishment.
They their courts, their religious courts, their scribes, their pharisees, their men learned in the law, they had complete jurisdiction, complete jurisdiction. But they could not execute the one a criminal in their according to their law. So when they come to Pilate, what do they accuse Christ of? Two things. One, on the basis of their own law.
And what was that? He made himself out to be God. He made himself out to be God. In other words, they had the impression, he gave the impression to the multitudes that he was God. That took care of the Jewish side.
And then, of course, the the political side, the civil side, and he made himself to be a king. So on the sides of the Jews, Christ was condemned of what? Of blasphemy. Now what's the sin of blasphemy? Making yourself out to be God.
So did Christ claim to be God? What did his contemporaries think of him? What did they accuse him of? They didn't send him to the cross or as we would say to the electric chair or to the gas chamber because he was a good man. They sent him there because they said he was guilty of blasphemy claiming to be God.
And then to Pilate they said, you've got to take a hand in this because he also claimed to be a king. And if there's one thing that the Romans did not allow you to do was to claim to be a king. Now one of the strongest incidents in our Lord's life, where he where the onlookers, the bystanders, on their own argumentation, drew the conclusion that this man was making himself out to be God, other words that he was guilty of blasphemy, is this today, is this incident today. It doesn't rest on how you interpret the text. There's no question of the authenticity of the text.
There's no question of its completeness. No question of that at all. There's no question of a nice distinction of this word or that word. As you might have about the statement at the last supper about this is my body and this is my blood. There is no ambiguities here.
None. It's a tremendous argument, and the Jews draw the right conclusion that this man is guilty of blasphemy unless he's God. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit, amen.