A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. This is a very significant incident from our lord's life as regards whether he did or did not claim to be god. I noticed the reliance here upon what you used to call Aristotelian logic. One day, Jesus was teaching, and the power of the lord made him heal. Now that's a curious phrase, but we'll go on.
Sitting close by were pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And that's the whole stretch of what we call the holy Land. Some men came along carrying a paralytic on a mat. They were trying to bring the man in and lay him before Jesus, but they found no way of getting the man to Jesus because of all the people around him. So they took the man up on the on the roof, which, of course, was a very flat roof.
There, they let the man down with his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd before Jesus. Now that's pretty dramatic. See these how you can see it right over there now. The the Top Floor was kind of a garden or a place where he could get get out and get the the cool breezes of the evening. And then there was a big hatch come in the roof so that the cool air could get down there.
So they took the man up onto the roof, and then they lowered him down through that opening right in front of Jesus with all the crowd around him. And seeing their faith, Jesus said, addressing the man on the mat, there was nobody said anything yet. My friend, your sins are forgiven you. Now listen. The scribes and the pharisees then began a discussion saying, who is this man who utters blasphemies?
Now the the penalty for blasphemy in our lord's time with a Jew was death. Who can forgive sins but god alone? Now that's their major premise. Jesus, however, knew their reasoning and answered them saying, why do you harbor these thoughts? Which is easier?
Is it easier to say your sins are forgiven you or to say, get up and walk? In any case, to make it clear to you that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He then addressed the paralytic. I say to you, get up, take your mat, and go with it into your house. The man at once stood erect before them.
He picked up the mat that he had been lying on and went home praising God. At this, everybody was seized with astonishment. Full of all, full of all, they gave praise to god saying, we have seen incredible things today. And this is the gospel, indeed, the good news of the lord. Sometimes that news is better than others.
As I said, in the of the father, of the son, of the holy spirit. Amen. Let's get let's get that straight. I was speaking in the name of the lord crucified. This is a this is a very important incident in our lord's life.
Remember, what put him on the cross was a charge of blasphemy. That's what the Jews charged Jesus with with which means you make yourself to be god, or you do something the the equivalent thereof. Now notice, these pharisees, these men learned in the law. These were good men, remember. These were the intelligent men.
These were the leaders, the religious leaders of the people. And for the most part, they were good men. And they, above all, they cherished the law. Above all. The law was everything, the Pentateuch, first five books of the Old Testament or or what we what they would say are scriptures, and that's true today.
Why do they wear that men wear that little skull cap? To show that they are under the law. And so they say that only god can forgive sins. And notice, our lord does not deny that. That's their major premise of their syllogism, and they accept it.
And our lord accepts it. He does not reject that. He accepts that. And when they say, who can forgive sins but god alone? What does he do?
He says, which is easier, to forgive sins or to cure this paralytic, this cripple? Now you can't see you cannot see sins being forgiven, but you sure can see a paralytic who who has been paralyzed. Everybody knew him. Everybody knew that he had been a cripple or whatever he was, a paralytic. Everybody knew that.
And here at the word of this man standing in the midst of a crowd up there in near Galilee, he says, get up. Man gets up straight. Notice that it says he got up straight. He wasn't crippled. He wasn't bent over.
He wasn't staggering. He he stood up straight. Every word there counts. Now notice the people were in awe. But do you think that this convinced his accusers?
Do you think this changed the pharisees and the and and the lawyers' minds at all? You can bet your last dollar it didn't change them at all. It only changed them in the direction they wanted to go. They hated Jesus. I use that word as the contrary of love.
I use it very carefully. I mean, if you love one thing, you've got to hate its contrary and its contradictory. There's a virtue of hate in my book. We if you love virtue, you have to hate evil. If you love good, you have to hate the bad.
If you love beauty, you have to hate ugliness. Keep that in your mind. We ought to be champions of hate for the things that deserve hate, just as we ought to be loyal to the love of those things which deserve love. Goodness, truth, beauty, goodness, oneness, the ontological properties of being. But anyway, this is frankly important.
If anything how you see, when people say Jesus was a good man, that's like talking about Christian values. You see how we have you see how the good people get mixed up? You hear Catholics talking about Christian values. Why don't we talk about automobile values? Why don't we talk about kitchen values?
It's a it's a very subjective term. Notice, when you talk when you talk in these see, you're rejecting the morality of Jesus Christ, which is not a system, which is not a value system. It's the command of God. Absolute. It's not relative values of word, which is not only subjective, but it's relative.
You see, people use words and they don't know they have no idea what they're talking about. Good tactics are talking about Christian values when they ought to be talking about Catholic morality because there's a great deal of difference among Christians. And so the you you see, you never really change a person's mind by an argument. I know that. I just like to argue for the heck of it.
It's as good as chess any day of the week, and you don't need a chess board. But the thing is, as Newman said, no one's persuaded by an argument because an argument appeals only to man's intellect and reason. And as Newman says, it's almost it's almost a definition of a man to say he is an irrational animal. And the word man there is used generically, if I have to tell you that. So but this is a frightfully important argument because here, if Jesus was only a good man, then what do you make of this?
Did he or did he not claim to be God? See, the Jews were right when they accused Jesus of blasphemy. They were right. The only thing was wrong is that it wasn't blasphemy because he was God. So you have that choice.
But you cannot say, as Lewis says, you cannot say Jesus was a good, only a good man. That's one thing you cannot say about Jesus. Because in this case you just take this case and and there's no argument here about the text or how you translate the Greek. Translate it the way you want it off. It'll come out the same way.
There's no play on words. It's very simple. It's very concrete. And you know what concrete is? Try to bash your head against a concrete wall, and most walls just get bloodied, it's your blood.
And so take as we notice, why why do we read this today? Because we're heading into the birth of Jesus Christ. And the birth of Jesus Christ means that God became man. And if there's anything incredible in this whole God's earth, it is that. How in his name could God become man?
Take up his resin in the womb, a bit of muscle and flesh and blood and veins, whatever. God Almighty. From the first moment of Mary's conception, God was in her body. God Almighty. You see, there are many good and intelligent people.
Remember, there are plenty of arguments against this. I can give them to you. As I've told could easily become an atheist. Most fit thinking people could because it's so incredible that God almighty could become a man. And not just become a human being, but to be through all through the process of gestation and being born and and living in this world and going through all this stuff of the of being crucified, and you call that god almighty, this is incredible.
I find that much more incredible than bending my knee, which is incredible enough to that tabernacle up there, which we say holds the physical presence of the son of Mary, the man Jesus Christ whose only personality was divine and God. We we Catholics, Christians, because Catholicism is this is the summit of Christianity. It it's based upon the most incredible sense. Newman has stressed this. Luther stressed it.
Any thinking person will stress it. It's against our nature. So be well, I was gonna say to be anthropomorphic, but that's not true. We we lean towards anthropomorphism all the time. But the thing is we our whole faith, and you people sitting in those pews, your whole life is committed to the proposition that God became man, and his son Jesus Christ endures in the blessed Eucharist in that tiny little piece of bread cut down to the smallest particle.
Transubstantiation. And so this text this morning is a whopper. It deserves your attention, and it should reinvigorate your faith. Because there's no question about it, the historicity of Jesus Christ. Now was he God?
Did he claim to be God? Or didn't he? Read that over and think about it. Think. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit.
Amen.