The older I get, the more decrepit I feel. Indeed, the Latin root of the English word “decrepit” could literally be translated as “broken down,” and was used for both people and animals that were old and infirm. In my case, things hurt that didn’t used to hurt. I don’t have the same strength or stamina. I forget things more easily and swear that I’m getting more fumble-fingered.
Still, I take good care of my health, and at this point don’t have any major complaints. I know not to take that for granted, because I know too many people who have been in and out of the hospital or the doctor’s office. They’ve struggled with a variety of conditions and setbacks. Even the treatments can be a trial.
Folks at church in our age group (I’m actually one of the younger ones!), tend to bear all of this with a touch of wry humor. Like everyone else, we greet each other on Sunday morning and ask “How are you doing?” Unlike everyone else, the response isn’t the typical “Fine!” but some version of “Well…I’m upright.”
They don’t mean morally (though that might be true).
The prayer requests we exchange are often about medical issues. So we pray for wise doctors, clear diagnoses, successful surgeries, and manageable treatments. Naturally, we also pray for healing, and the humility to accept God’s will in everything. Nothing wrong with that.
But then I think about the story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about Jesus healing the paralytic. There’s no question what the four men carrying the mat wanted for their friend: for him to be healed, to be able to walk. They believed Jesus could do it and were willing to do whatever it took to see that their friend got his chance.
If Capernaum had a law against vandalism, these guys didn’t care. They broke through the roof of the house where Jesus was teaching and lowered their friend down to him.
There was a hushed, dramatic moment as the paralyzed man hung suspended in midair before Jesus.
And then Jesus said… “Your sins are forgiven.”
A minute later, of course, Jesus also told the man to get up and go home. I imagine the four friends thinking, “You couldn’t lead with that?” But I think we’re meant to understand the words of forgiveness as the moment of healing. The kind of healing the paralytic and his friends wanted was the physical kind, and they got it. What they didn’t realize was that the man also needed spiritual healing—and they got that too, all at once.
As I suggested previously, Western thought is accustomed to dividing human existence up into different aspects. The physical is considered apart from the spiritual; thought is divided from feeling; individuals are treated separately from their collectives. Medical training tends to follow suit, leading to the increasingly common complaint that many doctors know how to treat disease but not people.
But what if the physical healing we want isn’t the spiritual healing we need?
None of the gospels tells us that the paralyzed man (or any of his friends) said anything to Jesus. If he did, it was surely to have his paralysis taken away. Conversely, I can’t imagine the man saying, “Please, Jesus, I need to have my sins forgiven.” But Jesus knew what he needed. He saw the faith of the man and his friends, and with one gracious pronouncement, he healed both the man’s physical sickness and his soul sickness.
What about us?
We may have a clean bill of health physically and no complaints. Or we may be desperate to be healed from some physical malady. We can and should pray for such healing, for ourselves or for others. The answer may be yes or no, and most of the time, we won’t know for sure.
But there’s one faithful request to which God’s answer is always yes: the prayer for forgiveness. It’s our sin after all, not physical illness, that separates us from God, and God is always ready to give out his grace and forgiveness.
We don’t even have to dig through a roof to get it.
