The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on the same gospel text that we heard this morning, says that Christ healed first that which is invisible, the soul, by forgiving his sins.

Matthew 9 begins with Jesus meeting a paralytic man. The man couldn't go anywhere unless someone carried him. Matthew recounts it this way in verse 2.

Then behold, they brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Son, be of good cheer. Your sins are forgiven you.

The man came to be healed in his legs, but the first thing our Lord does is forgive him. Everyone watching expected Jesus to address his physical paralysis, but he sees a paralysis that goes deeper than his legs.

Now, to be clear, Scripture doesn't teach that every illness is a punishment for sin. But in this case, Jesus sees in this man more than a broken body.

He sees a soul held down by sin. He speaks to him tenderly as a father would, calling him son. But not everyone watching is happy.

Verse 3 says, Jesus doesn't send this man to the temple to bring an offering.

He says, Your sins are forgiven you. He said it himself. What the temple offered through the priests and the sacrifices, Jesus gives in his own person.

The scribes are right that this is a claim to be God. And the only question left is whether it's true. Jesus forgives sins because he is God.

Jesus knows what they are thinking. And he asks them, For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven you, or to say, Arise and walk?

Anyone can claim to forgive sins because nothing happens that anyone can test the claim. Telling a man who cannot walk to get up is different.

Either he stands or he doesn't. And everyone watching will know which. So our Lord answers an invisible claim with visible proof.

He says, But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins. And then he turns to the paralytic and says, Arise, take up your bed and go to your house.

And he arose and departed to his house. You see, Christ forgives the soul. And then he raises up the body so that the whole man is made well.

That is what Christ does for the paralytic. He makes him ready in soul and in body. And the man goes home to do what he could not do before.

We are just like this paralytic man. We are the one on the bed. Sin separates us from God and ends in death.

And we cannot lift ourselves from it. God became man to restore us to himself. Our Lord took our sin and death upon himself on the cross.

And through his resurrection, he defeated death and opened to us the way of life. Christ made the paralytic whole in body and soul.

And through his church, he gives us that same gift that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood.

We look again at verse 2. Jesus speaks when he sees their faith and the faith of the people who brought the man. The paralytic didn't get to Christ by himself.

Others carried him. The church carries us in the same way. Parents and godparents carry a child to the baptismal font.

And others pray for us when we cannot pray for ourselves. None of us comes to Christ on our own. The crowd has the last word in verse 8.

Now when the multitude saw it, they marveled and glorified God who had given such power to men. The crowd says men in the plural.

We all know that only Christ has the authority to absolve sins. But the word men here points to what the Lord gives his disciples later in Matthew's gospel.

He gives Peter the keys in chapter 16, verse 19. And in chapter 18, verse 18, he tells all the disciples, Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. After his resurrection, he appears to his apostles. And he says in John chapter 20, verse 23, If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you retain the sins of any, they are retained. Christ gave his authority to his apostles. And through apostolic succession, when the priest pronounces absolution, it is Christ who speaks.

And he spoke to the paralytic. Your sins are forgiven you. Christ's forgiveness comes to us through the church in the sacraments.

And holy baptism, we are washed, joined to Christ, and made members of his body. And having been washed and forgiven, Christ raises us up.

Just like the paralytic man. By feeding us with his own body and blood. So that they may stand and walk in the life that he has given.

In the sacrament of confession and absolution, Christ speaks his forgiveness over us. But how do we respond to that gift? The man on the bed did nothing to earn forgiveness.

He couldn't even walk to Jesus on his own. But our Lord forgave him anyway. So the first step is to let ourselves be forgiven by confessing our sins and hearing the words of absolution.

The second step is to arise. As the paralytic man did. Forgiveness is given so that we can get up and leave behind the sins that keep us spiritually paralyzed.

Finally, in verse 7, we are told that the man walked home. He came in, carried by others, and he leaves on his own legs.

With his sins forgiven, and his bed under his arm. Christ has spoken that same forgiveness over us in baptism, and in declaring his absolution.

Now he sends us out. Again, just as he sent the paralytic man. He told him, go to your house. And the man went home with the proof of what Christ had done.

When we leave this church forgiven, we go back to our homes, our workplaces, and what Christ has done for us should be a witness to others in how we live and in what we say about him.

Forgiven and raised up, we are to go out and tell the world the good news of Christ. Take heart then, because in him we are forgiven.

Thanks be to God. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.