Can we be astounded?

1^st Week OT (F): 1 Sam 8.4-7, 10-22 and Mark 2.1-12
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Serra Club Mass, Church of the Incarnation

The video tape was out there, passing from hand to hand, showing up in one room and then the next, speeding away in another book bag just before I reached it. As a Resident Advisor in the freshmen dorm in the late ‘80’s, my guys were telling me all about this highly sought after video tape. It was the guest of honor at many-a-late-night party; and it was said that those who watched the tape breathlessly concluded, “We have never seen anything like this.” I finally had my chance to see this movie one late night shift in the dorm office. The subject of the movie? Something racy and X-rated? No, on the tape was a documentary called, “Faces of Death”—a collection of real footage from police, fire, emergency departments depicting real people meeting their deaths in a variety of horrible ways: a crocodile, a failed parachute, a police shoot out, an execution in a state prison. No one in 1986 could watch that and not come away astounded and saying, “I have never seen anything like that!” What astonishes us, what changes us, what draws us in to hold us still is very different now.

To show the scribes that he has the authority to forgive sins on earth, Jesus simply looks at the paralyzed man and says, “….rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” And he did. He walked “away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this.’” What exactly had they never seen before? A miraculous healing? A miraculous healing done by merely forgiving the sin of the sick? Or a miraculous healing done in defiance of traditional Jewish theology? Or, all three! Would we be astounded? Would we think that this healing through the forgiveness of sins was miraculous?

Maybe. More than likely we would set aside a judgment until we had more and better evidence. Where’s the doctor’s report, before and after? Are there any X-rays? Let’s see the tape again. Do we have expert testimony from a professionally trained, crime-lab certified videographer that the tape hasn’t been Photo-Shopped? Do we have an unambiguous statement from Jesus’ ministry office that the video isn’t fake? Is there a rebuttal statement from the scribes’ office? And so on. What can astound us in 2008? Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything.

Truly, what’s astounding about this gospel tale is that Jesus claims to be the Son of God and the Son of Man with the authority “to forgive sins on earth.” Essentially, he is claiming to possess the license that God alone enjoys to wipe away those offenses against God that bring us to illness, to paralysis, to demonic possession. By speaking, merely speaking, he picks up the paralyzed man and undoes his life of sin, repairing him, reconciling him to the Father. The witnesses at his home see and hear Jesus do that which the scribes argue that God alone can do—bring a creature to health by speaking a word to his disease. And! And, he does so not because of the paralyzed man’s faith, but because of the faith shown by the man’s friends. Another marvel! One more miracle to astound them. Are we astounded? Can we be astounded?

A weary cynicism worries this age. Miraculous healings are simply inadequately explained medical anomalies. Witnesses to miracles are duped pawns, gullible, easily impressed morons. Authority, especially spiritual authority, is an oppressive tactic to maintain institutional power. That which can astound us becomes more and more rare as we eagerly replace our Christian moral imaginations with the mechanical insights of science and the demands of political ideology.
It is impossible for a Christian to live this way. Why? We start with the premise that creation itself is a gift; Christ is a gift; our lives lived with Christ are all gifts. And when we give these gifted lives back to God, we are doubly gifted with their return to us! After this, nothing is beyond our astonishment, everything is a source of amazement! The Good News is that our Father whispers to us daily and all day, “Child, your sins are forgiven.” What malady, what cynicism can worm its way into that gift and spoil our party?