“They came bringing to him a paralytic…”
Paralysis is the problem. The man is paralyzed and we are not told how he got that way, how long he has been that way, or how much of him is that way. (Remember, some of these parables are about us, and in this case, maybe about our own spiritual paraly- sis.) We know that the man is paralyzed and that he can’t get to Jesus on his own.
Crowds gathered around Jesus impede the man’s efforts to get close to him. They paralyze the stretcher-bearers; they lock the paralyzed man out and Jesus in. The crowd’s indifference puts everyone in a freeze-frame kind of existence. Paralysis is not only the man’s problem, it is the problem of the crowd as well.
But it wouldn’t be a gospel story if it was only about a crowd that stopped a paralytic from getting to someone who could help him move again. Who else is paralyzed? How about the scribes? Do you think they are making a god or a law out of their idolatry? Out of their tradition? Out of the “way we’ve always done things”? Their hearts are paralyzed and not open to God doing any new thing. They don’t recognize their Lord standing in front of them talking about God’s kingdom, but instead accuse him of blasphemy. The problem is paralysis.
Yes, there is an even more profound part of this story dealing with forgiveness and mercy, but I wonder about the whole paralysis thing and how its power in the story – how it affects the man, the scribes and the crowd – how it has sustained its presence in our re- sponse, or lack of it, to Jesus’ command to stand up. How are we / you stopped in our tracks and held back from getting to Jesus? What weighs down our spiritual legs and arms and flattens us on the stretchers of our spiritual infirmity? Do we even want to get up? Who would be eager to take us to Jesus? Would we let them?