At the heart of the Christian gospel is the issue of forgiveness. Our world is often lacking in forgiveness, and there is a great need of forgiveness. As a result of our fallen nature, we all sin. Sin results in injury and hurt to others. The pain that sin causes is not conducive to forgiveness; rather pain arouses a desire for retribution or revenge. Forgiveness is often in short supply and so many people live alienated from each other.

Yet the most vital problem that the human race has is that we are alienated from God. Adam and eve sinned and their relationship with God was broken. The problem of guilt had entered the world. Guilt affects people psychologically; and it can also affect their physical well-being.

The message that Jesus came to bring, however, was that the kingdom of God has come near. God is doing something about the alienation between people and himself. The invitation is for people to repent and believe. What is God doing? In Jesus he is bringing forgiveness. The gospel is a gospel of forgiveness; and Mark chapter 2 is particularly about forgiveness and grace.

The first thing that comes across quite clearly, is that Jesus has authority to pronounce God's forgiveness. In the story from verses 1-12 Jesus has come home to Capernaum and the crowds flock to him. Jesus teaches them. Then along come four men carrying a man who is paralysed. They cannot get near the door because of the crowd, but they are determined to find a way to get to Jesus.

So they heave their friend on his stretcher up onto the roof; they break a hole in the roof and lower their friend down to where Jesus is sitting. I'm not sure of what the health and safety executive would have said about that. The important thing though, is what Jesus said: 'son, your sins are forgiven'.

I wonder what the man's friends thought at that point. Perhaps they were tempted to think 'that's not what we want Lord! We want you to heal him.' But Jesus knew what was vital, he went to the heart of the problem, and the problem was guilt. The solution therefore was forgiveness.

It says of those four friends that they had faith. Whenever people come to Jesus with faith, whatever their hopes and desires, they trust Jesus to do what is best. The greatest need for everyone is for forgiveness, to know that their guilt has been taken away. That is what this paralysed man needed.

When Jesus pronounced forgiveness he was challenged. Not audibly; but the scribes and religious people who knew the scriptures were thinking 'this is blasphemy, only God can forgive sins'. Jesus was God's son come to earth with God's authority to bring God's forgiveness.

He wants people to know that. So to show everyone that Jesus says to the paralysed man, 'stand up, take up your mat and go home'. The man got up, picked up his mat and walked out of the house in front of everyone. We are told that all were amazed and glorified God. Miracles are to convince people to believe in Jesus, and to believe the gospel, the gospel of forgiveness, and especially God's forgiveness of us and his love for us; this miracle confirms that Jesus has authority to forgive sins.

The next lesson about forgiveness is regarding the type of people who forgiveness is available to. Time and again Jesus shocks or surprises people by welcoming and accepting people who were considered outside of God's interest by the religious people of his day. He commends the faith of a Roman centurion. He offers the gospel to women with dubious morals.

Here in Mark chapter 2 he calls a tax collector to follow him. Tax collectors were regarded as undesirables, people to be avoided because there were often dishonest as well as being regarded as traitors to their nation because they worked for the Romans. It seems, that Levi was not the only tax collector to follow Jesus, Mark tells us in verse 15 that many tax collectors and sinners followed Jesus.

The Pharisees who were the religious leaders expected Jesus to give his attention to people like themselves; they thought he should concentrate on the good people, but Jesus did exactly the opposite. He said he had not come to call the righteous, but sinners. The reason was that they were the folk who needed him. As a sick person needs a doctor, so a sinner needs forgiveness. Jesus offered and he still offers forgiveness to all who respond in faith to him.

In fact Jesus had come to inaugurate a new way of relating to God that was distinct and different from the established way. The established way to relate to God was by the law that had been given to Israel through Moses. Jesus came to establish grace as the principle by which God accepts you and me. Forgiveness is the expression of God's grace, a gift that we can neither earn nor deserve.

That new way of relating to God was so different as to be incompatible with the old way. To try to harmonize the two was like trying to put new wine into old wineskins; the new wine would just burst the brittle old skins. This is why the Pharisees found it so hard to accept Jesus. They needed to have a radical change in their understanding; they needed to be 'born again' to enter the kingdom of God.

Up until the coming of Jesus God's forgiveness was understood to be available just to God's chosen people, through their obedience to the law and through the offering of their sacrifices. Jesus had come to change that. He had come that the God news of the kingdom should be known and available to all people.

Here in Mark 2 we find the religious people questioning Jesus, they find his teaching and his ways hard to understand, they find it goes against the grain of the way they have been taught. We know that in due course their questioning and incomprehension turned to hostility. It was the religious people who were ultimately the ones who had Jesus crucified.

One vital lesson for us in all this is to beware of the mistakes of the Pharisees. They were not the last religious people to revert to a harsh legalism that is always looking for faults in others and is often eager to write individuals or groups off as being outside God's love. Christians have on many occasions had attitudes closer to those of the Pharisees than to the attitude of Jesus, the friend of sinners.

Finally, I believe our passage shows us that forgiveness flows from a God who loves the men and women he has created. The problem with the Pharisees was that their understanding of God was that he had provided his laws to try to catch people out. Their attitude was a bit like that of the traffic wardens who measure success by how many parking tickets they can issue each day.

When Jesus is walking through the cornfields on the Sabbath, his disciples pick ears of corn, rub the grain out in their hands and eat them. 'Why are they breaking the law?' the Pharisees ask Jesus. Apparently in their book separating out the grains from an ear of wheat was regarded as work, and it was against the law to work on the Sabbath.

Jesus uses an illustration from the Old Testament story of David to show that the scriptures do not teach a harsh rigid application of the law that ignores compassion and human need. But more than that, Jesus points out that God gave his laws because he loves mankind, the law is there for mans benefit. The Sabbath was made for man.

Mankind was not created so that God could exert the power and controls of the law over him as the Pharisees were inclined to portray things. Mankind was created out of God's heart of love to be the object of God's love. God's law was given out of love for man. With the coming of Jesus, forgiveness was being offered to all because God loved the world. He loved and he loves fallen men and women and through forgiveness and reconciliation he wants to restore them to a right relationship with himself.

One of the severest criticisms that Jesus made of the religious leaders of the day was that they placed unnecessarily heavy burdens on the ordinary people. They didn't understand the love of God. Religion was a burden that they could impose on others. Tragically the church has also often fallen into that same error. Instead of being a community based primarily on forgiveness and grace, we have portrayed a religion that is burdensome and oppressive.

We have forgotten that Jesus invites all that labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest. He does invite us to accept a yoke of discipline, but it is a yoke that is easy, it is a burden that is light.

Last week we affirmed our faith by using the words of the Methodist covenant service. We pledged ourselves to take the yoke of Christ. But we should remember that Jesus has promised that his yoke is easy.

It is easy, because it is the yoke that a loving God offers us that we might take it willingly and freely. It is also a yoke or a burden that we do not have to bear alone. Christ is with us. Christ has borne for us the burden of our guilt and the penalty of our sin. His yoke is a yoke of fellowship made possible through forgiveness.

His yoke is a yoke of love and service, freely and thankfully embraced. May the Holy Spirit help us to know this deep in our hearts.
 

Amen.

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