Trinity XIX 2007

The mind is a curious thing.

In the oft times misspent days of my youth, my brothers and sister and I would perform unauthorized psychological experiments on each other – well, actually, our sister was most often the target of the experiments- the most popular being one that I suspect most siblings engage in during their "formative" years - hiding somewhere as we saw one of the others approaching, and then jumping out in a usually very successful attempt to frighten them out of their wits. Coupled with the desired look that would pass across their faces was a brief moment of paralysis; paralysed by an unpleasant surprise. The mind is a curious thing.

And has any of us experienced a similar moment of paralysis when, say, an automobile suddenly appears, apparently out of nowhere, bearing down upon us as we are crossing the street? In that situation, many of us are paralysed by fear (not to say encroaching arthritis and other physical ailments). The mind is a curious thing.

A monk was about to enter a medical clinic when the door suddenly burst open and a nun went rushing by him with a horrified look on her face. Upon entering the clinic, the monk asked the doctor why the nun was so horrified. "I told her that she was pregnant," said the doctor. The monk replied, "You told her what?!" "I told her that she was pregnant." "But she wasn't really…" "Of course not," replied the doctor, "but she no longer has the hiccups." It is very likely that, before the nun ran out in horror, for a moment, she would have been frozen; unable to move; paralysed by disbelief. The mind is a curious thing.

In other circumstances, many of us, when confronted with an important decision that begs for a quick response, can be literally paralysed with doubt or uncertainty as to the correct judgment.

The Oxford Dictionary defines paralysis as: "nervous disease with impairment or loss of motor or sensory function of nerves; state of utter powerlessness." Now a nervous disease may or may not be physical in its basis. The examples that I gave are all based on scenarios where it is the mind that is affected, thus rendering the body into a state of "loss of motor function."

There are many other examples where paralysis is not so brief, where the scientific medical community would very likely assume that such prolonged paralysis had a purely physical basis, but, after exhaustive analysis of the physical are forced to conclude that the paralysis has another basis. The medical community has long acknowledged that our physical well-being is mightily influenced by our mental well-being. This does not always make the scientifically minded comfortable, as they very much like to be able to dissect things, to look at something right down to the cellular level, to be able to explain everything and anything in purely physical terms that can be touched and felt.

Because the mind cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be dissected, it is a very curious thing; and yet, even our purely physical scientists must admit that our minds exist.

In Judeo-Christian thought, we humans are either a dichotomy, made up of body and soul; or, we are a trichotomy, made up of body, soul and spirit. In either case, there is a clear separation of the tangible or physical – our bodies – and the non-physical or intangible. And in either case, it is to the non-physical, yet very real realm that our minds belong. Uncomfortable as it may make physical scientists, the trusty Oxford Dictionary, in its several definitions of mind, provides this: "soul, opposed to body or material things." Further, physical is defined as: "of matter, material"; the opposite to which is not "non-physical", but "spiritual," which is variously defined as: "of spirit, as opposed to matter; of the soul, especially as acted upon by God; having the higher qualities of the mind." Spirit, soul, mind – intertwined, variously interchangeable, not physical but very real, and very often affecting the physical profoundly.

Most of us have undoubtedly heard before the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural", at least within the context that we tend to broadly categorize that which we can see and perhaps explain as "natural", whereas the unseen is therefore "supernatural." There is an obvious connection there to our definitions of physical and spiritual. Further, we have likely heard it observed that what to us might be supernatural is to God very natural, after all, He is the Creator of both seen and unseen.

While we continue to understand, often right down to the submolecular level, the laws of "nature", I sometimes engage in musing about what we might call the "laws of supernature". For example, consider Jesus' feeding of the 5,000. Any of us knows how to convert matter into energy: burn a piece of wood, and the result is heat and light – matter into energy. In the feeding miracle, did our Lord perhaps do the opposite by converting energy into matter, a feat well beyond our understanding and capabilities?

Throughout most of Christian history, the medical community recognized that the soul was a very real aspect of the mind, equally intangible, and that the health of our bodies was affected by the health of all aspects of our minds, not least the spiritual aspect – the soul. Though there are encouraging signs that our doctors may be slowly returning to the acknowledgement of a soul, and even though statistical evidence indicates that religious people, those who are concerned about the state of their souls, are generally healthier than pagans, which, by the way, simply means an irreligious person, there is very little to indicate that they will soon begin to prescribe prayer as a means to physical healing.

Which brings us, finally, to today's Gospel passage – the healing of the paralytic. Coming from a physical science background, I must admit that, the first time that I read this passage, I automatically concluded that the paralysis (which is what "palsy" means), was caused by some physical ailment. But our Lord, didn't lay His hands on the paralytic with words to indicate physical healing. He said, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee."

Sins, some of which are things committed in the physical sense, are nonetheless conditions of our minds and souls, they are morally contrary to the will of the Almighty, and morality is something that is understood by our souls and minds.

Some Biblical commentators in the past few centuries have contended that our Lord was merely being consistent with contemporary rabbinic teaching when He said, "thy sins be forgiven thee." The rabbis had a saying, "There is no sick man healed of his sickness until all his sins have been forgiven him." The argument is that the paralytic would have been aware of this teaching, and therefore would not have believed that he could be healed until his sins were forgiven. Thus, having set the paralytic's expectation, Jesus then proceeded to heal the man physically.

I suspect, though, that even if the paralysed man's friends were aware of that rabbinic teaching, they were not very convinced of it. They had heard about this Healer Named Jesus, Who had cured many others of physical ailments. The Gospels record for us that He did not always affect healing by saying, "thy sins be forgiven thee." Most often, it appeared to be a straightforward physical healing, miraculously performed by Him; and this is what the man's friends were seeking – physical healing. If I were a betting man, I would give very long odds that the friends did not bring the paralytic to Jesus so that his sins could be forgiven.

But let's not be too hasty to jump on the bandwagon of post-Enlightenment Biblical exegesis, to dismiss pre-Messianic rabbinic teaching, to ignore the obvious in the passage. Yes, there is the revelatory aspect to the situation – Our Lord was making a claim that only God could; and perhaps that was His intent, coupled with the healing miracle that followed. In our own secular examples, people can be physically paralysed by fear, horror, disbelief, doubt – all conditions of the mind, the soul. This man was physically paralysed by another condition of the soul – sin: an unseen, spiritual, supernatural issue that was, and is in all of us, natural in the obvious sense to our Lord.

Perhaps we should not be too hasty to dismiss the teaching of the rabbis. After all, even when any of us is healed from whatever infirmity by the physical efforts of the medical community, we may be restored to physical health; but is any of us capable of perfect spiritual health without our Lord saying to us, "thy sins be forgiven thee?" It remains eternally true that we can never be completely right physically until we are right spiritually, that health in body and peace with God go hand in hand.

Perhaps any of us should not be too quick to make a negative judgement when a Pentecostal friend observes that so-and-so might possibly be physically sick because of unrepented sins. They may not be correct in their assessment, God, Creator of the seen and unseen, the physical and spiritual, God only knows; but, they may just be right.

Paralysis due to fear, paralysis due to horror, paralysis due to disbelief, paralysis due to doubt, paralysis due to sin. Only God knows, the mind is a curious thing.

ANNUNCIATION OTTAWA 2007 +CR