Be of Good Cheer

Grace Before Strength

Today’s Collect begins with an honest confession: without God we are not able to please him. This is not an excuse for neglecting our duty. It is a prayer that we may begin our duty in the right place. We ask the Holy Spirit to direct and rule our hearts, because outward improvement alone cannot heal the desires from which our words and actions spring.

In the Gospel, a helpless man is brought to Jesus. He cannot walk into the Lord’s presence by his own strength. Others carry him, and Jesus sees their faith. Before commanding him to rise, our Lord speaks a word of mercy: “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.” Christ gives what the man cannot earn. His forgiveness opens the way into a life received from God.

We must not suppose that the man’s paralysis proves some particular sin caused his suffering. Saint Matthew makes no such claim. The Lord attends to the whole person before him. Bodily affliction matters to Jesus, and so does our need to be reconciled to God. His mercy reaches deeper than the trouble most readily seen.

The Authority of Mercy

Some of the scribes hear these words and accuse Jesus inwardly of blasphemy. Forgiveness belongs to God; how can this man speak with such authority? Their difficulty concerns who Jesus is. They see a claim they will not accept, while the sufferer hears an invitation to take courage. Our Lord knows their thoughts and brings their hidden objection into the light.

Then Jesus commands the man to rise, take up his bed, and go home. The visible healing bears witness to the authority of the Son of man to forgive sins. The man gets up and goes. The crowds marvel and glorify God. They have witnessed mercy that accomplishes what it declares: the Lord who forgives also gives this man strength to obey.

We too may find forgiveness harder to receive than advice. Advice can leave us imagining that we shall put everything right ourselves. Forgiveness requires us to admit our need. Sometimes we cling to an old failure as though Christ’s mercy could never reach it. Sometimes we excuse a favourite fault because admitting it would disturb our comfortable picture of ourselves. Jesus calls us out of both hiding places, into truth and hope.

The Life of the Forgiven

Saint Paul describes what that hope looks like in daily life. “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” he says. Put off the old life and put on the new. This renewal is God’s gift, yet it calls for our willing response. The Spirit whom we ask to rule our hearts also directs our tongues, our tempers, our work, and our treatment of other people.

Paul is wonderfully plain. Speak truth. Do not let anger settle into a lasting grievance. Let honest labour become a means of helping someone in need. Speak words that build up the hearer. These are ordinary duties, but they reveal whether we are letting grace enter ordinary life. A religious vocabulary cannot make a cruel remark kind, nor can years of church attendance excuse the resentment we refuse to surrender.

His final appeal supplies the reason: forgive one another, “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” We do not purchase God’s forgiveness by being generous. We learn generosity from the mercy already shown to us in Christ. The forgiven person is called to become merciful. That may begin with an apology, a truthful conversation, or a decision to stop repeating another person’s fault.

This calling remains when age or illness limits what we can do. The man in the Gospel needed others to bring him to Jesus. Receiving help is no disgrace. Nor is prayer from a sickbed a lesser offering. We can ask the Spirit to rule our hearts wherever we are, and we can bring others before Christ when we cannot carry them anywhere ourselves.

Come in Faith

As we approach the Holy Table, let us bring our actual lives before the Lord. In the Confession, let us name our sins honestly in our hearts. Let us receive the assurance of his mercy with faith, and seek reconciliation where we have caused injury. We come to Holy Communion depending upon Christ’s righteousness and sacrifice, asking him to nourish the new life he gives.

The command to rise was addressed to that particular sufferer; it is not a promise that every bodily illness will disappear today. But the authority of Christ to forgive is our sure hope. We may entrust ourselves to him, ask for the Spirit’s direction, and undertake the next act of obedience his grace puts within our reach.

Let us pray together the Collect for this day, asking that the Holy Spirit may direct and rule our hearts.

O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.