Who Can Forgive Sins? (9AM)

Today is Communion Sunday; please have some bread & juice on hand for the end of the service.

I admit that I watched very little of the 2022 Winter Olympics. I am actually more intrigued by the 2022 Paralympics which started this past Friday. The difficulties faced, the challenges overcome, the determination. The Men's Ice Hockey (sled) team has won gold four out of the five past Olympics. The Women's team has also had great success (gold twice, silver three times, bronze once).

This morning we meet a man who is simply referred to as "the paraplegic." This man had no opportunity for self-mobility. His legs didn’t work. He did not have the benefit of apparatuses available today that would have made him more independent. If he wanted to go somewhere others had to carry him. Those who carried him from place to place had likely heard stories, whispers, of those who had been blind, full of leprosy, deaf, possessed by demons, unable to walk, but when they met Jesus they were clean, hearing, set free, dancing, alive. And so, four of them carried him to Jesus. Maybe he begged them.

However and whyever it happened, it did. But then another barrier… Jesus was so popular, so many gathered to listen to, and watch Him, that they couldn't make their way through the crowd. They improvised … they hoisted the paralytic onto the roof, cut a hole in that roof, and lowered him down to where Jesus was. Their approach was bold, spur of the moment … but it worked. The result, Jesus did more than this man, or his friends, asked for or thought possible. The former paralytic walked home that day … on his renewed legs, his life changed. Jesus offers us way more than we ask for, or hope for, too.