The same chapter worked out at length — three assessments, and where the word evil falls: Why Do You Think Evil.
When we read the gospels we know who the bad guys are. The scribes and the Pharisees. We read them the way you read a villain in a film, and we never once think we might be them.
But they were good men. They kept the law. They had good jobs and good houses and their children went to good schools. If you met one, you would like him.
A man who could not walk was carried to Jesus on a bed.
You probably know this story with a hole in the roof and four friends lowering him down. That is how Mark and Luke tell it. Matthew leaves all of it out. Just a man, carried in, lying on a bed in front of Jesus.
Everyone in the room knew what he needed. It was the most obvious thing about him.
Jesus looked at him and said:
Take heart, son. Your sins are forgiven.
Nobody had asked about sins.
Some of the scribes were standing there, and they thought: he can't say that. Only God can forgive sins.
They were right. That is not a mistake. Every person in that room believed it, and so would you.
They did not say it out loud.
Jesus knew what they were thinking, and he said it for them.
Why do you think evil in your hearts?
Not why are you wrong. He said evil. Nothing had been said. Nothing had been done. They had only thought it — and they had thought something true.
I worked with a woman in prison for a long time. When she came out, our church gave her a house on the church property. She had friends, she had help, she had everything she needed.
Within a few months she was back on drugs and the whole thing fell apart. In the end we had to ask her to leave. I was the pastor. It was my job to make that call.
I was very angry with her. One day I was going over it in my head, listing everything she had done wrong, and partway through the list I stopped. I had the strong sense that I was not different from her. My sins were not her sins. But the excuses I made for mine were exactly the ones she made for hers.
I would not have used the word evil. I do not think of myself that way. Neither did the scribes. That is why he had to say it.
Then Jesus asked them a question, and left it with them.
Which is easier — to say your sins are forgiven, or to say get up and walk?
Anyone can say a man is forgiven. Nobody can check it. So Jesus did the one they could check.
Get up. Pick up your bed. Go home.
And the man did.
Most people in that room would have assumed the man could not walk because of something he had done. That was how people thought back then.
So the sick man was the sinner, and the men standing up were fine.
By the time it was over, the man on the bed had gone home forgiven and walking. And the men standing up had something wrong with them that nobody could see. Not even them.
The crowd was amazed and praised God.
Matthew does not tell us one word about what the scribes did next. He had been telling us everything they thought. Then he stops.
A few verses later Jesus is having dinner at Matthew's house with all the wrong people, and the Pharisees want to know why.
He says: people who are well don't need a doctor. Sick people do.
The man on the bed knew he was sick. That is why he was carried in.
He went home walking.