The more important liberation

The Gospels (Mark 2.1; Luke 5:17) tell us of a remarkable incident in Capernaum. Jesus had already begun to attract great crowds because of his preaching and his miracles. So there was a large crowd gathered to listen to him inside the house where he was staying. Also present were a large number of the hostile opposition: the Pharisees and Scribes who came looking for something that they could accuse him of.

A small group of persons came, carrying a paralytic in a hammock. They could not enter the house as the crowd was too thick even at the door. They climbed to the roof. (Jewish houses had flat roofs.) They removed some of the tiles, and then let down the hammock, so that the sick man landed right in the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus.

That was a very ingenious way of demanding immediate attention for their sick man. It also showed their faith: they believed that Jesus could and would cure the sick man.

What they wanted from Jesus was physical healing, a physical liberation of the sick man from his paralysis. Jesus gave them what they did not ask for: a different kind of healing, a more radical and more necessary type of liberation, freedom from sin. Jesus said to the sick man, "Your sins are forgiven."

"Blasphemy!" murmured the Scribes and Pharisees. "Blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Jesus then cured the man of his paralysis, as a proof that he had the power to forgive sins.

The message is clear: while physical healing is important, the healing of the soul, the restoration of a person’s relationship with God, is far more important and far more necessary.

Liberation Theology emanating from Latin America is born of the perception that God became man in order to bring freedom to mankind. Freedom from what? In their particular situation, the Latin American theologians could think only of freedom from oppression – political and economic. Political freedom from the tyranny of dictators, economic freedom from oppression by landlords and greedy multinational companies, and also freedom from what (in Marxist terminology) are called unjust structures of society.

Political and economic freedom are of course very important. They are an urgent human need. They must be the object of human efforts at liberation. But it would be a misreading of the Gospels to say that Jesus became man precisely to bring about political or economic freedom. He came to bring a more radical and more necessary freedom: freedom from sin. Freedom of the mind, the conscience, the soul. He came to give life – the supernatural life of the soul. "I have come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly." (John 10.10)

Freedom of the mind has been achieved even by prisoners. One of the cavalier poets of England, imprisoned by the Puritans for his continued loyalty to the King, wrote a poem about it:

Stone walls do not a prison make

Nor iron bars a cage:

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for a hermitage.

If I have freedom in my love

And in my mind am free,

Angels alone who hover above

Enjoy such liberty.

But more than freedom in mind and love is freedom from sin. It means a clear conscience and an intimate union with God. As Jesus said, "If you continue in my words, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." (John 8.32)

The Christian martyrs, chained hand and foot in their prison cells, had no physical freedom. But they were joyous. They enjoyed spiritual freedom. That was the freedom that Jesus came to bring.