Hidden in this discomfort with admitting disability or refusing to be called crippled is our own refusal to admit that we are sinners. Sins are like that disability in that to admit them is to also admit that they have had profound effect upon us and the character of our lives. We might be willing to admit our sin if we gained something by that admission but without such gain we are more likely to pursue the normalization of our sins or the comfort of the judgment that nobody else is any better off. That does not quite make this sin go away but I suppose it provides a momentary relief.
Jesus is not at all shy about meeting up with and identifying the disabled or crippled. He calls them lame, deaf, mute, etc. He is not shy about this not because He is insensitive to their feelings but precisely because He has come to answer this disability with something more than word games. He has come to bring healing. Over and over again our Lord answers the crippled or the friends of the crippled with healing that restores them to a full life over the limited lives they had known. He does so for the deaf and the mute and the blind and even those subject to demons. The present will not be allowed to stand. He will open the ears and release the tongues and open eyes and heal limbs and set free those whom the evil spirits have claimed as their own. He is not worried about offending but has come to transcend what we call the problem with a real answer.
Perhaps we could learn something. On the one hand, the people who come with sins could learn that the sins that trouble our consciences and cause us shame will not be allowed to have the final word over us in a Church where Christ has placed the power of absolution. The power is not in the admission that we are disabled or crippled with sin but in the mercy that absolves and forgives us. Yet without that confession, there is no value to Christ's answer. In addition, the Church needs to learn not to soft pedal or walk gently over the idea that sins are sins. It is not punishment to confess our need but the means to have that need answered with the mercy that forgives our sins and cleanses us from all our unrighteousness. So when the Church tries to find a way about calling people to repentance and confession, the Church is depriving them of the answer Christ has for those who repent of their sins and confess them. Furthermore, what does Christ have to offer us if we do not need the cleansing of His blood? We can play games with sin all we want but the outcome will always be to lose the only answer there is to sin in the cleansing that comes by His absolution. Without this, the Church becomes an unwitting or willing participant in the lie that sin does not matter.
It is no different than telling the blind not to fret because sight is not all that great anyway or the deaf not to despair because there is nothing to hear or the mute not to try since we don't want to hear from them anyhow. It is no different than telling those with missing limbs or limbs that do not work that mobility is not all that it is cracked up to be. What fools we would be to do that! What fools we are for finding ways to excuse or justify or normalize sin so that people do not feel judged when they are called to repentance! The whole point of this is not the judgment but the forgiveness that has the power to answer the judgment. Unless we really do believe that standing at the cemetery and telling the grieving family that the dead are better off in the grave than they are alive is the Gospel.
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