The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ

Jesus Scandalises the Scribes

The local teachers and religious lawyers, the scribes, who were alarmed by his fame, thought they should take steps to deal with him, so they began to attend whenever Jesus was teaching. On one occasion the house where he was speaking was crowded, and some men who had carried a paralysed friend there in the hope that Jesus would heal him found they could not get in at the door; so they carried him up to the roof, scraped off the plaster, removed the beams, and lowered the sick man on a mat down in front of him.

Jesus saw that the man and his friends had come in honest hope and faith, and that the crowd was excited and tense with expectation. Knowing the effect it would have, he said to the paralysed man, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’

The scribes – village lawyers most of them, men of no great skill or learning – said to one another, ‘This is blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins. This man is asking for trouble!’

Jesus saw them whisper, and knew what they would be saying, so he challenged them.

‘Why don’t you come out with it?’ he said. ‘Tell me this: which is easier, to say “Your sins are forgiven”, or to say “Take up your mat and walk”?’

The scribes fell into the trap he’d set, and said, ‘To say “Your sins are forgiven”, of course.’

‘Very well,’ said Jesus, and turning to the paralysed man, he said, ‘Now, take up your mat and walk.’

The man was so strengthened and inspired by the atmosphere Jesus had created that he found himself able to move. He did just what Jesus had told him to do: he got to his feet, picked up his mat, and went to join his friends outside. The people were scarcely able to believe what they’d seen, and the scribes were confounded.

Soon after that, they had something else to be scandalised about. Jesus was walking past a tax office one day, and he stopped to talk to the tax-collector, who was a man called Matthew. Just as he’d done to the fishermen Peter and Andrew, and to James and John the sons of Zebedee, Jesus said to Matthew, ‘Come and follow me.’

At once Matthew left his coins, his abacus, his files and records, and stood up to go with Jesus. In order to mark his new calling as a follower, he gave a dinner for Jesus and the other disciples, and invited many of his old colleagues from the tax department. That was the scandal: the scribes who heard about it could hardly believe that a Jewish teacher, a man who spoke in the synagogue, would share a meal with tax-collectors.

‘Why is he doing this?’ they said to some of the disciples. ‘We have to speak with these people from time to time, but to sit and eat with them!’

Jesus didn’t find that charge difficult to answer. ‘Those who are not sick need no doctor,’ he said. ‘And there’s no need to call righteous people to repent. To speak with sinners is exactly why I’ve come.’

Naturally, Christ was following all this with great interest. Obeying the stranger’s instruction to watch and wait, he was careful not to draw any attention to himself, but stayed in Nazareth, living quietly. He didn’t find that hard to do; although he resembled his brother, of course, he had the sort of face that few people remember, and his manner was always modest and retiring.

Nevertheless, he took care to listen to all the reports that came back to the family about what Jesus was doing. It was a time when political feeling in Galilee was beginning to stir; groups such as the Zealots were urging the Jews to active resistance against the Romans, and Christ was anxious in case his brother should attract the wrong sort of attention, and become a target of the authorities.

And he waited every day in hope of meeting the stranger again, and hearing more about his task as the word of God.