Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed the Paralytic?
And were they actually as hostile as they are often depicted?
Was the crowd of ‘ecclesiastics’ who witnessed the healing of the paralytic as hostile as they are often depicted?
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge shows us…
How Christ addressed an extraordinary gathering of religious leaders and seekers
That He read every soul in the assembly, offering grace suited to each condition.
Why His healing word was both spiritual and miraculous, piercing each heart.
He shows us that, as the widespread hostility actually came at a later date, some or perhaps many of these religious leaders were probably touched by divine grace.
For more context on this chapter, see Part I.
The Healing of the Paralytic
The Training of the Apostles, Part I
Chapter IV
St. Matt. ix. 1–9; St. Mark ii. 1–14; St. Luke v. 17–29
Story of the Gospels, § 139
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
Great assembly of ecclesiastics
Previously: We may suppose that our Lord did not return to Capharnaum until He had allowed ample time to elapse for the effect of this great miracle of the healing of the leper. ‘Again, He entered into Capharnaum,’ says St. Mark, ‘after some days,’ that is, after a considerable period of absence, ‘and it was heard that He was in the house, and many came together, so that there was no room, no, not even at the door, and He spoke to them the word.’
St. Luke’s account is more precise as to the persons of whom the audience was composed. ‘It came to pass on a certain day, as He sat teaching, that there were also Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting by, that were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judaea, and Jerusalem, and the power of the Lord was to heal them.’
This is a very remarkable description, and it most certainly signifies that the assembly was to some extent unusual.
It was not probably unusual at this period of our Lord’s Public Life, for the Pharisees and teachers of the law to attend His preaching, and to do so without any evil intention or prejudice against Him. The time had not yet come for the decided break between Him and the ecclesiastical authorities.
But that there should have been a gathering of such persons from all the towns of Galilee and from Judaea and Jerusalem, must have been unusual, and it may be considered as a proof of the very great extent to which public attention was now concentrated upon Him.
Perhaps, also, we may see in it the effect, already spoken of, of the miracle on the leper, and it may even be thought likely that some of these Pharisees and doctors had been sent into Galilee by the authorities at Jerusalem for the express purpose of watching Him. If this be so, it gives a character of unusual solemnity to the teaching which He now addressed to an audience so important in itself and in the possible influence of its members.
This may be signified in the remarkable words with which St. Luke introduces that teaching. ‘He spoke unto them the word,’ says St. Mark—and the third Evangelist adds, ‘And the power of the Lord was to heal them’—that is, the word was directed to the healing of their souls, and it was, as it were, winged by strong influences of Divine power, which worked upon the hearts which were fit to receive it, and so prepared them to correspond to the gracious and healing doctrine which our Lord delivered.
Variety of character
There were there, we may suppose, as in any large audience now or at any other time, and especially any audience made up in great part of the ministers of religion, men whose souls were in the most various conditions of moral health or weakness or disease—the hardened teachers of laws which they did not themselves observe, the hypocrites whose life was so fair outside and so foul within, the ambitious or covetous or sensual ministers of the altar, the men who sought nothing so much as to rise and rule, the bouncing and swaggering prelates, whose position encouraged them never to brook contradiction or opposition, the vain, the frivolous, the worldly, the sleek silky ‘devourers of widows’ houses,’ and those ‘who made long prayers for a pretence,’ who could thank God that they were not as the rest of men.
But we must never judge of the mass of the Jewish ecclesiastics,—out of whom a very large number were gathered into the Christian fold by the teaching of the Apostles after the Day of Pentecost,1— from what is recorded for us about their rulers. Even among these there were men like Joseph of Arimathea, and it would be hard to suppose that there were not many simple souls like Barnabas among the Levites.
The ministerial calling, the position of those, especially, whose lot it is to rule, has many temptations and dangers indeed, especially when the community in which they rule is prosperous as to its worldly condition or its connection with secular power. It then becomes a sphere in which ambition, avarice, jealousy of the excellence of others, a desire to monopolize opportunities of usefulness and prominence in activity, not to speak of other lower vices, are likely to find much room for exercise, and it has the peculiar danger of being ordinarily beyond the reach of admonition from others. The ranks of the ecclesiastical order are crowded with the best of men, but they do not exclude some of the worst.
In the assembly of which the Evangelists are speaking there may have been some of these, but by their side there may have been found many a guileless, innocent soul, full of faith, not yet ripe for the Gospel truths, but fed upon all the rich spiritual treasures of the older dispensation. There were to be found the honest perplexed inquirers after the truth, the men struck to the heart by the purity and sublimity of our Lord’s teaching, the beauty of His character, the splendour of His miracles, but still unable to understand the lowliness of His station, the humility and the free condescension of His life, the sincere zealots for the tradition of the elders like St. Paul afterwards, the timid hesitating good men whose very eminence was in their way, like Nicodemus or Gamaliel.
All the diseases or infirmities of their souls lay open to the eyes of this Divine Teacher, on Whose lips the whole of this heterogeneous assemblage was for the moment hanging, and for all of them He felt the burning love of the Redeemer and the Good Shepherd, for the wants of each He could provide healing and strength in the words which fell alike on the ears of all. As when His Apostles spoke on the Day of Pentecost, as it seems, in one language, and their words reached the ears of the strangers from so many various lands, so that each one understood them for himself in his own tongue; so the power of the Lord, as St. Luke says, in this discourse was adapted so as to touch each soul at the point where it was most vulnerable and where it most needed relief.
There was light for the ignorant, and the unravelling of entanglements for the perplexed, there was courage for the timid, and strength for those too weak to cast off the chains of sin, reproof for the haughty, comfort for the mourner, peace for the troubled, refreshment for the weary. Such is the power of the word of God, even in the mouths of the weakest of the ministers of the Church. A large crowd of the teachers of religion is always certain to contain the most varied forms of spiritual condition, and it is seldom without some among it who are most ready for the influences of grace, and some others with whom grace must have a hard battle not to plead in vain.
Subject of our Lord’s discourse
This seems perhaps to be the most natural interpretation of the words of St. Luke in this place: but a more common way of interpreting them is that which understands his language about the power of our Lord being there to heal them, as referring simply to the exercise of His miraculous power in curing diseases, which so constantly accompanied His teaching. It is at all events certain that one of these interpretations does not of necessity exclude the other.
What may have been the special subject of our Lord’s teaching on this occasion, we are not told by any of the Evangelists. It is quite possible that it may have had some reference to the last great miracle which had been wrought by Him, which had attracted to Him so much attention, and which had probably occasioned, in part at least, the great assemblage of doctors of the Law which is mentioned by St. Luke.
The transition from the subject of the leprosy of the body to that of the leprosy of the soul, and to its other diseases, would be natural and easy, and thus it may have been that the minds of His audience were full of the subject of moral disease at the time when the discourse either came to an end, to be succeeded by the exercise of the miraculous and merciful power on the bodies of men, or was interrupted by the incident which now follows in the history.
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The Healing of the Paralytic
Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important
Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed and forgave the Paralytic?
Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic
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Acts vi. 7.
Thank you! I have never heard this interpreted before on this Gospel. Past homilies I've heard usually focus on the persistence of the paralytics friends, not on the timeline in His ministry.