Fr Matthew Reese

“[Jesus said,] ‘Which is easier, to say, “Your sins are forgiven you,” or to say, “Rise and walk?” But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the man who was paralyzed—‘I say to you, rise, take up your bed and go home.’ And immediately he rose before them, and took up that on which he lay, and went home, glorifying God.” —Luke 5:23–25

Dear Friends,

In reading today’s Gospel passage from Luke, I could not help but think of many other such scenes of Jesus’s healing. Think of the scene in John 5 at the pool of Bethsaida, where a paralyzed man had laid for years, unable to dip into the healing waters. Jesus asked,

“‘Do you want to be healed?’ The sick man answered him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.’”

In all these moments of miraculous healings––of leprosy, skin diseases, blindness, and paralysis––Jesus usually asks these people only three things… give thanks to God, tell no one, and “take up your bed.” The first is straightforward enough. The second is more peculiar. The third is baffling.

The Levant must have been overrun with healed penitents carrying their mats around! Why this strange injunction? We might interpret this in any number of ways.

But today I would like to suggest one possibility: the healing power of God does not wipe away the signs and symbols of our past sufferings––physical or otherwise. We are not meant to feign some kind of holy perfection, to hide our woundedness or brokenness. After all, the risen body of Christ is a body marked by the brutality of the cross. Its woundedness is not obliterated but transformed––a symbol of God’s glory.

In the same way the earthly recipients of Jesus’s grace––healed, walking, seeing, believing––take up their mats and follow him… mementos of former suffering, transformed into banners of the power of God.

Let us not hide our own mats. Let us take them up, for as Jesus told his disciples,

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew