Eyes On The Prize: Jesus Heals A Paralyzed Dude
Jesus had this thing about teaching mind-bending stuff to large crowds of people, kind of like a non-crippled Professor X. Wherever he went, tons of people of all shapes, sizes, and Twilight preferences usually showed up. With Jesus there was no such thing as LOST fans or people that don’t hate themselves, there were just people. The religiously challenged people showed up to see him make a blind person see, the educated people came to see if they could outsmart him, and the alcoholics showed up to see if he’d turn more dirty water into wine.
So one day he was in this house hanging out and mentally pwning the Pharisees with theological jiu-jitsu like he usually did, weaving an intricate web of redemption and epiphanies. See, the Pharisees were basically the Whole Foods shoppers of their time. They walked around with thin-rimmed glasses and ivy-league rowing team sweaters draped over their shoulders as they looked down their upturned noses at everyone around them. They weren’t there to learn from Jesus, they were there to try to catch him in an error so they could loop it on TMZ for the next four days and prove that he wasn’t the bomb-diggity Son of God.
Jesus was in the center of this Messianic mosh pit, teaching like usual. The place was standing-room only, with people cramming in the doorways to hear what he had to say like a bunch of Southern California moms at a reading of The Secret. Just down the street a group of dudes were making their way toward the building, hoping to get in on the Christy healfest. These weren’t just a couple of dudes that came to get some Tony Robbins-style life coaching, these guys were total varsity level all-stars. You see, these guys were carrying their paralyzed friend on a mat, hoping to get him to Jesus so he could finally join their flag football team.
When they got to the place where Jesus was teaching, they saw that it looked like the DMV on a Monday morning. Normal people like me or any of the pansies that I call friends would have just turned around and walked away. Reminds me of that time I trusted a “friend” of mine who may or may not be named Jimmy to get my back after I won five rounds of Edward 40-Hands in his honor and instead I wound up naked in a kiddie pool in the garage, covered in stuff I didn’t even know could come out of my body.
Jimmy would have just looked at his paralyzed friend and said something like, “sorry dude, I guess it could be worse, right? You could be cripp… You could be dead?” But these guys were not Jimmy. Instead of waving the white flag, they decided to take their friendship to the Special Forces level. I imagine the consensus at their bro-summit sounded something like this: “Impossible to get in? You say impossible, I say Jew-possible. We’re too circumcised for the front door anyway. We’re going through the roof.”
Using some kind of crazy Jewish MacGuyver moves, the 6-man Ambrolance somehow got their invalid friend up onto the roof of the building without dropping him to an early death. These ballsy bro-mmandos then Spidermanned their way over to the spot above where Jesus was teaching, and started ripping off roof tiles like a friggin F5 Tornado.
You’d think that from there the guys would’ve just yelled down to Jesus and asked him to swing by after the sermon was done. Nope. Not these guys. These guys wanted their buddy to see Dr. Jesus and they weren’t gonna just drop him off outside the ER. They lowered him down from the roof on his mat, right in front of Jesus. I’ve got a brick of PBR that says these guys loved Mission: Impossible.
Imagine the reactions in the room at this point. Everyone is sitting there, intently listening to Jesus, hoping against hope that the fart they’re about to let loose is a silent one, when a paralyzed dude comes hovering down from the roof. I’m guessing the paralyzed guy just owned it and acted like nothing was weird about what was happening. “This is the handicap section, right?”
Jesus, being God incarnate and all, knew that everyone there was expecting him to bust out a sweet miracle and heal the dude on the spot, but he also knew… well, he was God so he knew pretty much everything else too. Instead of healing the dude, Jesus said “First of all, that was super cool. Props for innovation. Second, your sins are forgiven.”
Based on the gasps that followed that statement, you would have thought he’d said, “I don’t know, I thought Inception kinda sucked.” Jesus could tell that the Pharisees had just crapped enough bricks to build an entirely new building, so he was all like “Seriously guys, I can’t believe the stuff you’re thinking. What’s the real miracle? Forgiving a dude’s sins or fixing his legs? But fine, just so you know I’m legit enough to forgive sins, I’ll heal him too.”
And he did, and the dude formerly known as “crippy” by his friends picked up his mat and crip-walked out of that place. If you needed a story about going big or going home, you just got it.