“Tattooed by Grace”

My paralyzed son chose an interesting Bible verse for his first tattoo.

Few parents get the chance to take their kids to the tattoo parlor for the first time.

But I did. For the past few years, both my sons have clamored for some ink. I said “No” for a while, but they wouldn’t give up. So I gave in. I even gave them a gift card for Christmas, to use at the tattoo parlor—although I did require “veto privileges” on the design and placement. “Kiss Me Here” would not be etched on either of my sons’ bums.

I needn’t have worried. My strapping 16yo athlete-son Max is proud of his muscles and got a big hulking cross on his big hulking deltoid. When he flexes (he likes to flex), the cross stretches its arms out wide.

My other 18yo kid, Mitchell, wanted a cross too. (I am blessed beyond measure to have children who want to adorn their bodies with the love of Jesus. Seriously.) Mitchell researched cross designs for months. They both did, in fact. He settled on a snazzy image of a cross formed by three intersecting nails. (It was designed by tattoo artist Chris Boyle at Iron Age Studio in the U. City Loop. Aside from the pictures of sexually promiscuous demons on the walls, it’s a perfectly respectable place.) Mitchell decided to place the tattoo on his right forearm, where he could see it easily. And he also included in the design a tiny little Bible reference ‘neath the image: Mark 2:5.

It’s a verse from his favorite Bible story, the healing of the paralytic. In the story, Jesus is teaching in a very crowded house in Capernaum. It is the early days of his ministry, but he has already built a reputation as a teacher of authority and a healer of diseases. People are traveling from far and wide to hear him.

In this particular story, some men bring a paralyzed man to Jesus. The house is too crowded to get him inside, so they lift him up top, remove some of the thatched roof, and lower him down.

Jesus is so inspired by their destructive determination that he looks down at the man and says words that changed the course of his eternity: “Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk. 2:5). Some religious authorities had been following Jesus and objected to the idea that Jesus, a mere man to them, could forgive sins. Sensing their cynicism, Jesus confronts them directly: “Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to this paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” And then Jesus tells this immobilized man to get up, take his mat, and ambulate home in full view of them all. Which he does.

Everyone is amazed. The religious authorities are befuddled. Humiliated, in fact.

That’s the story my son had permanently tattooed on his arm. It’s his favorite Bible story. He thinks about it a lot and talks about it often. The story has given him hope and guidance for a long time. How so?

You see, my son is paralyzed. From the shoulders down. He has a progressive and mysterious neuro-muscular disease that is sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly taking his life. After a recent decline, he is currently in the ICU on a breathing machine, unable to move, and barely able to hear or talk. He needs healing of either the medical or miraculous sort (or both) if he is to live much longer.

But that’s why he likes the story. The story reminds him what he really needs, and what he only thinks he needs. Mitchell and I have spent hours marveling at what the paralyzed man’s reaction must have been when he was first laid down on the ground in front of Jesus and heard those words, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Huh?

That’s not what the man came for. That’s not what he wanted. Imagine his confusion: “Thank you, Master. Much appreciated. Happy to be forgiven. Yay. But I’m perhaps wondering if there is potentially something else you have up your sleeve for me today?”

There was. Jesus went ahead and healed the guy. But this is the key point of the story: Jesus heals him, almost reluctantly, and mostly to make a point to his skeptics. In Jewish culture it was indeed blasphemous for a man to forgive sins. That is the purview of God alone. As the latest messianic aspirant, Jesus had just crossed a line. But he knew who he was, and as the living embodiment of Yahweh he had all the authority that could be given. He also knew that it is relatively easy to pronounce forgiveness. You just say it: “Your sins are forgiven.” Nothing much happens. No flash or miraculous transformation. It seems too easy. How would anybody know if any sins had actually been forgiven just because someone says they have?

So, to show that he had the authority to do something relatively easy, Jesus did something undeniably hard. He had the crippled man get up and walk out—mostly, to prove a point.

Not that Jesus wasn’t happy to heal the guy. The Son of Man was frequently moved by compassion, and sometimes seems to not be able to stop himself from healing—especially the ailing children of desperate parents. But Jesus is also sober-minded about this. He knows that everybody dies. (Even the paralyzed man, eventually.) He knows that suffering is part of life. He knows that as much as paralyzed bodies are a problem, souls paralyzed by sin are an even greater problem. We are each alienated from God because of our individual and collective guilt as human beings, and not fit for what God has in store. Compared to our broken bodies, our broken souls are an infinitely bigger deal.

Knowing this, Jesus addresses the real problem. He gives him a greater gift. The man came for healing, and Jesus gives him forgiveness. And whether or not the man knew it, he had just been blessed beyond measure. Jesus is like the candy store owner who gives the little girl the deed to the business when asked for a piece of candy: “All I wanted was a jolly rancher. What’s with this piece of paper?”

As have many wondered: All I wanted was healing. What’s with this forgiveness?

That’s my quadriplegic son’s favorite Bible story. He got it tattooed on his now non-functioning arm to remind him that here on earth there are things more important than having arms and legs that work.

Of course, the story also drives him crazy. It takes a lot of courage for Mitchell to look down at the ink on his arm and be reminded of a God who sometimes heals and sometimes doesn’t. We continue to pray for healing. And we are truly perplexed—crestfallen, even—by the Great Physician’s apparent reluctance to heal via miraculous or medical means. But we’re reminded by the story, as we are by the life of Jesus overall, that if all we have to live for is life on earth, we don’t have much. You spin around the marble a few times and then you die.

But God’s love is greater. His future is brighter. He has something better in mind for us: eternal life in the new heavens and earth, with a body that works and a soul that is free.

And it starts with forgiveness—forgiveness purchased by Jesus on that big, hulking cross. Our sin has consequences, but Jesus took them. By his blood. And anybody can be forgiven by the blood of Jesus. The cross is expansive enough for anybody’s sin. As God flexes his muscles, the cross grows wide—wide enough to enfold any sinner of any size into his big, strong arms.

Write that on your soul. Etch it on your mind. Tattoo it on your forearm. Draw it on your deltoid.

We want healing. We need forgiveness.

Thank God for courageous young men who get it, and Saviors who make it so.

-MRH (9/22/2019)

Sad Update: On Oct. 2, 2019, our precious son breathed his last and went to be with Jesus. We trust in faith that he is now walking happily in God’s presence—free from both the shackles of his disease and from the burden of his sin. In his memory I braved the needle and got the exact same tattoo in the exact same spot. And yes, it hurt as much as tattoos are said to hurt. Only for love.