Poliomyelitis

It is strange how a scent can instantly remind you of past events. Oddly, as I recently entered a hospital blood testing laboratory, I was taken back to 1954. I was six years old and standing in a long queue in my school hallway in order to receive an injection. The older children were in front and the youngest got to watch the scene in front for what seemed like hours. I don’t know if the smell was caused by an antiseptic or by the vaccine itself. I was about to receive the Salk vaccine for poliomyelitis. Jonas Salk had developed the much heralded vaccine in 1952. I still vividly remember the smell in that hallway that day. No doubt the memory is made more intense because of my nervousness on that day. Terror may be a better word than nervousness. I was new to school and unannounced needles had not been part of the school day until that moment. I felt as if a sacred covenant assuring my well-being and safety had been broken. The opposite was of course true.

Polio was the one of the most feared childhood diseases of the first half of the twentieth century. It attacked the central nervous system in 1 in 200 cases and caused death and paralysis. Polio has existed for thousands of years in an endemic or constant state. It was not until the 1880’s that it became epidemic world wide. The effects in North America were devastating. Parents feared even the mention of the word. The introduction of the Salk vaccine reduced the numbers of global occurrences from hundreds of thousands per year to the present 1000 per year. The disease is now virtually unknown in Canada and the United States. Many young people may not even recognize the dreaded name of poliomyelitis or polio for short. There is a very good chance that Jesus cured many who are termed lame, sick with the palsy or paralytic in the Bible of the after effects of the disease polio. One such miracle is told to us in Mark 2: 3-11.

Early in His ministry, Jesus was preaching in a house in Capernaum. The room was so crowded that four men of faith lowered a paralytic man on a bed through a hole in the roof that they had created. Recognizing their and the crippled man’s great faith, Jesus was moved and said “Son, your sins are forgiven you”. Jesus quickly realized that the scribes were muttering about His perceived blasphemy because they believed that only God could forgive sins. His answer is in verses 9 to 11.

9 "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, take up your bed and walk’?
10 "But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins" ––He said to the paralytic,
11 "I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house."

Clearly both forgiving sins and miraculously curing paralysis are equally impossible to man. Only God can do either. The scribes could not see that the man’s sins had been forgiven so Jesus gave them something that they could see and that was the paralytic taking up his bed and going home. Jesus did not do this for the benefit of the scribes, who still refused to believe, but for the benefit of all those who observed, were amazed and glorified God.

I believe that Jesus also teaches us another very important lesson with this confrontation. Healing physical disease is important, but not nearly as important as having your sins forgiven. The healing, as miraculous and very welcome as it is, is as temporary as our life on earth. Forgiveness of sins leads to an eternity in heaven. Jesus showed this clearly by forgiving sins first and curing the paralytic second. The real miracle here is the opportunity that we have to believe, to confess and to allow Him to take our sins upon Himself. He finished that work for us on the cross at Calvary.

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