Does Anyone Know a Good Roofer?

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for
all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all
our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless
fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life
may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal,
and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ
our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Mark 2:1-12

Wow, this is the kind of gospel story that will just preach itself if you don’t mess it up too much.

The first thing I want to point out to you is the role of the paralyzed man’s community of friends in bringing their friend to Jesus. New Testament scholars point out that the grammar of the passage suggests that the faith Jesus is referring to is the faith of those who brought their friend to Jesus - at the very least, it is all of their faith together that Jesus praises. Now, this should give us pause because we ought to be immediately asking ourselves questions like this one in light of the teaching here: are the needs of those in my community important enough to me? To be able to answer this question in light of this text we need to ask another question: will we rearrange our schedule and lives in such a way as to make time to bring those who are hurting or isolated into the presence of Jesus. If we are willing to do this and actually do it sometimes then we are likely on the right track. If we are not actively pursuing those opportunities then we probably have our priorities out of whack.

So, as we approach the season of Lent, I suggest that is a good idea to ask ourselves, “are we passionate about people in such a way that we desire to bring them to the same environment in which we breath the air of God’s love and forgiveness?” Jesus is not physically in a house where we can bring people so we have to think about what it would mean for us to bring people to Jesus. That is why I like to talk about it as the environment where we breath the air of God’s love and forgiveness; we experience Jesus in our community of faith, whether in a church service or in the context of those life-giving relationships in other social settings. Are we comfortable bringing outsiders to the faith to those settings?

The second thing I want to note from this passage is related to this notion of bringing the friend into the presence of Jesus. Here it is: faith is about outcomes that only God can achieve with a person as God relates uniquely to that person and as that person relates uniquely to God. This is such an obvious conclusion to draw from this passage that it is sort of easy to miss. Look at it this way. If these guys would have really obsessed over the outcome of this scheme to dig a hole in the roof so that they could lower their friend down to where Jesus was they would not have done it. The dramatic tension of this story reminds us that more things were likely to go wrong in this scenario than would go right. It would be too easy to get stuck on concerns like these: what if this makes Jesus angry? What if we all get in trouble with the authorities over this? What if someone beats the tar out of us before we can even get the roof open?! Faith cannot ask those questions because faith is motivated not by passions and thought processes that are tied to trying to predict or engineer desired outcomes. Faith, at least in this story is seen to be faith when people, out of deep love and compassion for someone else, do their very best to bring their friend into Jesus’ presence so that Jesus can do whatever he will do. To be sure, the hope is for healing but that is an outcome that was beyond their control and we ought to remember that outcomes are beyond our control too. Also, we would do well to remember that we don’t show the proper respect for the person or for God when we fret over, or try to manipulate/control the encounter of someone with God.

Last thing for this morning: we need to take note that Jesus uses this opportunity to identify himself as the one who will bring to pass the promises that God had made to Israel regarding the new covenant, that there would come a time when God would bring to pass, with the coming of the Messiah, a forgiveness of sins that would be final and complete. Jesus, in identifying with the Son of Man prophecies of the OT, claims to have the authority to do just that, to bring God’s forgiveness to people in a way that suggests that something of a change of epochs is taking place. Those who knew their Old Testament might have been wondering if the promises of God to the prophet Jeremiah were coming to pass:

Jeremiah 31:31-34 “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,* says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

And so in that house on that day God revealed his heart in Jesus. The forgiveness and physical healing promised through the prophets was finally coming to pass in this fallen grace-starved world. So powerful and life-giving is an encounter with this new thing God is doing in Jesus that drastic measures are the order of the day; risks must be taken; outcomes must be left in God’s hands. How about you and me? How often are we at points during the course of our mundane life where we could either, so to speak, dig a hole in the roof to be in Jesus’ presence, or just go back to whatever banal activity we choose to use to distract ourselves from what is really important and life-giving? Good question as we move into the season of Lent. The good news is, of course, that God smiles every time we make the slightest movement in his direction - we don’t even have to dig through a roof. May we move in his direction more and more in the week that comes.

Questions for discussion:

1. Do you leave enough room in your schedule to respond to the needs of those around you? How would you be able to tell if you do or not?

1a. Do you see the work of the gospel as being about helping others in need regardless of their orientation to the gospel?

2. Do you actively seek to include those outside of the community of Christ in your communities of Christ followers? Is there a way to do this that makes the non-Christ-follower feel like an object? If so, how do you avoid that?

2a. Do you feel like you try to engineer outcomes, even if only subconsciously?

3. Related to question #2: what would you say to your non-Christian friend if she/he were to ask you this question: “are you friends with me only in the hopes that I might convert?” Then, how would you answer this likely follow-up question from her/him: “well, do you think I have to be a Christian to love God?”