“Through the Roof”

Mark 2:1-12

Sunday, February 23, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

Sometimes things happen in a church and because they do, the church becomes somewhat famous for the thing that happened. Ray Stevens, the great country music song writer and comedian tells a fiction tale about a squirrel that gets loose in a church one Sunday morning and after you have heard the song a time or two, you can just imagine being there. This morning, through the power of our imaginations, I would like for you to join me at the morning worship service at the First United Methodist Church in Fordyce eleven years ago. What happened that morning put the church on the map, you might say. It was so strange that Charles Albright wrote about it in his article that appears in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. I know that it happened, because my friend, David Eaton, who was working at that church at the time, told me that it did. We reminisced about it on Thursday night. So join me in the sanctuary in Fordyce. Go ahead and sit in a pew. You can sit in your favorite one because their sanctuary is set up just like our’s is set up. But I do want to warn you that sitting next the aisle might be dangerous to your health. Imagine that it is the middle of the worship service. The call to worship has happened. The opening hymn has been sung. The choir has sung their anthem. The confessional prayer has been said, and the children have been invited to come forward for the children’s sermon. That is when it happened. It was David’s day to do the children’s sermon. He was sitting on the step in between the communion rails delivering what he hoped would be a good message for the children. David told me that there was one kid who never seemed to pay attention to the children’s sermon. Instead, he liked to roll around on the carpet and look up at the ceiling. David, I guess, had gotten to the point that he could ignore that kid doing that. But on this particular day, David could not ignore it. While the little boy was looking up, he saw something. He pointed toward the ceiling, through the screens where the speakers lived, the boy said as loud as he could, “Look, there’s somebody up there!” Turns out that there were four somebodies up there. The four were part of the youth group. The four decided that the best seat in the house was not a seat at all. You see, four of them had gotten into the attic and walked across the length of the ceiling of the sanctuary by putting a two by fours end on end. And when the little boy pointed them out, two of them took off running. It is hard to walk on two by fours, much less run on them. When the boys started doing that, one of their feet went through the ceiling. I told you not to sit close to the aisle. If you are still sitting there, I suggest that you scooch over a couple of seats. Maybe it was the weight of the run or maybe it was the first ceiling tile that fell towards the center aisle, but David tells me that as you looked up, you could see their footprints with every step that they made. David says that he did not know what was happening. At first, he thought that there were demons in the church. And with every step that they made, chunks of the ceiling came tumbling down and landing somewhere near the center aisle of the church. They might have gotten away with it, if one of their last steps had been more sure. Don’t worry, one of them did not fall to the floor of the sanctuary, but most of his leg did. And this youth, you see, had on new shoes. They were the kind of shoes that were different and unique. David didn’t tell me what kind of shoes they were. He just told me that several people, throughout the morning had commented on this kid’s new shoes. So when one of those shoes came through the ceiling tiles, everyone knew at least one of the culprits. When the commotion was over and when everyone was safely out of the sanctuary, all four of the youth were found hiding in the church’s stairway. We thought that we had a sanctuary ceiling that was famous!

Four youth who were caught tearing up a roof. I guess that it would have been better for them if all of the pews were filled and if there were people standing up and down the side aisles, sitting in the windows, standing at the back of the church, and filling the narthex. I guess that it would have been better for them if they were in the attic in hopes of seeing Jesus there or if they had a friend who desperately needed healing and they were prepared to cut through the speaker screen and lower him down. But that is not what happened. What happened in Fordyce, some might say, was vandalism.

But in Capernaum, when it happened, when four friends dug through the roof, it was an act of faith. I do not mind telling you that this is a wonderful story, but you know that. It is not hard to put yourselves somewhere in this scene. Mark tells us that Jesus returns home to Capernaum. The house probably is not his house. It is believed that the house was Simon Peter’s house. They dug underneath a fifth century church and they discovered this house. On it’s walls were etched crosses and a boat. They believe that this is this same house and it probably served as both a house and a church. This is that house, and at the house, in this church, in our lesson for this morning, three miracles happen.

Mark tells us that Jesus was teaching the word to them. He also tells us that there were so many people gathered there that there was no room for them not even in front of the door. If you were there, you would have seen people everywhere. I suspect that the house was full, the doorway was full, the windows were full. There were people outside trying to get in. I think that there were people everywhere. That is when the four friends arrived at the house, with their friend in tow. Their friend was on a mat and the four were carrying him. The Greek word here suggests that it was some kind of a cheap bed or a mattress that could easily be carried. Carrying him was the easy part, getting him in to see Jesus, that was not so easy. And so what happens is the first of the three miracles. These friends, these four friends, will not let the crowd stop them. They know that they will never get in the front door. And so they have to come up with a plan.

They consider what they are going to do. They are a four person committee. Do you know how committees sometime work? A lot of ideas are thrown out. Some of them aren’t so brilliant. That must have been what the four friends did. One of them may have said, “Maybe we could go to the back of the house, and dig under the floor.” “No that will take too long!” Maybe another thought, “Why don’t we set the place on fire and when Jesus comes running out, we’ll grab him!” “No, someone might get hurt.” Then one of the four came up with a brilliant idea, though it was a little crazy. But it might just work. So the four went to the back of the house, climbed the stairs that led to the roof, and dug through it. We think that the roof was probably made of thatch and not shingles and that the roof was flat and not pitched. It would be easy to dig through it and then fix the roof later. What I want you to see here is the first miracle. These friends will not let anything stop them from getting help for their friend.

I would have liked to have been there to save seen parts of the ceiling falling in and then with everyone looking up and seeing daylight, this man is lowered to where Jesus is. Don’t you know that all of the eyes were on Jesus. What was he going to do? What would he say? Now I don’t know what they were expecting, but what Jesus said is the second miracle. Jesus saw the faith of the man’s friends and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” Huh? Your sins are forgiven? “We came for healing.” Your sins are forgiven? Mark tells us that the scribes who were there were thinking something radically different from that. Mark tells us that Jesus, in his spirit, knew that the scribes were thinking. They were thinking, “Who is this man? What he is saying is blasphemy and a capital offense. No one can forgive sins but God.”

Is there some kind of a connection between the man’s paralysis and his sins? We know and you’ve probably heard it, that in the days of Jesus, it was believed that physical illness was linked to sin. So that if someone was paralyzed, then there was a reason for it. He, obviously, had done something to deserve the paralysis. We don’t believe that any more. It is crazy thinking these days. Maybe it was crazy thinking then, too, I don’t know. Jesus knowing what the scribes were thinking asked a question that I’m not sure I know how to answer. Jesus asked, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk?’” I don’t know how to answer the question; both seem pretty tough to me. To show the crowd and the scribes who were there and to show us that he has the power to do both, Jesus says, “I say to you, stand up, take up your mat, and go to your home.” That is the third miracle, the one of healing. Mark tells us that all of them, everyone who was there, the ones who saw the miracle and the ones who heard about it outside, were amazed. Can’t you just see the former paralytic walking past them on his way home? Mark tells us that everyone there glorified God when they saw it. Then they said, “We have never seen anything like this.”

Now, what should we do with these words this morning? How can they speak to us these days? I think that there is enough in this lesson to keep a preacher preaching for several sermons. I think that it could easily be a series of sermons, but I won’t do that, because I don’t usually do sermon series. Instead I would like for you just to hear one thing this morning, from this lesson. Here is the one thing. I think that we need friends like the ones in this story. I think that we need friends who are willing to risk it all for us. As one commentator put this, “In the church there are barriers and there are carriers. We need more carriers.” I think that we need special friends who care. If you cannot have four friends like the paralytic had, I say that you need at least one friend. They are the person that you can call at 2:30 in the morning and after they’ve wiped the sleep from their eyes, say, “It is all right. It is all right. What is wrong?” We need friends like that. We need friends who can help us heal.

Mark tells us that Jesus is moved by the paralytic’s friends’ faith, who let their friend down from the rafters and who waited with hope. Isn’t it that way for us sometimes? We go through some kind of a paralysis, a time when we just can’t get to Jesus. Maybe we are stuck and we are having a hard time believing. I don’t mind admitting to you, that there have been times like that in my own life, when praying was very hard and when the demons of my life just were getting the better of me. In those times, we need to come and be among the people of God, his church, because we carry each other. We believe for each other. We sing the old hymns of the church and read the Word of God and talk with the Lord as if He were sitting right beside us. And our friends stand for us until we can hear Jesus calling our names. I love the line in our lesson, “I say to you....to you...stand up, take up your mat....” You are forgiven, you are acceptable. You are loved. Get up. Pick up the mat where you’ve been stuck on and get going again. That is just what we do for each other and the advice that I want to give you this morning is simply this, when you are there and when you are stuck and paralyzed and alone and abandoned, don’t give up. Keep coming to church. Find four friends or find a friend who will carry you to Jesus and when you can’t believe, let them believe for you, and see if you aren’t helped along by their faith.

I heard about a couple who were great friends. They had been friends for years and years. Their children had grown up with each other. One night all four of them went out to dinner and then to see a play. They laughed through the entire meal and talked before and after the play. In fact, they talked about how they ought to get together more often to do things like they had done that night. And they said good night to each other and all of them went home. It was several weeks later that one of the couples discovered what their friends, on the night that they were all together, were going through. Their son, their youngest son, had been arrested for drug possession. He had spent that day and then that night in jail and they were waiting for a day in court to be set.

It took courage, I guess, for the man paralyzed in our story, to seek out the help of his friends when he heard that Jesus was back in town. I think that it takes greater courage for us to know each other and to let ourselves be known. But how can we find healing if we don’t? Especially when life has knocked us on our backs and left us flat and paralyzed. Don’t we need each other to help us through these days?

I want to say a word to the men of our congregation. Men, are you listening? We don’t need anyone’s help, do we? We are strong and powerful. We don’t even need to ask for directions! We can get there without anyone’s help. My parents were lost in Washington, D.C. one summer. They traveled in circles around the Washington Monument. My dad did not want to stop and ask for help. My mother said this, “I knew that I married Mr. Wright, but I didn’t know that his first name was Always. Now let me say a word to everyone else. It takes courage, I know that, to get the help that we need. Who are you going to call at 2:30 a.m.? I know that being paralyzed is an awful feeling, but being alone is worse. This is a very practical sermon. What I want you to hear is that we all need friends. We need friends that we can share with and who we can trust and when the time is right, will take us to Jesus for healing. Let us pray.