Tear Off the Roof
Tear the Roof Off
Luke 5:17-26
Let’s start here. I want you to think about the most important friends in your life. Take a minute. See if you can assemble the list. I want that list to include not just the most obvious choices—your “hall of fame” friends. Those folks make the list because it seems like they’ve been your friend for your whole life or because the impact they had whenever they entered your life was so profound that they could not be missed. Push deeper, though. There were plenty of moments in your life when you ran into the right person at the right time. Although they may not have been a friend for life they were a critical friend at a crucial time. They were a gift.
What we know is that good friends make us better people. The obvious time when we know this is true is when we are “tweens,” not yet young adults, but not children anymore. We are emerging from the families in which we’ve been embedded from birth. We are discovering a whole new world in which we exist as an independent self but we also know that we don’t really have a clue about who we actually are. So, we experiment. Who am if I dress this way? What happens if I hang with these people? Will being in the play or playing this sport change everything?
“Tweens” are incredibly vulnerable. They can be crushed by judgmental peers. They can die a thousand deaths over a snub from their latest crush. Their failures seem so huge and their victories are truly thrilling. But, as people who love “tweens,” we just pray for those two or three good friends in their life, the kind of friends who will be there for each other, who will bring out the best in each other, who will be loyal and steadfast through all the ups and downs. I think it was Archimedes who said, “If you give me one fixed point, I can move the world.” We all know that if you have a couple of good friends, you can make it through almost anything.
We all also know that the need for friends like that doesn’t end in junior high or high school or college. We make powerful friends in those times, some of whom stay with us for the rest of our lives. However, we need good people around us every day, people who care, people who love us and challenge us and are there for us. Human beings, cut off from community, simply don’t thrive. Most of the time when we are cut off from community, almost instinctively, we urgently search it out.
In many respects, the church can be one of those communities. The church, at it’s best, is a community of care. We listen to what’s going on in each other’s life. Because we are of different ages, wisdom won through experience and the energry and joy of youth flow back and forth between us. We laugh together and eat together and cry together. We show up for each other when we know things are rough. Sometimes, we “gently drag” one another in the direction of growth: “Come on! I know it’s hard but I’ll go with you. Let’s do this together…”
There are so many examples of this. One of the great lessons of work trip is how few of those jobs could have been done alone. You need people who see things you don’t see. You also need the sheer phsyical strength that only a group of people can muster. In a much different moment, I think of the group of friends who accompanied Barb Mortimer to chemo for seven years, taking what was otherwise dismal and brutal and tranforming it into a “picnic” wrapped in great conversations. I also remember other times when families and groups of friends gathered for interventions in the lives of those they loved who were battling addictions because they loved that person so much that they had no choice but to tell them the truth.
Good friends “accompany” one another through life. They can’t necessarily fix one another. They’d give anything to make the hard stuff go away. However, in leu of that kind of power, what they can do is make sure that no one goes through the hard stuff alone. In the words of a quote that I’ve always loved, “In the end, we’re just walking each other home.”
So, let me introduce you to a great group of friends. There is a man who is a paraplegic—a “paralytic” in the ancient world. He can’t walk. We don’t know if he was born this way or some terrible accident befell him. Whatever the tragic story of this man’s paralysis might have been, the truly miraculous story is that despite his physical limitations, he has some amazing friends. Now, word had passed through the community that Jesus of Nazareth was coming. Jesus was a hot topic: a preacher and teacher but, most intriguingly, a healer. Jesus, the healer, is who they wanted their friend to meet. They wanted their friend to have a shot at being whole.
What do the friends do? They do whatever it takes. I imagine that they had to convince their friend first. If he had been paralyzed for a while, he probably had done the hard work of accepting his lot and getting on with life. He probably had changed the layout of his home and figured out the daily routines that allowed him to embrace the life before him. I bet he was okay with how things were going.
Then, his friends roll in. They say the most disturbing thing: “What if things don’t have to be this way? What if change is possible? What if you could do the one thing that you’ve already given up on ever doing again?” I imagine the man blew them off at first and then resisted hard when they kept pushing. This is what we do when we are faced with change, even when it would be great if that change could happen. We don’t want to fall into false hope. We don’t want to be disappointed. We don’t want to disappoint our friends, either.
Let me pause and just ask you to be honest with yourself about this point. No one really jumps at the chance to make real change. Yah…sure…superficial change comes easy: go to a new restaurant; wear different clothes; try out a new hairstyle. Those changes can be fun but the stakes are pretty low. We think we’re okay with change until our friends show up and say, “Today’s the day we climb your “Mount Everest” and we know what that “Everest” is because we know you.
So, the friends shoulder the load of convincing the man. They commit to some “sweat equity,” literally carrying the man all the way to the house where Jesus is dining. (And haven’t we all been “carried” by our friends to where we needed to go at some point?) However, what happens next is also what has happened to us all. You tell the truth. You re-kindle hope. You do whatever it takes to make what needs to take place happen. And then, what you run into is a barrier: the house is jammed with people, all of whom want Jesus’ attention.
What if you are having a “come to Jesus” moment, helping your friend get to where they need to be or being carried by your friends to that place, but there’s “no getting to Jesus?” People help each other get ready to do the right thing but a lot of times when we’re finally ready to do the right thing, something stands in our way: there’s no room in the treatment program; the therapist or doctor’s first available appointment is in six months. Everyone agrees, “Let’s do this,” but life answers, “I don’t think so.”
Do you quit? Do you just go back to the way things were? Is it even possible to put “hope” back in the bag once you’ve let it out? No! There are moments in life when we don’t take no for an answer. We stand there and ask ourselves, “What am I missing here?”
What do the man’s friends do? They tear the roof off the house! Imagine them dragging their friends up onto the roof: “Great, you all come up with this fantastic idea about how I can have a better life and now you’re going to kill me!” They grab ropes. They start grabbing the roofing tiles. They peal that roof like it was a can just waiting for a can opener. Then, they lower their friend through that hole, like he was some strange angel descending from heaven above, an angel making one hell of an entrance.
Are you that kind of friend—the kind that would tear the roof off if it was necessary? I’ve laughed with Tracy over the years that when she has been in Addison’s crises and can’t communicate for herself and I’ve had to advocate for her, I have learned to channel my “inner jerk.” You don’t want to be the doctor who is not listening to me when I’m trying to share what I’ve learned Tracy needs in that moment. I’ve been known to tear into a few things to make sure she’s getting what she needs.
The man’s entrance definitely gets Jesus’ attention. However, Jesus shocks them with the first thing he does. He doesn’t heal the man’s spine and legs. Instead, he says this: “Friend, I forgive your sins.” Wow! Is he saying the man is paralyzed because he had sinned and God had punished him? I don’t think so. I think, instead, that Jesus sees the whole person in front of him and understands that the healing that comes with forgiveness is just as important as the physical healing will be. The brokenness that we carry deep inside can be just as paralyzing as any spinal injury.
As a therapist, there are the issues that bring someone into therapy—usually a crisis of one kind or another. We start there and learn how to work together. However, as that crisis resolves a bit, a person’s real struggles start to emerge. “We put out the fire. Now, shall we take a look at the deeper things that made that fire so ready to burn in the first place?” In other words, “Now that we’ve worked through the crisis, our real work can begin.” The “paralytic” can walk again but there can still be things that keep him from really thriving, really “dancing.”
What’s interesting is that the crowd in the house includes a few members of the religious leadership, Pharisees and the like. When Jesus tells the man that his sins are forgiven, they’re angry? Why? Because that’s their job! They trained to do that. They are certified dispensers of God’s grace and care. Does he think he’s God? (Which is an ironic question coming from the people who pretty much walk through life thinking they are God!)
Jesus forgives the man and ends his paralysis. Before he does, though, he gets right up in the faces of the authorities and tells them that he is authorized to do both—to heal physical wounds and to heal the wounds that are far less visible but just as devestating, too. He turns to the man and says, “Get up! Take your bedroll and go home.” The man practially dances home, singing God’s praises with every step.
What’s our take away? Sometimes we have to be ready to “tear the roof off” for those we love. Sometimes, we have to let ourselves be carried in our friends arms and trust that they can help us find the healing that we need. Sometimes, we have to allow for the possibility that what we all thought needed to happen may not be what happens first. Sometimes, we have to make room for God to do whatever it takes to be made whole.