Through the Roof
Transcript is AI-generated and may not be 100% accurate.
Welcome to church. My name is Matt Moberg. I'm one of the leaders of this community. We are thrilled that you all are here with us tonight. This is the part of the worship service that we put on every Sunday evening, not always in this same location, but every Sunday evening we do put it on, where in this service we do a moment where we put our stories in the context of scriptural stories and we say, “This is a text that is thousands of years old. Does it have anything of value to say to us today?” We tend to believe it does, but we also understand it's not easy. It's, it's always a little bit of a hit or miss.
And so with that preface in mind, I always give this out of the gates. If you hear nothing else when you leave this building tonight, if there's nothing of value you can put in your pocket when you walk out to that parking lot after, hear this: who you are is more important than what you do. Even if what you do is getting more attention than who you are. That is a core baseline belief.
That's Mark 1. We have been going through the gospel of Mark and we will continue to do so for the next 30 years until we get to the end of it. But the baptismal story is the, the spirit that descends like a dove on the life of Jesus before he fixes any crooked legs or opens any kind of blind eyes or defies the laws of buoyancy and walks on water, he hears the voice of Love speak over his life—this carpenter's boy from the sticks—and say, “You are my son with whom—not by whom—I'm well pleased.” And the scriptures also go on to say that what is said to Jesus is said to each and every one of us.
And so we start there tonight. we're in Mark 2, we made a transition tonight, we got out of Mark 1. Now we're in Mark 2. And the text that we will be going into here in a second is a special one to me. Um, I told my wife this morning, I said, there are two texts in particular that I, I hate to preach on because they mean too much to me, if that makes sense. Nobody laughed with me, but I felt it. Thank you. It's Matthew 25: “Whatever you did for the least of these you've done for also for me.”
But this one right here: the story of the paralytic man being lowered to the roof, maybe it's because I was kicked outta church in middle school and I was all like, you can't go on this worship trip. And I found like this story to be so fricking inspiring. How these boys who get caught up in the traffic outside of the door, there is like a roadblock between them and Jesus and yet they find a new kind of door and they get the man that they're trying to bring to Jesus through the roof. They didn't know it was a door. They drop him down and there is Jesus. It's a powerful text. And so it's overwhelming for me as a pontificator of said text.
The other thing is in the past three nights I've had six hours of sleep. I'm in the worst stretch of insomnia I've ever been in right now. And so here's what we could do. I could be robotic with y'all and I could read from the notes I wrote down, but it'd probably get weirder that way. So do you mind if we just keep it human to human and we look at the text and see what comes up and hope that it's Spirit-led the whole time? Amen. Alright, Mark 2:1, here we go. And when he—he being Jesus—returned to Capernaum.”
That was his home base. Like in the brief moment that he's in the spotlight, if you were to ask Jesus, “Where do you like put your head down at night, where do you plant your roots?” It's Capernaum, the home of the comforter. That's the name of Capernaum. After some days when he was gone, he was out on tour. Word had reached the home crowd that Jesus was doing a lot of different things. They didn't know if it was true, but they had heard that he was healing people, that he was like calling demons or dysfunction out of bodies, that he was set in wrongs, right? And so there was a buzz about that boy when he came back into town. “After some days it was reported that he came back home and many were gathered together. So much so that there was no more room at the house he was in.”
We think it was Peter's house. Now here's what's funny about that. I don't want to forget this 'cause I do think it is funny. The gospel of Mark, from what we believe, is relayed to Mark—John Mark—by the apostle Peter. And so these are basically like regurgitations of what Pete once said. When you look at the same story in the gospel of Matthew, for example, he mentions nothing about the roof being torn open, but this is Peter's house and he wants you to know that there was a healing that happened, but there was also some property damage that happened and I took the cost of that. Nobody else had to foot that bill, but I certainly did. He goes out of his way to make sure that y'all know that it was him that had to deal with that hot mess. That's funny to me. Maybe I'm nerding out right now.
“And many were gathered together so that there was no more room, not even at the door. Everybody who was anybody had caught the buzz and they were there and he as in Jesus was preaching the word to them.” The word was preaching the word. And they came they as in all the people bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Next slide. “And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him. And when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, you are good son. Your sins are forgiven.”
You see how this…we're going to pause here, Patti, if that's all right. Thank you so much. I was waiting for that green light. That means a lot. Thank you. This text always jumps out at me in 10,000 different ways. But don't miss what was just said by John Mark. They're carrying this paralytic man on a maybe what we think a bed, a stretcher, a mat, something of that sort. They heard that the healer is back in town. They do not know if the rumors are true. They don't know if boy wonder can actually fix this man's feet. But they heard a true story and on their way to hear what he had to say, they see a paralyzed man on the side of the road and other gospels tell us there were four of them. They pick him up, they carry him there, there's congestion at the door, there's a traffic jam of sorts. But they create a hole in the roof and it says, when Jesus saw their faith, he says to the paralytic son, your sins are forgiven.
That's interesting to me because a lot of times in Jewish thought at this particular moment in time, if you were sick, the idea was you didn't have faith. Had you had faith, you could get yourself a fix. Had you had faith, you wouldn't be such a hot mess. If you were sick, you had done something wrong. And so to counter that: if you were faithful, you might find something right. But the text just said right here that Jesus looked up at this unwanted window that was now in the roof and they saw this human marionette being lowered to the ground.
John Mark says that when Jesus looked up and he saw those boys on the roof, it was their faith that compelled him to heal this man's feet. It it was their faith that impacted his formation. 2000 years removed from the story at hand. But it does still make you wonder, is it possible that your life has an impact beyond the confines of your life?
Is it possible that your example, it extends beyond your mere existence. That there is something about how you do what you do, how you step, where you step, how you live, how you live, all of it. It has dividends even if you yourself cannot discern it. What does your faith have to do with my formation? What does your impact have to say about who I will become?
I told Lauren about this moment this morning. Yesterday morning we had one of my Timberwolves players over for breakfast, and it was wonderful. Him and his wife came over and we had a blast. It was wonderful. But somewhere over the cinnamon rolls in the third round of coffee, my kids came in, they said, “Hey, will you come out and play kickball with us now?” And I said, “No, he will not. You will not lose our point guard on account of my kids. I cannot carry that cross. It's way too big.”
But this man had no respect for me and so he just went straight outside and started playing with our kids and he was—Lauren, what do you think? He was out there for 20 minutes or so running around the yard playing kickball and catch with the boys outside a very small thing, little effort involved in that. I don't think there was one beat of sweat on his forehead when he came back in a very big deal to my boys. A very small investment, a very big return from our kids.
Pay attention to the small ways that we are living our lives. Pay attention to the way that your example actually is speaking into who others are becoming. It might be like a late night phone call to a friend on your mind saying, “Hey bro, you good?” It might be the hand that shoots up at the end of an AA meeting saying, “Is anybody willing to be a sponsor?” It might be keeping a meal train commitment and not backing out when it's inconvenient. But you have no idea how big the small things are when you actually step faithfully inside of them. You have no idea the impact you are making. And I hope that we can get some kind of grasp upon that.
Jesus saw their faith and then he spoke to this man and his feet. And he said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This story. If we're not careful, it can easily become about a paralytic man in the city of Capernaum, somebody who's been paralyzed his whole life. And what I've seen dangerously done, abusively done, is that people will make it sound like this is the outcome of any kind of healing program. You do this dance, you say that prayer, you make this move and all of a sudden you're good to go. But that's not true. I know so many people with ailments, physical limitations, addictions where it's not as easy as subscribing to a one-two step in some kind of religious program to set you all of a sudden free from all of your habitual problems. That's not how it works.
To further it, Jesus actually goes out of his way later in Mark to say, “Listen, all the miracles that y'all saw, like we did a lot of good things in here, I really hope you didn't think they were about the things that were done. I hope you look past the event to get to the meaning, not just the story but the substance.” What was the thing behind the thing? It's not outrageous for us to look at a moment like this and not just go, that's amazing Jesus. Round of applause. standing ovation, you healed that man. Love it, son, your sins are forgiven. Get up and walk. That's not what we're supposed to do.
According to all the gospel's collective Agreement, we are supposed to look at moments like this and ask what they mean for people like us. And so when I think about this, I can't help but think also about Matthew 11 where Jesus doesn't just talk about this man. He talks about the city of Capernaum where he talks about them as a paralyzed People, about a people who do not respond to the moment at hand of people who are physically, spiritually, emotionally limited by their own circumstances, by the oppression of the empire, by their own sense of diminishment and they cannot rise up.
And so as much as you want to look at this moment right here and see just one particular man in history who was stuck on top of his mat, do not do it at the cost of seeing how you might be stuck on your own. How you might be also building up these different structures and systems that compensate for your own limitations. I think this is the thing, you know when I, when I started to break it down and think like what is it about this text on this particular week, 10,000 different ways this story is spoken into my story, 10,000 different ways this thing continues to yell at me. But for whatever reason this week in particular, it was that. Matt, how are you stuck right now on a mat? Oh that felt weird, actually didn't say that out loud when I was thinking about the term.
How have you built up a system to comfort your dysfunctions instead of confronting them? How have you tried to accommodate your own limitations and completely dismissed who you are as a child of God? We don't know how long this man was on a mat, but I will tell you one thing. If he was a grown man, he was heavy to carry for four little boys. You might not connect the dots there so lemme lay it out plainly for you. When I thought about that text and I thought about how long you've been building up systems to comfort dysfunction instead of confronting dysfunction, I couldn't help but think about “Yeah, but I've tried.” These guys all tried.
We don't know how many miles they carried this man on a mat to get to Jesus who was stuck inside of a stuffed house. But we know that there was an effort invested in bringing him all the way. They saw a man who needed a healer. The healer was inside of a house, they figured A plus B equals C. Let me get these guys, let's all do our part, lift him up and bring him there. And by the time they get to the doorway they recognize there's no way in. They tried.
One of my favorite things about this text is it says that like when, “When they could not get near him because of the crowd, comma,” I wonder when you think about your life and the things that are keeping you from being fully alive, how would you name that blockage in you? Obviously for them it's the crowd. What is it for you? Is it debt? Is it heartbreak? Is it betrayal? Is it that hope that you had held onto for a very long time and you found out it wasn't going to come to be? What is keeping your life from being fully alive? What is keeping you from connecting to this source of all things? For them, it's the crowd.
And one of the most tragic stories that I've heard 10,024 times in recovery community in particular, but I've seen it elsewhere is so many people will say “We tried but something was in the way. And so here we are. We gave it our best shot. We really did break a sweat. We really did the hard work. We went the extra mile, we tried, but that fricking crowd would not clear out, but the sponsor wasn't who I hoped he would be, but the relationship we were together, but the loneliness still stayed. Made some money, eliminated some debt, but there was a different kind of deficiency that all of a sudden took place. We really did try.”
And I can tell you that as tiring as it is, just being alive as an adult in today's world, that's depressing. Let me get positive here, but as exhausting as it can be with the Monday through Friday, the day in, day out grind, the asks on you, the responses to them, everything, kids, time, whatever, there are few spaces in my life where I am as tired as after I really did try. Like it's one thing to go like “Not now I'm going to punt this thing till later. I'm going to put off for tomorrow. I know it could be done today but just not now I'm going to rain check that thing. I'm not pretending what I don't know. I know what I need to know. I know what I need to do. I know where the change needs to unfold in my life.” It's different than that. This is like “I know where the change needs to happen in my life and I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to actually leave my house. I'm going to show up in that meeting. I'm going to say yes to that question. I'm going to move in this space. I'm going to connect with new people. I'm going to show up at church. Yes, I'm an introvert. Yes, I'm scared of relationships but I'm still going to join a small group because I do believe that's healthy. I'm going to try.”
There are a few places in my life where you get as tired as when you really do try and it's very trying. It doesn't actually work. You're still a hot mess. What's interesting to me about the gospel of Mark, he talks about faith four different times and each of the times that he talks about it, he doesn't talk about it as like an attitude or like a system of beliefs. He doesn't talk about like here's how we see the world, here's the platitudes that we put on our day. This isn't what, this is what our refrigerator looks like, how we knit our pillows at night.
No, no, no. When Mark talks about faith, he is talking about activation. He is, every single time Mark talks about faith the four times he does so, he talks about people who thought one thing and then they did something else. And that should be the loudest question that hangs over our head. When we get to Mark 2 and we hear Jesus looking up at the unwanted unrequested window in the roof and seeing these four boys and being so compelled by their faith that he heals this man's feet.
What was it about their faith that compelled them to move into action on behalf of this man's feet? These guys get to the door, they recognized they can't get in the door. I would go home, most of us would go home. They say, “Hey, that's a roof” and if, if faith really is the substance of what we can't see, but what we hope for and long for, if that's what faith is, we move on behalf of what not is present right now, but what we believe should be and could be, everybody else that's surrounding this house with an ear pressed up against it. They might just see a roof on top of the building. But if you look a little bit closer, that could be a door.
They move on top of the building, they go around the backside of the house, they climb up to the top, they break a hole through and they lower the man to the bottom. And one of the first things that Jesus says to this man who—Mark wants you to pay attention to the fact that he—wasn't brought here by dad or mom or brothers or sisters. He wasn't brought by family, he was brought by friends, maybe strangers, maybe to this man who had no family that was present inside of that room. He says, son, your sins are forgiven.
Which on one level is confusing, right? Because they lowered him onto the ground because of his feet, not because of a need for forgiveness. Everyone else is staring at his feet and Jesus goes straight to his spirit. Jesus goes straight to, it's almost like the way that Mark tries to tell the story, he wants us all us all to understand that it really truly is not about this particular man who had a physical limitation.
Each and every one of us are on our own kind of mats, the little mats that we live on, the systems that we create, the structures that comfort our dysfunctions instead of confronting the things that we know we are called to confront. The first thing Jesus says to this man with a paralyzed body is, “Son, it's okay. You're free. You don't have to live with that burden of guilt of what you did or did not do. You, you're not some stranger that just collects the dust of people who walk by you. You're not just a number in Capernaum, you're not just a wallflower. You're not just some washed up what could have been should have been but wasn't. You're not just an addict, you're not just a mistake. You're not just a forgotten individual. You are a son. You are my child. You are a daughter, you are my child. And your life matters so much more than living just on that mat. And so get up and walk.”
That is the most powerful and most beautiful thing. It obviously sets the religious establishment on fire. They start looking at Jesus with all kinds of crossed eyes. But before any kind of theological argument gets off the ground, this paralyzed man, this once paralyzed man gets up first. He takes his mat and he walks out of the room into what's next. We don't know what's next for him. The man who has no name is suddenly reminded who he has always been.
Do you know who you are? Again, I don't think that we get stuck in our own particular spaces, in our own particular limitations 'cause of a lack of effort. I don't believe that. Obviously sometimes it's true. But by and large, like Paul when Paul writes in Philippians like, let us live up to the the calling of what we have already attained. Let us be who we already are. We're not aspiring for something, we're moving from something. We're not looking for favor. We move from favor. We're not thirsty for love because we know that we are loved. And so we're not trying to get free 'cause we know we are free.
There is something so powerful to me inside of this text that the reason why we save texts and preserve 'em and protect 'em for all of these thousands of years now is because each and every one of us, we tend to forget that you actually are a son, daughter, child of mine. That you are beloved, that you are enough, that you are good to go, as is. You don't have to play small. We get so stuck on these mats, not because we aim high and miss all the time, but because we aim so freaking low and we hit it all the time. We think this is all we're cut out for, all we're built for.
And so the first move that Jesus makes from this human marionette is lower to the ground. And he says, “Son, your sins are forgiven. Get up and take your mat and walk.”
I don't know who in this room needs to hear that right now. Again, there are 10,000 different ways this text can speak into a life like mine. And I hope one of those ways will reach a life like yours. But as we close out this moment, I just want you to hear, I mean, it's true no matter what part of the gospel and Mark we're in. These texts are only helpful if you can hear them for you.
There's no point in being like long observers like “oh, that was a beautiful story, wasn't it guys, let's go out to dinner and really break it down one more time just for that extra round of applause that nobody was asking for in the first place, but we might as well do it 'cause that's what fidelity looks like.” That's not what this is all about. When you hear a story like that and you sit in a movement like this, you ought to consider what are the ways that we have been stuck on mats, what are the ways we have played to a level that is lower than my level as a child of God?
How have you been small when you've been called to get big? How have you turned away when the first door was closed? What does faith look like for you?
Because for the rest of Debbie, what did I say? The next five years we're going to be in the gospel of Mark? For all that time, it really is like it's proactive, it's practice. It's not just a theoretical like how do we arrange our intellectual furniture? That's not what it is. Boring. That's not helpful. That's a problem. That's why we are in a lot of different predicaments that we are in today.
The head has to move down to the hands. And this is one of the ways that it looks like the faith of the boys on the roof who made a door where there was once prior to just a roof. It compelled Jesus to heal this man's feet on the ground. Let that like germinate you throughout the week. Let it sprout out something new.
Jesus, will you pray with me? God, you are good. God, we are grateful. God, we are thankful for spaces like this where we can look at stories like this and we can say where, where's my part? And we can actually get honest. God, there are not a lot of spaces where we can just get honest and come clean about different areas in our life. Well, we've been playing small even though you called us big. But I'm grateful for texts like this that create them. God, I'm grateful that we can look at these stories and hear that charge to say there might be doors closed in front of us right now, but there also was a roof that could be made into a door. And whose life could I bring forward if I go up there and start digging? God, give us the courage to leave our mats behind in Christ's name, we all pray together. Amen.