Mark 2:1-12
February 19, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I first came to FCBC, I have never seen a church spilling out of worship onto the sidewalk before. We stretch up and down the sidewalk. Sometimes we are on the street. Others cross over to the other side to find more sidewalk to stand, chat, plan, and enjoy Christian fellowship.
Last Sunday with the hand bell choir playing we lost a few seats so people had to stand in the back of the vestibule. When we have joint worship, people are waiting to get in and others go up to the Nursery to watch from above. It’s crowded at FCBC! And for most visitors they may have never seen a church as crowded as we are before!
And today, we have such a wonderful crowd here this morning. It’s so great to see so many of you. That so many of you are here is quite a credit to Jesus. I look at you and am amazed at how wonderfully Jesus draws such a diverse group of followers into his house. You are a great crowd around Jesus today.
Today’s gospel lesson is a great story. Many of us know it from our times in Sunday school. And if you know it back then, then you are probably one of the regular members here at FCBC. You may have heard of many Bible stories besides this one which makes you one of the inside group.
Read Mark 2:1-12.
The Crowd
Last Sunday, Jesus’ reputation of healing people forced him to stay out in the countryside because so many people were looking for him. Today, Jesus comes back to his home in Capernaum and the people discovered him. They have crowded themselves inside his house that there was no more room for anyone else. Perhaps like our church, people are standing in the vestibule or upstairs in the nursery wanting to come into the sanctuary but there’re no more seats for them.
This great story of Jesus healing the paralytic often leads us to focus on how resourceful and risk-taking the friends were to hack a hole in the roof so that their paralyzed friend can see Jesus. Sometimes, we might focus on Jesus in this story and how he teaches and heals that draws a great crowd to him. We marvel at the fact that he can perform miracles inasmuch as he can forgive sins.
Today, I noticed the crowd. A great crowd clustered around Jesus that people couldn’t even stand at the front door and hear what he was saying. They didn’t have speakers in the vestibule and in the nursery like we do. While those who were inside can hear, the paralytic and his friends were so far outside that they couldn’t hear a word.
The crowd around Jesus wasn’t just any people. The house was full of scribes, people who spent their day studying the scripture, pouring over the word of God—professional religious experts.
In other words, these scribes are those on the inside, not only on the inside of Jesus’ house, but inside the faith. They are “in the know,” you might say. Mark doesn’t say that they are bad people; in fact, they are probably good people. They have heard enough of Jesus to want to come inside his house to learn some more. They are patiently listening to Jesus’ words, hoping to gain even more insight into the scriptures they were studying.
Just Like Us
In other words, the scribes and the crowd are just like us. We have come out—and quite a good sized crowd of us today—to sit at the feet of Jesus. Not everyone in town got out of bed this morning and went to as much trouble to hear Jesus. You are insiders, the inner circle, and disciples of the Master. You know how to dress, where to park, ate breakfast upstairs and found your regular seats. You are good people.
And the story says that it was these good, full-time religious, theologically informed, dedicated people—people like us—who quite unintentionally kept a person in need from getting to Jesus. Outside the house there is a paralyzed man in desperate need, his desperate friends are trying to get him some help, a man confined forever to this bed, utterly dependent on his friends to help him get to Jesus—and they can’t get to Jesus because of people like us.
There was a church, a fine Episcopalian congregation at that. They built a beautiful new church, but on the edge of one of the poorest parts of town. People warned them that this might not be a good idea, to build such a fine church in that part of town.
Sure enough, no sooner was the church building built and dedicated to God that one night somebody knocked the lock off the door and broke in. Next morning, they looked around to see what had been taken. Nothing was missing.
The locks were repaired, the doors again locked. A week later, locks broken, door forced open. They could see some muddy footprints up and down the halls of the church but again, after an extensive inventory of the church’s belongings, nothing was found missing.
Next week the janitor happened to be talking with the minister and said, “You know, of all the places I’ve worked, this church uses more toilet paper than any place I’ve ever been. I’ve had to order more toilet paper twice since…”
And then the minister realized why people were breaking into the church. He stood there with the janitor, in the hall, saying, “This church doesn’t have to go looking for mission. When people have to break into the church to get toilet paper…take that lock off the door.”
I know that the Trustees are currently working on changing the front door locks to prevent unauthorized entry and I agree that we should do this for security. But this illustration reminds us that people want to come into church and there are times when they can’t.
We meet people all the time who for one reason or another don’t want to be around Jesus. Some may have had a bad experience with church as a child or they may have taken a religion course in college and now have some doubts, they like to sleep in on Sundays, and on and on, we can hear the objections for coming.
But here is a man in desperate need with a group of friends who want to help him, and they can’t get to Jesus because of us, because of the crowd, the inner circle that want to study with Jesus.
Little Zacchaeus had to climb up a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus because the crowd was so great. Now, this poor man had to get his friends to tear the roof off of Jesus’ house. Though Jesus is inviting and open, sometimes it is not that easy to get to Jesus!
Unroof the Roof
The reason why this story is so interesting when we were children is that we have never seen anything like this before! We were mesmerized imagining how a room crowded with people—maybe like so many people that if you wanted to lean in any direction, there would be so many people there that they can hold you up from falling. And over this crowd, they started to notice someone chopping a hole in the roof of the house. Sawdust and sticks or mud are falling all around them. Assuming that this was Jesus’ house, it’s still never nice to rip holes in other people’s houses! The crowd has never seen anything like this before.
We know that in houses back then, the roofs were made out of sticks and mud, so it wasn’t all that hard to make a hole like this and have it repaired. Still, a hole in the roof is a hole in the roof. I can’t imagine when our sanctuary is so full that people would be removing the walls or breaking open the windows so that they can come in. But in Jesus’ house on that day, that’s what happened!
A pastor once said to a young woman, “I wish you would come to our church. I know you have it rough with the job and the kids and all. I think it would be a comfort to you if you came.”
“Preacher,” she said, “I’ll be honest. When I get done at my job, with 50 hours on my feet waiting tables, my feet are swollen that I can’t get into a pair of Sunday shoes. And I’ve seen the kind of people who come to your church. I can’t go there without Sunday dress shoes. That’s why I don’t come to church.”
The primary reason that people give for not following Jesus, for not embracing the Christian faith, is us, the church. They can’t get to Jesus, can’t hear what he is saying, can’t see the beauty of his way because of us. We need to unroof the roof sometimes to let people in. And when we do, people will say, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.
We may need to sit up front here so that visitors can find a more comfortable seat in the back. We may need to postpone our private conversations and speak with visitors and people whom we haven’t seen for awhile. We may need to invite visitors over to Sunday school for coffee and to take them out for lunch afterward. Here’s a revolutionary thought. We may even need to be “less ethnic, less Chinese, less Asian, less middle-class” and simply be more human and inviting of all people who come seeking a place they can called as their Christian home.
We know that the story doesn’t end with the paralyzed man remaining outside the house. His friends got him in by unroofing the roof. They hacked that hole in Jesus’ roof while the crowd stood there with their mouths open. Jesus heals the man. He miraculously told him to get up and walk and go home healed.
“I don’t care about the roof,” said Jesus. “I’m here to raise the dead, not worry about roofing.”
The crowd was all clustered in there with Jesus and with one voice they said, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Never Seen Before
We have never seen a Savior who wanted to reach out beyond his inner circle in order to save.
We have never seen a Lord who took delight in having his house wrecked in order that people in need might get in to see him.
We have never seen a Messiah who reached out beyond the bounds of the saved in order to touch the lost.
We have never seen a teacher who demanded that his best students move away from him, move away from the front seats and let those with greater needs get to him.
In Jesus Christ, we see a man of authority. He proclaimed the forgiveness of sins, followed by the command to get up and walk. This is no mere man, but a man of extraordinary authority, far exceeding that of a king or general.
When Jesus perceived the scribes’ objections, he moves from the spiritual realm of forgiving sins to the physical realm of showing us that his authority knows no bounds. It is just as easy for him to tell the man to get up and take his bed and walk as it is to say that his sins are forgiven.
Today, we are still amazed and we glorify God by saying, “We have never seen anything like this before.”
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we gather in your church on your day as your people. You have convened us, called us together as your Body in this world. Here we have found your presence, here we have found comfort in our times of trouble, and here we have found a family.
Yet there are others who are not here. Others whom you know as your beloved children, others whom you call to be part of your beloved family, others for whom you are seeking and searching.
Forgive us, Lord Jesus, when we settle down with folks who are just like us, when we content ourselves with the confines of our community, when we stop calling, inviting, and welcoming strangers as our beloved sisters and brothers.
Tear down the barriers that separate us from others, rip off the roofs of our churches, open us up, and turn us inside out. For your sake and in your name we pray. Amen.