Called to Reconfigure (Mark 2:1-12)

Called to Reconfigure

First UMC of Pocatello

September 29, 2024 

Mark 2:1-12 

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This story occurs early in Mark’s Gospel. It is part of a series of stories about Jesus’ first days of public ministry around the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. I’m going to briefly go over what happened before the healing of the paralytic in Capernaum, because the context of the story helps us understand the importance of what happens in it.

After traveling down into the Judean wilderness to be baptized by John, Jesus of Nazareth returned home to Galilee and began preaching about the kingdom of God. Mark and the other Gospel writers tell us what Jesus’ earliest sermon was: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news” (1:15, CSB).

Jesus then called his first few disciples, including the brothers Peter and Andrew. He then attended worship at the local synagogue in a town called Capernaum, performing his first exorcism after a demon-possessed man interrupted the service. News of that healing traveled fast in the small town. By nightfall, the whole population had assembled outside the house of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, where Jesus and the disciples were staying. For most of the night, Jesus performed more healings and exorcisms, confirming the rumors about his authority over sickness and spirits.

The next day, after a morning spent in prayer, Jesus told his disciples that it was time for them to travel around the region, preaching the message of God’s kingdom in other towns. During those local travels, Jesus encountered a leper, a man considered to be ritually unclean and unfit for normal social life due to his skin disease. Jesus healed him.

The fact that Jesus had transgressed this boundary between clean and unclean, and had cured a disease that was assumed to be incurable, caused news of his power spread like wildfire. He couldn’t travel anywhere without being mobbed, so he started to withdraw into the countryside and to move about from place to place more secretively.

Our story begins with Jesus sneaking back into Capernaum only to have it be “reported that he was at home” (2:1). In other words, Jesus was outed. Predictably, a crowd soon descends upon the house where he’s staying. “So many people gathered together,” Mark writes, “that there was no more room, not even in the doorway” (2:2, CSB). No rest for the weary.

The great crowd clogging the house presents a problem to an odd group of five men who now appear in the story. Here they come, desperate to get into Jesus’ presence. But they don’t come quickly enough. The reason for their delay is obvious. Four of them are carrying a portable cot with the fifth man lying on it, unable to walk. Their breath is heavy, their arms burn. Their hearts sink when they see that there is no room for them to get their friend in ear or eyeshot of Jesus. Mark puts it bluntly: “they were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd” (2:4, CSB).

Right here, I want to point out an important connection between words. When Jesus preached that the kingdom of God had come near, the Greek verb translated as “had come near” is engizō. It means “to approach” or “to be at hand.” In this story, Mark uses a verb with the same root. The four friends are unable to prosengizō, “to come near to,” Jesus. You see, Jesus has brought the kingdom of God near to all people, but some people, at least these five, were being prevented by others from coming near to it. This is not good! In their very effort to enjoy the closeness of God, a crowd of people crammed themselves so tightly into a space that there isn’t room for anybody else.

I don’t think that the size of the building is what the Gospel wants to direct our attention to. After all, Mark says, “[T]hey were not able to bring him to Jesus because of the crowd” (2:4). It’s the people blocking the paralytic from his audience with Jesus through the way they’ve configured themselves in the space.

We configure ourselves in many “spaces”. Physical, of course. But also mental, the way we think about things. And moral, our convictions about what is right and wrong. Cultural, our language and rituals and assumptions about what is normal and what is strange. We configure ourselves theologically according to what we say about God. We configure ourselves politically and arrange power and authority in our community in certain ways.

You see, it’s not just that our buildings can sometimes obstruct some people from experiencing the nearness of the kingdom. No, our thinking and feeling, our doing and assuming, our relating and our organizing can become obstructions as well.

Have you ever felt unwelcome in a Church? Felt like you couldn’t get to the heart of what the people around you found so meaningful, because maybe you talked a little differently, or you saw the world a little differently than the crowd? Have you ever remained on the outside of the gathering, because no one helped you understand what was going on? Have you ever been told, explicitly or implicitly, that you simply were not able or worthy to draw close to God?

Rarely is the problem actual lack of space in the house. It’s usually the crowd’s inability to pay attention or to exercise some holy imagination; it’s the crowd’s unwillingness to change how it’s configured.

I think the rest of the story bears this out. The four friends recovered quickly from their initial disappointment, and they pivoted to a new approach. Up the ladder, onto the roof.

Homes in Galilee at that time had flat roofs made from slats of woods layered over with branches, reeds, and clay. Roofs were used for leisure and work; they were always accessible. Somehow, the four able-bodied friends managed to lift the fifth man and his cot on top of the house. Then they started to make a hole in the roof, breaking apart that plastered mixture of dirt and wood.

Mark may have said that “there was no more room” in the house, but do you know what I think? When clouds of dust and lumps of clay and splinters of dried reeds started to rain down on the people below, I bet that they very quickly managed to get themselves away from the falling debris. Can’t you seem them wincing, looking up confused, seeing more material falling, and then bodying themselves around to at least clear that immediate area. If for no nobler reason than their own self-preservation, certainly they made some room right there at Jesus’ feet, room where there had supposedly been no room.

And I don’t think getting out of the way was their only response. Certainly a few people inside or outside ran to see what in the world was going on. “Hey, what in the world are you doing that for?”  But evidently, no one tried to stop it! When they realized the reason for this massive disruption – realized that this mess was being made for the sake of a person who needed help – I bet that they changed their mind about stopping it. They started to help. Can’t you see them now, laughing at the audacity of the four friends, shouting up words of encouragement, reaching up their hands to gently guide the lowered cot down to the floor.

Deep down, we long to see the things that separate us from one another broken down. We crave the expansion of our horizons, the unroofing of our perceived limitations. The stories that sustain us are stories of bold acts born of desperate love, and we want to participate in writing those stories ourselves.

Because of the bold, transgressive act of four friends, a whole crowd of people discovered that they also possessed the power to reconfigure themselves, to reshape the room and redirect their attention. They did it to meet the need of one person who couldn’t, until that moment, come near to the One who had come near to him.

Mark then shows us Jesus’ response to the whole situation: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Child, your sins are forgiven’” (2:5).

Their faith… Whose faith did Jesus see? The obvious answer is the four friends’. They made a way where there was no way; they took the roof apart. But maybe he also saw the faith of the people in the house, who made a little room and reached up to help. The faith of a community learning to adapt itself to God’s limitless love meeting our boundless need.

And what kind of faith did Jesus see? It wasn’t faith in him – at least not directly. Obviously, these people wanted to get to him, but there’s nothing to suggest that they had faith in his identity as the Son of God or the Messiah, faith in salvation or eternal life.

Faith, at heart, means trust. Faith is different than belief. We believe that 2+2=4, but we trust a person. I think Jesus was noticing some trust. He was seeing a community trusting that it change without ceasing to be near him.

As long as Jesus abides with us and speaks his word to us, we can tear a hole in the roof and make a mess and change the terms of our belonging all without needing to be afraid of death. The death of who we are or were or will be. Nothing we do should prevent another person from coming near to Jesus. And changing how we come near in order to make more room, that won’t kill us, even if it’s disruptive. There’s life and joy not just on the other side of that change but in the very midst of it.

This is the first instance in Mark’s Gospel when Jesus not only heals someone but tells them that their sins are forgiven. ‘You’re not just healed,’ in other words, ‘but you’re right with me, beautiful and whole in God’s eyes.’ Forgiving sins is only something God can do. In that house in Capernaum, seeing the light pour in through the opened roof, Jesus revealed something deep and profound about himself.

Might it be that the depth of what Jesus will say to us in some way depends upon the breadth of the space we make for others?

If that is the case, let us ask ourselves three questions:

First: How is God calling me to reconfigure my life to make space for somebody else?

Second: How is God calling us, the Church, to reconfigure our life so that everybody can come near?

And finally: How is God calling us to instigate the reconfiguration of the world, not through violence of any kind, but by lifting up the excluded, the overlooked, and the disinherited, and making a good and holy mess on their behalf?

I’ll end it here with Paul’s words from the opening of Romans chapter 12, which strike me as particularly appropriate to the challenges and opportunities facing the Church today:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (12:1-2).

In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.