By Rev. Amy Butler
Today’s gospel lesson is all about what we see . . . and what we don’t see. As a matter of fact, the whole church season of Epiphany leads us through the gospel accounts of Jesus’ earthly ministry and helps us squint through the darkness to see if what we’re learning about this Jesus sheds any light on our own human experience. Let’s take a look and try to figure out what it is we are seeing here in Mark’s gospel.

Today Jesus has moved on from healing the leper last week, and because the leper told just about everyone what had happened, well, Jesus became–despite his hopes to the contrary–an instant celebrity.

Jesus was inside a building and the building was packed with people . . . they pushed their way inside, they lined up against the walls, they pressed in closely . . . all just to get a glimpse, to hear a word, to get close enough to this man who was stirring everything up. They gathered in tightly; they listened intently, and most of all, they watched very, very carefully. There was no way they were going to miss even on little miraculous sight of this Jesus. It was like a movie star had come to town and the place was packed. It was just a few weeks ago he was having trouble getting ANYONE to listen to him. Certainly nobody important was giving him the time of day; he’d had to find followers among some of the more shady folks in town–fishermen and tax collectors.

Meanwhile, outside a whole separate drama was unfolding. A group of four friends approached the building where the people were jammed in the door, spilling out the windows. The men were a little late in getting there because when they’d heard Jesus was coming to town, well, it took awhile to get their friend, the fifth man in the group, ready to go find this Jesus. Their friend, you see, was a paralytic. He couldn’t walk; he had to be carried. As they approached the crowd they could see clearly that there was no way they’d be able to carry their friend through the crowd, a group of people already pushing and straining, to force themselves into the very last square inch of space the building had to offer. No, there was no room at all in which to fit four men plus one more, carried on a stretcher.

In the dusty crush of the crowd, frustration must have overwhelmed them. They’d tried to get there in time . . . years of failed healing attempts, dashed hopes and broken promises, this man Jesus had been observed actually healing people. If only they could get their friend to him, surely THIS time it would work?

And while all of this was going on outside, inside, well, you can probably imagine. It was hot with all those bodies pressed together and people were straining to see this Jesus. They were there to rub elbows with the new celebrity; I am sure that some of them were also there hoping to be healed. On the front row, in the “reserved spots” were the leaders of the temple, the VIPs in town, most of whom were there to check out this rabbi Jesus, to see if he was any cause to worry. Jesus certainly WAS there to preach a subversive message, but nobody really realized that yet. Because they were pulled in by the crush of the crowd and mesmerized by the promise of miracles, they couldn’t see what Jesus was really there doing. How do we know this? Well, it goes back to what was going on back outside the building.

Somehow the four men managed to hoist one another, one pushing, one pulling, one hanging on to the side of the building for dear life, all of them wondering what the heck they were doing, until all of them, even their friend on the pallet, were perched on top of the building–right there on the roof!

And then it happened.

I think it must have been when they started hearing pounding or cracking. Maybe the mortar and mud started to drop on their heads, maybe one of them got a piece of dust in his eye, or was temporarily blinded by the light filtering down from up above . . . and it was then, as soon as the light began to leak in from above, that folks’ attention was pulled away from the words of Jesus and toward the spectacle of a paralyzed man being lowered down . . . through the roof!

I just returned from Los Angeles where I had the opportunity to visit a ministry center in downtown LA called, The Dream Center. This place is INCREDIBLE. Located on three acres of property in an old Sisters of Mercy hospital building, the site is home to over 200 ministries serving some of the poorest and most blighted neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles. The building has been transformed from a run-down old hospital to a bright, white-washed campus of buildings and vehicles, parking lots and manicured gardens, that house things totally foreign but unbelievably life-giving to the community in which they are located. There’s a totally professional gym, with trainers and membership and flat screen televisions, available to neighbors for a monthly membership of $5.00. And the gym is right next door to a Starbucks Coffee Shop, where you can come to get a cup of coffee after picking out a new outfit in the store–a second hand shop that looks like a trendy clothing boutique. Right next door to that is a state of the art recording studio where anyone in the neighborhood can come to record a record (apparently this is something folks like to do in Hollywood). I was overwhelmed by all the ministry programs going on in that place.

After our two hour tour we were offered the opportunity to ask questions about the ministry. Several of my colleagues were asking important questions about theology and ministry, community and justice. When it came to my turn, all I could think to ask is . . . who makes sure the grass is cut, the walls are painted, the place is clean? Who takes care of security, scheduling, payroll? How do you keep things looking so good around here?

I know exactly why I had those questions, and it’s not just because I often take a very shallow approach to life. I had those questions because I am in charge of a big building here, and these are the questions that take up most of my time when I am thinking about church.

So I can’t really blame the leaders of the synagogue for what I imagine must have been looks of horror and outrage as they began to come to the realization that . . . somebody was taking the roof apart!

Sure that man wanted to see Jesus–but lots of people wanted to see Jesus. But is that any reason to be taking apart the roof? Did those men have approval from the Board of Trustees? Permits from the city? Adequate funding to replace the roof? What if it rained?!??!

As the leaders of the temple surveyed the situation, these are the things they saw, the questions they asked. But do you notice what Jesus did? He didn’t even mention the roof. All he did was marvel at the faith, courage and clarity of sight those men on the roof seemed to have and he said to the man on the stretcher, “Your sins are forgiven you” (v. 5).

Well, this was outrageous. First of all, there was the very serious matter of the roof. Second of all, the whole crowd could clearly see that the paralytic man had not gone to all the trouble of getting his friends to make a hole in the roof just so Jesus could say some magic words over him! He wanted to be healed! Everyone wanted him to be able to walk! They wanted drama! Miracle! A story to tell their grandchildren!

And the leaders of the temple were incensed. Not only did they now have a roof with a big hole in it, they were sitting there witnessing this strange man Jesus say things about forgiving sin that they knew only God could say. It was blasphemous, what he was doing. From the front row of the crowd, they had a great view and this is exactly what they could see.

The text says that Jesus knew what they were thinking. He knew they could not see clearly what was right in front of them, so he invited the paralytic man to get up off his mat, roll it up and head on his way . . . and Jesus did this so they could see . . . so they could SEE with their eyes that the situation in front of them was more than a hole in the roof; it was an encounter with God.

Here we are, Calvary. We’re about to move into this beautiful new space and it is one of the most beautiful buildings in our neighborhood. You worked so hard; spent so many hours; invested so much vision in this project and this afternoon you’ll get a chance to take a walk through the new space to see the end result of years and years of planning and praying and working together.

And here’s our challenge today as we follow the Jesus of Epiphany from the cradle all the way to the cross–the challenge is about what we will see. Yes, we have a beautiful new building; I am already worrying about things like the roof. But (and you know this), despite this beautiful, beautiful building, the church of Jesus Christ gathered here, Calvary Baptist Church, is NOT the building. Even the beautiful new building.

When we walk through this afternoon you might see the beautifully back-lit stained glass windows from the Burrell Class. You’ll certainly see the incredible music suite, the youth rooms, computer lab, children’s suite, pastor’s office. But here’s an invitation to look past all of those beautiful things toward the real work of the church. Try to see as you go, faces of children in the after school programs. Try to imagine the beautiful music of all kinds of groups, the incredible learning opportunities, the meaningful conversation. Imagine the hope that so many will find for their lives and their families in these walls; imagine the encounters people will have with the living Christ, encounters that will change them, that will change the world.

See, there’s really not much point for a little church like ours to be building a huge building like this one unless we can see outside its walls to the message they embody–that healing comes not in successful programs but in relationship with God . . . not in carefully maintained roofs but in friends who would risk everything to exemplify faith . . . not in socially accepted norms of healing, wholeness and beauty, but in the perspective of a God who came to earth to show us relationship that can make us whole.

It was a little later, after the furor had calmed down a little bit and the paralytic had rolled up his mat, risen to his feet and headed home–healed and whole–that the crowd recovered from their stunned silence and realized that the whole scene they’d just witnessed was so much more than a reckless act of vandalism perpetrated in the heat of conviction. What they saw was so much more than a hole in the roof! What they saw was the transformation of a whole human life . . . right in front of their eyes.

In fact, as they pulled themselves together and the crowd began to disperse, they whispered among themselves, “We never SAW anything like this!” (v. 12).

When you walk into that new space today and in the weeks, months and years ahead, what are you going to see? It’s a gorgeous space, yes. But it’s just a gorgeous space until we can see beyond architectural detail and award winning historical preservation. It’s not the church of Jesus Christ until it becomes a place where people come into contact with healing, until they experience transformation, until they meet God and feel all the things that had been holding them back, weighing them down, keeping them shackled . . . until all of those things become incidental and they can see, clearly and powerfully, the love of God.

When they do, when this place becomes a place that the message of Jesus: love, reconciliation, peace with God and each other, is lived out in tangible, healing ways, then, then the last thing on our minds is going to be a hole in the roof–scuffs on the floor, stains on the carpet, coffee in the sanctuary, fake flower arrangements on every horizontal surface . . . and the first thing on our minds will be looking around in amazement to see the powerful healing and transformation, the divine work . . . of God. Amen.
Scripture quotations from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2006, Amy Butler. Used by permission.