Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
November 23, 2008

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In our reading from Mark this morning we have a story about a hole in a roof that turned out to be a very good thing. Some men wanted to get their paralyzed friend in to see Jesus, but the crowds around Jesus’ house were so thick that they couldn’t get close. We don’t usually think of Jesus as having a house. We think of him as a wandering teacher and healer, but in this story he has a house; and the house, of course, had a roof. Buildings in Galilee in Jesus’ day were made of mud bricks, and their roofs were sod. So these guys who wanted to see if Jesus could heal their paralyzed friend climbed up on the roof and dug a hole through it.

It’s always surprised me about this story that Jesus doesn’t get mad at the guys who had just dug a hole in his roof. It’s not that Jesus never got mad. He got mad at the religious authorities of his day all the time. Maybe he was just glad to see how much faith those people had. That’s what Mark’s story says, anyway. When Jesus saw their faith, Mark says, he first forgave the paralyzed man’s sin, then cured him of his paralysis. In any event, Jesus didn’t get mad at these men. He didn’t take them to small claims court to recover the cost of repairing his roof. He praised them for their faith.

Whatever the reason for Jesus’ graceful reaction to people digging through his roof may have been, I thought of this story when I was thinking about the issue we’re having with the roof on this building that we’re in right now. The roofers tell us that it needs to be replaced. They say it might get us through this current winter, but we can’t count on it to get us through another one after that. It will leak, as indeed it already has. Just look at the plaster over my head right now, and you’ll see the evidence of that fact. The roof may even get a hole in it. A really good wind storm might put a hole in it big enough to lower a paralyzed person through, although how you’d get that person up there in the first place is a bit of a puzzle. Rent a crane, maybe. Still, the point is that the roofers who have looked at it are all concerned that we have, or will have a hole in our roof.

But hey! Jesus had a hole in his roof, right? Those guys in Mark’s story dug it to lower their friend down to where Jesus was, and Jesus was happy about it! Well, what’s good enough for Jesus is certainly good enough for us, right? Maybe we should all go out, climb up on the roof, and make a great big hole in it so lots of people can be lowered down to come to Jesus in our sanctuary. We’d be reenacting a story from the Bible, something many churches love to do. We’d get a lot of publicity. And it sure would save us a lot of money! So how ‘bout it? Anyone up for going up and making a big hole in the roof? I could get my son to help. He’s a professional fire fighter, and he just loves it when he gets to take an ax or a chainsaw to a roof as part of fighting a structure fire.

Sounds like a great idea to me, but somehow I’m sensing a decided lack of enthusiasm for it. I don’t understand why. Although come to think about it, maybe where we live has something to do with it. I guess maybe a hole in the roof isn’t the problem in Galilee, where it’s dry most of the time, that it is in Monroe, where it’s wet much of the time. It gets colder here than it does in Galilee too. And we do have a door; and, unfortunately, I haven’t noticed so many people thronging around it that anyone who wants to, paralyzed or not, can’t get in. We even have a wheelchair accessible entrance back here off the breezeway. And to top it all off, Jesus’ roof was low and flat, while our roof is high and very steep. So maybe imitating this Bible story isn’t such a good idea after all. Darn. I thought I was really on to something there.

Well, if Mark’s story about the hole in Jesus’ roof isn’t a helpful Biblical image for our decision about what to do with our roof, is there some other Biblical image that works better? Of course I think that there is. That’s why I included that reading from Isaiah that we heard this morning. Most of the time when I use this passage, or the nearly identical one in chapter four of Micah, it’s because I so love the image “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” This morning, however, I’m looking to these verses for another reason. I chose them for the image with which they begin, not for that swords into plowshares image with which they end. It is an image of the temple in Jerusalem and the hill on which it sat, here called “the mountain of the LORD’s house.” The temple of course was the holy site of Judaism. Here, however, Isaiah gives us an image of the temple and its hill—it really is more of a hill than a mountain—as a place of pilgrimage, instruction, and peace for all people. He says “all nations shall stream to it.” He says “Many peoples shall come and say, Come, let us to up to the mountain of the LORD.” By “mountain” Isaiah actually means house, the temple, since Hebrew scripture frequently uses Mount Zion, that hill on which the temple was located, as a synonym for the temple itself. Isaiah gives us an image of the house of God as open to and welcoming of all people, not just the Jews for whom it was originally intended. That image works better for us than the image of a big hole in the roof, doesn’t it. That’s how we think of this house of God, isn’t it. We like to think of this church as open to and welcoming of all people.

That’s true enough, but you may be wondering what that idea of the church has to do with our roof. Well, consider with me for a moment what a roof is. It is, of course, something physical. It is a part of a larger building. It is part of a structure, of something that separates off a certain space; and the nature of the structure often determines the use of the space, and vice versa. A roof covers the space. Like the walls it both marks the limits of the space and protects the interior of the space from the elements. Those things are its physical form and function.

But like everything else about a church, a roof is also a symbol. Like all symbols, a roof stands for something more than its physical self. It points beyond itself to something greater than itself. And it seems to me that the symbolic meaning of a church roof is, in itself, ambiguous. As part of a structure that separates space inside from space outside a roof can symbolize exclusion. It can serve to separate those who “belong” inside from those who don’t. In this sense a roof can be a negative symbol.

Yet a roof symbolizes other things too. A roof symbolizes shelter. It symbolizes sanctuary. It symbolizes warmth and protection. It even symbolizes home. And even though it does serve to separate space inside from space outside, a roof can also symbolize welcome. After all, welcoming generally means welcoming people to a place. Welcoming is usually welcoming people to come in—into a space to be sure but also into a community. A good solid roof says come in. Here you will find welcome. Here you will find safety.

And one more thing: Think of how a roof is structured. It is the part of a building that spans across space. It arches over the people. In doing that it draws people together. It points in the direction of togetherness, of community. It draws our attention upward. The roof of a church represents the over-arching protection of God for God’s people. In all of these ways, and probably in many more besides, a roof is so much more than a mere physical structure, as important as it is as a physical structure.

In all of these ways a roof is a symbol of the community that gathers beneath it. A healthy community has a healthy roof. A solid roof shows the world the solidity of the church that built and maintains it. But our roof is not solid. It is falling apart. So it not only is not functioning well as the physical structure that it is, it is not functioning well as a symbol for this church family. We are healthy. We are solid, but our roof doesn’t reflect that reality. Together we can make our roof reflect who we are. It can again reflect our strength, our solidarity as a community of God’s people. Together we can reflect who we are as together we care for this sacred old building and give it, and ourselves, the roof we need and deserve. Amen.