The Roof That Came Apart

Simon's boats were still pulled up on the beach where he had left them to follow Jesus. Now Jesus was home in Capernaum, and word went round the town fast. "He's back! He's at the house!" By the time Jesus began to teach, people were squashed into every corner, pressed against the walls, and spilling out of the doorway into the street.

Across town, four men picked up the corners of a mat. On the mat lay their friend, who could not move his legs. He could not walk to Jesus, so they were going to carry him there.

At the house they stopped. There was no way in. Not through the door, not past the window, not even close.

"Excuse us!" Not one person budged.

"We'll never get through," said one friend.

Another looked up. "Then we won't go through. We'll go over."

(Houses there had flat roofs made of wooden beams, covered with branches and packed-down mud, with a stairway up the outside wall. People dried their washing up there and slept there on hot nights. They did not usually dig holes in them.)

Up the stairs went the friends, with the man on his mat bumping along between them. Then they knelt and began to dig. Scrape. Crunch. Lumps of dried mud broke loose. If you had been sitting inside, you would have felt dust sprinkling into your hair and seen a patch of blue sky open above Jesus' head. The teachers of the law, who had come from towns all over the country to hear him, brushed dirt off their fine robes and frowned at the ceiling.

The hole grew. Then down came the mat, lower and lower, until it bumped onto the floor right in front of Jesus. Four dusty faces peered in from the sky.

Jesus could see how sure they were that he would help. He looked down at the man on the mat.

"Son," Jesus said, "your sins are forgiven."

The teachers sat very still, but their thoughts were loud. Why does he talk like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?

They were right about that part. Only God can.

Jesus knew what they were thinking. "Why are you thinking these things?" he asked. "Which is easier to say to this man: 'Your sins are forgiven,' or 'Get up, pick up your mat, and walk'?"

(Anyone can say the first one. Nobody can see a sin go away. Everyone can see whether legs work.)

"But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins." (Son of Man was Jesus' name for himself.) Then he turned to the man. "I tell you, get up. Pick up your mat and go home."

The man moved his feet. He bent his knees. He stood up, rolled his mat under his arm, and walked out through the crowd, which turned out to have room after all.

Everyone was amazed and praised God. "We have never seen anything like this!"

Somebody would have to fix that roof, of course. A few new branches, a few baskets of mud, and it would keep out the rain again. The man's legs would carry him for the rest of his life, and then, like everyone's legs, they would grow old and tired.

But the first thing Jesus said would never wear out. The teachers had asked exactly the right question, and the answer had been standing in the room with dust on his shoulders the whole time. Jesus would keep forgiving people all along his road, a cheating tax collector, a woman crying at his feet, a friend who swore he never knew him, and he would even ask God to forgive the soldiers who nailed him to a cross.

The friends had brought a man down through a roof to find Jesus. Jesus had come down from much farther up, all the way from heaven, to find him.