Through the Roof - Feb 19, 2006
Mark 2: 1-12I've thought a lot this week about those five friends, and the predicament they found themselves in. This was one of those weeks when the sermon almost wrote itself. On Tuesday, you see, I opened up the mail here at church to find the letter that I strongly suspected was coming, I just didn't know when. But when I saw that the return address was the logo of the Lake Country Unitarian Universalist Church, I kind of knew what it was going to be. The Session and I had received a letter previously from them, letting us know that they were in negotiations with another church to purchase a building of their own. On March 19, "the UU's" as we affectionately call them, will worship for the last time in our space.
On Wednesday I received a call from one of the UU's congregational presidents. She asked me if I had gotten the letter, and we chatted awhile about the changes that are ahead for both their congregation and ours. Many of you can probably imagine what kind of excitement and trepidation that congregation is feeling, since you were around when this congregation left the Kettle Moraine Parish. When I've talked to some of you about what that experience was like, words like "scary" and "exciting" are used. I'm also reminded that the decision to leave the Parish was not unanimous. There may even be a few members out there who wish that Jerusalem had remained a part of the Kettle Moraine Parish to the end, which will occur for them very soon as well, although its okay with me if you don't tell me that to my face!
It is impossible for me to talk about the Unitarians leaving without mentioning the impact on our bottom line. I did the math Tuesday after reading the letter, and the loss of rental income is about 8% of our budget for 2006. That's not insurmountable to people who believe that God provides, but it is significant enough that we needn't pretend it doesn't exist. Right about now you might be wondering why I didn't preach a more pointed Stewardship sermon back in November. I think we now know why.
So, back to those five friends. It is almost impossible for me to separate the five into the needy and the helpers. Didn't they all have some reason to see Jesus? What the four physically strong friends had was the ability to carry the paralytic. But the paralytic gave them the reason they needed to be creative about finding the way to be with Jesus, face-to-face. Without their friend and his needs, however, the four would probably have ended up standing outside the house with the rest of the crowd. So, who helped whom?
When the five friends arrived at the house, with crowds inside and the crowds surrounding the house, I'm sure the obstacle seemed overwhelming. If the four had just dropped the paralytic man to the ground and taken off to become just four more faces in the crowd, they would have been no closer to Jesus than the others who were standing on the outermost perimeters. And lets face it, chances are the paralytic man wouldn't have been too surprised to see this happen. In our own culture, hundreds of years later, the poor and disenfranchised still get overlooked, every day. On the other hand, they could have jammed their way through, demanding that everyone move out of their way for their sick friend, causing a ruckus that would have likely gotten them thrown out, because even in our own day, the rabble rousers are looked down upon.
Instead, the five friends looked up. Staircases to the roof were common in Palestinian first century houses. The roof was considered another living space of the home. In fact, families often slept on the roof in hot weather. So getting up there was not as much of an obstacle as it would be for us in our 21st century homes. But once they got up to the roof, the real task began. The job of creating a hole in a roof of an average house in first century Palestine was hard, dirty work. Roofs were constructed of mud, straw and twigs, packed tightly and allowed to dry in the hot sun until it baked to form a sort of reinforced clay.
So while getting up to the roof was not so hard, it was only the first step. The ones who could dig, dug. I wonder what it was like for the one who could not dig to lie there and watch his friends?
I've been that friend for whom others dug through mud. Have you? I have a story I like to tell to people who aren't familiar with the congregation of Jerusalem. Some of you here today were players in this story. The rest of you should hear it.
When my family and I moved here so that I could become your pastor, we had scheduled the move and the transition very carefully. Pete and Andrew arrived in Wisconsin on Monday, I went before presbytery on Tuesday, we scheduled the closing on the house on Wednesday, and the truck was to arrive with our furniture on Thursday. That would give us a week or so to set up household before I started my work here, then a few more days until our family arrived to help us celebrate my ordination. There was no "wiggle room" for something to go wrong, but we were confident that we had covered all the bases.
On the day I went before Presbytery to be examined for ordination, Pete and I got a very troubling phone call at the hotel that had become our temporary home until we closed on our house. The short Reader's Digest version of that part of the story is that we were informed that due to a paperwork mistake, the closing on our house would not happen unless we showed up with a very large check to supplement the down-payment. Regardless of the fact that the paperwork mistake was on the part of the mortgage company, and not on our part, the mortgage company was holding their ground, and insisting that we show up with about $9,000.
I cannot adequately describe the reaction I had when I got this phone call, two hours before I was to appear before Presbytery. One reason I cannot adequately describe it is because I had some less than pastorly things to say to and about the mortgage agent. Things I cannot, will not, say while standing in this room in front of God and witnesses, and while wearing this robe. But on that day I said them, out loud. Suffice it to say that I was distraught that I had brought my family 2,000 miles to a new community, and that a paperwork glitch by someone I had never met had rendered us homeless. And I was about to drive to Hartland to stand in front of 100 or so of my Presbytery colleagues, and be interviewed. And this interview was to be the most important one of my life so far - the interview that I had spent seven years of my life preparing for. So while Pete stayed behind to try to convince the mortgage company to reconsider fixing the paperwork error in time for the scheduled closing, I took off in my rental car for Kettle Moraine United Presbyterian Church, not knowing where my family and I were going to live.
I arrived at the church early, as is my habit, and hoping that my red eyes and tear stained face weren't too obvious. The first person I saw from Jerusalem got the whole story, as soon as she asked, "How are you?" I couldn't not tell her, even at the risk of feeling afraid that the PNC would get the wrong idea about what had happened and would decide that someone who was so bad with money should not be the pastor of this church.
But God had seen ahead to what I needed. And God had put somebody on the roof, digging through the mud and the twigs so that there would be a way for me to see Jesus, face-to-face. Because the person I told this story to turned to me and said, "No problem. Don't worry about it. If you need a check for $9,000, the church will lend it to you."
I stood there for a second stunned. Then I started to cry again. Through my tears of relief I said something brilliant like, "Really? You can do that?" "Of course." Someone remembered that in order to have a thing like this happen, we needed a Session approval, so right there, in the narthex of Kettle Moraine United Presbyterian Church, with the Presbytery meeting about to begin in a few minutes, and with a few dozen people milling about oblivious to what was happening, a quorum of the Session was declared, Dana Lindsley was grabbed to moderate, and an emergency loan was approved so that the pastor and her family could have a place to live.
After the impromptu meeting ended, I turned to Dana, and said, "Is this how they do things here?" He just laughed and said, "Yes."
You'll be relieved to know that the glitch in the paperwork got fixed, and although we had the longest real estate closing in recorded history, we did not end up needing that loan from the church. But that's not the point of the story, the point is that right there in the narthex of Kettle Moraine United Presbyterian Church, some people I barely knew opened a hole in the roof, and I saw in those face, the face of God.
When I think of our relationship with the UU's, I think of us as a symbiotic system. We had something they needed for those six years: space. And they had something that had been in short supply sometimes in the past: cash. We've been rather like those five friends. Its important to note that in the Biblical story, the friends do not go back home through the roof again, but rather a new way, with new vigor. They go home forgiven and restored. It seems to me that it will be our task in the weeks and months to come, to figure how God is leading us to go off, possibly in a new way, not necessarily the way we got here, with the help of our friends.
We may not be able to understand how it is that we have been given a chance to envision a new way of making our budget, but whether or not we are able to see through to where we are going, God is faithful in providing. Many of you might have had some healthy skepticism about leaving the Parish, but God has provided. And God will provide once again.
The words for today from Isaiah are very hope-filled words:
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise."
God is about to do a new thing. Thanks be to God!
