A Beautiful Mess
Lipstick and Human-Shaped Skylights
A few years ago, I was officiating a wedding, and Julia and our girls came along with me. At the time, Ansley and Maggie were only 3 and 1. After the ceremony, we had some time to kill before the reception, and the girls were hungry. So, we decided to class it up and head to McDonald’s in our formal attire. We pulled into the parking lot, and I got out of the car to get the girls from the back seat. As I opened the passenger door, I saw it: Ansley had somehow gotten hold of Julia’s lipstick. She had not only put it on her lips but also managed to cover her entire face and arm with it.
She looked up at me and said, “Do I look pretty, Daddy?”
… and you know what?
She did.
But we still had a reception to attend, so we rushed Ansley into McDonald's to try to clean her up. Despite our best efforts, we returned to the wedding with our tomato-hued daughter. But here’s what I learned:
Some messes are beautiful.
In the Gospel of Mark, one miracle has always stood out to me as a beautiful mess: it’s the story of four friends who carry a paralyzed friend to Jesus. But when they arrive, the crowd is overflowing from the house where Jesus is teaching and they can’t get inside to him. But they can’t turn around, not when they’re so close to Jesus. So, they do the most logical thing: they climb up onto the roof, and then they make an opening by digging through the roof. Can you imagine the mess? And then, once the opening was presumably large enough for a fully grown and paralyzed human to fit through, they lowered their friend into the room and placed him right in front of Jesus. All eyes are on Jesus, watching, waiting:
What is he going to do with this mess?
Jesus makes it beautiful.
Jesus reveals his authority to forgive sins (which nobody quite expected), and then he even healed the man. It leaves everybody amazed. But whenever I read this story, I can’t help but wonder:
Who fixed the roof?
That detail hits a little different if you’re a homeowner, doesn’t it? Will insurance cover it? Will the four friends come back and fix it? Will the crowd get a fundraiser going? Here’s a thought that I have about it:
What if the owner didn’t fix it? What if he turned it into a skylight? That way, every time he looked up, every time he saw the light of the sun bursting through the hole, he would remember three things.
I imagine the first thing he would remember is this:
Faith is not just for ourselves.
The passage in Mark says, “When Jesus saw their faith …” This is in reference to the friends’ faith and not the paralyzed man’s. The friends are literally willing to carry someone to Jesus. They had the crazy-faith-idea to get up on the roof and rip through it. And when Jesus saw their faith, he honoured it, celebrated it, and revealed that he has the authority to forgives sins and, then, on top of it all: he healed their friend.
Your faith is for someone.
In the ‘70s, a friend of my parents, Debbie, gifted them a Bible. It’s an epic time capsule of the era. Look at this thing. It’s a whole vibe full of '70s glory.
Inside is a beautiful letter and it ends with a prayer that I love, “May His Way which became My Way, become Your Way too.”
This Bible collected dust on a shelf for the next two decades. But then, in the late ‘90s, when I started to feel a sense of my lostness, when I was shocked by my own sin and unsure about what to do about it, when I was asking questions and seeking answers: I picked up this Bible, dusted it off, and cracked open its pages. I figured you could know a story by how it begins and how it ends, so I read Genesis 1 and Revelation 22. (Side note: Not the most helpful way to get a sense of the Bible.) But even in that little effort, here’s what I learned:
Time begins and ends with God. Life begins and ends with God. Before time and life, there is God. And after time and life, there is God. It all begins and ends with God.
I didn’t immediately come to faith in that moment. But the Word of God doesn’t return void. A seed was sown in my soul, and Jesus honoured the faith and prayers of Debbie, and in due time … faith bloomed in me. Debbie isn’t the only person who had faith for me. But she put her faith into action, she gave this Bible to my parents and she prayed, “May His Way which became My Way, become Your Way too.”
… and now, I’m walking in the Way.
Thank God for the Debbies of the world.
Your faith is for someone. Because the Gospel always comes to us on its way to someone else. What might happen when we take a little step, even something as simple as giving someone a Bible with a thoughtful letter? There’s only one way to find out! And maybe, like Debbie, we won’t know the result of our ordinary steps of faith here-and-now. But one day, and I look forward to this, I’ll sit down with Debbie in eternity, and I’ll say: “Deb, Debbie, Deb-orah. You did it! You took that step of faith. And it mattered. Thank you!” And, then, we’ll celebrate, full of joy, forever.
May His Way which became My Way, become Your Way too.
Here’s the fun in a faith that is for someone else:
Whatever steps we take, our faith will always be outmatched by Jesus’ authority. He can take our faith and pull off what we can’t dare to imagine: He’ll call, he’ll forgive sins, he’ll forge new life, he’ll write the better story.
This brings me to the second thing I like to imagine that the owner of the home would remember when he looked through the human-shaped hole in his roof:
Faith opens up new possibilities.
The human-sized hole in his roof would remind the owner that the paralyzed man who was confined to a mat walked out the front door. I mean, come on, imagine the new possibilities! What does the now-healed man do next?
Well, he walks home. Maybe he even skips, leaps … dares to run? Surely he realizes he is a living, breathing, embodiment of the prophecy of Isaiah about the Messianic age: “the lame will leap like a deer!” The man opens the door. His family is shocked. They go for a walk, he picks up his kids, plays with them, he even throws them into the air and catches them. He puts them to bed and he can put even himself to bed. The next morning, he clothes himself, and prepare meals. Then, maybe the next day, he goes for a hike and beholds the beauty of the Sea of Galilee. And maybe, he’ll even wade in the water and try to swim. All these new possibilities open up before him!
But when I was in seminary, a professor asked us, “When he walked through the door of his home, what do you think the first thing he said to his family was?”
What do you think?
One person put up their hand and said, “He probably told them the story of what happened.”
That didn’t seem to be the answer my professor was looking for. So, I put my hand up:
“Maybe he said, ‘I’m sorry.’”
I figured since Jesus forgave his sins before healing him, he must have been a fairly decent sinner.
My professor looked at my side-eyed. Then he said:
“When he walked through the door, I think he said: ‘I’m forgiven!’”
I’m forgiven.
That opens up even bigger possibilities, doesn’t it?
The miracle got him back on his feet. But forgiveness forges a new life. The best of all possibilities opens up: eternal life, a life with God, and it begins now! Yes, this man was back on his feet, but now he’s following the Messiah. He’s living for the one who loves him enough to tend to his deepest need—to forgive his sins—so he can have a life with God.
Yes, I like to imagine that the owner of the house kept the hole in his roof. He made it into a skylight. Because every time he looks up, he would remember one more thing:
Heaven came down into our mess.
Jesus looks at the mess: the hole in the roof, the debris on the floor, the sin in all our hearts, the cynicism, the aftermath of the fall and broken bodies. And Jesus does his best work in the mess. He takes the mess and he makes it beautiful. Because just a little faith mixed up with the authority of Jesus and new possibilities stretch out forever on the horizon. This story in the gospel of Mark reminds us:
The mess faith makes is the most beautiful thing on earth.
May grace touch our ordinary messes and turn them into something beautiful.
P.S. This article is an excerpt and adaptation from a recent sermon I preached at Coastline Church.