Breaking and Entering

Articles

Home > Articles > 2006 > Breaking and Entering

True friendships take time and commitment.

by John Ortberg | posted 11/30/2006

Topics:	Community, Fellowship, Friendship, Healing, Prayer, Service, Stories, Vulnerability
Filters:	Connect, Leader, Member
Purpose:	Fellowship
References:	Mark 2:1-8
Date Added:	November 30, 2006

2 of 4

Many people lack great friends for the simple reason that they have never made pursuing community a high priority you can't carry somebody's mat in a hurry. And everyone comes with a mat.

The Fellowship of the Mat

Think about what the paralyzed man goes through in order to be friends with this group of men. He must have wrestled with his sense of dependence. I suspect at times he became jealous. Sometimes he must have wished in the secret places of his heart that he could trade places with one of them.

It is a very vulnerable thing to have someone carry your mat. When somebody's carrying your mat, they see you in your weakness.

There is the gift between these friends: trusting vulnerability and dependable faithfulness. This mat, which according to society should have created a great gulf between him and them, instead became an opportunity for servanthood and acceptance. This group becomes the Fellowship of the Mat. Wherever human beings love and accept and serve each other in the face of weakness and need, there is the Fellowship of the Mat.

Here is the truth about us: Everybody has a mat. Let the mat stand as a picture of human brokenness and imperfection. It is what is "not normal" about me. It is the little "as-is" tag that I most desire to hide. But it is only when we allow others to see our mat, when we give and receive help with each other, that healing becomes possible. Every effective Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is a Fellowship of the Mat. So are healthy families and churches.

Because everybody has a mat.

Maybe your mat is a raging temper, fear, or an inability to trust. Maybe it's a need to be in control. Maybe your mat involves a terrible secret of some awful thing you did that you still feel guilty about. Maybe it is a crushing sense of failure, or inadequacy, or loneliness.

Community is made up of people with all their richness, but also with their weakness and poverty, of people who accept and forgive each other, who are vulnerable with each other. Humility and trust are more at the foundation of community than perfection.

If you want a deep friendship, you can't always be the strong one. You will sometimes have to let somebody else carry your mat.

That is what happens in the Bible story. This group of people become friends. It requires formidable character and intentionality. Perhaps because one man's vulnerability is so visible, they all become more honest about their mats. Against all odds, they form a little community.

A gang of roof-crashers

Then one day Jesus comes to their town. These four men find out about it, and naturally they want to hear this famous rabbi.

One of them says, "We can't just go ourselves. We've got to get our friend there. This could really encourage him. And maybe these things they're saying about Jesus are true. Maybe Jesus really can heal our friend—wouldn't that be something! We gotta get him there!"

To do that is going to make things harder logistically, but they're not thinking about themselves. They are thinking of him. Friends do that. Friends serve each other. When they get to the home where Jesus is teaching, it is standing room only "There was no room left, not even outside the door," the Bible says. Jesus is so close, but they can't get through to him. The men hadn't counted on this. They had been so excited, and now they're shut out.

Then one of them gets an idea—probably the youngest guy the tattooed and pierced guy, because he's an outside-the-box thinker.

"Dudes! What if we make a hole and lower him through the roof! Whoaaa!"

next page … |

2 of 4