On Sunday, my husband sat next to me in church as our pastor gave a sermon on Luke 5:17-26, the story of the paralytic man being lowered through the roof to see Jesus. He leaned over and whispered,

“I wonder if there were some other group of friends in the next town over who just didn’t think to climb the roof.” 

In the Sunday School version of this scripture, the man and his friends are celebrated for their commitment, their faith that Jesus could heal their friend. But I found myself wondering about my husband’s comment; everyone in that crowd had faith. Everyone in that room was pressing into a packed door to try to get a glimpse of Jesus. There may well have been half a dozen sick or paralyzed people on stretchers surrounding the house, their friends may have carried them many miles on bare feet just for the chance to maybe be healed by Jesus. 

What separates these friends isn’t faith, its creativity and audacity. 

The act that canonized these ordinary people, locking their story into the scripture, into the story of God, wasn’t wasn’t carrying their friend on a stretcher out of hope he could be healed – it was climbing the walls, and digging through the roof by hand when it seemed there was no other way. It was the decision, based on blind hope, that if there were no doors open to them, they would make their own. 

For the vast majority of the people at the scene, and the vast majority of us today, even if it was the deepest, truest desire of our hearts to see our friend healed, even if we believed in every bone of our bodies that Jesus could and would heal if he saw them, we simply would not even consider climbing the roof. It just wouldn’t appear in our mental list of options. As I ponder this story (and as my husband pondered this story) the question presents itself – what if what is remarkable about the friends is, in part, creativity? Not creativity in the aesthetic sense, but in the sense of being able to see paths that are invisible to everyone else. 

This is when the other remarkable thing about the friends appears: audacity. Even if one in twenty of the people stuck outside the building considered carving a tunnel, or dropping in from the roof, it would be safe to assume that the vast majority of them, and the vast majority of us, would not do that. It’s not our house! There are people inside! We didn’t bring the right tools for that! The roof could collapse! And, because I really feel like this needs to be stressed, it’s not our house, you can’t rip the roof off of a stranger’s house.  

But they did. And their friend was healed. These people had great faith and great creativity but the perhaps more remarkable thing about this group of friends, was their demonstrated, non-hypothetical willingness to scale the walls, carrying a fully-grown man, and remove a roof with their bare hands.

How many times while they climbed and carried and dug do you think they thought, “this is dumb, this will never work.” What do you think it would take for you to grab onto the windowsill of a stranger’s house and start to pull yourself up?

We at Ministry Incubators focus most of our efforts on innovation in ministry, on finding paths not seen by other people, and championing them. We have found that while creativity appears in all kinds of constellations, the audacity to chase it requires something specific: a team that will climb the roof with you. They didn’t need to all have the idea, but they needed to all get on board and continue to climb, dig, and carry, for one another when one member of the team’s confidence wavered. They needed to do it together. 

As you think about where you’re called to innovate in your ministry, where the door is blocked and you aren’t sure how to get through, I encourage you to remember these friends, to start looking for roofs, windows, and back entrances. And when you find a way in, to make sure you have people who will agree to go with you. 

And as you engage in the unpredictable, grueling work of digging out the roof by hand, I hope you imagine the friends, muscles shaking, sweat dripping down their faces, as they lowered their friend in front of Jesus. I hope you imagine the way their heart lurched, their breath caught, their throat tightened, when Jesus looked at their friend and said,

“Your sins are forgiven.” 

Something more than they could have ever imagined, something they didn’t even know that they could go looking for. A miracle, and one a lot more remarkable than the one they hoped they would see. I hope you imagine them meeting their friend outside, their friend standing and holding his mat, and the tears they cried together. And I hope you feel encouraged to keep going. 

God is at work, may we have the creativity and the audacity to join in.