YThe Fellowship of the Mat
(an excerpt from John Ortberg's 'Everybody's Normal Till You Get To Know Them'.)
One of the great stories in the Bible about community involves a paralyzed man and the friends who brought him to Jesus.
Imagine what life was like for this man--what it would mean to be a paralytic in the ancient world.
His whole life lived on a mat three feet wide and six feet long. Someone has to feed him, carry him, clothe him, move him to keep him from being covered with bedsores, clean him when he soils himself. He will never know the sense of independence we prize so fiercely...
What's he got going for him? He has friends. He has amazing friends.
He is in one of the killer small grounds of all time.
In one sense, this whole story takes place because of his friends. Without his friends he never makes it to Jesus, never gets healed, never gets forgiven. All these things flow out of some very wise decisions made years ago--to have great friends.
Choosing Community
...[H]ere is a little band of men who refuse to let any obstacle stop them. And this is a key point for us: Their little group clearly did not come about by accident. In face of formidable obstacles--social stigma, inconvenience, financial pressure, a high cost of time and energy--they choose to become friends.
People rarly drift into deep community...[R]ule number one for entering into deep friendships sounds deceptively simple: Assign top priority to your relationships. Ironically, we tend to devote massive amounts of time to making money, urnning errands, and succeeding at our jobs, but we neglect giving our more valuable possession--time--to the experience for which we were created: community.
One of the most countercultural statements in Scripture is the description of the early church. In speaking of the people's oneness of heart and mind, the writer notes, "They met together daily." They worshiped together, ate together, talked together, prayed together--on a daily basis. No wonder they grew so close.
We try to create first-century community on a twnety-first-century timetable--and it doesn't work. Maybe the biggest single carrier to deep connectedness for most of us is simply the pace of our lives. How often do you hear (or say) things like, "We've got to get together soon" or "Let's do lunch in a few weeks when things settle down"?
The requirement for true intimacy is chunks of unhurried time. If you think you can fit deep community into the cracks of an overloaded schedule--think again. Wise people do not try to microwave friendship, parenting, or marriage. You can't do community in a hurry.
You can't listen in a hurry.
You can't mourn in a hurry with those who mourn, or rejoice in a hurry with those who rejoice.
[You can't read all of this in a hurry].
Many people lack great friends for the simple reason that they have nver made pursuing community a high priority. You can't carry somebody's mat in a hurry. And everyone comes with a mat.
Everybody Has a Mat
Think about what the paralyzed man groes through in order to be friends with this group of men.
He must have wrestled with his sense of dependence sometimes. I suspect at times he became jealous of their independence, since after they had been together, everyone could walk home but him. Sometimes he must have wished in the secret places of his heart that he could trade placed with one of them. He must have struggled with how they saw hime in his neediness.
Is it a very vulnerable thing to have someone carry your mat. When somebody's carrying your mat, they see you in your weakness. They might hurt you if they drop you.
There is this 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 opporunity 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, these if the Fellowship of the Mat.
Hese 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 mnat, when we give and receive help with each other, that healing becomes possible...
Because everybody has a mat.
Maybe your mat is a temper you can't seem to control. You lash out at the people you most want to love...
Maybe your mat is fear. You love to hear stories of courage and boldness...But the reality is that you still get sweaty palms when you have to confront your mother.
Maybe your mat is an inability to trust, or the need to be in control, or an inability to speak the language of the heart. 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, of plainness, or loneliness.
Sometimes people spend their whole lives doing "mat management." They pretend they don't have a mat. They appear to be so healthy and strong that the people around them assume they could walk anywhere they want to...If this is you, you may get quite good at hiding your mat. You may convince everybody of your strength and competence. But you will not live in community.
So let me ask you a personal question: Who carries your mat for you sometimes?
--Who do you show your weakness and struggles to?
--Who do you ask to pray for you?
--Who do you let see your brokenness?
Jean Vanier writes,
There is not ideal community. 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. Humilty 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.
A Community of Roof-Crashers
...[O]ne day Jesus comes to...town. These four men [the Fellowship of the Mat] find out about it, and naturally they want to hear this famour rabbi.
One of them says, "We can't just go oursevles. 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.
They tell their friend he's going to see Jesus. They will pick him up at nine o'clock. He doesn't have much choice, because when his friends pick him up, they really pick him up.
They get to the home where Jesus is teaching, and it is packed. Standing room only. "There was no room left, not even outside the door," the Bible says.
...The men hadn't counted on this. They had been so excited, and now they're shut out. They just watch for a while.
Then one of them--the management guy, the one with an MBA--says, "How can we get him to Jesus? Let's have a brainstorming session, and remember--when brainstorming, there's no such thing as a dumb idea."
One of them gest and 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!"
Silence.
"Okay," asks the MBA, "any other ideas?"
There aren't any. The hole in the roof idea is the only thing they can come up with. They realize it's an unorthodox way to get into a room.
But they are desperate to get to Jesus. They had decided they wouldn't let anything get in their way, so strong is their trust in Jesus, so great their love for their frien.
So the men get some ropes for lowering the mat and head upstairs...The friends go up and start remodeling this guy's house.
Imagine this:
Jesus is teaching, and because he is an excellent teacher, people are paying close attention. But suddenly the distraction level begins to rise. There is a strange noise that sounds as if it's coming from the roof...then a hail of large chunks of first-century plaster. Eventuallly all conversation ceases...Everyone is looking up now, and there's a hole in the ceiling. Four pairs of hands are rooting around, making the hole bigger.
Imagine being the guy who owns the house.
You agree to host a meeting, and suddenly you're having a spontaneous skylight installed. The ownder calls his State Farm agent to see if this is covered.
"Jesus is here--can we call it an act of God?"
These men are devoted to their friend, so they decide a little roofing is not going to stand in their way. They serve him with determination, boldness, and a certain right-brained creativity. They become roof-crashers for their friend...
Ironically, many of the barriers that keep us isolated are surprisingly fragile, much like the roof that stood in the way of this little community..."A major commitment to television viewing--such as most of us have come to have--is incompatible with a major commitment to community life."
Friends are people who have made a major, roof-crashing commitment to other human beings. But in our society, as Lewis Smedes puts it, we have confused friends with "friendly people."
...There is sa world of difference between being friendly to someone because they're usefule to you and being someone's friend...psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner's definition of a family...applies to the Fellowship fo the Mat: "A group which possesses and implements an irrational commitment to the well-being of its members." The key word is irrational. In great communities, people carry mats and crash through roofs without asking the question, "Whats in it for me?"
How often do you do a little roof-crashing? It doesn't have to involve destruction of property. Most it involves just two tasks: noticing and doing. When you see a friend is discouraged, you can write a note or make a phone call. When you know someone really needs a talk, take the time to listen even though you're busy. When you see a gift you know would bring delight to comeone in your family, buy it for the person for no reason at all.
...This leads us to what might be called the irony of the mat. OUr mats are usually what we are least proud of and most likely to hide. We are often convinced that if other people knew about our bats, they would stay away from us. But in reality it is precisely our mats that form the connecting points for a deeper relationship.
...Harry Stack Sullivan was a pioneer in what is called interpersonal psychology. He used to tell his students, "It takes people to make people sick, and it takes people to make people well." Theologically, this is not stricktly true: Every one of us has our own quotient of sin and brokenness that we are quite responsible for on our own without help from anyone. But for better or worse we are shaped more by people than any other force in life. In the same way, more than anything else, God uses people to heal people.
Community Requires Trust
Now for a mement imagine that you are the man on the mat. You are about to go through the roof. This is the biggest risk you have ever taken in your life. You wonder if you can trust your friends to keep you safe. After all, when they carry you around at ground level, a drop would be unpleasant but not irredeemable. When you're on the roof, the stakes get raised a little higher. Has anybody tested the ropes?
You wonder if you can trust the crowd to be civil...If things get physical, you have no protection.
You wonder if you can trust Jesus. What if it turns out that he can't help you after all? ...What if he's in the middle of a really important point and doesn't like to be interrupted?
You lie there on your mat on the roof, thinking abut all these dangers. You have a decision to make. If you go through the roof, you could get dropped, you could get ridiculed, you could get rejected. On the other hand, if you don't go through the roof, it's certain you will never be healed. This is your one shot at wholeness.
The man nods his head. He decides to roll the dice. He becomes a roof-crasher, too. And naother will never be the same.
Authentic Community Always Involves Spiritual Growth
The man's friends must wonder also how Jesus will respond. I know from personal experience tha teachers can get a little touchy about being interrupted. You'll notice Jesus made sure he came to earth before there were beepers and pagers and cell phontes...
Jesus looks up and sees the faces of four friends staring down at him.
They have nothing to ask for themselves. Their only thought is, "If we can get our friend close to Jesus..."
That's what great friends want to do for each other.
Then the text says an amazing thing: "when Jesus saw their faith..."
Jesus sees a group who possess and act on an irrational commitment to the well-bring of one of tis memebers...He sees people who love even in the face of a giant "as-is" tag. He thinks to himself that this is humanity at its finest.
He sees their faith.
Jesus turns and looks down at this twisted, motionless body on a mat. He sees not only a broken body but--as in every one of us--a broken, fallen soul.
He speaks tenderly: "Son, your sins are forgiven."
I wonder what hte man on the mat thinks at this point. He hadn't really signed up to have his sins talked about.
But it's one of the things that happen when you get neck deep into a community and Jesus is there in the middle of it. Being in community has a way of surfacing the sin issue.
...A Dostoyevsky chracter said, "In my dreams, I am very often passionately determined to serve humanity...yet I'm quite incapable of living with anyone in one room for two days together, and I know that from experience."
I think it is reflective of what happens in deep community: Sooner of later, you get to the sin issues. "Community is the place where our limitations, our fears and our egoism are revealed to us,"writes Jean Vanier. "While we are alone, we could believe we loved everyone. Now that we are with others, living with them all the time, we realixe how incapable we are of loving, how much we deny to others, how closed in on ourselves we are." Indeep community with Jesus, in the Fellowship of the Mat, we find our sin being talked about and forgiven.
Jesus is filling the desires of this man's friends, perhaps even deeper than they realixe. When someone is your friend, your greatest desire for them--deeper than external well-being or even physical health--is that thngs are right between them and God. If someone is truly my friend, their deepest concern is the well-being of my character, my soul.
...Count on it: In community with Jesus and with those who love you, most of what happened to this man will happen with you: Sn will get named and dealt with. And although this sounds frightening, it may be the best gift of all.
The "Unity of Spiritual Orientation"
Let's start with a question: What preoccupies you? Or, where does your mind drift when you're not doing anything? What do you daydream about?
You can tell a lot about a person if you know what they think about when they're just sitting around...>
An entrepreneur eats and sleeps her business start-up.
A great coach is always scribbling plays on a napkin.
A young mother worries about her children...
What does God think about lal day? Of course, being omniscient, he can think of everything at onece, but you understand the gist of the question. What preoccupies him? Where does his mind drift?
We can know--because of Jesus. He is the Word--the mind of God--made flesh. And Jesus insisted that God is constantly thinking about the people he loves so much. Jesus said the mind of the Father is moved toward the people the way the mind of the shepherd keeps coming back to his lost sheep, the way the thoughts of a poor woman are obsessed with finding her lost coin...The God whom Jesus revealed is a God who is ceaselessly preoccupied with finding and redeeming and loving people.
There is a very important implication to this. It is simply impossible to love the Father without sharing his heart for people.
...The truth is, the more spiritually mature you grow, the more you will find your heart being drawn to people. You want to reach out to peope, especially those neglected by society or far from God...
People who don't love people can't love God, just as people who don't know the multiplication table can't do algebra. They may know a lot abou the Bible, they may be quite churchy, and they may carefully avoid scandalous sins and be thought of as spiritually advanced. But this is an error, and one that deeply damages both those inside and outside the church. Just as love is the ultimate expression of the law, so lovelessness is the ultimate expression of sin.
This was the condition of the "teachers of the law" who sat listening to Jesus...Churches are full of people who think they love God when in reality they have little love for the people who mean so much to him. I understand about such people because too often I fall victim to the same syndrome. I struggle with the same self-righteousness that plagued the teachers of the law. I far too often sit where they sat, disapprove as they disapproved, and forget to pick up mats and break through ceilings.
Jesus is concerned for his critics. He loves them, just as he loves the men coming through the ceiling. So he acts as if to say, "Just so you see I have authority..." He turns to the man otn he mat: "Get up, take your mat, go home."
Silence. Everyone watches...
The man stands up. He lifts his mat off the ground. He folds it up. He has spent his whole life on that thing. And suddenly--never again.
...Not just his body has been healed. He heart also. His soul. Every sin has been forgiven.
Physically, relationally, spiritually, he is the healthiest guy in the room.
...His greatest gift, humanly speaking, wasn't his legs. It was his friends. There's no gift like the gift of community.
The Fellowship of the Mat still exists. You find it here and there, in a friendship or a marriage or a church, wherever a group possesses and implements an irrational commitment to the well-being of its members. It's not an easy fellowship to be part of--people's mats are sometimes heavy and awkward, and there's always a roof of busyness or fear or conflict that needs to be crashed through. But those who find their way to it would never live without it again. It is the place where healing and wholeness happens. It is the fellowship where Jesus shows up: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
jac was here with you
9/18/2004 11:12:00 am
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