Love Embraces Mess

In Scripture, we find a type of love that embraces the mess. Jesus entered our mess, embraced our mess, and brought hope in the midst of it. Paul defined love in 1 Corinthians 13 to a community that was riddled with mess. Hosea’s relentless pursuit drove him into the mess to reflect God’s faithfulness to us. Mess is always the proving grounds of love.

One of my favorite stories in Scripture is found in the gospel of Mark.

“A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” -Mark 2:1-5

Imagine this story with me for just a moment because I fear we read so quickly that we miss the comedy and the adventure.

Here we have a paralyzed man. On a mat. He has four friends who want to go hear Jesus preach. So they go to his house, pick him up—literally—and carry him across town. Imagine them struggling, awkwardly, as they navigate the busy streets of Capernaum while carrying their paralyzed friend.

Then they get to the house, and it’s packed out. Standing room only. Now, I would have thought, “Well, dude’s gotta stop preaching at some point. Let’s just wait it out, and he will eventually come out of the house.”

But that wasn’t good enough for these guys. They pick their friend up and start scaling the side of the house to get him to the roof. But once you’re on the roof, then what? Dig a hole, obviously. These guys start excavating the roof. This isn’t the kind of hole that produces an annoying drip on a rainy day. They created a hole big enough to fit the entire man’s body through.

Now we can only imagine what everyone in the living room below was thinking. As dirt and dust were falling on Jesus as he was teaching…did he just stop and look up? Where was the owner of this house?

Imagine this scene. All eyes in the crowd are fixated on Jesus—what will he do? And then Jesus looked up and saw the friends of this man and saw their faith and told the man on the mat, “your sins are forgiven.”

But the story doesn’t end there…

As if eternal life wasn’t enough, Jesus told the man to “stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” (Mark 4:11) He was healed!

That man walked out of that house with new legs and a new identity because of the tenacity of four friends who were so desperate to get their friend to Jesus that they were willing to destroy someone’s house. Their love embraced mess.

There are a few things we pull out of this story.

First, friends carry the mat. The mat was something that could have kept the friends away. “It’s too much trouble, too much of a burden to bear. Anything we do with that guy is going to take a lot longer and be a lot more trouble.” But these four guys saw the mat as an opportunity for a miracle.

Beyond that, we all have our own mats. We all have a burden we are too ashamed to share, something we feel no one would want to carry along with us. Something in our past. An insecurity. A weakness. A secret. We can let those things keep others at arm’s length. Or we can invite one another in and let those become places for healing and transformation.

Friendship is about throwing ourselves headlong into the mess, into vulnerability and into inconvenience.  

Who is carrying your mat? Whose mat are you carrying?

Someone else’s miracle may be on the other side of your willingness to embrace the inconvenient and the awkward. And, in turn, your miracle may be on the other side of your willingness to humbly share your own burdens with other believers.

Secondly, friends do the hard work. It took some sweat to get that man to Jesus that day. We tend to believe that the best friendships are the ones that come the easiest. But I don’t believe that’s true. The best friendships are the ones that require risk and sacrifice and cost us time, emotional capacity, and physical energy. Those four friends dared to believe that a little sweat is the stuff that waters the seeds of a miracle.

Someone else’s miracle may be on the other side of your sweat.

Finally, friends change us. This man’s friends were willing to go out of their way. They were sweaty, dirty, and even made an enormous scene in front of a large crowd...and the Messiah. Because of the faith of these friends, this broken man was carried to the feet of Jesus, and healed forever.

Whose life is being changed by your faith? Whose faith is changing your life?

Someone else’s miracle may be on the other side of your faith. Someone else’s miracle is on the other side of your prayers, your risks, your encouragement, your checkbook, your inconvenience.

When it comes to a love that embraces the mess,

- Are we willing to move past convenience to commitment?

- Are we willing to measure the value of the friendship by what we bring to it and not what we get out of it? 

- Are lives being transformed because of our faith?

If our answers to these questions are “no”, let’s make it our aim to get a little messy. Maybe we go a step beyond the social norm of helping others. Rather than offering up a prayer for the homeless person we pass on the street, what if we stopped, bought them a coat and dinner and actually listened to their story? Maybe we cancel our Friday night plans to spend a tear-filled evening with a friend suffering from a broken heart. Maybe take our shopping money for the month and give it instead to the single mom who just lost her job.

Rather than keeping others at arm distance, let's jump head-first into the exhausting, humbling and life-giving mess of genuine friendship. God can use these sacrificial acts to change everything. But we just have to be willing to get a little messy. Are you?

Special thanks to our friend Emily Hendrickson for writing this guest post today! 

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