"Unroofing"

Have you heard about Jesus healing so many ill people that they had to bring pneumatic hammers and cut through the concrete floors so that they could install substantially larger elevators?

            Well, of course not! I am making it up. Or more precisely I am translating a biblical story into our current idioms. But I do not feel badly about it because that is exactly what can be found already in the Bible!

            There is the highly memorable story when a group of friends brought to Jesus a person for healing and they could not get to him and so they lowered the ill to Jesus’ presence through the ceiling.

            The gospel of Mark is the oldest among the gospels and closest to the original Middle Eastern context. And so in the gospel of Mark we hear that they were digging (αποστεγαζω and εξορυσσω) through the roof - one must imagine flat roofs of that region covered with compacted dry mud.

            The gospel of Luke is written a little later and for a different Greek audience further north and in the urban setting and thus Luke writes about taking apart those picturesque tiled (κεραμος) red roofs of Italy and Greece.  

            You see, it’s all right to translate the Good News into our own context and situation!

Join us this Sunday as we continue listening to NT healing stories. Let’s see what unroofing might mean for us today in the middle of our own society need for healing.