Fixing the Roof

The Answer: 

The sun was not quite risen yet but it had already tinted the morning with light and warmth, like the distant scent of water and fish which wafted through the streets. It was early, but that didn't matter to Capernaum, and at least half of the city was already awake and stirring. In the distance, one could hear the singing of the fishermen as they rolled into the docks, and the tramp of animals' hoofs as the merchants began to assemble in the marketplace.

And through this dim scene of predawn activity, Jabez ben Jabez hurried, with a strange speed and agility considering the fact that he carried a heavy bundle on his back. But he hardly seemed to notice its weight and, to watch him, you would have thought it contained nothing but feathers.

His feet finally slowed and he stopped as he reached a large house near the middle of town. He didn't know it well though he would also never forget it. And it took him just a moment or two to remember exactly where to find the stairs which led up to the roof. But once he found them, he scampered up.

Despite the fact that it was still cool, there was sweat on his forehead from the exertion of carrying his heavy burden up the stairs, but he showed no other sign. On the roof at last, he heaved his sack down and unto the rooftop, the muscles of his arms bulging beneath the sleeves of his tunic. And through it all, he kept whistling as if he was enjoying himself. There was in all his movements and attitude something of an unnatural youth and vitality. For he was a very young man.

He had been born only yesterday. And today he was fixing the roof.

Squatting on the roof beside his sack, Jabez untied the string and started pulling out the tiles it contained. He almost laughed allowed at the feel of the tile in his hand. It had been so long since he had felt that familiar touch; it was almost like clasping the hand of an old friend.

The tiles had been supplied by Abia ben Levi. As always, Abia was happy to come up with ideas and plans and pay the bills so long as nobody asked him to do any of the heavy lifting. The other three of their gang would have been willing to help, but Jabez wanted to do the work himself, out of the almost sheer joy he had in being able to do it. It was not a pleasure he took lightly.

Once he had. He had always taken a certain pride in his work, but it had been something of a drudgery. There were always other things he would have rather been doing. And with his four friends at his side, he had always found it easy to do what he wanted. They had never been well-liked or respected by the people of Capernaum. Abia's father was a tax collector and the odium of that spread to all of them. But Jabez had never cared much what other people thought of him and Abia's father being a tax collector also meant that they could also count on a source of money.

And certainly, they had found ways of gathering a bad reputation for themselves that was quite separate from the scent of the tax booth. They were young, reckless, with more spare time and money than was healthy and the result had been what you would expect. They had broken hearts, broken noses, broken a few promises, and a good many laws—until the day when in a moment of careless daring Jabez had managed to break his own body beyond repair. .

But today was not the day of breaking things. Today he was fixing the roof.

For months after the accident, he had been filled with anger and bitterness. He had gone in one instant from being young and strong with the endless possibilities of life before him to being a wreck of man, more dead than alive; his body had become a prison and a shroud. Unable to work, unable to move, unable to care for himself, barely able to speak—he was no longer alive but merely lingering through an endless death, so much so that in one especially dark moment he had begged Abia to kill him and end the whole thing.

Abia, somewhat predictably, had refused.

And perhaps deep down, Jabez had hoped he would; perhaps that was why he had asked Abia and not one of the others. Because, as much as he had come to hate the idea of life, he hated the idea of death even more—because, as the days passed, his anger and bitterness had given way to something else.

He had been left as helpless as a baby; and once again, as when a baby, his parents were taking care of him, feeding him, tending him, doing everything for him—his parents whom he had ignored and neglected and shamed by his careless and thoughtless life—the ones he had hurt most by his reckless course now bore the full responsibility for him and he could do nothing to repay them.

It was as he thought on this that he began to realize the truth. He had no right to be bitter or angry; self-pity and reproach could find no lodging in his heart. He had gotten exactly what he deserved. That accident had perhaps been the judgment of God and perhaps it had been the mercy of God, sparing him the further depths of shame to which he would have pulled his family if he had been allowed to go on in his life.

And that was why, as much as he hated the living death in which he was trapped, he hated the thought of death even more. For if this were the punishment he had received in this world, he could not face the thought of what punishment he would face in the world to come. He had never paid enough attention to the teaching of the law to know what to expect, but he knew God could show no mercy to a reckless, good-for-nothing scoundrel such as he had been. For that was the truth which he had come to see; that the real corruption and disease was not in his body. His soul was far more broken than his broken body.

But today was not the day of broken things. Today, he was fixing the roof.

It had been Abia who had first come up with the idea of taking Jabez to the Rabbi. They had all heard stories of the Rabbi; even had seen him a time or two. He had been living in Capernaum for some time, taking the city as his base while he preached in the surrounding area. And they had all heard stories of his power to work miracles. Lord Chuzas had never tired of telling how the Rabbi had brought his son back from the brink of death without even coming near him.

“If he could do that, he could heal you too,” Abia had asserted.

Jabez wasn't sure that even the Rabbi could fix anyone as broken as he was. And even if he could, Jabez felt sure that he wouldn't bother. There were so many other more deserving people the Rabbi could heal, even within Capernaum.

But he was too weak and helpless to argue the point successfully and once Abia had managed to convince the other three, he really had had no choice but to go along. And so it was that on the previous morning, the four friends had gathered at the house of Jabez' father and, rigging up a makeshift litter, had begun to carry him through the streets towards the house where the Rabbi was teaching.

Jabez was still far from happy with the idea. If the Rabbi was truly a prophet and had such power from God, he would be more likely to use it for justice than for mercy; if the Rabbi were willing to do anything for him at all, it would be probably to make his condition worse, not better. That was why he was almost relieved when they reached the house and found it far too crowded for them to enter. Even if anyone had wanted to let them through, the press was too great. And the people of Capernaum knew them too well to be very anxious to let them through; some, in fact, seemed happy to be able to block them.

Jabez couldn't blame them for that.

But the other four were stubborn. Having come this far, they wouldn't turn back. And in moving around, looking for a way in, they had spotted the roof. It had been Abia's idea to take this approach and before anyone could protest, he had gotten them up the stairs and onto the top of the house and had begun issue orders to the other three to start breaking up the roof. Jabez had tried his best to stop them—things were bad enough without bringing that kind of attention to themselves. This would surely make the Rabbi—and everyone else in town—hate them more than they already did. But his words had been unheeded and before he could even come to grips with what was happening, he found himself being slowly lowered through the broken roof and unto the floor of the house below, practically right at the Rabbi's feet.

It was then that he was glad of his condition. At least he didn't have to do anything. All he could do—all anybody could expect him to do—was to lay there on the floor and wait. He knew that he deserved nothing—yet, somewhere deep in his heart, there was still a glimmer of hope...

And the Rabbi looked down on him with eyes that seemed to pierce through the very marrow of his soul. And after a long pause, he spoke: “My son, take courage. Your sins are forgiven.”

How had Jabez felt when he heard those words? Coming from anyone else, he would have laughed. But—somehow—he knew—he knew that coming from the Rabbi, the words meant something. It was as if the dim light of evening had been dissolved by the sun; the thick fog which had laid over his soul for as long as he could remember had passed away. For the first time in his life, he felt completely at peace.

The Rabbi was saying something to the others in the room, but Jabez could barely take it in. And then, before he could think anything else, the Rabbi had turned back to look at him, with eyes that almost seemed to shine with tears, whether of joy or sorrow or compassion it would have been hard to say.

“Stand up,” he said in a voice that was both quiet and penetrating. “Pick up your bed and go on your way.”

And as he spoke, somehow Jabez knew—knew that something had changed. Strength was once again coursing through the sinews of his body and his body itself seemed to have changed in that instant as if the sands of time had begun to flow backward and had restored to him the life he had had before his accident.

As he stood to his feet, his mind reeling with the strangeness and unexpectedness of it, only two things were certain in his mind. The Rabbi had fixed his broken body just as surely as he fixed his broken soul.

As Jabez now, in his turn, was fixing the roof.

Everyone in Capernaum was talking about it. Everyone thought it was strange. Some were struck only by the Rabbi's power while others were rather puzzled that He would use that power to heal someone like Jabez. But a few seemed to understand the mystery of mercy which had been enacted. Abia's father had spent most of the evening talking about it; he was so stuck that if the Rabbi were to stop by his tax booth and ask the man to become His disciple, Jabez didn't have a doubt that he would go without a second thought.

But Jabez was not much worried about what others were thinking and saying about what had happened. He didn't blame the people who were skeptical and uncertain; who thought he didn't deserve such a mercy. Because he knew they were right and that he didn't deserve it. But more than that, he knew he had received it.

He had received new life out of the death-in-life had known before. Every ray of the morning seemed to shine with freshness as if it were the first morning of the world. The very tiles of the roof seemed to be bursting with a secret. The world seemed to be alive with something strange and new; how could he ever have seen this world as dull? How could he ever have felt driven to sin for pleasure and excitement?

He didn't know what the future held. He knew he had a long road before him; the road of restitution and restoration. He knew it would be hard ever to win back the respect or acceptance of the people of Capernaum. And he knew there were some who felt distrust or hatred for the Rabbi—with such, his cure would be a hindrance rather than a help. He had heard stories of how the people of Nazareth had tried to kill the Rabbi a year before and there was some such feeling here, though not as strong. As someone who had been touched by the Rabbi, his life might be in danger. Perhaps he might end up, once again, paralyzed and helpless. He didn't know what the future held. He only knew that he had been given new life, both in body and in soul, and that from now on he was going to live differently. He only knew that somehow, the Rabbi had fixed someone who was broken beyond the hope of human help.

And that was why, today, he was fixing the roof. 

The Question:

Who fixed the roof?

Some time ago, I heard a preacher describe being in an adult Sunday School class where this question came up and monopolized the lesson. He used the story to make the point that we often get distracted by unimportant details and miss the main point. As the teacher of an adult Sunday School class, I can appreciate that point of view. But I do not entirely agree with it. Discussion on this question is useless because we have no data on which to determine the point. There is no way of knowing, by now, some detail like this on which the gospels, our only witnesses, are silent. The question cannot be answered and so there is no use in trying to answer it; but that does not mean that the question, as a question, is unimportant. Really, it is a very important question, and, considering it as a question (rather than attempting to answer it) we will find some things worth noting about it.

This question is important because it is a question that has an answer, even if we do not (and cannot) know the answer to it. We do not and probably never will know who fixed the roof. But most certainly somebody fixed it; or else it remained forever broken.

It is too easy to see the places where Jesus walked as props in a play, like the manger in our nativity pageants which is careful stored in the church basement after every Christmas. We can imagine the house where the paralytic was cured as being rolled up and stuffed in the hall closet and never thought about again. But we have to remember that this was a real house where people really lived. Jesus may have moved on to some other story after this event, but the house remained where it was and the roof remained broken until somebody fixed it.

I think questions like these, though they are unanswerable, are important because they help to remind us of the essential realism in which the gospel story is founded. That roof is only important because someone came through it into the presence of Jesus, just as the manger is only important because it was the first epiphany of Jesus. But in both cases, the point of the story considered as theology or merely as a story consists of the fact that these were common, ordinary things. We do not care about the cattle that ate from the manger before and after it was a cradle, but it is only a manger at all because of the fact that cattle had and would eat from it. We only care about the roof because of the man who was lowered through it, but the very effect of the story depends on the fact that it was a normal, everyday roof—and if it was, then, of course, someone had to fix it.

And while this whole question may not seem very important to us, you can bet your bottom denarius that it was very important to the man whose house it was. If he was a good man, no doubt he felt the restored life of the paralytic was more important than his roof, but that does not mean he had no concern for the roof. I ask any Christian of today to ask themselves seriously how they would feel in a similar position. Say someone broke down your front door in order to bring a seeker into the presence of a visiting evangelist so that he might be saved; would we really have no worry about fixing the door merely because that was, of course, much less important than the salvation of the seeker?

In the same vein, much has been said of the greed of the Gadareneneans who were more concerned for the loss of their pigs than the restoration of the demoniac. As a point of fact, the Bible records that their motive was not greed but fear (see Luke 8:37)--they reasoned that someone who could drive out such demons must be something stranger and more powerful than a devil, as indeed He was. But even on the subject of greed, we must remember that those pigs were, after all, their livelihood and the loss of them did involve a real deprivation.

Now, do not take me wrong. Obviously, Jesus had a right to command the swine just as He did to command the demons. And He knew more of the situation than we do. Perhaps, He realized that greed DID have a hold on these men and the loss of their property was their only hope of restoration; perhaps the casting out of the swine brought salvation as surely as the casting out of the demons. Again, it could be if the owners had come to Jesus with prayers for help rather than prayers for Him to go away, He might have restored to them what they had lost. Perhaps they would have—perhaps, even as it was, they did—prove true the words of Solomon: “Cast thy swine upon the waters: for thou shalt find them after many days.”

We do not know what did happen, still less what would have happened, any more than we know who fixed the roof. My point here is simply that these were real men with real problems, like us in many ways. I would suggest meditating on that broken roof and those drowned pigs merely to enforce this point—the essential real context of the stories of the Bible. We, necessarily see the Bible (and any other history) as a series of individual snapshots with one or two figures in focus and all the background a slight blur. And when the figure in focus is the Most Important Figure in any picture, that is right enough. Often enough, that was probably the perspective of the people in the story; as I said in a previous article, after a certain point in His ministry, Jesus was always the center of attention. But the whole point of the gospel story—considered either as theology or as a story—is the fact that Jesus was, after all, an ordinary man who moved among ordinary men. To think of Him as an ethereal figure who floated silently through a world of dreams would lead to an entirely different religion and an entirely different sort of poetry. That is why that roof matters; because roofs did not fix themselves in the first century any more than they do now; then, just as now, if something is broken, then somebody has to fix it.

Thinking of that, by the way, explains an odd line in the gospel. John says that if everything that Jesus did was recorded the world itself would not be able to contain the records. On the face of it, that seems rather an exaggeration. Jesus' public ministry was roughly three years long; that is about 1,576,800 minutes of time. Giving an average of one page per minute, that could be still contained in less than 2000 volumes; a large library no doubt, but not earth-shattering. (Though of course books were bulkier in John's day.) But to record truly the story of Jesus you would have to do more than simply record the things that He did. Everything He encountered changed through that encounter; His story spawned a countless number of other stories. The paralytic He healed—his four friends—and the roof—they all have a story which is forever different because of that encounter with Jesus, an encounter which probably took less than an hour of Jesus' time.

And this is not irrelevant to the thread of my argument. The broken roof of that little house and the broken body of that anonymous paralytic help us understand exactly what the incarnation really was which helps us understand exactly what Christianity really is. (Or, if understand is too strong a word, these things can at least describe what I mean.) The point is that God's greatest stroke did not come from outside, like battering rams battering against the outside of the world. It came from inside. But it is not enough even to describe it as a covert or undercover operation. Jesus did not merely come in disguise. Spies come in disguise; so do angels and perhaps demons. But God did not come in disguise—that is, as something alien and separate which takes on the artificial appearance of something personal and familiar. An American who puts on a Russian hat and beard does not become any more Russian by the act, though it may be enough to fool Russians. A policeman who goes undercover as a criminal does not (hopefully) become a criminal and a criminal who goes undercover as a policeman does not (generally speaking) become a policeman.

But God really did become a man. The Son of God really was the Son of Man, possessing two natures without mixture and without confusion. He did not merely disguise Himself as a man; He was (or rather is) a man. That is the doctrine of the incarnation.

Suppose you had a tapestry that had been badly woven so that the design was ugly or even disgusting. The most obvious course would be to burn it and start over. But it would also be possible to cover up the pattern with some external thing like a patch or cover. But God did not do either of those things to the tapestry of this world when it was ruined by sin—He wove Himself into the pattern as a new strand which, while a part of the total design, so altered the pattern to make something entirely new.

And that is why it is possible and congruous to talk about God and a broken roof in the same sentence—because that really is the sort of thing which Jesus was surrounded in this life. Perhaps Jesus Himself fixed the roof; certainly, in His life up to that point He had fixed other material things. It sounds strange and even blasphemous to picture God running to Home Depot to pick up some shingle nails. But that is the sort of thing which the doctrine of the incarnation necessarily implies. Because of His humanity, there is in the ministry of Jesus a clear sense of particularness, of concrete and actual things. It would make no difference to anybody's theology if the Sermon on the Mount had been delivered instead in a valley or on a lake or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon; the content would have remained essentially the same. But as a particular man, He had to be in a particular place in order to deliver that sermon and it had to be the same general area that His congregation was. Nobody today really cares about the roof of that house in Capernaum, but as a particular person, Jesus had to be standing somewhere and if anybody wanted to get to Him they had to follow the same rules of physics as anybody else—and if there was a roof in the way, they had to break it to get through.

And I mean no casual flippancy when I say that roof was never the same; indeed, the world was never the same. The thread which was woven into the fabric of this world can never be unwoven. Everything He touched is different because of the fact that He touched it; this world itself is different.

Christianity is a religion founded on specifics, on particular places and events. There are other religions like that; other religions founded around sacred spots and holy places. But if the holiness is merely in the place, then if you want to be part of it, you have to go there. If Jesus had been only a holy man or even a man drawn up into deity like some Greek hero, then He might have been contained in the specific places in which He lived.

On the other hand, if Christianity were an abstract philosophy like the doctrines of Plato or Buddha, then locality would be unimportant. (In fact, I would suppose in classical Buddhism locality is viewed not only as unimportant but as an illusion, but here I defer to those who more knowledgeable.) You could learn and follow the philosophy of Plato without ever having heard of Greece, his homeland. You could learn and follow the philosophy of Buddha (and could do it better) without ever having heard of your own homeland.

If you are to worship a man, you must go to the man. If you are to worship nature, you must be in the midst of nature. If you are to worship an Unknown God then it is irrelevant where you go. If you are to worship nonentity then you do not need anyone or anything else.

But Christianity is different. It is founded, as I said, on specific things and specific places because it is founded on a specific Man. But because that Man is God, because His life was not merely the life of an individual member of our species but also (without mixture and without confusion) the life which stands above and before and beyond all life—because we can say of this man that He was born in Bethlehem and walked in Capernaum and died in Jerusalem and we can also that in Him we live and move and have our being—because of that, He is not far from any one of us. We do not need to drop through a roof, as the paralytic did, in order to get close to Him. If that house could be discovered and you took a pilgrimage there (as there is no doubt many people would do) you would be no closer (and no farther) from God than you are right now. Because something new has been added to reality itself.

That is why—as irritating as this is to atheists and a certain class of Christians—Christian art and Christian tradition completely ignore historical details. So, for instance, Jesus may or may not have been born “in the bleak-mid winter” but it probably was not when “snow had fallen, snow on snow.” There were probably few evergreen branches wrapped around that stable. The whole Europeanization of the Christmas story would be improper if it were a story about purely natural things and it would be irrelevant if it were a story about purely spiritual things. But that is the whole point of Christmas is that spirit became flesh; the supernatural became natural to depose all that was unnatural. And therefore, it is only proper and almost inevitable that each culture will retell the story in its own way. It is the not the Europeanization of Christmas but rather the Christmasization of Europe--a more grammatical word is sanctification. If any place could be sanctified by the physical presence of Christ then obviously every place is or at least ought to be.

And I do not use the word sanctification casually. There may not be anything spiritual (in any sense of the word) about some of the Christmas traditions just as there was nothing intrinsically spiritual about the people who crowded that house in Capernaum. (Some of the people were there for specifically anti-spiritual reasons.) But the point is that Jesus (who is at the center of Christian spirituality) was also at the center of ordinary, material things and therefore Christian spirituality does lead to this sort of sanctification of material things. The spirit of a Dryad could only inhabit one particular tree. But the Spirit of Christ can fill any man who will let Him, and therefore any tree can become (to that man at least) a Christmas tree. It is only proper that “the children in each different place/Will see the Baby Jesus' face/Like theirs” because the children in each different place may become like Christ if they chose. (Indeed, there is a problem with all this in our own time but the problem is that our own culture, and especially Christian culture, has somewhat stagnated; so people in California celebrate Christmas as if they were in England and people in a culture further off from Renaissance Italy than Renaissance Italy was from 1st Century Palestine still insist on drawing Jesus as if He were a friend of Leonardo da Vinci.)

And all of that brings me to what was originally the whole point of this article—though, like the friends of the paralytic, I have taken a rather long and circuitous route in order to reach my goal. This article all began because (as I said earlier) I heard a preacher ask this question of who fixed the roof and treat it as something unimportant and, specifically as being unimportant because of a comparison to the spiritual truth of the story—that it didn't matter who fixed the roof because what is really important is that a man was saved.

From a standpoint of mere logic, this is wrong. Saying that A is unimportant because it is not as important as B is like saying that Knoxville is not a city because it is smaller than Mexico City or that Robert Wadlow was a dwarf because he wasn't as tall as Goliath. Obviously, comparative words are always somewhat subjective and contextual but it is simply a fallacy to say that something is, in itself, unimportant simply because it is comparatively unimportant. But I did not write all of this merely to make a point about logic. 

We cannot say—as a Buddhist or a Hindu might say—that material things are unimportant because they are not spiritual. We also cannot say—as a certain kind of pop theologians would—that material things are important because they actually are spiritual. What we have to say is that because God became man, because the spirit put on flesh and dwelt among, therefore every material thing is—or at least can become—important. Because God became an individual, every individual is important; and because God took on a material existence every material is important.

There is probably much deeper philosophy we could get into with that, but I want to make what is a quite practical point because the whole point of all this is that practicality is important. Jesus, as a man, could not live without having a place where He lived. He could not stand in a house without being under a roof. He could not, in His earthly ministry, be without a physical and material context, and while that context is only important because it is the Context of Christ that doesn't change the fact that it necessarily existed and was necessarily important. And any Christian today is not and cannot be without a physical and material context; that context may be important only because it is the context of the Christian but that doesn't change the fact that it necessarily exists and is therefore necessarily important. Jesus did not float through dreamlike and disconnected life; He was rooted in our reality even if His roots went down beyond the world. And we do not float through a dreamlike and disconnected life; we are rooted in our reality even if God has grafted us into the tree of life on which grow the fruit of the Spirit.

And here it is where all our theological chickens begin to come home to roost. It might seem a little odd, even a little comical, to connect Christmas trees, soup kitchens, the orthodox rejection of the Health-and-Wealth-Gospel, and the Holiness stand against short sleeves with one broken roof in Capernaum. But they really are tied together, tied together with one rather gigantic thread which is the thread of this world, the vast, cosmic braided cord into which a thread from beyond the world has now been added.

Because Jesus was born into this material world, it is only proper that the material things be used in His honor—in a sense, every meal is, or ought to be, a sacrament; every tree should be a Christmas tree—or a cross. There is a transformation but it is a very specific kind of transformation, a transformation from within which does not destroy but rather adds something new which alters the whole, such as some piece of music in which new instruments are added which continually alter and expand the harmony and overall color of the piece.

What I mean is that the world is transformed but the world is still real. Whatever may be the strange and awe-full fate of our future (some eschatological statements imply a more dramatic transformation along the lines of what has already happened while still more imply complete destruction and recreation), we are still living now—in one sense—in the same world we always did, the world of broken roofs and broken laws and broken bodies. Becoming a Christian does not remove you from these things any more than being Christ removed Him from those things. Having your sins forgiven does not heal all your bodily or social problems any more than having his sins forgiven healed the paralytic of his palsy—that was a quite separate act—and even that did not fix the roof. God can heal all things; someday God will heal all things. Christ healed the paralytic; for all we know, He healed the roof. All problems are ultimately spiritual problems because they all stem from the sin of Adam and all solutions are ultimately spiritual solutions because every good gift comes from above. But it is simply wrong to believe that spiritual realities simply negate physical realities. Becoming a Christian will not fix a broken roof or a broken reputation or a broken family. We still live in a world of real consequences and real responsibilities, just as Christ did and just as the paralytic did.

That is why we have works of real restitution and works of real charity—perhaps the paralytic or his friends fixed the roof (which would be restitution) and perhaps Jesus or His disciples or the homeowner himself fixed it for them (which would be charity). But in either case, we cannot float through this world with airy indifference as if this world were unreal or unimportant; for the Earth was once His footpath and is now His footstool. I remember reading a group of Christians in some Christian periodical discussing whether acts of physical or social charity were beneficial to the ministry of the church. It never seemed to occur to them how irrelevant the question was. Christianity believes in physical and social charity because we live in a physical and social world and therefore our charity is going to partake of the nature of the world. We are all trapped within one common house and that house has a broken roof and therefore fixing the roof is a quite logical and proper response. It may have some greater trans-cosmic purpose, as the healing the paralytic had a greater purpose of testifying to the Divinity of Christ and ultimately providing objective evidence of His spiritual power, but admitting that hardly makes it any less important in its own right.

And if this world is a real place and has a place for real charity then obviously it also has real dangers and a need for real virtue, for courage and chastity and self-control and a dozen other virtues which could not exist in a dreamy or ethereal existence. (In fact, there is at least a possibility—though now we walk in marvels beyond our power to think—that this was one of the purposes of the Incarnation; that certain of the virtues we need, specifically temperance or self-control which is part of the Fruit of the Spirit, could not exist in Heaven or in Eden and therefore were, so to speak, created by Jesus though then infused into the world retroactively, since God is not bound by time.) And if these virtues are real then they are particular. You cannot be brave in general; you must be brave in the face of a particular danger. You cannot repair an abstract roof, only an actual one. And if virtues are particular then they are or may sometimes be strangely specific. That is why the Church—and especially the Wesleyan/Holiness Tradition—has insisted on small points of virtue, on issues that seem (on the face of it) rather trivial. But nothing in this world can really be trivial if it is the world of God. You may not agree with all of the Holiness stands on particular issues—Holiness People often do not agree with each other on particular issues—you may not even agree with the general methodology. I am not arguing any of that here. My point is simply that the idea of these kinds of standards do necessarily follow from the belief in a real world and a real incarnation.

Who fixed the roof?

By the point, who knows? Perhaps, for all I know, it wasn't fixed; perhaps for centuries after the stars shone down through that broken portal at the crumbling cobblestones where once had stood the feet of God. The stars could sympathize; for they too are part of a vast (almost comically vast) roof, a broken roof through which the angels gaze down at the strange scene of incarnation and redemption. And whatever the fate of the roof in Capernaum, someday that other, higher roof will be fixed, perfectly repaired by the Carpenter from Nazareth. But until that time, we are living together under that strange cloven and cluttered cosmic roof, in a world of broken things, a world of moths and rust and thieves who break through and steal. And yet, in this strange and unsettled world, we are not alone. That roof in Capernaum was broken by an action that was, perhaps, rash and foolish--but through it, a man came to God. The great roof of this world was broken by the sin of Adam which was, without doubt, rash and foolish—but through it, God came to man.