A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home … So he said to the man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home” (Mark 2:1-11).

Hope you’re still enjoying good memories and swapping good stories from yesterday’s Chatham Serves!  As we continue thinking, praying and living our way into our Made on Purpose for a Purpose series, let’s use this week’s passage to come at things from a slightly different angle, namely:

What is Jesus’ purpose?

Our passage this week (please take a few moments to read Mark 2:1-11 now) may be familiar: Jesus, now basing his ministry in the Galilean village of Capernaum, is surrounded by crowds.  They seek to hear him, they seek to be healed, some are seeking reasons to criticize him … and a small group of men come, carrying their paralyzed friend.  Because of the crowd, they have to cut a hole in a roof to bring their needy friend to Jesus’ immediate attention.  Jesus, appreciating their faith and aware what his critics are thinking, first pronounces the sick man’s sins forgiven … and then, despite the grumblings of his opponents, heals the man.

And sends him home.

Our passage is framed by “home”: in verse 1, Mark tells us Jesus has “come home” – apparently the little village of Capernaum had become kind of a “home base” for Jesus.  In verse 11, Jesus sends the healed man “home.”

What is Jesus’ purpose? There are all kinds of answers: Jesus’ purpose was to heal … to teach … to die for our sins so we could be forgiven and go to heaven … to reveal God, along with many others.

But why?  Why heal, teach, die for us, reveal God to us?  What is the purpose of it all?

What if it is to bring us home to God, and to make us at home in the life of God?  Not only in the hereafter but also in the here and now?

Home: a place of genuine intimacy and steadfast love; of life-giving communication and communion; of generous giving and grateful receiving; of welcome and belonging; of healing and wholeness; of refreshment and rest; of good work and joyous celebration.

But for us to be brought home, God would first have to make his home among us: he wouldn’t merely move into the neighborhood, he would move all the way in, into us, into our humanity.  He would show us the ways in which his “house rules” differ from our ways of thinking and doing.  He would decisively and permanently dislodge and defeat the many evils that keep us always living far from home.

What if the home God wants to build – for himself and for us, together -- can’t be made of lumber, bricks and mortar, steel and glass?  What if what God means by “home” is crafted from the lives of people who are living life according to God’s ways, because God has taken up personal residence within them?

What if the home where you now live is the place where God desires to make himself at home, in order that you might find yourself fully and lastingly at home in him?

What “paralyzes” you from being more at home in God?  Is there a kind of “mat” that you just can’t seem to get up from?  What if Jesus is present and at home with you, and you now have his full attention?  What would you ask him to do for you?