Chapter 15
And when they could not get near Jesus because of the crowd, they broke in through the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the man on the mat. Mark 2.4
It’s Monday. You probably weren’t expecting to start the week with a story about a chainsaw and a church—but here we are – not the typical Easter week story … or maybe it is?
On March 19, 2025, as reported by WDR, a man in Hagen, Germany, broke into a Greek Orthodox church—not by picking a lock, but by cutting through a side door with a chainsaw. No metaphor here—this really happened. A woman who entered the church noticed the damage and, alarmed, fled in fear, immediately calling the police. Witnesses described a man in bright forestry gear, chainsaw in hand, casually walking away from the scene. Nothing was stolen—just a jagged hole left in the wall of a sacred space, followed by an eerie silence.
It reminded me of two stories in the Bible—one of an unexpected entrance into holy ground, and the other of an unexpected exit from it.
In Mark 2, four friends can’t get into a crowded house where Jesus is preaching. So they do something wild: they climb up, tear open the roof, and lower a paralyzed man on the mat into the room—right in front of Jesus. And what does Jesus do? He honors their boldness. He heals.
Easter up ahead, and Easter is, at its core, an intrusion into the impossible.
The stone was rolled away. The tomb—broken open. And what did they find?
Nothing.
Jesus wasn’t there.
And maybe that’s the real twist of this whole thing.
The man in Hagen broke into a church. Maybe looking for something. Maybe nothing. But like the women at the tomb, he found emptiness. No Jesus, no treasure, just silence.
The church was empty because maybe—just maybe—we sometimes look for God in places He’s already moved beyond or was he in the silence after all the noise of the chainsaw?
We build structures, routines, expectations. But Jesus? He’s always breaking out of the boxes we try to keep Him in. The resurrection wasn’t just a return to life—it was a declaration that nothing, not even death, can contain Him.
So maybe this chainsaw story, bizarre as it is, becomes a strange sort of Easter parable.
Are we still trying to break into the sacred to find Jesus when, like the empty tomb, He’s already gone ahead of us? Or maybe—just maybe—He’s waiting for us to break in again: not with noise and force, but in silence, and to find Him dressed in new clothes, in unexpected places.
Maybe faith isn’t about where we find Him, but how far we’re willing to go. Through the roof, out of the tomb or into the sanctuary by any way we must, even through the side.
Wishing the courage to break through barriers and discover the sacred in unexpected places.
Philemon