They Carried Him There

“One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.””

— Luke 5:17-20 (NIV)

Today is kept as Luke's day, and Paul calls him a doctor; this scene stands in his own account. Several experts sitting in that room had walked up from Jerusalem, which meant days on foot rather than an afternoon. Ordinary houses carried flat roofs used as an extra room, reached by outside steps or by ladder, with a low wall required around any new one so nobody fell off. Luke writes that they opened it overhead and let the sick man down through the tiles. His word is keramos, meaning clay: tiled roofing belonged to Roman era building, while village houses in that region were often beams, branches and packed earth. Either reconstruction leaves what matters, a covering pulled apart from above, and somebody left to close it again. For what he lay on, Luke picks a diminutive, a little couch, nearer a stretcher than a bedroll. Notice who never speaks. He says nothing anywhere here, so trust gets credited to whoever held those corners. A verse later, scholars in that room are silently thinking blasphemy, since by their reckoning only God cancelled guilt. Someone else's trust carried him where he would never have arrived alone.

Some days someone near you cannot get to help on their own. Someone just out of surgery cannot make it to the clinic or the shop. Someone is stuck with a matter at an office and has no strength left to call. Someone has needed a doctor, a priest or a support group for a long time and will not go alone. The first way in is often blocked, like a door jammed with people. Jesus saw faith in the ones doing the carrying before the sick man said a word. You do not have to carry anyone alone, but someone has to take a corner of the stretcher.

God, there are people near me who will not get to help on their own, and sometimes I am one of them. Show me one of them today, and the first step I can take. When one way is blocked, help me find another. And do not let me carry it alone if we can carry it together. Amen.