The story of the paralytic being let down through the roof
to be healed by Jesus was always one of my favorite stories as a child, perhaps
because I was so enthralled by the illustration of this story in my children’s
Bible (photo below). The paralyzed man’s friends will
stop at nothing to bring their companion to Jesus; they refuse to acknowledge
any barriers, and when one way to the Lord is blocked, they seek another,
creative, out-of-the-box way to accomplish their goal.
We human beings have a tendency to set up barriers between
ourselves and God, obstacles that get in the way of the loving relationship God
desires to have with us. Like the people
described in Isaiah, we are often caught up in the past, walled in, failing to
see that God is always doing something new
in our lives. Jesus came to forgive
sins, to tear down the barriers.
Participating in the sacraments, particularly in Eucharist, is one way
for us to help those barriers to come down, to open ourselves to God’s action
in our lives in this very moment. We
come together as a community to celebrate God’s love for us, for all of
us. Maybe it’s not surprising that the
paralytic ‘gets by with a little help from his friends’ – we all need each
other to help us fight that sense of alienation that causes us to establish
walls between ourselves and the world, between ourselves and our God.
(The Paralytic of Capharnaum is Lowered from the Roof,
Scenes from the Life of Christ, Byzantine School,
Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.)
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