Down the dusty road come four young men laboring to carry a stretcher bearing a fifth friend. At first, the sight is almost comical, until you realize that the friend on the stretcher is paralyzed. Each of the four has a corner, and they try to walk out of step so they don’t bump or swing their friend too much, or, God forbid, drop him, but it is difficult. Since leaving in the pre-dawn coolness, they have stopped a number of times to change sides, to let the burning hand, and arm, and shoulder rest. But each time, the "fresh" side is a little less fresh. Now it takes very little time before the burning comes back.

Finally, finally, they are in sight of the house. Their spirits — drop. Even from a distance they can see that the house is mobbed, packed inside and out. They can see Jesus standing in the door speaking, but they can’t even get close enough to hear, much less bring their friend to him. "Excuse us," they say to the picket fence of backs that form the perimeter of the crowd. No one moves. "Let us through!" one of the boys shouts. A few heads glance back, but no one moves.

The sun is high now, and, sweating, they lower the stretcher. Hands on their knees, panting, they look at each other in despair, disappointment, disgust. Then they look down at their friend. "It’s all right," he says, "thank you for trying." That does it.

They survey the house. It is the typical "Wattle and Daub" construction typical of the world’s poorest places. A house built of sticks woven between posts, plastered with mud to make walls a foot thick, but soft. Roofs were the same, but covered with tile. Outside stairs lead to the roof, a cool place to go in the evening.

Seeing that the crowd is thin near the stairs, the young men pick up their load, push their way through, and carefully lift the stretcher to the roof. They remove the poles, and, glancing at each other with a "We’re committed now" look, begin to pry up the tiles. Then they dig through the dried mud and sticks. Dust and debris rain down into the room below, and cries of indignation rise up through the hole. They pay no attention.

When the hole is big enough, they replace the poles and remove the ropes that serve as their belts. Tying them to the poles, they carefully, slowly, lift the stretcher, stopping to get it balanced, then move it over the hole and lower it. It is a precarious business, but by the time they are on their bellies with their arms through the hole, the stretcher is being held by the outstretched arms of the people inside, who now have little choice but to help.

Jesus had stopped talking when dust and debris began raining down on the people in the room. Fascinated, he just watched. When the stretcher was finally safely down, he looks up and marvels at the faith of these young men whose arms and faces were framed by the hole. He goes to the paralyzed man, covered with dust, and says, "Son, your sins have been forgiven."

The scribes didn’t like it one bit. "It is blasphemy to say you can forgive sins. Only God can forgive sins," they thought. Jesus turns to them, "So that you may know that the Son of Man does have authority on earth to forgive sins;" he turns to the paralytic, "Stand up, take your mat, and go home." And he does. Yes, he does. He walks home with his friends.

I’d like to look at some of the characters in this story and see what we have to learn from them. First, let’s look at the four friends. These are people who are willing to sacrifice and suffer to ask for healing for a friend. They carry the load, and they overcome obstacles. And they break the rules. (In fact, one can imagine a story in which Jesus comes over to the paralytic, covered with dust, and says, "Son, — you’re going to have to pay for that roof!"). These young men are what my friend Jane Dreisbach (who certainly was one) used to call "Prayer Warriors." When you pray for someone, think of these young men. Don’t make it a quick, "You got that, God?" prayer; carry the load; let your hands and arms and shoulders burn; and be willing to break up and dig through obstacles. If you’re like me, those obstacles, those roofs, are within yourself. Doubt, insecurity, a sense of unworthiness, thinking you don’t have the time — we come up with lots of roofs to keep us out. Break through; dig through; make a mess, but don’t give up. Get inside. Remember that Jesus didn’t say a word about the paralytic’s faith. He saw the faith of the friends peering through the hole.

But what about the paralyzed friend? For me, he represents a part of myself that I really have trouble with — the part of me that is unable to do something and needs to accept help. When I think of him, I think, "What must it have been like to be paralyzed on a stretcher that is being lowered through a hole in a roof?"

About twenty years ago, I went skiing for the first (and last) time since I had had a knee surgically reconstructed. I didn’t ask for my doctor’s permission because I knew what he’d say, and, sure enough, on the fifth day there I was, lying in the snow high atop a Colorado mountain, in pain and unable to stand without assistance.

When the Ski Patrol came, they strapped me into a fiberglass sled, a stretcher really, and, to my alarm, they put my head on the downhill end and strapped my arms against my chest. I was helpless and unable to move. And they had to ski that sled down a black diamond slope (for experts only — very steep and bumpy).

When I think of how that paralyzed young man must have felt being lowered through that hole, I think of how I felt at the beginning of my trip down that mountain. And I imagine that his heart was beating as fast as mine was. But there’s a difference. I had no choice, but he did. He clearly let them do it. He accepted their help. When they told him of their plan to carry him to the house, he didn’t say, "No, don’t worry about it; I’ll take care of this myself." When they ached along the way, he didn’t say, "I don’t want to put you out like this. You can turn back now." When they hatched the plan to lower him through the hole, he didn’t say, "Are you crazy? What if you drop me?"

No. He recognized that he needed help; he accepted the gift of help that was offered, and he trusted those who were helping him. I hate to think of how often I have refused to recognize when I’ve needed help, dishonored (usually out of embarrassment) the gift of help that was offered, or distrusted that the helpers would do it "right," (meaning, of course, "my way.") I think most of us have a lot to learn from that guy dangling helplessly from that hole in the ceiling. And it’s important, because I don’t believe anyone can come into God’s presence without some help and some trust.

Those are characters we can learn from by what they did right. Let’s look at some we can learn from by what they did wrong. Let ‘s look at the crowd and the Scribes. The crowd is the community gathered to hear Jesus (what we would now call "the Church"), and its function in the story is to keep the faithful away from Jesus, to present a picket fence of backs to those trying to get in. The scribes see their job as being sure that all things religious are done according to the law and long-standing tradition. How do we, the Church, keep the faithful away? How do we disapprove of God’s action when it is, as Isaiah says this morning, "a new thing?" We need to keep the disturbing example of the crowd and the scribes in mind when we greet visitors, or decide whether to invite newcomers to join our group, whether it be at lunch or on the Parish Life Committee. We need to remember the crowd and the scribes before we tell anyone that they can’t get in because they aren’t educated, or are the "wrong" race, or because they because they don’t know how to follow the Prayer Book, or because they are gay, or because they are from Mexico, or because they don’t appreciate our music, or any of the other reasons that we might be, even inadvertently, crowding people out, not making a place.

Jesus is still in a house, this house, "speaking the word." And the good news is that you don’t have to dig through the roof of this house (in fact, I’d rather you didn’t!). But you may have to dig through the roof, the barrier, that is in your heart. And it is unlikely that you can do that alone. My faith has always reminded me over and over (much to my chagrin!) of the ways that I am powerless, and my faith has required me to accept help, and to trust, to be willing to dangle helpless in God’s presence. And if we ever find that there are those who want to come into Christ’s presence, who want a place at this table, and we are not making room for them, or that God is doing a "new thing" and we are resisting it, then may God forgive us our sins.

My prayer is that we all may be willing to carry, to dig, to dangle, and, when necessary, to get out of the way.