A Larger Crowd3/6/2026  We have just celebrated the Week of Compassion Special Offering, taking time to think together about A New Way of being in ministry at this time. I’ve always enjoyed the passage that anchored our reflections for this offering. The image of four friends doing whatever it took to get their friend access to healing is a powerful one, but this year there was a new element that captured my attention in Mark 2:1-5. The passage says, “Then some people, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.” In the past, when I’ve pictured this scene, I’ve only imagined the four people and the paralyzed man. I didn’t ever think that they were a subset of a larger group as is so clearly implied in the passage. It’s easy, with our eyes and hearts trained in a highly individualistic culture, to valorize the four people carrying their friend, but as I now picture them surrounded by a larger crowd, it changes the way I see the story. We don’t know for sure how many more people were there, but even another four or five would have changed things in this situation. I think about how much easier it would be to carry someone a great distance to healing if I knew that someone could step in to carry my load, that the four who carried the mat did not have to be the strongest if they had people to take turns with. I think about if I was the one laying on the mat and the mixed emotions I would carry with me, perhaps joy at knowing how cared for I was by so many, perhaps an element of embarrassment about being out in the open in my community being so obviously vulnerable. I wonder if it would make me feel less embarrassed to have friends outside of those carrying the mat who might be able to block my body from view of voyeuristic onlookers. When the four go up to the roof to commit property damage, I wonder if the larger group was on the ground doing crowd control, getting the four enough time to cut through the layers of roofing materials to get their friend closer to healing. I think about them going through plan A of the front door to B or C or D in their minds, never giving up on their pursuit of healing. Right now when it comes to immigrant and refugee response it feels like there are not enough letters in the alphabet to count which version of a plan we are on to keep our immigrant and refugee siblings as secure as we can, but I am continually amazed at how Disciples are willing to show up in solidarity and love, whether that is bearing witness in immigration court, getting food delivered to neighbors who can’t leave their homes, patrolling elementary schools to send up the alarm if ICE shows up, or collecting more comfort items for Operation Cacti to let our kids know they are loved and prayed for by their church. If you’re ready to figure out where you fit in the crowd, email me to set up a time to talk.
This reflection is included in the Feb '26 "No Longer A Stranger" newsletter,
sent every other month from the Immigrant & Refugee Response ministry at Week of Compassion. To sign up for that newsletter, click here. Comments are closed.
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