There is a card in my wallet that tells a story. Many of you have heard the story and some may even have lists of your own. The list, the card, battered and torn, started, as all good stories do, with a teacher who made a difference.
It was my junior year in high school and Sr. Judy Eby, RSM asked us to reflect on the reading from Mark’s Gospel that we will proclaim at Mass on Friday morning this week. You’ve heard the story before: there are crowds gathered around Jesus and so some guys carry a paralytic, drop him through the roof, and in front of Jesus.
After we read the story in Sr. Judy’s class, she wheeled in that big glorious television that promised a break from the text and we all move our seats so we could see it. It was a scene of Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 masterpiece, Jesus of Nazareth. The story unfolds sort of like like it does in Mark’s (and Luke’s) Gospel: the crowds have gathered and there is no room for the men to bring their friend to Jesus. He cannot walk so they carry him over the wall, through the thatched roof, and place him before the Teacher.
You know what happens next. The man is told his sins are forgiven. The crowd goes nuts. “Only God can forgive sins,” they reproach Jesus. Putting yourself on the same plane as God is only going to cause trouble. To this, we get a classic Jesus response: “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”
Think about it. Surely forgiving sins is easier. But how can someone who is not harmed be the one to forgive sins? To show the crowd what he’s really capable of, he tells the man to get up, pick up his mat, and go home. The man obliges. The crowd goes nuts for a new reason and everyone learns an important lesson.
But back to the card in my wallet.
We wrap up the reading, the watching, and the discussion about the friends who carried the stretcher, and Sr. Judy hands us all an index card. “Now,” she tells us, “write down the names of those who carry you to Christ.”
I have repeated that exercise with youth and adults alike for years. Like Sr. Judy, I challenge people to think of those who, when we are paralyzed with fear, sinfulness, guilt, and selfishness, carry us to Christ. When you cannot move, who lifts you up? When you are sick or alone or unhappy or in serious need of a friend, who do you call?
I have edited my list throughout the years. Friends come and go. People die. But my list has been there since that spring day in 1987. I have moved it from wallet to wallet. It’s a thirty-year-old ratty piece of paper that I carry with me everywhere. On more than one occasion, the list has saved my life, my soul, my sanity.
Go ahead, take out a piece of paper.
Who is on your list?