A major source of contention across the country for the last year or so has been the price of gasoline. We describe the price as going through the roof. That same phrase is often used to describe what happens when someone gets angry. We say that he or she went through the roof.

            Today’s gospel story gives the phrase a meaning that has nothing to do with high prices or with anger. It is about someone literally going through the roof.

            This is a rather bizarre incident: Jesus is in a house so packed with people that they spill out the door. The crowd is so large that no one else can get in. And then there is a major interruption. There is a commotion on the roof and then a hole opens and a person who is paralyzed is lowered through the hole on a stretcher.

            How did they get the stretcher with a person aboard onto the roof in the first place? They may have had a ladder or perhaps they were good climbers. Either way it would not have been an easy task. Was this person on the stretcher a friend of theirs or someone they just met? We don’t know. What we do know is that they saw someone in need and they responded. This whole event had to have been a spectacle both for those outside the house and for those with front-row seats on the inside. In today’s world, it might well have made the 6 o’clock news.

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