Four Friends and a Roof

Mark 2:1-12 gives us one of the strongest pictures of friendship and faith in the Gospels. Jesus was teaching in a house in Capernaum, and so many people had gathered that there wasn't even room near the door. Four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man, but they couldn't get him through the crowd. Instead of deciding there was nothing they could do, they went up to the roof, opened it above Jesus, and lowered their friend down on his mat.

That's a teammate.

These four men couldn't heal their friend, and Scripture doesn't tell us how long they'd known him, what their relationship looked like, or whose idea it was to climb onto the roof. What Mark does tell us is that when Jesus saw “their faith,” He responded. Mark 2:5 (ESV) says, “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” Jesus later healed the man's paralysis, but we shouldn't miss what happened before that. This man got into the presence of Jesus because four other people were willing to carry him when he couldn't get there himself.

There's a pretty hard question for athletes buried inside that story: What kind of teammate are you when somebody else needs to be carried?

Everybody likes talking about being a good teammate when the team is winning, they're getting playing time, and everybody is getting along. It's much harder when a teammate is struggling, injured, buried on the depth chart, making mistakes, dealing with something outside the gym, or becoming difficult to be around. That's when we find out whether “team” actually means something to us or whether we only like the idea when it benefits us.

The four men in Mark 2 encountered a packed house and didn't leave their friend outside. They didn't tell him they tried, wish him luck, and walk away. They found another way to get him where he needed to go. That's the kind of loyalty teams desperately need because eventually everybody has a season when they aren't strong enough to carry themselves. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's emotional, sometimes it's spiritual, and sometimes life outside the sport hits harder than anything happening inside it.

Being that kind of teammate doesn't mean trying to become somebody's savior because that's not our role, and the story makes that distinction very clear. The friends carried the man, but Jesus did what they couldn't. That's an important lesson for Christian athletes because supporting somebody doesn't mean believing we're responsible for fixing everything that's wrong in their life. Sometimes our responsibility is to notice, show up, help carry the weight, and get them connected to the people and resources that can actually help.

It also means we should probably pay attention to who we're surrounding ourselves with. A lot of people will celebrate with you when you're playing well, getting recognition, or accomplishing something they want to be associated with. Pay attention to who stays when you're the one lying on the mat. Pay even closer attention to whether you're willing to stay when it's somebody else's turn.

Locker rooms are built on more than talent because talent can't carry a teammate through a hard season. Talent doesn't notice when somebody is withdrawing, sit beside an injured teammate who feels forgotten, confront a friend who's making destructive decisions, or stay after practice to help somebody who's struggling. People do that, and the character of those people eventually becomes the character of the team.

Mark 2 isn't a story about teamwork, and we shouldn't reduce a miracle of Christ to a sports lesson. It's a story about Jesus' authority to forgive sins and heal, with the faith of these men playing an important part in bringing their friend before Him. But their actions still give athletes and coaches something worth examining because they refused to let an obstacle become an excuse for abandoning someone they cared about.

Every locker room has people who will eventually need to be carried, and at some point, one of them may be you. Build the kind of relationships where people don't disappear when somebody becomes inconvenient, and become the kind of teammate who doesn't either.