Care, Dependence, and the Gospel of Human Need
Primary Scripture: Mark 2:1–12
Supporting Scriptures: Genesis 4:8–10; Psalm 41:1–3; Luke 10:25–37; 1 Corinthians 12:12–26; Galatians 6:2
“Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.” — Mark 2:3
Introduction: Everybody Eventually Needs to Be Carried
There is a lie at the center of modern life.
It sounds like this:
I can take care of myself.
We admire independence.
We praise the self-made person.
We teach children to become self-sufficient.
We sometimes speak about needing help as though dependence were an embarrassing defect we are supposed to overcome.
But there is a problem.
Nobody is independent.
You entered this world completely dependent upon other people.
Someone fed you.
Someone cleaned you.
Someone carried you.
Someone taught you language.
Someone kept you alive while you were unable to keep yourself alive.
And someday, if you live long enough, you may again need someone to carry you.
Between infancy and old age we temporarily experience enough independence to create the illusion that we are self-sufficient.
We are not.
We are interdependent.
And perhaps that is not a defect in human existence.
Perhaps it is something sacred.
Today’s Gospel begins with a person who cannot reach Jesus by himself.
So four people pick him up.
And maybe the miracle begins before Jesus does anything.
Maybe the first miracle is simply this:
Somebody carried him.
I. The Gospel Begins With Friends Carrying a Body
Mark tells us that Jesus is teaching in a house in Capernaum.
The place is packed.
Then four people arrive carrying a paralyzed man.
They cannot enter.
So they climb onto the roof.
They remove part of it.
And they lower their friend down.
Imagine preaching while pieces of someone’s roof start falling beside you.
Jesus looks up.
A mattress begins descending from the ceiling.
This is one of the Bible’s wonderfully chaotic stories.
But Mark tells us something extraordinary:
“When Jesus saw their faith…”
Their faith.
Not simply his faith.
The faith belongs to the community carrying him.
Sometimes you cannot carry your own faith.
Sometimes somebody else believes tomorrow is possible for you.
Sometimes somebody else carries the stretcher.
II. Christianity Has Over-Individualized Faith
Modern Western Christianity often asks:
Do you personally believe?
Have you personally accepted Jesus?
What is your personal relationship with God?
Those questions can have meaning.
But biblical religion is profoundly communal.
Israel is a people.
Jesus creates a community.
Paul describes a body.
The Lord’s Prayer begins:
“Our Father.”
Not:
“My private spiritual provider.”
Christianity was never supposed to become a solitary transaction between an individual soul and heaven.
We belong to one another.
III. Cain Asked the Wrong Question
Genesis gives us one of humanity’s most haunting questions.
After Cain kills Abel, God asks:
“Where is your brother Abel?”
Cain replies:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The entire Bible may be answering that question.
Yes.
You are.
And your sister’s keeper.
And your neighbor’s keeper.
And sometimes your enemy’s keeper.
And the stranger’s keeper.
Not because people belong to us.
But because their well-being concerns us.
The opposite of love is not always hatred.
Sometimes it is:
Not my problem.
IV. Jesus Refuses the Theology of Blame
In the ancient world, illness and disability could be interpreted morally or religiously.
Even within the Gospel traditions we find people asking questions about sin and suffering.
Who sinned?
What caused this?
Whose fault is it?
Human beings still do this.
Someone becomes sick and we ask:
Did they eat correctly?
Exercise enough?
Take the right supplements?
Pray enough?
Think positively enough?
Sometimes these questions become cruelty disguised as explanation.
Historical-critical interpretation reminds us that ancient healing stories operate within ancient understandings of illness, purity, community and divine activity.
We should not turn them into simplistic modern medical claims.
But the ethical movement of Jesus is clear.
Jesus repeatedly moves toward suffering bodies.
Not away from them.
V. Bodies Are Not Moral Report Cards
Your body is not a spiritual performance review.
Illness is not proof of moral failure.
Disability is not evidence of insufficient faith.
Aging is not defeat.
Needing assistance is not shameful.
Bodies are vulnerable because bodies are alive.
Christianity’s obsession with perfect bodies has sometimes forgotten something fundamental:
Jesus himself becomes wounded.
Christianity places a wounded body at the center of its symbolism.
Not a body untouched by vulnerability.
A wounded body.
VI. Paul Says the Weaker Members Are Indispensable
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians:
“The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.”
That is revolutionary.
He does not say:
We tolerate weaker members.
He says:
Indispensable.
A society built entirely around productivity asks:
What can this person contribute?
Paul asks another question:
What kind of community would we become if we discarded part of ourselves?
The answer is obvious.
A wounded body.
VII. Disability Theology Changes the Question
Disability theologians have challenged churches to stop treating disabled people merely as objects of healing or charity.
That matters enormously.
A disabled person is not a sermon illustration.
Not a tragedy.
Not a theological puzzle.
Not somebody waiting for a miracle so everyone else can applaud.
Disabled people are teachers.
Leaders.
Theologians.
Friends.
Artists.
Workers.
Mystics.
Neighbors.
Members of the body.
Sometimes the problem requiring healing is not the body.
Sometimes it is the staircase.
The inaccessible building.
The prejudice.
The poverty.
The healthcare system.
The social assumption that only certain bodies count as normal.
Perhaps society needs healing too.
VIII. Judith Butler: Vulnerability Is Shared
Judith Butler has written extensively about vulnerability, precarity, bodies and which lives societies consider worthy of protection.
Her work helps us see something Christianity should already know:
Bodies depend upon social conditions.
Food.
Housing.
Healthcare.
Transportation.
Relationships.
Safety.
A body never exists completely by itself.
Vulnerability therefore becomes political.
Who gets protected?
Who receives care?
Whose pain is believed?
Whose life receives resources?
Those are theological questions as much as political ones.
IX. Julia Serano: Bodies Are Interpreted Socially
Julia Serano’s work on gender also helps illuminate the ways bodies are not merely biological objects.
Bodies are interpreted.
People make assumptions about them.
Gendered bodies are judged.
Disabled bodies are judged.
Fat bodies are judged.
Old bodies are judged.
Poor bodies are judged.
Trans bodies are judged.
Certain bodies are treated as normal.
Others are treated as problems.
Jesus repeatedly disrupts this sorting system.
He touches bodies society considers unclean.
He eats with people labeled morally suspect.
He places marginalized bodies back inside community.
That may be one of the deepest meanings of healing in the Gospels:
restored belonging.
X. Francis Embraces the Body He Feared
Francis of Assisi famously remembered his encounter with people suffering from leprosy as transformative.
He had feared and avoided them.
Then something changed.
The person Francis had learned to regard with disgust became the place where Francis discovered another way of being human.
This is not a sentimental story about Francis becoming a heroic caregiver.
The encounter changed Francis.
The marginalized person became teacher.
That reversal matters.
Sometimes the person we think we are helping is actually revealing something about ourselves.
XI. Clare Builds a Community of Care
Clare’s spirituality was profoundly communal.
Life was shared.
Prayer was shared.
Food was shared.
Illness was shared.
Responsibility was shared.
Nobody became holy alone.
This offers an alternative to the mythology of radical individualism.
Human flourishing is communal.
There will be days when I carry you.
There will be days when you carry me.
And perhaps neither position is superior.
They are simply different moments within relationship.
XII. Caputo: God Happens in the Act of Carrying
John D. Caputo helps us reinterpret this Gospel without requiring a supernatural interventionist deity.
God does not have to be imagined as a cosmic physician selectively deciding whose illness to cure.
God insists.
The suffering body calls.
The hungry body calls.
The exhausted caregiver calls.
The abandoned elder calls.
The overwhelmed nurse calls.
The person without insurance calls.
And God happens as that call becomes responsibility.
Perhaps God is happening when four people pick up the stretcher.
Not above them.
Between them.
In the carrying.
God insists.
Care responds.
XIII. Whitehead: God Is the Fellow-Sufferer
Alfred North Whitehead famously described God as:
“the fellow-sufferer who understands.”
That is profoundly different from imagining God as a distant ruler observing suffering from celestial safety.
Process theology imagines God participating relationally in the world’s becoming.
Every joy matters.
Every pain matters.
Every experience enters the ongoing life of reality.
God does not escape suffering.
God receives it.
Perhaps divine compassion is not supernatural rescue from vulnerability.
Perhaps it is the depth within vulnerability calling creation toward healing.
XIV. Bonhoeffer: God Is Not the Explanation for What Medicine Cannot Explain
Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned Christianity against pushing God into the gaps of human knowledge.
That insight matters in healthcare.
We should not use God to explain what medicine has not yet explained.
Science should investigate.
Doctors should study.
Researchers should research.
Medicine should improve.
Faith does not compete with medical knowledge.
The mystery of God does not shrink every time science learns something.
Perhaps God is not hiding inside the unexplained.
Perhaps God is happening within the human response:
Research.
Care.
Presence.
Compassion.
Medicine.
Solidarity.
XV. From Today’s News: Who Will Care for the Caregivers?
Today’s news makes this question urgent.
The World Health Organization is warning of a global shortage of healthcare workers as populations and medical workforces age. Its recent analysis projects a worldwide shortfall of about 11.1 million health workers by 2030, with dozens of countries potentially unable to maintain current levels of care.
Meanwhile, a recent U.S. survey found that about 70% of Generation Z healthcare workers were considering looking for another job within the next year, even though many also said they valued long-term employment stability.
These are not merely employment statistics.
They raise a human question:
Who cares for the people who care for everybody else?
Nurses need rest.
Home-health aides need living wages.
Doctors need sustainable workloads.
Nursing assistants need dignity.
Mental-health workers need support.
Family caregivers need respite.
Care cannot survive indefinitely on sacrifice.
A society that applauds caregivers while exhausting them has confused gratitude with justice.
XVI. Healthcare Is a Moral Question
Political traditions disagree strongly about healthcare.
Some emphasize market competition, consumer choice and private provision.
Others emphasize public financing, universal coverage and healthcare as a social right.
A democratic-socialist perspective argues that access to necessary healthcare should not depend primarily upon wealth, employment status or profitability.
The theological reason is straightforward:
Bodies are not commodities.
Illness is not a luxury market.
A heart attack does not wait for comparison shopping.
Cancer does not negotiate according to income.
A child with an infection does not become less deserving because their parents are poor.
Healthcare inevitably raises the question:
What do we owe one another simply because we share vulnerable bodies?
XVII. There Are Political Disagreements About How
We should distinguish the moral question from the policy question.
People can agree that everyone deserves care while disagreeing about how healthcare should be financed and delivered.
Single-payer systems.
Public options.
Private insurance.
Employer coverage.
Cooperative systems.
Mixed systems.
Different countries make different choices.
Christianity does not supply an insurance actuarial table.
But it does give us the Good Samaritan.
The Samaritan does not ask:
Is this wounded person in network?
He sees suffering.
And responds.
That establishes at least a moral direction.
XVIII. Today’s Drug-Pricing Debate Shows the Complexity
Current healthcare policy also demonstrates that political labels do not always predict policy neatly.
The Trump administration recently announced participation by all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico in a Medicaid drug-pricing initiative designed to tie prices for some medicines more closely to prices paid in other developed countries. Supporters argue it could produce substantial public savings, while pharmaceutical-industry critics warn about potential effects on access and future investment.
The specific policy can and should be debated on its evidence and outcomes.
But notice the underlying question.
Should society simply accept whatever price the market produces for medicine?
Or does public need justify collective bargaining and regulation?
That question reaches beyond party identity.
It concerns the relationship between markets and human need.
XIX. A Democratic-Socialist Theology of Care
Democratic socialism contributes a simple principle:
Some goods are too fundamental to human flourishing to distribute solely according to purchasing power.
Healthcare.
Education.
Housing.
Food security.
Basic utilities.
Public transportation.
Care for children.
Care for elders.
Care for disabled people.
Different democratic-socialist traditions propose different institutions for achieving these goals.
But the moral intuition is communal:
Nobody should be abandoned simply because caring for them is unprofitable.
That sounds remarkably close to Paul’s theology of the body.
“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.”
Paul apparently did not believe suffering was merely a private matter.
Neither should we.
XX. Care Work Is Work
Our economies frequently undervalue caregiving.
Who raises children?
Who cares for aging parents?
Who cooks?
Who cleans?
Who provides emotional support?
Who sits beside someone who cannot be left alone?
Historically, much of this labor has been performed disproportionately by women, often unpaid or poorly paid.
Feminist economics has forced societies to ask:
If caregiving stopped tomorrow, how long would the rest of the economy function?
Probably not very long.
Care is not peripheral to the economy.
Care makes the economy possible.
Perhaps budgets should reflect that.
XXI. bell hooks: Love Is Something We Do
bell hooks repeatedly insisted that love is not merely feeling.
Love requires practice.
Care.
Commitment.
Responsibility.
That fits beautifully with the Gospel.
The four friends carrying the man do not merely say:
We care about you.
They pick him up.
Love acquires muscles.
Love climbs stairs.
Love tears open roofs.
Love finds transportation.
Love makes appointments.
Love brings meals.
Love changes diapers.
Love sits through chemotherapy.
Love fills prescriptions.
Love answers the phone at three in the morning.
Love becomes material.
XXII. Religious Pluralism and the Sacred Work of Care
Christianity does not own compassion.
Buddhist traditions cultivate compassion toward suffering beings.
Judaism emphasizes care for community and the preservation of life.
Islam places profound importance on mercy, charity and responsibility toward vulnerable people.
Hindu traditions contain rich traditions of service.
Sikh communities have demonstrated radical hospitality through practices such as langar, feeding people without regard to status or religion.
Humanists care for people without requiring supernatural beliefs.
Good.
Let everyone carry the stretcher.
If an atheist develops a lifesaving medicine, use it.
If a Muslim nurse cares for a Christian patient, give thanks.
If a Buddhist physician heals someone, rejoice.
If a Christian caregiver serves an atheist, do not turn the bedside into a conversion opportunity.
Care first.
Theology can wait outside.
XXIII. Christian Atheism: The Miracle May Be Us
Suppose no supernatural hand comes through the ceiling.
What then?
Four people are still standing beside the stretcher.
Perhaps Christian atheism asks us to stop waiting for heaven to perform responsibilities that belong to us.
Someone needs food.
Cook.
Someone needs medicine.
Provide it.
Someone needs transportation.
Drive.
Someone is lonely.
Visit.
Someone is exhausted.
Sit with them.
Someone has fallen.
Lift.
Maybe the miracle is not that supernatural power interrupts nature.
Maybe the miracle is that human beings interrupt indifference.
XXIV. The Church as a Community That Carries
Imagine church differently.
Not primarily:
A building where people agree about doctrines.
But:
A community that carries people.
Someone loses a job.
Carry them.
Someone becomes sick.
Carry them.
Someone loses faith.
Carry them.
Someone cannot pay rent.
Carry them.
Someone is grieving.
Carry them.
Someone is exhausted from caregiving.
Carry the caregiver.
Someone cannot believe in God anymore.
Do not throw them off the stretcher.
Carry them anyway.
Perhaps that is faith.
Mark says Jesus saw their faith.
Sometimes the community believes for us.
Conclusion: Someday You Will Need the Stretcher
There are seasons when you feel strong.
Enjoy them.
Use your strength.
Carry somebody.
But do not become arrogant.
Because bodies change.
Circumstances change.
Life changes.
Someday the person carrying may become the person carried.
And that is not failure.
That is humanity.
We are born needing care.
We live through relationship.
We become sick.
We recover.
We age.
We grieve.
We depend.
We carry.
We are carried.
We are one.
The great spiritual illusion is independence.
The great spiritual awakening is interdependence.
Cain asks:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The Gospel answers:
Yes.
But more beautifully:
You are your brother’s brother.
Your sister’s sister.
Your neighbor’s neighbor.
Part of one vulnerable body.
So when someone falls—
pick up the stretcher.
When caregivers become exhausted—
carry them too.
When healthcare becomes inaccessible—
change the system.
When someone’s body does not fit society’s definition of normal—
change the definition.
When medicine becomes unaffordable—
ask why.
When profit conflicts with human life—
choose life.
Not because a supernatural ruler threatens punishment.
Because suffering calls.
And perhaps that call is what we mean when we say:
God.
God insists.
The wounded body calls.
The exhausted worker calls.
The lonely elder calls.
The overwhelmed caregiver calls.
The uninsured patient calls.
The disabled neighbor calls.
And love answers:
We are coming.
Four people arrive.
They cannot find the door.
So they climb onto the roof.
Religion says:
You can’t do that.
Love starts removing tiles.
Because sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is tear a hole in the roof until everybody can get inside.
And perhaps that is the church I still believe in:
Not the church with the perfect doctrine.
The church carrying the stretcher.
Not asking first:
What do you believe?
But:
Where does it hurt?
Not promising:
God will fix everything.
But saying:
You will not face everything alone.
That is incarnation.
That is solidarity.
That is Beloved Community.
That is Franciscan kinship.
That is the Body of Christ.
That is the insistence of God becoming flesh through human care.
So carry one another.
And when your turn comes—
let somebody carry you.
There is no shame in the stretcher.
Sometimes the stretcher is where grace begins.
Amen.
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