Carried the Last Thousand Feet

What's happening

Near the end of the Boston Marathon on Monday, a Northeastern student named Ajay Haridasse collapsed about a thousand feet from the finish line. Aaron Beggs, a runner from Northern Ireland who had been struggling himself, saw him go down, glanced at his watch, and stopped. Robson De Oliveira, a Brazilian runner, joined him.

The three men finished together, the two strangers holding Haridasse up on either side for the last stretch of the 26.2-mile course.

Their finishing time, slowed by the carry, was still fast enough to qualify all three for next year's Boston Marathon. Haridasse will run again because two men he had never met decided, in the same instant, that their race could wait. Video of the moment has been viewed millions of times.

What the Text says

Mark tells a story that happened on a roof in Capernaum.

Mark 2:3-53Four people came, carrying a paralytic to him.4When they could not come near to him for the crowd, they removed the roof where he was. When they had broken it up, they let down the mat that the paralytic was lying on.5Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you."

In first-century Galilee, a paralyzed man was not only physically immobile. He was socially erased, dependent on others for everything from food to dignity, with no path back to standing on his own. The four friends carrying him had no medical hope. They had a destination, and they had each other, and they had him.

The verb Mark uses for what they do at the roof is chalao, to lower with ropes. It is the language of dock workers and fishermen. It is hard, technical, costly work. They tear through someone else's roof to do it.

What Jesus says next is the part most readers walk past. He looks at the man on the mat, and he commends their faith. Idon ten pistin auton, "seeing their faith." Plural. The man on the mat does not speak. We do not know what he believes. Jesus heals him because of what the carriers did.

The reflection

The standard religious framework, then and now, is that you are saved by your own faith. Your own response. Your own decision. Mark 2 quietly says something else. Faith can be borrowed. A person can be carried into grace by people whose belief is doing the work theirs cannot do yet.

The marathon is the cleanest individual sport there is. One body, one clock, one finish line. Haridasse crossed his because two strangers refused to let it be only his.

Most finish lines that matter are crossed this way. Beggs glanced at his watch and stopped anyway.