In 1990, a fire badly damaged the sanctuary of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan. When the congregation rebuilt, they chose not to restore everything exactly as it had been. They left out one of the most recognizable and useful features of a church: permanent pews.

Without fixed pews, the sanctuary could be used for worship on Sundays and transformed into a soup kitchen during the week. A ministry that had begun by serving only thirty-five meals grew into one that served hundreds of hungry people.

At St. Boniface Church in San Francisco, the pews serve another purpose. During the day, unhoused people are welcomed inside to sleep. There are blankets, bags, tired bodies, and the ordinary disruption that comes whenever suffering is allowed to enter our carefully arranged spaces.

These churches learned to see beyond the usual appearance of a sanctuary. One removed its pews so people could eat. Another allowed people to sleep in them. In both places, the church did not become less sacred. It revealed more clearly what sacredness is for.

In today’s Gospel, the house where Jesus is teaching is full. The people have come for good reasons. They want to hear him, see him, and be near him. It resembles a church gathered around Christ.

Yet the crowd is so tightly gathered that a paralyzed man cannot reach Jesus.

No one appears to be intentionally keeping him out. The people inside simply do not notice that their gathering around Christ has become an obstacle for someone trying to reach him.

That is the question this Gospel places before every faith community: Do our faith, our worship, and our life together become instruments through which others can reach Christ—his presence, his healing, and his blessing? Or can we become so absorbed in our own understanding of what a church should be, how it should look, and how it should function that, without intending to, we make the way to Christ more difficult for someone else?

The four friends understand what matters most. When the entrance is blocked, they open the roof. They are willing to disturb the building because they know the building exists to bring people near Jesus.

That requires holy imagination, but also spiritual courage: the courage to step beyond what is comfortable, to loosen our attachment to familiar ways, and to accept the inconvenience that comes when real human need enters our ordered lives.

May God give us the vision to notice who cannot reach Christ, and the courage to move whatever stands in the way.